Yes, We Can!

Who hasn’t heard President Obama’s 2008 electoral pitch – “Yes, We Can”? Although I’m not planning on contesting an elections any soon,I firmly believe in the power of the “Yes, We Can” attitude – Yes, We can, but only if we want it; Yes. We can, only if we persist. Yes. We can, only if we strive for it..

I am reminded of a Samskrta subhashita of Bhartrhari which classifies people into three categories -The people in the lowest rung, who never try because they are scared of failing. The mediocre people who start off with their task, but stop when faced with hurdles and finally those excellent men and women, who despite of being hunted and haunted by troubles and hardships, do not stop in their endeavor, and work towards achieving their goals.

On March 8th, the world celebrated the International Women’s Day.That day, I remembered, Nagamani, a very remarkable woman. Nagamani was born about a century ago in a middle class family in village in south India. As a young girl, she was trained in Indian classical music along with regular schooling. However she wasn’t encouraged to be a performing musician and was married at an young age. To her sorrow, she wasn’t allowed to take the Veena, the musical instrument she was trained on with her because it was considered a family heirloom, one that could only pass to a son. Nagamani moved on to join her husband. Since her husband was a forest officer, that meant she would now live in extremely remote locations, surrounded by the wild and the beautiful but without the music a town life could offer. As a remedy, Nagamani decided to make some of her own, got herself a harmonium and taught herself playing it. She played hours on end, just for herself, and perfected the art.

Life wasn’t a bed of roses for Nagamani: 12 childbirths out of whom 4 did not survive; one of the children became a victim of brain fever and ended up being disabled and needing constant care. But Nagamani did not let go of her music. As the children were growing, she kept playing the harmonium, for herself, and for her kids, and to instill the love of music among them. Years rolled by, and some of her children indeed become performers, something she herself could not do earlier. And her addiction to Indian classical music was passed to many of her grandchildren and great grand children too. She was an example of the “Yes, We can” spirit to engage in activities that are close to our hearts even if there are obstacles on the way.

It’s almost three decades since Nagamani passed away. I was very young then, but I still remember glimpses of her mastery over the keyboard that created wonderful music; and I still carry the love of music that she made a family heirloom. Nagamani, was my grandmother.

Now, let me switch gears to something more contemporary. Susan Spencer Wendel, a journalist left her job as a legal reporter when she was diagnosed with a serious condition called ALS in 2011. The disease left with her muscles dying and now she can barely talk and move her fingers. With her health fast deteriorating, she decided it was time to live the last couple years to the fullest. Last year, she went to the Yukon territories up North to see the northern lights with her best friend. She started writing her memoir typing only with her index finger on her iphone as that was the only functioning finger by then. This memoir, titled “Until I say Good Bye” goes on sale today, March 12th, 2013. Susan is a living example of the “Yes, we can” attitude doing things that we love to do, about in spite of the most grueling hardships.

How many times have we told ourselves that we don’t have time for things we wanted to do or wanted to do better, and blame external factors? “Only if I have more time” – “only if I had more money”, “only if the weather was not so cold” , “only if the neighbours dog didn’t bark so much” – Oh well. I made that last one up. But you get the idea!

Come on, let’s stop making lame excuses and move on! To do things that we really love. To do things that we care about. To do things we enjoy. And to say with pride and satisfaction , “Yes, We Can”.

-neelanjana

(This is the text of a speech I gave at my Toastmaster’s club contest today: March 12th, 2013)

Leelavati

This is a story from long time ago. You’ll have to go back to a sunny day in the middle of 12th century, to the grand old city of Ujjain in central India. It was to be a memorable day in Leelavati’s life. A day that was expected only once in a girl’s life time – the day when she would be the bride. The day when the groom would tie the golden bridal necklace around her neck. The time had been carefully chosen. You know, the bride’s father was none other than Bhaskara Acharya – Or “the learned teacher Bhaskara”, who was considered as one of the very best mathematician, astronomer and astrologer during those times.

Bhaskara was immensely happy when his daughter Leelavati was born. As was customary in those times, he prepared a chart of planetary positions at the time of his daughter’s birth. When he saw what those positions predicted, he really had to start worrying because the positions indicated the girl would never get married. But how could he not marry off his daughter? Marrying off ones daughter was considered as one of the most critical duties of a family man. Giving the hand of a daughter to a suitable groom was a guaranteed way for a good place in the heavens after death.

But Bhaskara did not leave this worry affect his bringing up of the little child Leelavati. Life went on as usual and Leelavati grew to become a young beautiful and intelligent girl. Bhaskara did leave no effort in educating her with the arts and sciences he was proficient at.  There qas no paucity of material to be taught. Leelavati was especially fond of mathematics, and Bhaskara would often compose terse verses with mathematical problems and ask her to solve.

When it was the appropriate age for Leelavati to get married, her father dug into his books again to see if there was a way to get her married, in spite of the shortcoming in her planetary charts. Finally, after careful evaluation, he found an auspicious time, when all the planets would be at the right locations conducive of a long, happy married life. But time was of the essence, and he had to make sure that the wedding ceremonies began exactly at the prescribed time.

Bhaskara went off to search for a suitable match for his girl. He found a groom to his daughter’s and his liking. All arrangements were made. The wedding hall was decorated with flower garlands. The water clock was also brought to the wedding hall to make sure that the ceremonies began at the right time. The water clock consisted of a big pot of water, in which a metallic bowl of accurate size, shape and weight that had a small hole of accurate dimensions at the bottom would float. Water would constantly come up into the floating bowl filling it up with water, and ultimately sinking it down, which acted as an accurate time marker.

Young Leelavati, still curious at heart, wanted to take a peek into the new water clock that was brought into the wedding hall. When no one was looking, she went near the water clock and peeped inside, and as luck would have it, one of the pearls from her nose ring fell into the floating bowl and covered the hole at the bottom. Unluckily, Leelavati did not take note.

Everyone was waiting for the arrival of the groom’s family, so that the wedding ceremonies might start at the appointed hour. Bhaskara went and checked the clock and was satisfied to see that the appointed hour had not come, because the bowl was still floating. After a while, he checked it again, again to see the bowl at the same position. Now he was sure something had gone terribly wrong. He looked carefully, and saw the pearl that came in between his daughter and her marital bliss, by getting stuck in the hole in the bowl and thus making the auspicious hour pass. The planets had indeed foretold the truth. The groom’s family did not make it to the wedding venue after all.

Bhaskara became sad for a while, but he was a learned man. He went to his daughter Leelavati, and said: “Oh my dear girl, don’t worry. I wanted to get you married so that you could have a family of your own, have good children who would carry the family’s name. But the planets proposed something else. I don’t consider this a defeat. I will make your name immortal”.

He then went on to write a book, which comprised of all those problems that he was giving his daughter, which she was very fond of solving. It had 278 verses, dealing with different fields in mathematics like arithmetic, geometry and algebra. And he called this book after his little girl “Leelavati”, and making his girl immortal as he promised.

Here is one verse from Leelavati (on calculations involving fractions) translated by your truly:

 

ಬೇಟದಾಟದಲಿರೆ ಇನಿಯ ಇನಿಯೆ, ಮುತ್ತಿನ ಸರವವಳದು ಹರಿಯೆ
ಮೂರಲ್ಲೊಂದು ಉರುಳಿದವು ನೆಲಕೆ; ಐದರಲೊಂದು ಹಾಸಿಗೆ ಕೆಳಗೆ;
ಅವಳು ಹುಡುಕಿದಳು ಆರಲ್ಲೊಂದು; ಇನಿಯ ಹೆಕ್ಕಿಹನು ಹತ್ತರಲೊಂದು
ದಾರದಲೀಗ ಉಳಿದರೆ ಆರು, ಸರದಲಿ ಮೊದಲೆಷ್ಟು ಮುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾವು ಹೇಳು!

ಸಂಸ್ಕೃತ ಮೂಲ: 56th verse of Leelavati

ಹಾರಸ್ತಾರಸ್ತರುಣ್ಯಾ ನಿಧುವನ ಕಲಹೇ ಮೌಕ್ತಿಕಾನಾಂ ವಿಶೀರ್ಣೇ
ಭೂನೌ ಯಾತಾತ್ರಿಭಾಗಃ ಶಯನತಲಗತಃ ಪಂಚಮಾಂಶೋಂಸ್ಯ ದೃಷ್ಟಃ |
ಪ್ರಾಪ್ತಃ ಷಷ್ಟಾಃ ಸುಕೇಶ್ಯಾ ಗಣಕ ದಶಮಕಃ ಸಂಗ್ರಹೀತಃ ಪ್ರಿಯೇಣ
ದೃಷ್ಟಂ ಷಟ್ಕಂಚ ಸೂತ್ರೇ ಕಥಯ ಕತಿಪಯೈಃ ಮೌಕ್ತಿಕೈರೇಷ ಹಾರಃ ||

-neelanjana

p.s: The skeleton of this narration is based on Indian folklore – but the details are my imagination.
p.p.s: This post came from the script of speech I gave at my Toastmaster’s club (And won the best speaker of the day too!)
p.p.p.s: Solving the puzzle of pearls is left as an exercise to my readers

Seven Days In A Week

“There are seven days, there are seven days,

There are seven days in a week

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday

Thursday Friday Saturday”

You might know this rhyme for a long time, but have you thought why there should be seven days in a week? Why not five? Why not ten?

Or for that matter why there should be a week after all?

If you didn’t know, let’s do some time travel to see the origin of the seven day week.

As a second language learner of English, I remember being surprised at the fact that three of the days of the week (Sunday, Monday and Saturday) had the same meanings as their counterparts in Kannada, my mother tongue. This similarity was very conspicuous given the fact that the names of the months of traditional Indian calendar were very different from their western counterparts. As you might know, Indian names for the days of the week are based on the 7 visible planets (Traditionally, the Sun too was considered a planet) Later on, I came to know that even the names like Tuesday and Wednesday (which do not show a direct relation with Mars and Mercury, were indeed coming from old Germanic words which are either equivalent to the planets or another God or deity with very similar features.

If you look at world languages, there are two distinct ways of naming the days of the week. The first is calling the days of the week as the first day, second day, all the way up to seventh day. Some languages have a ‘Day of rest’ after the sixth day. This system is used in languages such as Hebrew and Mandarin.

In the other scheme, the names of the days are always named on the planets. I will elaborate on this scheme because this one is most likely the fore-runner to the other system.

This naming scheme seems to have originated in or near Babylon around 3000 years ago, and spread to around the world in historic times. The names were obviously based on the planet names, but why should Monday follow Sunday or Saturday follow Friday?

Years and Years of looking at the night sky had made the ancient civilizations proficient in everything seen in the night sky. They had figured out that it took about 365 days between the return of the seasons, and Sun complete a revolution in the sky against the background of the stars in the same time. They call this unit as the ‘year’.

They also knew that there were 12 full moons in one year. In other words, there were 24 waxing and waning cycles of the moon in one year. When they had to define a unit of time shorter than a day,  they choose to divide a day into 24 parts. This is the unit that has come to be known as an hour. This is why we have 24 hours in a day.

These people from ancient civilizations knew that there were exactly seven objects in the sky which moved with the stars being fixed in the background. Each one took a different amount of time to move in the background of stars. Moon took about 27.5 days to return to the same position among the stars. Mercury took about 90 days to return to the same spot among the stars. Venus took about 225 days. Sun took exactly 1 year. Mars took little more than 2 years. Jupiter took about 12 years and finally Saturn took about 30 years.

Now let us write this in a table, in the decreasing order of the revolving time of the planets around the sky in the background of stars, as observed from Earth :

Saturn	1	8	15	22	5	12	19
Jupiter	2	9	16	23	6	13	20
Mars	3	10	17	24	7	14	21
Sun	4	11	18	1	8	15	22
Venus	5	12	19	2	9	16	23
Mercury	6	13	20	3	10	17	24
Moon	7	14	21	4	11	18	1

Earlier, we saw that a day was comprised of 24 hours. Who ever came up with this naming, allocated each hour of the day to a celestial object in this order. Assume on day 1, the first hour (hour when the sun rises is given to Saturn, Then the following hour is given to Jupiter and the third hour to Mars and so on. When you finish 24 hours and go to the next day, you may notice that this hour will be associated with Sun. – and that is the first hour of the next day. Continuing this process repeatedly you will see that the first hours of each day are governed by these planets in the following order – Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn.

This method adopted by Babylonians went to the west through Greeks and Romans. This was also carried to the Far East, most likely through India. All the major Indian languages follow this naming. Japanese, Korean and Old Vietnamese follow this scheme for some of the days of the week and for the rest the days, there are substitutions such as fire –day, water-day etc. But in Japanese, the planets themselves are named on the five principles (fire, water etc) thus indicating the source of naming to be the same. For some reason, this naming is lost in China, which follows a first-day second-day kind of naming.

Many of the customs and rituals followed by ancient civilizations had real scientific principles behind them. I wish we take sometime in understanding the traditions of earlier generations, and take the best part for our future. We should not forget a giant Sequoia tree becomes great by a combination of its ancient roots, and the shoots and blossoms of today.

-neelanjana

ps: This was a speech I gave in my Toastmasters Club

Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Da Ni

Doe (Do), a deer, a female deer
Ray (Re), a drop of golden Sun
Me (Me), a name I call myself
Far (Fa), a long long way to run !

I am sure most of you recognize this song from the classic movie – “The Sound of Music”. The song tells about the seven musical notes used in western classical music – do re mi fa so la ti do.  Here, in this gentle introduction to Indian classical music (ICM) I am going to tell you about another set of 7 notes, sa ri ga ma pa da ni –the very same notes as they are known in India.

Indian musical traditions date back to several thousands of years. Around the 13^th -14^th century AD, it started splitting into two streams. Both these systems are in vogue today. The basics of the two systems are the same, but there are differences in style and presentation. The system prevalent in most of the northern India is called by the name Hindustani, or uttarAdi (northern music). This had an influence from Persian music during middle ages. The music in the south retained more of original elements of Indian music, is called Karnataka or dakshinAdi sangeeta (literally, southern music).

I will compare and contrast Indian music classical with western classical music to make this an easy learning experience. Just keep in mind that whenever I refer to western music or Indian music, they refer to the classical variety.

Let me first tell about the similarity. Both western and Indian music are based on an octave with 7 notes and 12 semi-tonal intervals. A note is called svara in Indian music. The 7 notes are shadja, rishabha, gandhara, madhyama, panchama dhaivata and nishada. Don’t worry about the complicated sounding names – These are always represented by the solfa syllables -sa ri ga ma pa da ni while singing.

There are some key differences that can make Indian music almost alien sounding to an ear trained to listen to western classical music. The first difference is that the notes in Indian music are seldom played or rendered plain at their nominal position. The notes generally descend from a higher note or glide from a lower note or oscillate around the nominal value. This is called gamaka , and this technique of singing a note is employef commonly in Indian music.

The second difference is the floating key used in Indian music. The compositions in western music are set in and are always performed at a certain key. There is no such hard and fast rule in Indian music. A performer uses a pitch in which he or his instrument sound best. This is normally set by the sound of a drone, called the shruti. In a performance, all the singers and the instruments set their pitch to the shruti set by the main performer.

Coming to the next difference, harmonic elements are almost absent in Indian music, while western classical music has abundant harmony. In western classical, you will find combination of notes that sound nice when played together form chords. You may also find different instruments, or vocals singing a different note blending very harmoniously. On the other hand, Indian music most of the time does not use of playing or singing different notes at the same time. Indian music a melodic system, where compositions are set in different melodies, called raagas. The term rAga actually means color, and indeed is a true representative of Indian music. There are hundreds of raagas which have individuality by the notes they use, the sequence of notes, and also the gamaka or the variations on the notes in the raaga, and the mood they create.

Last, but not the least is the importance of improvisation. In a western music scenario, most of the pieces you would get to listen in a performance are pre-composed. The performers may also have the notation in front of them when they sing or play. On the other hand, in an Indian music concert, there is heavy emphasis on improvisation and elaboration. There are compositions, but the artist would augment it with his own imagination and explore the contours of the raaga he is performing.

There is a saying: “Shrutih mAtA, layah pitA” – Being in tune(key), and keeping a good rhythm are like parents to have good music. There is a well defined rhythmic system in Indian music. It can be as simple as keeping the rhythm by hand or use a plethora of rhythmic instruments.

To conclude here are the key take-away points. Indian musical system is based on the same 7 notes and 12 semitones as the western music. However, absence of harmony, increased use of melody, the glides on the musical notes and the emphasis on improvisation make it distinct.

-neelanjana

p.s: This is a speech I gave at my Toastmasters Club

A Walk in the Neighborhood

I am sure most of us would like to take a walk around our home on pleasant summer day like today. When you go out, you might see the neighborhood kids biking on the side walk. You might even see some neighbors walking their pets. You might stop to exchange a few pleasantries with people whom you know. You will see blooming flowers, in the bright summer air.

But, just for a moment, imagine that when you take your walk there is nothing around. The only thing you see is a dim light afar. You walk towards it; you do not meet anyone on the way. You have walked more than 4 miles, to your surprise you find a he toddler crawling slowly on the ground. Then you look around; The light you were following all this time is much more closer now, and you can see a couple standing below the light pole. Could they be his parents? Do you think if such a neighborhood be interesting? Do you find it creepy? Are you willing to take a bet that such a neighborhood does not exist?

Don’t take that bet! Because that is exactly like the interstellar neighborhood we live, or rather our Sun lives in. The Sun is an average star – meaning when compared with the bulk of stars in the Milky Way it is neither very big, nor too small. It is not one of the hottest stars and not one of the coolest. It is not a very old star nor is it very young.

The solar neighborhood is typical of what you would find on the periphery of the galaxy. The stars are packed very loosely. If you take s sphere of radius of about 20 light years around the Sun, there are only about 100 stars!

The scene I described before is a solar analogy. The slowly crawling toddler 4 miles away from your home is Proxima Centauri. in the constellation of Centaurus. This is the nearest star to the Sun at a distance of about 4.2 light years. This star is much cooler than the Sun and has a diameter 1/7th that of the Sun. Proxima Centauri is not even visible to the naked eye, with a brightness 100 times dimmer than the faintest stars that we can see with the naked eye.

This dwarf is orbiting a star pair, called Alpha Centauri. Many of the bright stars have proper names, otherwise they are referenced by the constellation they belong to, normally with a Greek prefix. Generally, the brightest star in a constellation is termed Alpha. Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in the constellation Centaurus.

Many stars that we see are in fact multi-star systems. The stars that constitute Alpha Centauri, generally termed Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B and these are analogous to the couple I mentioned before. These two stars are both very much like the Sun. When seen by the naked eye, Alpha Centauri looks like a single bright star, and it is the third or fourth brightest star as seen from the Earth. Because of it’s location in the celestial southern hemisphere, it is not visible from large parts of northern hemisphere. The pair forming Alpha Centauri is located about 4.4 light years away from the Sun.

Who comes next in the list of our neighbors? It is Barnard’s Star – another dim star about 6 light years away. This is at least 15 times dimmer than the dimmest star we can see with bare eyes. The Star is named after an astronomer who first identified this star. We all know that stars are fixed points in the sky. But the truth is that all stars, including our Sun, are moving. We can not notice the change in the positions of the stars because of the large distances involved. In case of Barnard’s Star, it has perceptible movement and within your life time you will be able to see the change in its position in the sky with respect to other stars. Because of this fact, it is also called the Running Star or the Flying star. In fact, it is moving so fast that in another 10000 years, it would be replacing Proxima/Alpha Centauri system as the closest neighbor of the Sun.

The next closest star Wolf 359 is rather an uninteresting dim star named after a scientist. After this, at 8.3 light years is Lanande 21185. This is dwarf star, and an interesting one. Scientists have evidence to believe this star has 2 planets comparable to the size of the Jupiter in our solar system.

Little further, at around 8.6 light years we find Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, and is about 30 times larger than the Sun. This brightness attracted all ancient civilizations. It is called vyAdha in Samskrita, Al Shira in Arabic and Tian Lang in Chinese. Ancient Egyptians found out that the annual flooding of the Nile occurred when this star appeared in the sky just before sunrise, and so it became quite an important star to them. Sirius is also a binary system, but in this case, one of the stars, Sirius A is a huge star, while B is a dwarf star.The star is part of Canis Major constellation and called Alpha Canis Majoris and in common usage, the star is called the Dog Star.

Let’s skip a few more naked eye-invisible stars and come to the next naked eye star. This is Epsilon Eridani located at about 10 light years. It is similar to the size in Sun, but only quarter as bright. What is special about this star? Well. It turns out that this star too has a planetary system, with at least two planets!

We went around our solar neighborhood. We found all kinds of stars, big and small. Bright and dim. We visualized how space is very sparsely populated. We also saw that planetary systems are not unique to our Sun. So could life be? That is a question only future can answer.

I enjoyed waking in this stellar neighborhood. And hope you did too!

-neelanjana

**********

(p.s: This was a speech I gave in one of the meeting of our Toastmasters Club)