Did Arjuna Understand Bhagawad Gita?
I contend that Arjuna could not have learnt Sanskrit as he is of the warrior caste (Kshatriya). Sanskrit is the language of the Devas and only Brahmins can have access to it. Anyone else who even hears Sanskrit verses is to be subjected to unspeakable torture, as spoken in Manusmriti.
Hence, Arjuna could not have known Sanskrit, and he could not have understood what Lord Krishna told him, as given in the Bhagwad Gita. Q.E.D
Raghuram Ekambaram
Indian Mathematicians of Centuries Ago
As continuation of, "We've done this, that and that too before anyone else," I wonder where the forerunner of calculus is hiding? I am hoping that someone will direct me to the source of calculus in Vedic Mathematics.
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Raghuram Ekambaram
I Have Tried My Best...
..and I failed. When I read something, I analyse it as much as I can, and try to handle any one issue on its own merits and demerits. But, I am unable to do so. I bring in parallels and perpendiculars, and the post becomes too log, even for my own taste.
Hence I am putting a full stop to this activity of mine.
Thanks for everything.
42
Raghuram Ekambaram
I Love Thamizh Movies
Some background to make the material in this write-up even halfway comprehensible.
I am the firstborn of a physics teacher (in college). Then, you could say that physics is in my blood, but I would not. Yes, I am interested in listening to any number of interviews/podcasts of physicists of the highest level, and Nobel Prize is not a definitive metric in this regard in my mind.
I am a civil/structural engineer by profession and I retired from the profession 19 months and a week ago yesterday. In the final ten years of my professional life, I taught the college level first year course on mechanics, which is the foundation of structural engineering which I taught for 2nd year students and also PG students. Yet, even after more than a year and a half,some hull fouling of structural engineering is clinging to the sides of my brain. This becomes active when I see the fight-scenes in Thamizh movies.
I am not exactly embarrassed to admit that I refer to some scenes from the movies in my classes, for example, why the hero jumping off of a two- or three-storey building cannot land even on a mound of sand without bending his leg at the knee and possibly at his hips too. But, that is precisely what we see on the silver screen (there no silver on the screens, though).
Some villains would be kicked so hard by the hero that they would slide perhaps ten feet before hitting a traffic barricade conveniently placed for the villains to come to a stop.
In a Hindi movie (copied from the James Bond movie Octopussy, in my opinion, the worst as the villain was not villain enough), an antique car accelerating and continue running on its metallic wheels (the tyre material had been shredded) on the rails. This is definitely impossible as both the metal surfaces are too smooth to offer any resistance; resistance is necessary, and teachers call it−and I do too−unnecessary waste. But I immediately explain that if a thing is necessary, it cannot be a waste! By the way, the wheels have to transfer some weight to the rails for friction to be mobilized and the wheels to run on the rails. I am surprised that Thamizh film makers have not woven this scene into any of their movies. Maybe they have and I am not aware. Mea culpa.
The villain sees in the wing mirror of his car that the hero is following him, perhaps in a motorcycle, a three wheeler, a car or a bus, but at a distance. The villain hasn’t had the time to read what is etched in glass in the wing mirror–Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. No wonder he is surprised when the hero is literally upon him in a trice!
An automobile would have cartwheeled and its occupants would emerge almost unscathed, with only some bruises on their arms, legs, or face. This is a combination of physics and physiology. Oh, yeah, then how come that individual alone escaped from the airplane wreckage in Ahmedabad not too long ago? The meaningful answer is, it is some sort of a “5-sigma” event. A meaningful mumbo jumbo it is, I admit.
In movies, the villain fires a handgun, and the hero sort of moves his head sideways and the bullet whizzes past his ear. The muzzle velocity from a handgun is about 300 m/sec. If the hero is about 10 m away from the villain, after the gun is fired, it would reach the target in between 0.03 to 0.05 seconds. I cannot imagine anyone shaking his head sideways in that period.
True, I do not take my structural engineering brain to the movies. Yet, it grates me when I see things that are not even absurd. Yet, as a mental masochist, I enjoy the fight-scene in Thamizh movies!
Raghuram Ekambaram
Carefree Play or Careful Fight
I Understand Charlie Chaplin Now
Till the age of 66 years I would have seen no more than two films of Charlie Chaplin, thanks to my parents. I used to consider them something like Laurel and Hardy films, slapstick comedy and more of the same. My parents were of no help in making me understand better; perhaps they themselves did not understand anything more than I did. Ouch, that would hurt, but both are dead for nearly 25 years. But, over the past nearly five years I have increased the count by 150%!
Many evenings, now that I am retired from professional life, I sit in front of the idiot box for three to four hours if a Bond movie or Chaplin movie is running on the screen. No, please do not take that I consider a Bond movie is as good/bad as a Chaplin movie. They are of two different genres, and each is perhaps the best in its own.
I would be writing about Bond movies, particularly about why I enjoy them later. For now, though my mind is focused on Charlie Chaplin’s movies; particularly the five films that keep coming up on TV.
The movies of Chaplin that run repeatedly on TV are Modern Times, City Lights, The Circus, The Great Dictator, and The Gold Rush. There could be some more but I do not recall.
I am no cine critique (all of you know that) but I find Modern Times as the best reflection of society changing, not knowing how those changes are going to affect them. This was in the 1930s, well into the modern, automated, Ford’s moving assembly line (the workers did not move from station to station to do the work they were trained for) industrialisation (started in the second decade of the 20th century), yet it carried the emotions and emotional trauma of individuals in the initial decades of industrialization.
Yes, every one of the movies of Chaplin that I have seen in recent years opened my eyes to what life was and how people coped with. City Lights has so many scenes that would find parallels in Indian movies; yet, the difference is the absence of maudlin sentiments though there were enough opportunities.
The Great Dictator is a satire that intimates things that would happen subsequently in Germany and imitates them (if something in the future could be imitated). There is just one year difference between Hitler’s occupation of Poland and the release of the movie. The interval between reality and the movie was merely six months. I would dare any astrologer to be anywhere near that specific in his/her prediction.
Charlie Chaplin was left-leaning but never a Communist. He seems not to have believed in God, but was more of an agnostic than an atheist−I do not know whether he cared very much whether He existed. That is a point in his favour in my book, as though you could not have been aware of this without my telling!
My only wish is I would get to see many more of his movies, even those that I might not appreciate or agree with the thoughts behind them. But, which channel would devote two hours time for an audience of one? My understanding has come some six decades too late.
Raghuram Ekambaram
Stupidity or an Abomination?
This refers to a news item in today’s newspaper (The Hindu, 2025-10-23) on how the Union Government of India proposes to catch a tiger by the tail. It talks about bringing the deep fake stuff put up in social media outlets. I give below the scanned image of the news item that appears in two distinct parts but given as a single image (.jpg), hence a deep fake by itself!
The above image is a composite of two parts of an article in the newspaper. The larger one is visibly rectangular and is on page 1. The smaller one that looks like a misplaced appendix, though nearly square in shape, in the human body, is from page 10. That is, what you see is a fake, does not matter deep or shallow. The real one is as published in the paper and the “synthetic” one is what I am giving here.
You are asking me why I am putting the “synthetic” part opposite to the real part. A valid point and I would clarify. I am not doing it, but I found it in the news item under discussion here!
But, prior to that, let me state what I understand by synthetic: Anything that is produced which is beyond one’s unaided senses or effort. It is beyond what is “natural”. That is AI, because your brain is incapable of producing the effects, and the seat of intelligence, let us take it for now, is the brain. So, every movie has to be tagged, per the ministry’s draft law, “synthetic.”
The IT minister said, “…the step we have taken is making sure that users get to know whether something is synthetic or real (my italics)”. As the whole brouhaha is about use and abuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which as far as I know has not been clearly defined, the IT minister should have avoided giving a new meaning to AI, that is, “synthetic”; even if the law is worded with “synthetic”; its opposite, then, has to be :natural” rather than “real”.
Now, getting out of wordsmithy, let us take a look at a photograph shot by a professional using a digital SLR camera. She would have adjusted the aperture, the shutter speed, the effective focal length (in the telephoto or wide angle range), colour balance and any and all other options she has at her disposal. The non-technical answer is (all the lengths given here are approximate, and from a non-professional) the depth of field may be taken as the appropriate metric.
If you took in scenery comprising a series of mountain peaks, setting the focal length at 18mm or lower, you get a wide vista, and, this is important, the depth you perceive will also be exaggerated; you would judge the peaks as much farther away than they are. Your eyes can never see what the camera shows.
Perhaps a more common experience is when watching a movie you see the wide, deep hall with a double-split, curved staircase at the end in a palatial house; here, the cameraman is using a short focal length setting. If you were to visit the site, you are bound to be disappointed: the hall is neither that wide nor that long!
Similar tricks can be played on your mind using telephoto lens, a villain espying the hero and his girl cavorting in a wide meadow far away but can see the glitter of the eardrop the female lead has on her ears!
I truly wish to take a photograph of a cloud in the evening sky (towards the west) that is fringed by a strip of pink (the colour my eyes see), which evokes in me a sense of wonder; letting me know that the Sun is further west, revealing hidden knowledge; an instance of learning that I have not experienced often in other settings. Just suppose that a photo I capture of such a setting is appreciated as beautiful by some, just so-so by others and downright meaningless by many, is that natural beauty? It is natural to me, most definitely, at least the few times I would be enamoured of it, and then, it becomes passé, more and more “synthetic,” because I know that I adjusted my camera settings.
This is the transformation between “synthetic” and “real”, it is time dependent.
Both nylon and rayon fibres are synthetics, but while the former is unadulterated synthetic, rayon is not (unadulterated synthetic? Yes, wholly man-made from, most probably man-madechemicals). Yet, both fibres are “real”! That is why I can get a shirt or a pair of trousers stitched. The other synthetic substance that is frequently mentioned is steroids that are similar to human hormones but not extracted from humans. Hence synthetic, but synthesized by humans. Then, what do you call music that is played on a synthesizer? Obviously, synthetic!
Then, what type or nature of “synthetic” that the IT minister was referring to? I do not think he can answer that question, when he could not even meaningfully differentiate between “synthetic” and “non-synthetic”!
Any setting that produces something which is beyond one’s unaided senses should be tagged“synthetic”, in the sense it is beyond what is “natural”. That is AI, because your brain is incapable of producing the effects. So, every movie has to be tagged, per the ministry’s draft law, “synthetic.”
In this formulation that places “synthetic” and “real” on the two plates of a common balance, one is likely to see the “synthetic” side would go low. The laptop I am typing this piece on is definitely “synthetic”, and so is the software (MS Word). My mind that has taken input from many things that are synthetic is definitely not natural. No, I am not extending the argument in an ever expanding universe of things (IoT, Internet of Things). IoT was what people were attracted to some 20 years ago. Now, where has it gone? Nowhere, it is just not visible as it does not generate any vibes. Yes, I want to use some jargons, just keep myself abreast of some things!
As I have argued earlier, nothing that man makes can be tagged “Artificial”, and that includes intelligence. Can AI ever escape natural intelligence? I have my doubts. Human genes can be visualized as being spread out in a gene lake (not a piddly pool, but a large lake) and by chance some of them, say about 20,000, come together and a human is born. That is natural. It is the same with AI. Artificial Intelligence is as natural as Natural Intelligence.
You may argue with the above, but not with the following: how do I know that the neurons in your brain did not keep firing randomly and out came ChatGPT? Why would I allow you to make money using this most fortuitous event that merely fortuitously localized in your brain, which anyway, is another fortuitous level−indeed, hundreds of thousands of levels in fortuitous sequences−unless there is something exclusively “synthetic” in it, and you just happened to be the undeserved owner of this exclusivity?
The worst thing I came to know from that news item is the reason the IT Minister is taking such a keen interest.
“…the deep fakes … are harming society …People are using some prominent persons image and creating deep fakes which are then affecting their personal lives, privacy as well as [creating] various misconceptions in society.” A single OUCH! Does not suffice. Deep fakes would not come to the attention of the minister had they been of common people, he seems to be claiming. The reason the government is interested, in the minister’s own words, “…affecting (prominent persons’) image…” and other personal aspects of these “prominent” persons’ lives. This is abominable.
Doesn’t the minister know that if relevant statistics is available, he would find his statements translate into celebrities’ lives are to be taken care of. What about the other citizens. He seems not to care except when time comes to beg for their votes.
It is stupidity. So, you ask, is the issue I have raised an abomination or merely unimaginably stupidity. If I feel generous, it is the latter.
Raghuram Ekambaram
My Eyes Cheat My Brain, or is it the other Way Round?
There is some cheating going on; I just do not know in which direction.
In the evening hours, say about 7 o’clock, on October 22, 2025 when the sky had turned ominously dark (all these details are unnecessary, but merely to appear precise I mention them), I was on my evening walk, in a dare without an umbrella, along a not so busy road.
The doors of the sky opened up just a bit, one might say, ajar (I do not know who put his/her foot in the door to prevent it from shutting it completely). I took shelter under the awning of a shop front. The street lights were on. In that light and against the luminaire, I saw rain coming straight down, not in sheets but large enough drops in quick succession, as there was no wind, not even a breeze.
I was stationary. And, there was light traffic on the road, both cars and two-wheelers, and all with their headlights on. I could not believe my eyes; no, not about the headlights being on (happens more often than you think)! As the vehicles moved I saw rain drops hitting the vehicles at a slant. Understand what I was flummoxed by.
It did not matter whether the vehicles approached my location from my right or my left. Rain fell against the headlamps of the vehicles that were not moving very fast, perhaps 20-25kmph, that is all. Let me make it vivid to the readers, if the automobile was coming from my left, rain fell slanting right-to-left, and if from the right, slanting left-to-right. That is, my eyes were seeing rain coming down in two different directions, depending on the headlamp of the vehicle I am looking at. This was different from the scene in Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid in which the song Rain drops keep fallin’ on my head, they keep fallin’ is shot bone dry conditions, as I remember!
In the 71 years plus a month of my life, I must have taken in the scene on the road hundreds of times but haven’t ever noticed. Why did I notice it last night? I don’t know. My mind, in connivance with my eyes, must have played this trick on me so many times without my being aware. Just a line of philosophy here, I promise. Do we know what our sensory organs and brains together are doing? I think not. Yet, who is the I, my eyes, my mind, jointly or severally (that is a bit of mathematics)?
I could have taken snap shots of the rain against the light from the lamppost, against the headlamps of a vehicle approaching me from the right, or from the left. I have no idea, whether the camera would have been fooled as I was. I did not want a definitive answer, even if I may have got one.
I wanted to chew on the question that arose in my mind, for the first time ever. I have read perhaps about a dozen books on where the mind is, if anywhere at all, and what it does or could do, if anything at all, and when it would fool me. For the last item, I know why people suffer from motion sickness when their vehicle traverses a hilly terrain. That, I understand happens because the brain gets distinctly different inputs from the ears and the eyes.
But, for the above situation? I do not know. I would leave it at that. The most I would do is to check the universality of my experience in other instances (rainy and dark evenings, taking shelter under the lean to of a shop), other places (other streets with light traffic), under some other streetlamps, with other types of vehicles (like large trucks trundling) and so on …
Let me affirm or negate my experience of last night.
Raghuram Ekambaram
