“Five-Day Test Cricket match is boring …” – NO, IT IS NOT!

 

“Five-Day Test Cricket match is boring …” – NO, IT IS NOT!

 

‘Freedom has a thousand charms to show,

That Slaves, howe’er contented, never know - William Cowper

 

The above lines carry least relevance to what I am going to write in this post. No, I am not going to talk about the slaves that William Cowper talked about. Rather, this post is about a kind of slave I am, to five-day cricket test match, watching on TV, a luxury I am affording myself in my retired life.

Yes, I am an anachronism. In this fast, get-it-done-yesterday world, even leisure comes pre-packaged with moment–wise activity schedule. Of course, without such a schedule, the vacationers would be lost. In my understanding, a vacation should be schedule-free, but not for the current corps of vacationers.

Yes, a Test Cricket match takes inordinate time, over five days; approximately 30 hours. A One Day International (ODI) takes about 7 ½ hours; a T20I, about 3 ½ hours. This slave to the test match is contented with seeing any cricket on TV, but I miss the charms of a test match.

One question to make a point: Has an ODI or a T20I ever kept you on the edge of your seat from morning (say, 09:00 hrs.) to about 16:30 hrs.? They could not have. Never. But, I was stuck to my chair for the full duration of a day’s play (including the lunch and tea breaks) for the test match at Eden Gardens in Kolkata (was it Calcutta in 2001? Who cares?).

I may be wrong in the commas and periods of the events of the fourth day of the match, India following on after its dismal first innings score. But, just listen to my memory. Every ball bowled by Australia on that day–I mean EVERY BALL–was a potential last nail on Indian team’s coffin. Yet, the then mighty Australians were denied, and how!

VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid (the Wall) just dug in, dug in, and dug in till stumps that day, fateful for the Australians. Every ball mattered. Digging in did not mean Ken Barrington’s (English cricketer) block-bloc-block strategy, but going after hittable balls with gusto (no sixes, if I remember right; too risky). VVSL scored a double century and RD, a century. Then, things happened on the final day and Harbhajan Singh took over in Australia’s second innings, scalped three or four wickets, all crucial.

Till the end, it was edge-of-the-seat tension. Will Australia, playing for a draw, be successful, an asterisked word, given the context India won? Would it not be a blot on their reputation? Yes, and yes, and it was not to be.      

India won. That was how.

This was not a one-off. More than a few decades earlier, I had heard, on All India Radio, Mansur Ali Khan, Nawab of Pataudi, score a double century by sending the ball across the rope on the last ball of a test match. That was excitement, even when everyone knew that the match was ending in a draw. He scored 203, I vividly remember, hearing it at my friend’s place, sneaking out of school. Yes, I have had my escapades!

One more, to round off, of being a witness of an unedifying collapse, when Australia and India played a test match at Chepauk. India was in a comfortable position. But, before I could have finished that sentence, Indian batting collapsed.

At stumps the previous day, Australians were reeling at 24 for 6 with all the biggies sent home. Then, Ian Redpath hit a skier that Ajit Wadekar could not hold on to (the sun was in his face, and it was on mine too, in the stands). The batsman made some 60 plus and that turned out to have been enough for an Australian win. The missed catch, there ended the match, a terrible loss.

Now, I am writing all of these without referring to any scrap book (I have none on this topic), no Googling. They just stayed in my mind as the voice of radio commentators, and, in the last episode narrated, a dispiriting personal experience, in sports.

It is not impossible that three or four decades later, some cricket fan now in his/her (my female cousin knew cricket stats upside down) could recall similar details of excitement in their ODI or T20I experience on TV.

I doubt it, though. There are just too many of them and one’s brain shovels horse shit every so often.

In my mind, I still carry them. So, it might not be about the format of the cricket, but more about how much. I was slave to test cricket in my youth because that was the only game in town. It ain’t so anymore.

Just musing: Will Cowper’s lines resonate with descendants of slaves among today’s youth?

Raghuram Ekambaram

Why do athletes look up at the sky when they win?

 

Why do athletes look up at the sky when they win?

Just about every athlete looks up, at the sky, when things go their way. Why? Is it their way of saying thanks to the Almighty? If yes, what should the other athlete do? Look down? Or, look up at the sky with a forlorn mien on their face? Would the Almighty respond to each, and how?

If only there were no Almighty, such questions would not have arisen. There would be competition, but both the winner and loser would still be friends, beyond the conventional handshake across the net in tennis and similar gestures in other sports and games. Across the board in chess.

Magnus Carlsen said it best in the context of the World Blitz title for men: paraphrasing, it would have been cruel had he not extended his hands across the board to Ian Nepominiachtchi offering a draw to a hard-fought and long game, had it been taken to a tiresome  and a “very, very cruel” conclusion. I do not know chess, but I can appreciate the depth of the sentiment.

Why can’t the world appreciate losers? Oh, commercial endorsements.

“Money for nothing …” Dire Straits sang. Truly so.

Raghuram Ekambaram  

I can add to the news item on the glass bottom bridge at Kanyakumari, and I will

 

I can add to the news item on the glass bottom bridge at Kanyakumari, and I will

Per Google, there are at least three glass bottom bridges in India. Therefore, you may think that the chest-thumping that is going on in Tamil Nadu is, in Shakespearean terms, Much Ado About Nothing.

You would be wrong. That play was a comedy of errors, but the bridge is not a comedy of errors but of doing things right. I know that the general public would not be interested in how the loads are carried but only that they are carried to the supports. As a structural engineer, I hope to interest a few structural engineers.

Look at the picture below (ignore the tower on the left end of the bridge, a requirement during construction; nothing more):

In a typical arch bridge one would see the deck being supported by vertical hangars from the arch. There are no vertical hangars here. Then, how does the rib of the arch takes the load on the deck? There are arch strings, which are not vertical. The best part is the tension strings connecting the deck and the arch are so thin, they become almost invisible – the best architectural feature of this type of arch bridges.

What are these called? Network Arch Bridges. I will try to explain in simple terms how the Network Arch Bridge, conceptualized in the 1950s, differs from the conventional arch bridge in which vertical hangars are used. In the latter, if a load, say a truck on highway is on near the left end of the bridge, only the segment of the arch around the load point(s) on the bridge will take the load. Because of this, the part far away from the load will not only not carry any part of the truck load but may lift up, relieving the tension in the hangar. Though the strings are given an initial tension (called pre-tensioning), this structural system is neither effective nor inefficient.

Now, Network arch bridges are substantively different, though they may not appear so. Given below are pictures of and also diagrams to bring in conceptual clarity.

One may take in merely the hint of the slant strings towards the right end of the bridge. Even the bridge itself would vanish if one were to look at from the middle of the water-way! The deck is slim and so also the ribs. The figure below gives the schematic of the structural system.

The critical points are on the arch rib where the strings attach to it.

I will try not to go too deep into the mechanism. Each nodal point on the rib carries two strings instead of one as in the conventional arch (except at the very ends).

In the above sketch showing the deflected shape, the bottom cord does not lift up anywhere along the span and hence all strings will be in tension, even at or near the supports. The rib’s dimensions are also much reduced (from basic engineering mechanics course).

This is all I want to say about the glass-bottomed arch bridge joining two rock outcrops (of significant size) out in the middle of the sea. This is truly the first for India, and thanks to some state department officials (Punjab and Haryana) to whom the network arch bridge was mooted but did not bite. Hence Tamil Nadu has the first Network Arch Bridge that is glass-bottomed.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Hercules and the Hydra in Ken-Betwa Link

                                           Hercules and the Hydra in Ken-Betwa Link

The image below is a newspaper report (from The Hindu of December 29, 2024) that talks about one project out of many river-linking projects in India, both in the Gangetic plains an in the Deccan area. As a sample, the project discussed conveniently falls on the dividing line between the two geographical features!

I was working in a civil engineering consultancy company and my boss fancied himself an expert on the subject of river water transfer. I could not fault him for this, as I have not seen any penthouse boss who does not become a multi-faceted expert, and vanity does the rest. So, he gathered a bunch of egomaniacs like him (there were indeed a couple–not more–of down to earth academics) and compiled a document (I am ashamed to say that I acquiesced in this task as I had to put food on the table) which, as far as I know did not go anywhere.

I did go with my boss to almost all these jamborees (I like the fried cashew nuts on the table spread) and took notes (while shaking the brain matter inside my skill vigorously). At least once I was subbing for my boss; yes, it made me feel important. Why would I not?

The cost of all the mooted projects under this rubric was Rs. 560,000 crore (approx. USD 1 trillion, per the exchange rate then). My boss was an acolyte of the then Prime Minister Hon’ble Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who had taken this as his pet infrastructure project. Acolyte or not, who would not want to be on the right side of a mouth-watering revenue stream!

Yet I kept my counsel.

Even then, the Ken-Betwa link was prioritized.  The project required a number of aqueducts, water-lifting points, canal lining and so on. All these required technical and supervisory requirements of civil engineers.

This is the same project on which now the call for open-sesame sounds. And, the environmentalists and also wild-life conservationists have taken up arms against. Nothing has changed since the time of Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee who also faced similar two pronged demands and attacks.

The government department has said that the nay-sayers cannot do anything but protest, never mind that the alignment goes through a national park and a tiger reserve. Let the tiger be our national animal, it will take care of itself as Bharat cannot ever be vanquished.

The same concerns and the same responses, lies or truths, no one ever needs to know! Look at what China has done in this regard. There a transfer from the Yangtze to the yellow River (south to north) was mooted by Mao Zedong mooted it 1952 and I have no idea whether the project stands completed and benefits computed (there cannot ever be any losses, you understand). We, of course, would rather teach the Chinese than learn anything from them!

Now our Prime Minster Hon’ble Narendar Modi thinks it is time to lay a foundation stone, I am sure one in a slew of such edifices he would lay in however long a tenure he enjoys. Good for him, and perhaps for the dry area along the corridor and for the whole region. Tigers, as said earlier, belong to a sturdy species and will take care of themselves, The construction would lay barren a lush forest area. No problem. We would count the trees to be felled and plant enough saplings elsewhere that these species are not native to. Par for our environmental concerns.

Finances? Oh, never feel shy of going with a begging bowl to IBRD (World Bank), if Ambani, Adani, Noel Tata and others are not able to fork up Rs. 44,605 crores (Rs. 0.44605 x 10¹², or at today’s exchange rate of 1 USD = 85.50 INR, USD 5.2170 billion). We are an international player now and this piddly sum should not bother anyone.

Let us start digging the canal!

And, we hope too that the hydra is not hiding in there! This Hydra myth is quite parallel to Lod Krishna's Kalingam Nardhanam. Scenarios change but somethings remain constant.

Hurray!

Raghuram Ekambaram

   

 

Segment the Eighteen Steps to Reach Lord Ayyappa in Sabarimalai

 

Segment the Eighteen Steps to Reach Lord Ayyappa in Sabarimalai

In my school days and through my college days too, I survived on my powers to memorize lists. Give me six, seven, as many as ten items even, I could repeat flawlessly, from memory. One of the tricks I used was to fragment the list. The first three goes into the first segment, the next four into the second and so on.

Yet, I must defend myself: I understood what I was memorizing, always. This helped my memory in ways I did not understand then, but I do now. More synapses, more pathways in the brain. They are all gone now.

This came in handy when I went through the ceremony of entering true Brahmin bachelorhood, through the sacred thread ceremony, Upanayanam when I was maybe 12 years old. The evening before, I was sitting with a Brahmin acharya who told me the way I should introduce myself to my male elders after falling at their feet in obeisance (the only female entitled to this is the mother; hence son preference?) and getting up. I had to tell them that I am in the line of so and so schools of thought (though it was at that time given to me as lineage). I memorized and as I knew the meaning of each segment of the relatively short recitation, I did not stutter or stammer. There were no cues from backstage, so to say.

That was a long introduction to trying to answer the question in the title. I felt intuitively that the eighteen steps to reach Lord Ayyappa at Sabari Malai, must have, or have been infused with, eighteen specific items, all within the folds of religion and spirituality.

I got this inkling from the sixty steps in the main stairs reaching up to Lord Subrahmanya at Swami Malai (there are other steps at the top and bottom that do not count). Each step denotes one of the 60 years in the sacerdotal calendar of TamBrahm almanac. You may check this if and when you visit this temple, and also refer to the above referred almanac.

But 18 and 60 occupy different mind spaces. Eighteen can be easily segmented, 3 x 6, 5+4+4+5, 5+8+3+2, 6+8+2+2 and other combinations, if there are any. Then, to get my mind on track of what these segmentations could mean, if anything at al, I Googled “Significance of the 18 steps in Sabari Malai” and I hit pay dirt!

Human senses – the bottom most five; sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch

Emotions – the next eight emotions; anger, love, greed, lust, jealousy, boastfulness, unhealthy competition, and pride [healthy competition is OK! Who defines? Do not ask]

Human qualities – above the bottom thirteen, the three qualities that represent a human; goodness or purity, passion, inertia or dullness

Knowledge and Ignorance – (I don’t think these are given in the correct order, which in my opinion should be first ignorance, and then knowledge that shoos off ignorance) anyways, these two, in the correct order (whatever it may be) to get you to Lord Ayyapa.

So, there it is, in all its glorious segmentation, 5+8+3+2! Had I known this early in my life and had committed it to my memory, I could have reeled them off nonchalantly! Alas, that ain’t the case.

The point I am making is that memorization has been a part and parcel of the process of evolution, including the development of the human brain, I believe. That is why when the villain is left out in the desert of Bolivia in the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, we see the featureless expanse of sand; oh, there were the shifting sands but ephemeral they are and of no benefit to the villain who looks out and sees nothing. This could not have been so when “Lucy” trekked through what is now Ethiopia. (?)

Then, suddenly, your edupreneur comes in and says that memorization is all wrong. This is unadulterated nonsense. Look at the 18 steps – they are not merely segmented, as 5+8+3+2, but infused with meaning (though I disagree with the meaning and importance attached to them). Without these meanings, the steps are merely steps, even for the believers (devotees).

 In teaching too, one of the best mnemonic I learned that has stayed in my mind and which I have repeated to my students is the following:

(M/I) = (f/y) = (E/R)

May I Follow You Elizabeth Rani! Mnemonics are good for your mental health! I still think it is neat. I was not forcing it on my students, and now, on you. Leave it or take it. But, recognize that, even in the days of electronic calculators, if you want done something fast, you could do worse than remembering your multiplication tables.

Memorization is not an unalloyed poison!

Raghuram Ekambaram

 

Why life?

 

Why life?

I am not being facetious. I am devoting my retired life to watching YouTube videos, on economics, on physics, on philosophy, on theology, on history, on sports, on religion, on politics (in the US) … In one of those videos the narrator raised the following question: Why are we here? In a less philosophical mode: Why there is life at all, as opposed to what?

The question struck me as odd.  Instead of answering the question, I raised the counter question (my wife does this to me, every time I even merely state something!): Why shouldn’t there be any life? That is, why can “no life” not be the other state of the universe?

My thesis (I have to sound serious here!) starts with the age old question in philosophy which has not been answered yet. Were a tree in a forest to fall and there be no one to hear it, could the tree really have fallen?

The so-called objective reality takes the fall, along with the tree! I do not purport to have any kind of answer, but the question itself is loaded. How loaded? It must have stumped Socrates. I do not know whether he was asked this question at all. Assuming he was, his answer would have been profound silence; silence is profound (those who read my mind-vomit remain silent on this score telling me things without telling them)!

But there was someone earlier or contemporaneous who also used the sword of silence, but in a more devastating way, the Buddha. He would have said, “The question lacks utility. What are you going to do with the answer even if I deigned to answer it?” Ouch, a cutting answer that puts the questioners way down in Hell. Oh, The Buddha did not believe in Hell or Heaven! My bad.

Sankara of Kaladi pulled one over the eyes of the Buddha, by seemingly answering but not quite, postulating the indistinguishable Atman that is reposed in the universal Brahman. Then, why do TamBrahms (Tamil Brahmins, the cult I am born into) re–visit their ancestors, who, after all have fused themselves into the Brahman? Questions, questions and more questions! Rather, just one question.  

This is an age old question and to bring it to current times, we need to transform philosophy into physics. Go to Sir Isaac Newton. What is the title of Newton’s magnum opus? Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (In English, The Mathematical Principle of Natural Philosophy). So, what we now call physics was, in Newton’s time natural philosophy

Philosophy is wishy washy (ask David Hume about existence, about analytical statements – try parsing, at the lowest level, “the existing thing does not exist!” the statement is logically valid, just says something does not exist, but that something exists is adjectively proclaimed!), and to my dismay I found physics is too, with or without Newton! Schrodinger’s Cat is living/is dead. In the much fabled double–slit experiment, the particle (light/electron, what have you) goes through which slit? It goes through both slits simultaneously! Does and does not go through (proxy for existence) any one of the two slits simultaneously!

Some philosophers, perhaps unwilling to ascribe our existence to a single entity say, ‘We are nothing but a divine mistake, a cosmic accident, something that should never have happened’. Yet, they invoke divinity! This is what Hume was possibly referring to. We may go even earlier to find what could have been embers of divinity, but we fail. Newton described the sun’s luminosity to divinity (when contrasted with the darkness of the planets, as Steven Weinberg says in his conversation with Richard Dawkins).

Sam Harris, though sharp, slipped here: “We can’t get the data; but, we know data is there”. Let him argue this point with David Hume, for whom nothing is, including data!

Was Jesus a historical person? Yes, no, may have been, may not have been! A valid question to ask and not answer on his birthday!

So, gradually I have come back, step–by–step to the question I started this post with: Why life?

Life is, is not, maybe, maybe not!

Raghuram Ekambaram

This, That, and That too!

 

This, That, and That too!

It is not very often that in a day’s newspaper I can put my penny worth of thoughts in three different articles/reports/opinion etc. This happened on Dec. 18, 2024, exactly a week before Christmas, my Christmas Gifts.

Each of these items was not long enough for me to write an eight hundred word thesis on it. I could, of course, make an anthology of these, and that is what I have done here. I could not come up with a title for my post as the items were truly disparate each in its own universe: One, public distribution system (PDS) in Odisha; two, sewer and septic tank cleaning–an occupation–based work; three, higher education–NEP 2020.

THIS

The ruling party at the centre seems to be in a go-slow mode, leading to “deprivation among marginalised communities”, and deaths too.  People ate gruel made of mango kernels (I did not even know these are edibles–shame on me). The losses appear to be among, if not exclusively, Adivasi people. The proximate cause? Digitisation of PDS, including making e-KYC mandatory. “The victims are to blame for their food practices and improper storage.” Blame the victims, be it rape or starving. The kind of society we are living in?

  Mango kernels gruel is a traditional food (of low nutrients?)  (to get over the lean months). The remoteness of PDS stores, as much as 10 km (irregular bus service, difficult trek, etc.?) is another emasculating feature in the lives of these Adivasis.

I know a few families with the erstwhile bread-winner of the family who live a comfortable life, staying with their profitably employed, sons and daughters who cling to their entitlement cards for PDS benefits. I do not, even though I have zero income beyond my interest income from my savings. I am not holding myself up as a model, I hasten to add. Think on the above.

THAT

 This THAT is about what kind of work is sewer/septic tank cleaning is. GoI has apparently classified this kind of work as “occupation–based” rather than “caste–based”. You must know that GoI is putting the money where its mouth is, and the above revealing classification comes from a survey it commissioned.

There are more revelations from the numbers churned out by the survey: 68% are from SC communities, 16% from OBC, 8% from STs and general categories each.

Before I write the meaty part of the revealed data, I do wish to take to task the newspaper. It has given the percentages to double digit decimal accuracy. The total respondents are 54,574 citizens from across the nation. The percentage for SC communities is 68.91% which amounts to 37061.20 people! For OBCs, 8584.49 people. I thought only GoI statisticians would do a Solomon (cutting a baby into two halves) on people. No, Indian media too tries very hard to be as accurate as possible, distilling meaning out of the numbers!

The stated aim of this survey was severely utilitarian: “[P]revent deaths due to hazardous cleaning work.” The NAMASTE programme [National Action for Mechanized Sanitation Ecosystem] (the ‘A’ after the ‘M’ in the abbreviated is missing and so also the ‘T’ after the ‘S’, somewhat similar to the ‘hanging preposition’, acceptable but may not be kosher). NAMASTE replaced Self-Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers. Perhaps Dr. B. R. Ambedkar did have an effect, however much delayed it is.

Are there any manual scavengers in India? Do not ask GoI, but check for yourself when you take a stroll on urban streets in high noon in summer when this activity could be at its peak as there are fewer even air-conditioned vehicles on the road. Road safety of the workers!

And, THAT TOO!

Education, the occupant of the last available seat at this dinner table. The number of courses thrust upon students in higher education institutions (HEI) is unconscionable, the article says. Yet, the raising of the conscience arises not out of any concern for the students’ physical and mental health; rather, comparison with the academic load on them in the US and EU. Does this mean that load “Shalt be the norm”, Kant’s moral imperative?

If students are to be introduced to life–stresses, why can they not be stressed academically? The writer claims that Indian students of HEI lack incentive to be involved in learning continuously, and I agree. I have seen this during the nearly ten years I taught in a private university. At best, students learn only when they are to be tested, an exam looms.

Yet, the writer fails to develop his thesis completely, contextualizing it. Are high school students taking the so-called Board Examinations at the end of Class X term exposed to such needlessly high pressure periods in their lives till then? What I have heard about Tamil Nadu State Board secondary school examinations is that only when they come to Class IX they are exposed to such a pressure, pass or fail. That is, they are ill prepared in Class IX and all classes higher. Then, they have just one more year for such acclimatization before they hit the dreaded Class XII Board Examinations.

You let the drag horses go their own way for eight years, and then you yoke them. Expecting them to pull the weight now and for the rest of their education is like looking for the liquid state in a sublimating material, like camphor. I have seen students of first year struggling on this count. The writer skipped this.

“[D]esigning the course...” is the prerogative of the teacher for subjects only for courses beyond the first year of college, even in the US. There, sometimes the faculty teaches a student body of more than 3,000 (I have an article on this, on biology, a compulsory subject); yet, the class is divided into a sufficient number of sections in which what is taught in the class is explained, debated, students tested ... In CalTech, the number of students in a class taught by Richard P. Feynman was an order less, still there was an army of tutors! Can Indian private universities afford this bloating of instructors, even if they were to suborn researchers?

Yes, I understand the thesis, but not the analysis.

I come to the end of the smorgasbord. Thanks for sticking with me, even if you did not enjoy the fare.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Dies, is Dead, has Died, Dead

 

Dies, is Dead, has Died, Dead

This post is going to be merely a few lines long.

The main reason is my facility in English language has been going down forever, starting from the lowest rung. And, I do not understand how in the English language media, grammar is used/abused.

I have seen headlines in some of the venerated English language media – The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The Hindu, The Pioneer (when it was not dead) , The Washington Post …

When announcing the death of a person, any one of the four formulations indicated in the title is used.

[Someone], […,] dead [my inheritance to be realized soon!]

[Someone], […,] is dead [good riddance!]

[Someone], […,] dies [unmourned (!)]

[Someone], […,] has died [an orphan!]

Which of the above would a nit-picking English grammarian use, like William Safire, the syndicated columnist who wrote on English language and who dies/is dead/died/has died in 2009? Do you mean to tell me that each of them is not wrong if used appropriately.

Then, in an obituary?

Raghuram Ekambaram