Skip to main content

Zero


“Zero was one of the greatest inventions in human history,” I remember one of my mathematics teachers telling us at St Albert’s college, Ernakulam.  Without zero we would have reached nowhere beyond some letters like X and M and C which were employed gratuitously in the Roman arithmetic.  Zero simplified and complexified mathematics at once.  It made easy not only counting but also all mathematical operations such as multiplication and division.  Just imagine division, for example, in the Roman system.  MMXLVI divided by IXCMXXXIII.  Wow, that is 1946 divided by 9933, after the invention of zero.  And the answer is 0.19591261451.  Imagine that figure in the Roman numerals.  Your imagination would go bust.  There was no decimal system before the arrival of the great zero.

Take any number.  Say 20.  20 ÷ 20 = 1. 20 ÷ 10 = 2.  20 ÷ 4 = 5.  The smaller the divisor, the greater the quotient.  Take a big divisor like, say, 10000.  20 ÷ 10000 = 0.002.  Now apply this logic: as the divisor becomes greater, the quotient becomes smaller.  As the divisor becomes smaller, the quotient becomes greater.  Zero is nothing or shoonya as they call it in Hindi.  So, logically, when you divide a number by zero you should get the greatest number.  Infinity?  Well, mathematicians choose to leave that quotient undefined.  When it comes to zero, it’s no joking matter.  You have to tread carefully, reverentially.  “That’s why we in Kerala call zero by the name poojyam, venerated,” concluded my mathematics teacher. 

I remembered that lecture which I listened to decades ago when I saw the latest Indispire theme. 

Decades later, today, I have little to do with mathematics.  Having gone through all sorts of experiences most of which carry neither rhyme nor reason, I imagine the guru telling his disciples: “Become like the zero, shoonya and poojyam simultaneously.  Empty yourself of the ego.  Fill yourself with grace...” 

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 141 #zero



Indian Bloggers

Labels:

Comments

  1. Durga Prasad DashOctober 28, 2016 at 7:47 AM

    To be shunyam and poojyam simultaneously, that is a wonderful concept.

    Of course puja is related to purnam or fullness. Purnatat jayate iti puja.. that which is born out of fullness is puja. That was the original concept of Puja... not breaking a coconut in exchange for good marks in exams. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 28, 2016 at 8:19 AM

      Thanks for your addition to the post, Durga ji. Zero is quite spiritual and beyond exam grades. Perhaps math can be a more effective religion for our times..

      Delete
  2. ManasaaOctober 28, 2016 at 2:01 PM

    when dividing bigger numbers itself is difficult, I can't even imagine dividing Roman numbers!! mind-boggling! Zero is the best invention of mankind!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 28, 2016 at 4:01 PM

      Division is fun but never with the Roman numerals which have no numbers!

      Delete
  3. जितेन्द्र माथुरOctober 28, 2016 at 3:39 PM

    Empty yourself of the ego. Fill yourself with grace. Perfect saying. Thank you Sir.

    ReplyDelete
  4. SaketOctober 29, 2016 at 9:50 AM

    Interesting to note that zero is called Pujyam im Malayali. I find your mention of life experiences which "carry no rhyme or reason" meaningful.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 29, 2016 at 10:13 AM

      Yes, zero enjoys a venerable place in Malayalam and rightly so. I'm grateful to my math teacher for drawing my attention to the fact.

      Delete
  5. Amit AgarwalOctober 29, 2016 at 8:20 PM

    “Become like the zero, shoonya and poojyam simultaneously. Empty yourself of the ego. Fill yourself with grace...” that is The Ultimate!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 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...
19 comments
Read more

Mother Mary Comes to Me

Book Review In one of the first pages of this book, the author cautions us to “read this book as you would a novel.” No one can remember the events of their lives accurately. Roy says that “most of us are a living, breathing soup of memory and imagination … and we may not be the best arbiters of which is which.” What you remember may not be what happened exactly. As we get on with the painful process called life, we keep rewriting our own narratives. The book does read like a novel. Not because Roy has fictionalised her and her mother’s lives. The characters of these two women are extremely complex, that’s why. Then there is Roy’s style which transmutes everything including anger and despair into lyrical poetry. There’s a lot of pain and sadness in this book. The way Roy narrates all that makes it quite a classic in the genre of memoirs. The book is not so much about Roy’s mother Mary as about that mother’s impact on the daughter’s very being. Arundhati was born in the undivided ...
14 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Insecurity and Exclusivism

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...
10 comments
Read more