Read/Write

I do not claim to be a voracious reader; nor you would accept that I am a good writer. Still, in this post, I am going to write about the books I have read last year. But don't worry, this is not going to be like the typical book reviews.

Blink. The White Tiger. Something Like An Autobiography. Imagining India, in parts. Outliers. A Short History Of Nearly Everything. In that order. Interspersed with a few other booklet-books.

The White Tiger was like an entertaining movie. I finished the book in three sittings. (Of course, I am not going to tell you how long each of my sittings were) The beauty of the book lies in its innovative narration and Adiga's lucid, simple writing. The story is presented as a series of letters by the protagonist, a successful entrepreneur, about his rags-to-riches story, to the Chinese premier. And unlike the autobiographies/biographies on the success stories of Ambani, Biyani etc, the fictional The White Tiger exposes the darker shades of a man who wants to make it big in life in India; and for whom any means could justify the ultimate end called - success. And success, for a man from a deprived circle, is only about money. If you are one of those who avoid Award-winning books presuming the awards are given only to those ones that have lots of abstract concepts and hundreds of Spell Bee-type words - please grab a copy of TWT. Your idea will change, just like it happened with me.

"I wish I had come across this book during my school days!". Not very frequently one has that kind of a feeling after reading a book. In fact I never ever had that feeling, until I came I came across A Short History Of Nearly Everything (Bill Bryson, published by Black Swan) In one word this book is just a - classic.

As the name says it all, this 680-page book gives you very interesting insights about things ranging from the tiny atoms to the galaxies that are huge enough to be beyond our imagination. ABHONE is can be classified as a book on the history of science that also doubles up as a repository of wonderful facts, interesting stories behind great discoveries and inventions. This is book that tells us, in a remarkably captivating way, about the way we went about questioning things around us and attempted solving the world mysteries.

The book starts with a section on the creation of universe and goes to to talk about the omnipotent atoms, archeological studies and the size of the earth, cells and the origin of life, before finally ending with the chapter "Goodbye" that talks about the privilege we human beings have had in the planet and the responsibilities that are to be taken with it. The book is also loaded with facts and the facts are presented in a dramatic, yet, well... a factual way. For example while talking about the size of protons he says Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like that dot on this "i" can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000 of them, or rather more than the number of seconds it takes to make a half a million years.

All I knew about Newton was that he had given us those three famous laws; and even when his pet dog Diamond spoiled his research papers involving sleepless nights of work, he did not get angry with that cute doggy. Had read that story in one of my school English prose books. Well Bryson's chapter on Newton (just like the portions on scores of other scientists/inventors) is a lot more interesting and insightful. Newton's curiosity knew no bounds and it is said he inserted a bodkin - a long needle of the sort used for sewing leather - into his eye socket and rubbed it around "betwixt my eye and the bone as near to [the] backside of my eye as I could" just to see what would happen.

Some of us curse Newton for his destructive invention called, the calculus. Even I have been a victim of this highly destructive device termed calculus; unlike other areas in Maths, calculus consumed an unimaginably huge portion of my memory during Class XII. The engineering days were a nightmare as in a course called AdCal (Advanced Calculus), we were introduced to an intimidating species named "triple integration". Actually that course took away even the tiny bit of reverance I had for Newton; his calculus made me spend sleepless nights. Now, having got to know what made Newton invent calculus, my animosity towards Newton is only increasing...it is said that Newton invented this new form of mathematics - as he was frustrated by the limitations of conventional mathematics (!!) But I am happy that in a way I share something with Newton - while he was frustrated by the limitations of conventional mathematics, I am frustrated by mathematics as a whole.

The book's bibliography/notes alone run for 100+ pages. In the true sense this book is an eye-opener. I really had not thought that science/history of science could be dealt in such a wonderful way, without compromising on facts.

I think our schools need such books; or at least a few lines from such books.

(PS: Continuing with the opening lines of this post, last year I even managed to write a book and get it published)

Engaged!

A lot has happened over cups of coffee...

27 Jan 2010

In Memory of Memory

What is your name?

...

What is your favourite colour?

Anandh

Where are you from?

Violet

Which animal you like the most?

Coimbatore

Who is your favourite hero?

Cheetah

What is the highest peak in the world?

Mt.Everest!... No!!...Rajnikanth.....Rajnikanth..

Your game over Anandh. Good try! Your score is twenty. Okay next is Meena's turn. Meena, where is Taj Mahal situated?...

Some of us might remember this game we used to play during our school days. The rules of the game are very simple. Someone keeps on asking you very simple questions one after the other, and you keep answering them. With a tiny modification - you are not supposed to answer the first question. You just let it go and the person poses you the next simple question. Now you give the correct answer of the first question asked. You score a point. Then the third question, and you give the correct answer of the second question. One more point and so on. You score till you end up giving the reply of the question being asked rather than that of the previous question asked. There is also a time limit within which you are supposed to give your answers.

Pretty simple, eh? Just try your hand at this game with your friend. To adjust for your advanced mental faculties compared to that of us during the school days, your friend may be asked to make questions a little complicated like - (Qn 1) Imagine yourself sitting playing in a crowded park across a road. You see a green Maruti Swift pass by. How many tyres does the car have?, (Qn 2) One fine morning you wake up and realise that you are alone in the middle of a huge monument. You take a walk and realise you are inside the Red Fort. In which city are you in?

Most of us might have seen Memento (C.Nolan/Eng/2000) or Ghajini (Murugadoss/Hin-Tam/2008-05). The lead character suffers from anterograde amnesia or also-popularly-known-as Short term memory loss. The hero often clicks with his Polaroid camera to remember even basic stuff like the location of his apartment. Further the walls in his room are fully covered with sketches, emergency phone numbers etc. In short, the person does not seem to remember anything...well, its not "anything", it is "anything new". He is aware of his past. But again, only till a point. He is totally incapable of forming new memories beyond that point. Given all this constraints, he relies purely on his Polaroid and countless sketches to avenge the death of his beloved! That is how the movie plot goes. The movies were a huge hit.

Coming back to our game. Why did you find it difficult to score more than four or five? The answer is in the way we store information; the way we remember things. Very broadly speaking, our "memory space" can be viewed as something made of two partitions. The bigger, robust one is called the Long term memory (LTM). It is like a computer hard disc with unlimited storage space. Also, whatever is there is there forever.The other smaller partition is, of course, Short term memory (STM). Something like your computer's RAM. It has a very limited capacity and things here are ephemeral.

The things that we try to remember go and sit in the STM first. They can comfortably be there for about 10 seconds (roughly), after which they begin to disappear. If one is interested in remembering the information for a longer time, it has to be necessarily sent to the hard disc of our memory. The movie's hero had a problem in doing this after his head injury in a scuffle with the villains. So whatever was there in his LTM, like the duets he had danced with Asin, was readily available to him. No LTM, No flashbacks! Events happening after that injury never went into his LTM and thats why he ends up using instant-photo cameras and Post-it Notes.

So why did Anandh find it difficult to score beyond four answers? To begin with, he hears and remembers the first question (What is your name?). This is in his STM. He does not try to move it to the LTM. Well, no problems there as the next question will be posed within the next 10 seconds and he can comfortably retrieve the first question sitting in his STM, and answer it. The next question. (What is your favourite colour?) There's a discomfort now. Unlike the unlimited capacity of the LTM, our RAM can not handle too many things at a time. Still Anandh somehow manages to store the second question in his RAM; process the first question sitting already in his RAM and give out the answer. By the time he reaches the third or the fourth question he is worn out and his STM shouts out "I can't!".

Wait...in a TV programme a few days back there was this little girl who went on and on, and finally the person who gave up was the one who had been asking her the questions! How is that possible? Is she an extraordinary specimen?

Somehow she knew there is something called as LTM. On hearing the first question she immediately processed it, got the answer and - stored the answer in her LTM. The second question asked. She got it and stored it in her STM. Gave out the answer to the first question from her LTM. Processed the second question sitting in her STM, moved the answer to the LTM. The next question asked. The same sequence followed. And finally, the person who was asking the questions shouts out "I can't!"