Monthly Archives: March 2005

To see but not understand…

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I had just finished commenting on how many weird death stories we find in India when I came across this story that takes the cake… well, for today at least –

Woman kills herself so blind sons can see But corneas of little use to her children, doctors say NEW DELHI, India – An Indian woman committed suicide so her two blind sons could receive her eyes and see, a newspaper reported Monday. …Doctors in the southern city of Chennai say Kumar’s condition cannot be helped with a cornea transplant and also suspect his elder brother does not have a cornea defect. “We had told the family earlier itself that a corneal transplant was not needed for the younger son,” the Express quoted hospital official G. Seethalakshmi saying.

Between the Mother’s obvious love and the utter Maji-like tragedy of the whole thing, I’m just speechless. Continue reading →

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A beautiful brown mind

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Eccentric mathematics rock star Srinivasa Ramanujan, who died at age 33, postulated a combinatorics problem almost 100 years ago that’s just been solved (via Slashdot). The breakthrough may yield better cryptography, meaning more secure documents and transactions.

Any integer can be broken down into sums of smaller numbers (‘partitions’). A University of Wisconsin researcher has extended Ramanujan’s theorem and shown that the number of partitions in any large integer are divisible by all prime numbers.

The truly interesting bit is Ramanujan’s Indian Idol story. He was recruited to Cambridge from an underdeveloped farm system like a pitching prodigy from Puerto Rico:

… in 1913, the English mathematician G. H. Hardy received a strange letter from an unknown clerk in Madras, India. The ten-page letter contained about 120 statements of theorems on infinite series, improper integrals, continued fractions, and number theory… Every prominent mathematician gets letters from cranks… But something about the formulas made him take a second look… After a few hours, they concluded that the results “must be true because, if they were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them…” [Hoffman]

The next Einstein working alone in a room, surfacing out of nowhere to overturn the accepted paradigm: it’s every institution’s nightmare. The self-taught Ramanujan had flunked out of school in Tamil Nadu and run away from home because he obsessed over math and only math. Over time, he was granted an honorary doctorate by Cambridge and elected to the Royal Society of London, Valhalla for mathematicians.

Ramanujan was an intuitive thinker who disdained formalism:

Hardy was a great exponent of rigor in analysis, while Ramanujan’s results were (as Hardy put it) “arrived at by a process of mingled argument, intuition, and induction, of which he was entirely unable to give any coherent account…” He was amazed by Ramanujan’s uncanny formal intuition in manipulating infinite series, continued fractions, and the like: “I have never met his equal, and can compare him only with Euler or Jacobi.” [Hoffman]

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Monsters of rock

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India Abroad magazine just ran an excellent cover feature (zipped PDFs) on desi rockers and rappers in America, covering Stubhy of Lucky Boys Confusion, M.I.A., Karmacy, Chee Malabar of the Himalayan Project, Shaheen Sheik, Jungli and Funkadesi. They also shout out to ancestral rockers dating back to Freddie Mercury: Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, Ashwin Sood (Sarah MacLachlan’s drummer-husband) and Tony Kanal of No Doubt. There are others, of course, such as Dave Baksh of Sum 41.

Stubhy, lead singer of 100K-selling ska-punk band Lucky Boys Confusion, vents his parental issues in his music:

… the artist formerly known as Kaustubh Pandav was something of a vagabond, sleeping on roofs and behind couches in Chicago… he had to decide exactly what he would have to sacrifice to pursue a music career. At the time, he figured it would be his college education. The parents weren’t happy. “They said, ‘Get the hell out of the house,’ and I said, ‘Okay.’ ” What followed was a long string of “odd, crappy jobs,” like doing the midnight shift in a parking lot, or whatever else inspired him. “I threw parties,” said Stubhy. “Bought a keg. It was one grand scheme to the next. ‘Let’s go steal comic books from that kid and sell it.’ That would make about $15. Stupid stuff.”

… the song ‘Fred Astaire’ [is] a terse dialogue between a demanding parent and a son who can’t live up to expectations. The title, he said, could have just as well been “Amitabh Bachchan”… he still gets e-mails from Indian kids who thank him for writing the song.

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Beware Hail the size of cricket balls.

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I am a nerd. Due to this immutable fact, I love checking the Wikipedia main page on a near-daily basis.

Today, under the “Did you know…”/newest articles section, the following blurb immediately owned my attention:

…Skeleton Lake in India is named after the remains of approximately 600 people who died there in a sudden hailstorm…

Skeleton Lake?

Skeleton Lake is a lake in Roopkund in Uttaranchal (itself formerly part of Uttar Pradesh, India), the location of about three to six hundred skeletons in the Himalayas. The location is uninhabited and is located at an altitude of about 5,029 metres. The skeletons were discovered in 1942 when stumbled upon by a park ranger. At that time it was believed that the people died from an epidemic, landslides or a blizzard. The carbon dating from samples collected at that time in the 1960s vaguely indicated that the people were from the 12th century to the 15th century

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Speed dating starts up in Bombay

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Wealthy singles in Bombay are getting their first taste of speed dating, which works by bringing together a group of the unattached, and giving them three minutes to impress one another before moving on to the next potential date:

Organisers feel Mumbai was the right venue as it is India’s most liberal and cosmopolitan city. “Mumbai accepts a lot, its very tolerant city,” says Sandeep Shetty, one of the local organisers. Another organiser, Maha Khan, 25, a London-based British Asian who runs the Asian Speed D8, believes India is ready for speed dating. “I think cities like Mumbai are ready for a safe, informal way of getting to know each other face-to-face with a view to finding partners.” [BBC News]

Experts say the western phenomenon of speed dating is bound to find success in India, as it perfectly complements its centuries-old tradition of speed marriage.

BBC News: Speed dating comes to India
Speed dating sites: Asian Speed D8, BombaySpeedD8

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Sepia Mutiny: By the Numbers

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Number of Blog Posts on Sepia Mutiny: 1000+ as of today

Number of Comments: 5900+

Number of Fundamentalists (of one cause or another) that now hate us: 3598

Number of times my mom has started speaking in Gujarati because she thinks my phone is bugged because of SM: 6

Number of bomb threats at SM headquarters: 3

Number of times either Apul or I have met Rohini Reese after becoming bloggers: 0

Number of dates/lovin’ ANY of us have gotten because of SM: 0

Your continued visits to our site: PRICELESS (until you are hopelessly addicted and we can find a way to charge a price for this)

We at Sepia Mutiny would like to continue to thank our wonderful readers (except the prick that mailed us a picture of the Voodoo dolls of the seven of us). Earlier today we blogged our 1000th post. We STILL haven’t jumped the shark. We will all be getting s*it-faced in the basement of our North Dakota headquarters tonight. If you can find us you are more than welcome to join. Continue reading →

Scene in New York

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Just north of Manhattan’s Union Square (17th St. between Broadway and 5th Ave.), a small shop called Beads of Paradise has a big India display in the window. It’s the same old exotic schtick: saris, elephant statuettes, beads, you know the shpiel.

But the centerpiece of the display caught my eye: they’re selling some random desi family’s photos for half a G apiece so they can grace a Union Square trust-funder’s mantelpiece. Just imagine that poor family, the Griswolds of Rajasthan, cleaning out their attic and realizing some hippie’s snuck off with their family memories.

And what if we’d done it in reverse? Tourist in Delhi: ‘Thelma, come quick! I think I found cousin Edna’s bat mitzvah photos!’

Seen in San Francisco: here.

Desi MovieLink

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A former coworker of mine from Microsoft just launched Masala Downloads, which lets you legally download and watch Bollywood films and cricket matches. The price is $2.99 for a 3-day rental, and the downloaded files come DRM’d (locked) in Windows Media format with a 3-day expiration.

The idea is convenient for people with fast Net connections who don’t live near an Indian movie rental store. And since those stores often rent out pirated copies, this concept is potentially as legit a rental as you can get. It’s similar to MovieLink and CinemaNow, which offer downloadable Hollywood flicks, and CrimsonBay, which serves up desi music downloads.

The films are high-quality rips of DVDs they’ve purchased. The site says it enforces DVD licenses; I imagine they have a ripped version on a server, buy several DVDs and block over-limit downloads until at least one outstanding rental expires. I can’t imagine they’ve negotiated with film companies for authorization directly, but maybe they’ve spoken with distributors.

The site is pretty young — it’s got limited selection and only takes credit cards via PayPal — but the concept seems sound, and the trial movie, a 15 MB snippet of Veer-Zaara, downloaded quickly. Check it out.