Soma Purana

One reads so many books in their lifetime. Most books are so ordinary, you will forget them easily. Some are very good but still you may not be able to recall the title or the author or the general story line. I remember the following books. These books have captivated my mind. Of course, I have to admit, the books I like, you may not like. The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk: I have read this twice and would like to read it again. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger: This is supposed to be for teenagers, but I like it still. The hot zone by Richard Preston: This is a true story and truly is stranger than fiction. I am reading this now again.

I distinctly remember as a 4-year old until I was about seven or so, there used to be a bigger kid in the village who would tease me everyday. He belonged to a "scheduled" caste. I am not an expert on the caste system in India, but let me relate what I know. In my village about 30% of the people belonged to the scheduled castes. There were two scheduled castes - holeru, madigaru - in our village. I have no idea what the difference is between these castes and the higher castes. Both were considered the lowest castes (they were not even allowed to touch the people of higher caste). If a higher caste person gets accidentally touched by a holeru/madigaru person, they would rush off to get a bath and clean themselves. Holeru and madigaru lived in a separate part of the village and could not mix with higher caste. They basically worked as laborers in the farms owned by higher caste folk. I hadn't seen a single well-off or educated lower caste person in my village. It seemed as

When I was small and going to elementary school, I was not spending much time in studying like my brothers and sisters did. My father was particularly concerned about my future. He didn't think I would get a college degree and settle down with a job like my oldest brother Chowdappa did [he was the role model for all of us. He was the first person in the history of the village to complete high school, the first one to get a college degree, and the first one to get a masters degree). I vividly remember my father seriously discussing his plan for me with my mother. His plan was to fund in opening a small cafe in Chinthamani so I could run it and establish my life as a normal person. He abandoned his plan once I completed high school and started my education in engineering.

When I was a child my father ran a cafe. It had some strange characteristics. It was open only for 2 hours, every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year from 6 AM to 8 AM. It offered only two items, idly and coffee. There were always four workers; my mother who prepared the idly hittu on the previous day (it took a couple of hours), my father who sat at the stove and prepared idly and coffee, one cleaner whose job was to clean the dishes, and one server whose job was to serve the customers. The cleaner and servers jobs were rotational. The very first server was my older brother Radhakrishna and I was the cleaner. We kept these jobs for many years, may be 10 until we left the village to go for higher studies (I went to Bangalore and Radhakrishna went to Chinthamani). After both of us left at the same time, my younger brother Gopala became the server (he was never the cleaner which was considered a lower level job) and Ramamurthy who was younger to Gopala became the cleaner. When Gopala le

I am reading Leonard Susskind's "The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics." A fascinating book. Susskind is a physics professor at Stanford. I started watching some of his video lectures on classical mechanics, relativity, entanglements, etc. He has an extremely captivating style. He has had a long standing battle with Hawking on what happens to information when objects fall into a blackhole. Hawking stated that it is lost, lost forever. Susskind and others including Nobel physicist Hooft did not agree since the basic principle of physics says information is preserved. They came up with this theory of holographic world which explains that the information is preserved in the surface of the horizon of the blackhole. If it is on horizon's surface it should be within the blackhole too since what is in the blackhole is projection of what is on the surface. This whole debate is highly theoretical and hard to understand

I have taught multivariable calculus for three semesters now at MCCC. I love teaching this subject. I had had many Math courses during my engineering days, but I never understood math at conceptual level. I am sure it has to do with the way it is taught in India. Perhaps, now it is changing, hopefully. Technology has its underpinnings in calculus. Real world can be better understood once we master calculus, in particular, vector calculus. I don't remember learning back in my college days the Green's theorem, Stokes' theorem, and divergence theorem. They are so powerful and form the basis for most fundamental laws of physics including Maxwell's equations. A little book called "div, grad, curl and all that" by h.m.schey is so wonderful in getting a real understanding of multivariable calculus. It is such fun to read this great little book. Schey expounds vector calculus by applying it to electrostatics. With technology these days, anyone, anywhere in the world c

Among a few things I love to do is bike (not motor) riding. I have always loved to ride a bike since I learned to ride a bike in my teens. Riding a bike uses only human energy, yet seems effortless even when riding for hours continuously and travel almost 100 km! The difference distance you could cover with the same level of work between biking and walking is about an order of magnitude. What makes bike riding so much more efficient? I don't know fully know the answer, but it seems that walking involves so much muscle movement that really does not carry you forward. Furthermore, cycling allows you to take micro-breaks while not stopping so your body can briefly rest, rejuvenate, and continue the effort. Bike ride involves much smoother leg motion, it is kind on the human body. It seems as if human body is designed for bike ride! I have a weekly quota of 200 km, and often I exceed that. One reason I try to better the quota I fixed for myself is that I anticipate bad days and weeks w