Fear

I fear.
I fear the fear.
Fear - a spanning feeling of this year.
I fear to remember this year.
Fear of power.
I fear my power
For the fear of losing it.
I fear the powerless
For the fear of them gaining it.
From powerlessness I powered to power.
I used this. I used that.
I stamped over this. I tampered with that.
I fear all those whom and which I used, stamped over and tampered with.
I fear the existence of all those.
I am  in a spree to stop all those gaps.
The gaps I used to rise to the power.
The gaps I used to wrest the power.
Gaps are gaps.
Gaps are void.
They are black.
I am on a mission to fill the gaps,
Hoping to turn the black to the white.
I need to stop the gaps to drive my fear away.
But, is the opposite of black, white?
Is the opposite of white, black?
Woe to me!
The trap of the binary, I fell into.
The power of fear will grapple me.
The fear of power will topple me.
O man, count the moments
As the lies and lines will fade away.
"Put up thy sword into its place,
For all they that use the fear shall perish with the fear."
Thus spake, the lord of fearlessness.

The Certain Uncertainties of Life

Is life binary?
Between the known and unknown,
Do we restrict ourselves?
Is the known fully known?
Are all the unknowns completely unknowns?
Is life struggling between Yes and No?
The passage from the unknown to the known,
Is a passage from the known to the unknown.
The more we know, the more we know not.
Yes is a No and No is an Yes.
Is life n-ary?
I doubt, doubt and doubt the doubt.
Life is a sequence of the knowns and the unknowns,
And the unknowns and the knowns,
And the knowns and the knowns,
Partial and partially partial,
Separated by commas, exclamations, question marks and hyphens.
Of course, within the unavoidable ruthless margins, it blossoms.
Am I missing something?
Am I avoiding something?
Yes, I must accept the stops,
The FULL-STOPs.
They give meaning to the commas.
Right, the margins and full-stops,
The frames and periods,
Protect us from the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns.
It is life.
Life is continuous, yet discrete.
It is discretely continuous.
It is continuously discrete.
Hang on…
No place for any conundrums.
Bang on, it is sagaciously!

Love of Light

I love light.
To be in the light
Not in the limelight
Is my might.
I love fight
To be in the light.
For that I hate
To be in the limelight.
Light is bright,
Transparent and fast.
That's why I hate
What is not light.

Feast of Denha

Denha is the second great Feast after Easter that was being celebrated from early centuries in the Universal Church. Denha which means Sunrise or Dawn is celebrated to commemorate the Baptism of Our Lord and through that His public manifestation to the world by God the Father as His Beloved Son (Mt.3:17: Mk. 1:11; Lk. 3:22). The Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove (Mt.3:16: Mk.1:10: Lk.3:22; Jn. 1:32). Thus the three Persons of the Holy Trinity also were manifested on that occasion. Therefore in the early Church the Holy Trinity also was commemorated on this day. 

In the Nazrani Church, this feast is celebrated in two distinct forms viz., Rakkuli Perunnal and Pindi Perunnal. To commemorate the Baptism of Our Lord in the River Jordan, the Faithful at Palai and Pulinkunnu used to take a holy dip by night (Rakkuli) in the streams flowing near the churches in these localities after the solemn celebration of Ramsha, the Evening Liturgy. Faithful in and around Thrisur light small oil lamps and pin them around plantain trunks (Pindi) erected in churchyards or in front of the houses and go around them chanting in Syriac El payya. These Syriac words mean God is radiant. The thought underlying the lighting of lamps and the chanting is that God sheds His light over the human race through Mishiha (Lk.1:76-79). We may also allude here to the tradition in the Syriac Church which says that when Jesus was baptized in River Jordan, a great light shone in that River. This also might be linked with the introduction of lamps into this festive ceremony. In recent years this Pindi Perunnal ceremony is celebrated in the southern regions also.

Peace to the World

You train gun,
We drain fun.
You train fun,
We drain gun.
You drain gun,
We train fun.
You drain fun,
We rain fun.
Gun's no fun
Have gun of fun
Let's go to the man-ger
Peace be with us

The Prodigy that was Shakuntala Devi

Shakuntala Devi was the best known face of popular Mathematics in India. She was renowned for her mindboggling calculations.  Indian Mathematics was synonymous with two names late Srinivasa Ramanujan and the other being Shakuntala Devi herself.  While Ramanujan is associated with the pre-independence period, Shakuntala Devi flowered in the post-independence India.
Ramanujan was famous for his longstanding contribution to the modern Theory of Numbers, including the methodology to estimate the accurate value of Pi. On the other hand, Shakuntala Devi, who lacked formal education, attempted to eradicate ‘Arithmophobhia’ or the fear of numbers among the masses.  Her public performances sought to convey the message that Mathematics is fun and not necessarily esoteric.

When Shakuntala Devi established herself through the 1960s and 1970s the television era did not exist   in the country. The only medium available to her was public performances at schools, colleges or clubs.      Shakuntala Devi was inherently gifted with the power of calculation that started as a child through association with her father who performed card tricks. She gradually mastered the art of Mind Dynamics to astonish audiences worldwide with her almost instantaneous calculations of complex Mathematical operations. The lady was not a qualified classical Mathematician in the true sense of the term, considering she did not focus on development of Mathematical theories like CR Rao or SR Varadhan. Instead she concentrated solely on her amazing ability to calculate with super speed.

On 18 June 1980 at the Imperial College of London, Shakuntala Devi outdid the then fastest computer to multiply two thirteen digit numbers with each other. This earned her a coveted place in the Guinness Book of World Records.    It would be relevant to mention that the techniques that Shakuntala Devi used to wow the world with her superhuman skills were gleaned from the Atharva Veda.  These included:  ‘modular ‘arithmetic to figure out the day of any given date to find the nth root of any integer power; besides, movements of celestial bodies aimed to generate astrological predictions. Shakuntala Devi through her public performances was able to restore some of the glory of Vedic Mathematics.
The fact that Shakuntala Devi did not go to school never deterred her ability to grasp the nuances of numbers along with their permutations and combinations. Her father who was born in to a family of traditional priests had the courage of his conviction to pursue his passion as a vocation and became a circus artiste. This resulted in financial instability which hampered Shakuntala Devi’s formal schooling. Despite this disadvantage, she authored a dozen odd books on Arithmetic skills and Mathematical puzzles which are well received across all age groups and even beyond Indian shores.  
Clearly her life suggests that learning is as important as teaching.  Otherwise the lady applied her mathematical capabilities to Astrology in an era when there were no computers. This helped her become a celebrity astrologer and earn some wealth.

Clearly Shakuntala Devi possessed a God- given gift that coupled with her circumstances nurtured her capabilities to calculate to flourish over time. To that extent, she was born with mathematical abilities and lends credence to the thinking that Mathematicians are born and not made. Interestingly Shakuntala Devi’s birth and death, from a mathematical viewpoint have mystical significance. She was born in November 1929 and died in April 2013 aged 83 years. To a Mathematician these numbers 19, 29, 2, 13 and 83 are all prime numbers --- the building blocks of Counting Numbers.      
Shakuntala Devi was a unique individual and India’s gift to the world of Mathematics. Her life serves as an inspiration to one and all. It sends the message of the importance to identify one’s hidden talents and thereafter nurture them irrespective of one’s circumstances or grooming.