The Last Lecture

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand”.

 – Randy Pausch 

We cannot decide the length of our life, but surely, the height that we attain. This is exactly what Randy Pausch does and inspires us to do. For unacquainted, Randy Pausch was a professor in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. Born in a typical middle class family, this person went on to create an Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon, and later on became well-known for his legendary last lecture, which is available for future generations in the form of a video and a book.

Born with the winning ticket, as far as parents were concerned, he was lucky enough to live out his childhood dreams. Surely, he would love to cherish the dreams of his children and empower them to realize them, but for a terminal pancreatic cancer, which attacked him almost in the middle of his life. Then started the earnest attempts of a father, to give his children the fullest. The Last Lecture is also a part of this endeavor.

Most of the book is autobiographical, involving the incidents from his childhood to this last lecture, peppered with words of wisdom. But what I loved most is, this is not a traditional self-help stuff. This is a book which gives you insight into your life. Here is somebody with flesh and blood, giving down-to-earth tips to enrich your lives, though not in the materialistic sense. This journey of an inconsiderate but a passionate kid keeps us hooked till end. It’s just like one of us, narrating his experiences of fulfilling the dreams, some of which, even we have relished. And this journey is made more meaningful by the people who come across and leave their imprint.

From seemingly petty thing like answering “Park is open until 8 pm” to a question “When does the park close?”, Randy succeeds in changing our attitude. We are elated at the successes that he gets in achieving his dreams. Especially, his encounters with Disney World at various stages of his life are worth reading. The next in line is his gratitude towards the folks who shaped his life through their good deeds. And not to forget, that all this is written, when the death is waiting for you at the next turn.

He just sets an example, of how to live your life fully and enjoy every moment of whatever short span you are left with without whining about the fate. Then only you will be the richest one to die, as satisfaction is the wealth that you have with you on the deathbed.

So, get set go, on the life’s race, which is full of hurdles, waiting to be conquered, because, once again in Randy’s words, “Brick walls are there for a reason. ”

पाहुणा पाऊस

पाऊस! सगळ्याच लेखक - कवींचा आवडता विषय... मीही त्याला अपवाद नाही. पावसाच्या आठवणींचा जणू एक खजिनाच आपल्या पोतडीत असतो.

माझ्या आठवणीतला पहिला मुसळधार पाऊस पडला तेव्हा मी चार वर्षांची होते. माझ्या तर गुडघ्याच्याही वरपर्यंत पाणी आलेलं. त्यापूर्वी एकदा म्हणे आमची आख्खी बस पाण्यात वाहून जाता जाता वाचलेली असं आई-बाबा सांगतात. पण तेव्हा मी बहुदा फारच छोटी होते... नंतर तर नवा रेनकोट/ छत्री वापरायला मिळावं म्हणून पाऊस यावा असं वाटायचं...

नंतरचा आठवणारा पाऊस मी पाचवीत असतानाचा. आम्ही मैत्रिणी शाळेतून घरी येत होतो. वाटेत एक ओढा लागायचा. त्या पुलाच्या वरून पाणी वाहायला लागलेलं. तशा परिस्थितीत त्याच पुलावरून नाचत - उड्या मारत आम्ही घरी आलो. कारण रस्ता दिसत नाहीये तर आपण वाहून जाऊ शकू हा विचार तेव्हा डोक्यातच आला नव्हता. एक नवा thrilling experience एवढंच आमच्या लेखी त्याचं स्थान होतं.  एक दुसरा रस्ता पण होता, पण जरासा दूरचा. त्यामुळे घरी गेल्या गेल्या शिव्यांच्या पावसात भिजावं लागलं...

केवळ बाहेरच हा पाऊस भिजवतो असं नाही हं, आजवर दोन-तीनदा तर आमच्या घरातही त्यानं प्रवेश केलाय. एकदा खूप लहानपणी... आमचं घर एका उतरणीच्या पायथ्याशी होतं. त्यामुळे पाण्याचे लोंढेच्या लोंढे  घरात घुसले. अचानक झालेल्या या माऱ्यानं आम्ही गडबडलो. मला पलंगावर बसवून आईनं पाणी उपसायला सुरुवात केली.  रात्री ९ ते २-२.३०  हाच कार्यक्रम चालला होता. नंतर तर एका घरात दरवाजाखालच्या फटीत एक छोटासा धबधबाच तयार झाला होता. आणि मग घर म्हणजे त्या धबधब्यानं निर्माण झालेला जलाशय. मग दुसऱ्या दिवशीच त्या फटीचा बंदोबस्त केला गेला... त्या वर्षीचा पावसाळा मग निर्विघ्नपणे पार पडला. पुढल्या वर्षी मी एका खोलीत अभ्यासाला बसले होते. बाहेर पाऊस सुरु होता. पण यंदा तर काही कोणती फट मोकळी नाही अशा गोड गैरसमजात मी होते. थोड्या वेळानं फोन वाजला म्हणून मी बाहेरच्या खोलीत आले, तर "अवघा जीवनमय  संसार " अशी परिस्थिती होती.

आता मात्र बऱ्याच दिवसात हा पाहुणा आमच्या घरी आलेला नाही. आता आमची गाठ बाहेरच पडते आणि गप्पा होतात त्याही  खिडकीतूनच.... 

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….

गंधर्वयुग

काल बऱ्याच दिवसांनंतर चित्रपटगृहात जाऊन चित्रपट पाहण्याचा योग आला. अर्थातच it was worth it…. आमच्या पिढीला गन्धर्वयुगाच्या सुवर्णकाळाची सफर घडवून आणण्याचा हा प्रयत्न निश्चितच स्तुत्य आहे ….

सकाळ मधल्या सुबोध भावेंच्या लेखनातून चित्रपट बघायची उत्सुकता निर्माण झाली होतीच; पण ती उत्सुकता शमवतानाच बालगन्धर्वांविषयी अधिक माहिती घ्यायलाही उद्युक्त करण्याचं काम या चित्रपटानं केलंय . एखाद्या विषयाचा ध्यास घेऊन त्याच्या पूर्ततेसाठी झटलं की कसा उत्तम कलाविष्कार साकार होतो , याचं उदाहरण म्हणून या कलाकृतीकडं पाहता येईल …

सुबोध भावेंचा राजस बालगंधर्व मनात घर करतोच , पण त्याचबरोबर “मामा , गंधर्व म्हणजे काय रे ?”, असं निरागसपणे विचारणारा अथर्व कर्वेही आपल्या छोट्याश्या भूमिकेत ठसा उमटवून जातो . बालगंधर्वांची रसिकता, विनम्रता , कर्तव्यनिष्ठा, देशभक्ती , उत्कृष्टतेचा ध्यास , अनेकानेक आघात पचवण्याचं धैर्य , रसिकांवरची श्रद्धा , तत्त्वनिष्ठा आणि “इदं न मम ” अशी निरासक्त वृत्ती , अशा बहुविध पैलूंचं इतक्या अल्प कालावधीत प्रत्ययकारी दर्शन घडवण्याचं शिवधनुष्य नितीन देसाईंच्या नेतृत्त्वाखाली या साऱ्या मंडळींनी अतिशय उत्तमरीत्या पेललंय . पण त्याचबरोबर त्यांच्या अव्यवहारीपणा सारख्या काही उण्या बाजूही अगदी सहजगत्या समोर आणल्यायेत . आणि हे सगळं केलंय ते कुठंही “judgmental ” न होता … कारण , चित्रपटात म्हटल्याप्रमाणं गंधर्वांच्या आयुष्याला लौकिक बंधनांमध्ये अडकवण्याचा प्रयत्न करणंही निष्फळ आहे …. . शिवाय , सहकाऱ्यांचं प्रेम आणि कळकळ, रसिकांचं प्रेम आणि त्यातूनच उमटणारी दानशूरता , सहचारिणीची सोशिकता या गोष्टी झाकोळल्या जाणार नाहीत याचीही पुरेपूर दक्षता दिग्दर्शकानं घेतलीये . 

मुलीच्या मृत्यूनंतर डोळ्यात आलेलं पाणी क्षणार्धात टिपून भूमिका रंगवणारे बालगंधर्व आपल्या डोळ्यात अश्रू उभे करतात , तर बोलपटाच्या चित्रीकरणाच्या वेळी होणारी एका सच्च्या रंगकर्मीची घुसमट आपल्यालाही अस्वस्थ करून सोडते . आणि हे सगळं पाहिलं की पटतं – “खरंच, आयुष्य हे तर एक नाटकच. त्याचे प्रवेश “त्यानं” आधीच लिहून ठेवलेत . फक्त आपल्या वाटेला आलेली भूमिका उत्तमरीत्या पार पाडणं हेच आपलं कर्तव्य”.

PS: १. आनंद भाटेंचा देखील विशेषत्त्वाने उल्लेख करायला हवा.
      २. आता कुठूनतरी “धर्मात्मा” मिळवायला हवा ….

Advaita: in my Ph.D. Problems

It has been a month since I wrote… Firstly, it was the effort to catch up with the running time, which had left me back (or may be I had let it run, as I was too inertiatic to catch up) and then, for a short while, blogger fuelled the lack of posts … I had a good excuse for not writing anything…

But now, some deep spiritual realization, urged me to write this…  Adi Shankaracharya proposed “Advaitawad” (nonduality) in his quest for understanding the Brahman. "Advaita" refers to the identity of the Self (Atman) and the Whole (Brahman). Seems pretty difficult to digest, isn’t it? But I hadn’t thought even in my dreams that my petty Ph.D. work  (It’s really petty compared to the problems he was thinking about, though for me it’s certainly worth more than that ) may make me a staunch follower of Advaitawad.  I was struggling for a while for getting uniform integrability of some particular class of functions. That seemed to be the biggest hurdle, which showed no signs of moving… We tried to bypass it in many ways, either trying to choose some completely different, well-trodden (and hence easier) path or even by devising escape routes… But,…. there was no way we could avoid it…Whatever may be the road, we were bound to stumble upon it sooner or later….

And now, finally, that is solved……I was very much relieved to see the solution. But my joy was short lived…As soon as I thought that I have crossed the so called biggest hurdle, another one was there to welcome me… Now, it is the situation where I am in search of something which Ramanujan had encountered when he was in school. I have to work out the limit of the type 0/0. Now, again the fruitless efforts of filling up the notebook pages for rearranging the things in a frail hope of landing on something  finite have started. But, whatever may be the shuffling, the terms tend to remain loyal to their original form…In fact once I came up with a limit, which involved some intricate mathematical expression with three different constants, and kept on simplifying it for about 10 minutes, only to discover that the most simplified version was 0.

In essence, even these problems deny dualism. All these problems have a single soul, though they may be having different external forms. And one more thing, avoiding a problem, is like simply avoiding an unwanted relative (some nosy aunty or meddlesome uncle, which all of us come across pretty often), who is sure to bump into us at the next crossing.

Procrastination…

Procrastination…. almost everyone has experienced it…I’m not an exception. But this time, it was heights of indolence. It has probably been a week since I spent my entire day prolifically. Initially, tried to work on some tedious, almost new topic “EM Algorithm”; so, could console myself about the sudden dip in the efficiency.  In fact, managed to convince my advisor, by giving the same excuse… how it’s inevitable to study this topic and at the same time it’s so time-consuming…. But, alas, even these excuses have their own “best before” date L.  Was thinking that it’s time to seriously get back to the work… but it’s difficult to get back on track, once you have derailed. Inertia makes its presence felt, every now and then… and as expected, before I could reach in the right gear, the excuse became outdated. Probably, for the first time during the past 7-8 months, I faltered over a seemingly innocuous question by my advisor, “What’s going on?”.  So now, it’s time to wake up, before it’s too late….. Will have to work really hard, to make up for this gap… off to work now…