Skip to main content

From myths toward mathematics

Courtesy: The Hindu

11 – 10 = ½ = 0.5

The equation on the blackboard baffled me as I walked into a classroom where I was given an exam duty.  Somebody had rubbed out something, I thought.  My mind started playing its usual game.  Come on, change it, said my mind.

This is how I changed it:  11 – 10 = 1

I erased two figures mentally, the denominator 2 and the final decimal part of the equation.  Such a simplistic solution failed to satisfy me especially since I had a lot of free time in the exam room.  Seeing my solution, Sherlock Holmes would have said, “Elementary, Mr Matheikal.”

My mind made the following equation:

(11 - 10 ) ÷ 2 = ½ = 0.5

That was neat, said my mind.  I had added a denominator 2 to the first part of the equation.    

11 – 10 = 1 = 0.5 x 2

What I did was to transpose the denominator 2 to the RHS (right hand side) of the equation.

One could go on.  How far you go with it depends on your capacity to work with numbers as well as your aptitude for it. 

An Albert Einstein would have touched infinity with it.

A Narendra Modi would take us far on the left side of zero on the number line.  Regression.

When our Prime Minister was inaugurating the Sir H N Reliance Foundation Hospital and Research Centre last Saturday, he said, “It is said in the Mahabharata that Karna was not born from his mother’s womb.  This means in the times in which the epic was written genetic science was very much present.  We all worship Lord Ganesha; for sure there must have been some plastic surgeon at that time, to fit an elephant’s head on the body of a human being.” [as translated from Hindi by Karan Thapar]


Mr Modi is taking the nation backward on the number line of history.  He reportedly took the state of Gujarat forward to economic development while taking it backward to a lot of other myths by meddling with academics.  For example, he introduced the books of Dinanath Batra in the schools.  Batra’s books contain the kind of views spoken by the Prime Minister above.

The Prime Minister is playing a dangerous game with history.  He has already kidnapped Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel and added them to the Parivar pantheon.  The entire history of India aka Hindustan is going to be rewritten under the benign dictator’s command. 

Mr Modi should learn to play with equations.  Not political playing.  Real visionary games that befits a good leader.  Then he will realise that truths are layered.  Sherlock Holmes would have said, “Elementary, Mr Prime Minister,” had he heard the Prime Minister’s speeches.

Mr Prime Minister, India is a great country and we are proud to be its citizens.  But we are not fools to think that myths are scientific truths.  Please educate yourself before tinkering with history and academics.  Please learn to play with your brain in a creative way.  Take us toward infinity and not to myths. 


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Gowthama RajaveluNovember 2, 2014 at 7:27 PM

    Rightly said Tomichan, I also read about this in The Hindu last night. You seem to bring out same view in your style. Nicely written..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 2, 2014 at 8:51 PM

      True, the Hindu article inspired me. I've also given the link to the article.

      I just happened to have a conversation with a senior reporter from The Hindu a few minutes back. He said that Mr Modi is very convinced about what he said. He really believes such things as the ancient "science" of India!

      Delete
  2. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 3, 2014 at 9:38 AM

    I love playing with numbers.

    The confusion between myth and facts arises from ignorance, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownNovember 3, 2014 at 1:07 PM

    Point taken sir, but what to do in India none of us (I mean the larger part of the society) doesn't like bland food and so even our prime minister is forced to add a LOT of or should I say an overdose of mirch masala to get his point through. I feel that he has so many smart heads IAS guys and so on around him that he should have come out with more facts than so much masala and then leave all of us with acidity.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 4, 2014 at 10:49 AM

      The PM has a lot of smart guys as advisers, Athena. But he likes to do it on his own and impromptu because he thinks he is the best orator in the world. He also seems to believe that words can create reality. Amusingly, he also believes that myths were indeed science and history!

      Delete
    2. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 4, 2014 at 10:49 AM

      The PM has a lot of smart guys as advisers, Athena. But he likes to do it on his own and impromptu because he thinks he is the best orator in the world. He also seems to believe that words can create reality. Amusingly, he also believes that myths were indeed science and history!

      Delete
    3. UnknownNovember 4, 2014 at 2:15 PM

      I would like to add to your point, our PM is a good orator and often what is almost always impromptu when he is in India but at the UN meeting and while meeting big-shots in US he chose to read from a paper. Just shows he too knows who needs facts and figures and of-course people like us and the gentlemen mentioned in the next post can easily be tricked with myths and fiction.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more