Lucky and Unlucky

It was Saturday. One of my friends had come to university to attend the weekend course work lectures. We are among the ones who are never short of a topic to discuss about. This has been the case since our M.Sc. days, when we used to stay in the same hostel. Now that we are at two different places, countless things are there to ponder about when we meet, because of two simple reasons – first, we meet once in a while and secondly, each one of us has her own set of incidents to narrate. As a result, when we are together, we are completely lost in our own world. This, clubbed with the absent mindedness, which both of us are gifted with (probably, being born Pisceans) leads to some unexpected events. The same thing happened that Saturday. We left the department and reached my room, with our hands full of our belongings. So, to open the lock I had to put her laptop near the door. We entered the room completely overlooking the laptop, latched the room from inside and continued with our chatter. After about 25 minutes, we came out of the room and were astounded at seeing the laptop there… The very first reaction was thanking the God… anybody could have easily stolen it… But thankfully, we were spared…

The similar kind of thing happened with my cell phone also. After having lunch, I forgot it in front of the department, went upstairs and got engaged in some work. Suddenly, my friend got a call from my mom. She informed me that someone from the Geography department had got my cell and called up my mom to inform about it. I was unaware of the fact that I had lost my cell when I got news of it being safe… Once again I thanked the God and this time saluted the honesty of that person as well…

But not on all days you are so lucky… Today, I was having a usual post-dinner stroll with my friend. Generally, we keep our water-bottles on the nearby katta. Because of rainy weather, today, the water bottles were replaced by umbrellas. It takes about two minutes to reach the other end of the hostel compound and then we turn around. During one such round, we realized that our umbrellas were missing. We searched for them, but couldn’t locate. Certainly, somebody had picked them up within the span of two minutes, when we were headed in the opposite direction. So, there are souls like these also…

But still, I am glad at the fact that it was just an umbrella… It’s unthinkable to imagine the appearance such a soul in the two prior incidences…


PS: This reminds me of a lesson in our 6th standard Marathi textbook “Pavsala”, which mentioned that the only reason that you have to buy a new umbrella is it’s lost (forgotten / stolen). You never buy a new one just because the old one is worn out. Mine was also pretty sick… with many aberrant bends, but I had no plans to part with it…But now, I am forced to buy a new one, considering the ceaseless showers and the fact that it’s just the beginning of this rainy season. L

Tribute to a Probabilist and an Actor

I was strolling in the cyber space just to get some inputs for our budding joint venture, when I stumbled upon the following news on the website of Bernoulli Society – “Prof. Patrick Billingsley passed away on April 22, 2011.” This was a single line, but it couldn’t leave me, as Billingsley occupies a significant place in my daily research work. Impulsively, I googled his name to get a glimpse of his life.  Unsurprisingly, the first result was from Amazon, as he has touched lives of many like me with his fundamental books on advanced probability theory.  The second result was from IMDb about some actor Pat Billingsley. I overlooked it as a mere coincidence, thinking - even the great “Billingsley” is not unique …Google has a name-alike for him too. So to get a relevant and reliable account of his life I started hunting for his Wikipedia entry, and to my surprise, the very first line was – “Patrick Billingsley was an American mathematician and stage and screen actor, noted for his books in advanced probability theory and statistics.”  I was rendered speechless. I couldn’t imagine that a person who wrote something so technical can be an actor as well…

This is not the first time that I am shocked after hearing something about Billingsley.  The first startling revelation was the fact that he is Feller’s student. Knowing that Feller is pretty sympathetic towards his readers, it’s very hard to believe that his student wrote such books. But considering his intellect, the gaps that he leaves for his readers to fill in must be really trivial for him.

The Princeton graduate was an accomplished actor with around 20 plays, 8 movies and 9 television shows to his credit. He had earned a black belt in judo. Besides occupying many important academic positions, he served on the athletic board of University of Chicago and even helped run the football scoreboard.  In words of his daughter Marty Billingsley - “A true Renaissance man, he also painted, did woodworking, read Beowulf in the original Old English. His interest in folk music led him to study the collection of ballads put together by Francis James Child in the late 19th century, which he sang as lullabies to his five children. Echoes of those ballads can be found in his daughter Franny Billingsley's young adult novels.”  (Source : UChicago News)

When asked about his equal interest in academics and acting, Billingsley replied  – “Teaching has a little bit of show biz. When you teach, you perform in front of an audience. That’s much like acting. As a teacher you’re used to being on stage”.

In short, if you are a genius, it doesn’t matter, which career path you have chosen. You can make a mark, in any field you like….