Mahabharata and Disney Lab Rats

Within Mahabharata - one of the greatest Sanskrit epics - there is a verse that describes the epic itself:

"Whatever is here, is found elsewhere. But what is not here, is nowhere else."

While surfing through channels I came upon the Disney program Lab Rats - Episode "Bionic Showdown" (per Wikipedia). The key premise of the story is about a billionaire who has three bionic kids - one with intellect, one with strength, and one with agility/speed - and a regular kid who is the traditional "good-at-heart but full-of-pranks" Disney staple. In this episode there is an extra bionic - who is later revealed to have the combined skills of all three - built by the billionaire's evil brother and is used to try to destroy the other bionics.

As the plot unraveled, I realized the strong similarities with the good old Mahabharata. Here are the key ones just based on this episode:

1. The three bionics are similar to Yudhishtra (intellect), Bhima (strength), and Arjuna (speed/agility)
2. The billionaire and brother are akin to Pandava and Dritharashtra (good and evil fathers) - technically the evil brother can be compared to Duryodhana instead of Dritharashtra, but we will set that aside for now.
3. The android is equivalent to Karna - having strength of all the good bionics combined, but sides with evil
4. As a bit of a stretch, the goofy kid can be compared to Krishna - he doesn't fight by himself but assists/helps/boosts morale of the bionics and is there at the pivotal moment to turn things around

Now, I am not necessarily suggesting that the writers based the characters off of Mahabharata or were 'inspired' by it - I don't even know if they know that an epic called Mahabharata exists. I am also aware that it is easy to draw similarities in hindsight where none exist - like a Nostradamus 'prediction' of things that happened in the past.

However, what I do want to bring attention to is the notion that a seemingly unrelated story still seems to have strong similarities to aspect of Mahabharata - keeping true the quote at the beginning.

What also interests me is the possibilities that can arise if we were to do it the other way around. One of the most common complaints against the new readers of Mahabharata, or any other Sanskrit literature for that matter - is about how dated the situation, text, plot, and characters are. New generation of kids don't relate to names like "Yudhishtra" or "Yajnavalkya" or "Nachiketas", even though each name has been carefully crafted to provide insight in many cases to the character itself. Nor do kids relate to the story of kings of bygone era talking about caste and arrows and chariots (even though they interestingly don't have issues with similar concepts around Disney characters). Nor do kids relate to the complex moralities embedded within each story.

Imagine that if instead of finding similarities from a Disney story back to Mahabharata and then vainly posting in Facebook about the greatness of Mahabharata, this can be made more constructive. What if one is more proactive instead and read the epic carefully and then translate it to the modern world in a way that relates to kids without losing the story or the plot? If a minute component of Mahabharata can lead to a successful multi-season episode in Disney, imagine the number of episodes that can be created from all of Mahabharata! Truly, it will be endless.

The Genius of U.Srinivas-Rajesh and the Stupidity of the Indian Elite

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a Mandolin concert by maestros U. Srinivas and U. Rajesh. It was three and a half hours of sheer bliss with the brothers belting one soulful rendition after another of various classical Carnatic compositions.

Of course, even bliss has its moments of despair and this was no exception. The concert was marred by periodic interruptions by enthusiastic listeners who wanted the brothers to play their favorite song.

I have been to a few concerts in USA and this is a recurring event. The concert begins and the organizers provide some ground rules only to be flouted within 30-45 minutes into the show. Given the nature of the concert and where it is being played, it is reasonable to assume that most, if not all, attendees were well educated, poised, and professional - at least till they get into the concert hall. Then all hell breaks loose.

The concert started with a beautiful rendition of a song in Kamas, followed by "Mahaganapathim" set to Gowla (something I haven't heard before). Then the maestros kicked it into high gear by rendering a song in a raga I had never heard of (hope to remember soon). It was a mesmerizing experience. Then came trouble.

As soon as the song got over, an 8-year old kid came with a small chit - probably a printout of the concert ticket. His parent (or grandparent) wanted the musicians to play "Nagumomu" - a popular Carnatic composition by Saint Thyagaraja. The U brothers - probably too nice for their own good, and mos likely not realizing the gravity of what was to come - accepted the requested and duly played the composition beautifully and got claps all around.

From then on, the break between every other song gave way to a 6-year old, a 10-year old, the 8-year old again - this time with a bigger piece of paper - and finally off with a 1-year old who had just learned to walk - all asking for one song or the other.

It was like watching Katrina Kaif suddenly popping up in the middle of a suspense thriller when the hero is about to unmask the villain and singing 'Sheela ki jawani' - it has no relevance to the theme, undermines the intelligence of the story writer, and all for satisfying the 'popular sentiment'.

The height of the farce was the decent looking gentleman with an equally decent looking lady two rows in front of me jumping the row before him, running to the stage, and deftly vaulting up the stage to get to the now-stunned musician to give his request. I don't know if he was just being passionate or was trying to impress his lady - the result was an act of extreme stupidity.

Unfortunately, the event organizers were too tame to control this jarring interruption to the event they had painfully put together. Having had the experience as an attendee of such events, I would like to propose to the organizers to announce the following before the start of the event AND after the second song (for the stragglers):

1. Please do not 'request' musicians to play a song - by chit, by shouts, or by screams. 
2. The musicians are intelligent and are quite capable of creating an agenda that will suit their audience.
3. The audience want to listen to the performer's playlist and not the 'personal playlist' of any attendee. If they are so inclined, they can buy and listen to a CD
4. Anyone who tries to get to the stage before the end of the show will be summarily removed from the venue - the person or the family if the offender is a child.
5. A camera flash is functional only up to 3 meters (10 yards) from the camera. If you don't know how to turn the flash off and are intent on blinding the eyes of the performers, RTFM before coming to the concert.
6. Limit your photography/videography to no more than 5 minutes an hour. Sure you want to keep some memories of the concert, but don't turn it into a bootlegging event. You know that you are not going to see this video you are going to take EVER again. Don't kid yourself.

To the organizers, please keep a 'bouncer' even if it is an old grandfather on both sides of the stage to prevent people from simply walking up to the musicians.

Ideally, request the musicians and set aside 15 minutes at the end of the program to play 'thukkadas' of various popular songs to satisfy the passionate elite who resort to these tactics.

Hindu philosophy explained with 3rd grade math

One of the chapters that I remember reading in History class is the "Bhakti Movement" between 8th and 12th centuries in India. During this time, India was at it is peak of productivity in terms of religious exposition, philosophy, and spirituality. The movement was made by three great saints, who in turn, founded three interpretations of Hindu Philosophy - Advaita (monism) propounded by AdiSankara,  Vishishtadvaita (qualified monism) propounded by Ramanuja, and Dvaita (dualism) propounded by Madhwacharya.

Though there are numerous Gods depicted and worshipped within the umbrella of Hinduism, fundamentally the Vedas (scriptures) emphasize that there is only one God and he is the Creator (interestingly "theory of evolution" seems to be weaved within the concept of a "Creator", as I mentioned in an earlier post). With that as a given, various scholars since have tried to understand the relationship between that one God and us humans by way of interpreting the vedas and supplementary documents such as the upanishads (appendix to vedas), ithihasas (epics), and puranas (mythologies).

Personally I feel that this is the most distinct feature of Hinduism compared to most other religions, where the focus is not just on how God wants humans to behave, but more on what the relation between the two is. Rather than taking the "God is the Creator" concept for granted, it tries to probe further - Who is He? Is He the same as me? If not, how are He and I related? What makes Him a Him and me a me?

In programmatic terms, I would say that Hinduism focuses on the class hierarchy (sub-class, super-class, abstract class) as well as interfaces (behavior of a class) while others tend to elaborate only on the interfaces! You need to have a strong foundation of your class hierarchy first before you can start extending the behavior by means of interfaces.

While eminent scholars over time have provided a number of interpretations what the vedas describe as the relation between God and human, three are the most popular enough to be in history text books. I have always held a simplistic summarization of these three philosophies:

• Advaita says God is the same as human (in other words, God lives in humans or when humans die they merge back with God)
• Vishishtadvaita says humans are not the same as God, but by devotion throughout life, they can eventually become one with God after death (moksha)
• Dvaita says God and humans are always distinct and never the 'twain shall meet.

This suited me well for the last 20 years. However, there is really no pizzazz in this explanation. It sounds, well, as dull as a history textbook! Recently, I received an email forwarded to me by my dad that provided a much better, more fun, and a more profound definition. This was by Sri. Chandrasekharendra Saraswati (fondly called Periayaval - not to be confused with Periyar - or the Elder One), who I personally consider to be the last "true" saint that India has seen, and who himself was the head of an Advaita institution.

He had an inimitable quality of explaining complex philosophies in a way that commoners can understand. He was down-to-earth, unassuming, and most importantly focused purely on spirituality without getting into politics - a quality that no one else seems to have nowadays.

Here goes his definition (interpretation from Tamil to English by me) of the three philosophies in the form of 3rd grade Math!!

According to Advaita, the relationship between God and Human is like the relationship between the side and perimeter of a square. Like how the perimeter of a square is always four times the side, Advaita preaches that if you follow a proper path, then you WILL reach God (or become one with God). There is no ambiguity there.

In case of Dvaita, the relationship between God and Human is like the relationship between diameter and circumference of a circle. Unlike a square. the circumference is PI times the diameter. The issue here is that PI is an irrational number and cannot be accurately defined. Likewise, Dvaita says that no matter how much humans try to be close to God or be one with God, it will not happen and that there will always be a difference, however minute. The diameter is a whole number in itself and the circumference is another whole number by itself, but the relationship between the two cannot be defined absolutely. With this established, Dvaita philosophy then goes into the details of the inequality of the relationship and defines the various intermediary stages between God and Human (called 'tAratamya'). This can be roughly translated into the precision of PI.

Lastly, Vishishtadvaita takes a midway (similar to Aristotle's Golden Mean). It says that the relationship is like a square being perceived as a circle. By default, Humans perceive their relationship to God as that of a circle's diameter and circumference - that the two can never be the same. As they gain enlightenment by devotion, the confusion is resolved and the "square" nature of the relationship is revealed at which point, the enlightened person becomes one with God. The thought here is that humans can become egoistic if they believe that they are God (Advaita) and can get disillusioned or depressed if they believe that they can never reach God (Dwaita) and hence a middle path is proposed.

The analogy here is that each individual has a distinct identity by default, but when they get into a train, they all become "passengers" for the conductor, thereby losing their individual identity and becoming a part of a bigger entity.

A simple, but powerful explanation! What I love even more about this is that he leaves enough room for the three schools of thought to claim superiority over others - an apolitical person but with a perfect political speech!

Origin of Creative Prophecies

OK. I'll admit it - I check Daily Mail once a day. I blame my wife for hooking me to the site - it's mostly useless drivel but a good way to pass time in the train or when I am bored - although I am getting increasingly tired of repetitive news.

A few days back among a bunch of Kim Kardashian news articles, there was an interesting article about Srinivasa Ramanujan - the mathematical genius. Apparently Ramanujan, in his deathbed, wrote a bunch of formulas and sent them to his mentor G. H. Hardy saying that they were important and were revealed to him by Goddess Namagiri, who he worshiped and believed to be his source of genius. A century and change later, it has apparently been found that those formulas that were cryptic at that time, could now hold the key to understanding portions of how black holes function. Interestingly, black holes were not even discovered during Ramanujan's time (1920s)!

 
In many of the news sites, the comments are sometimes more interesting than the article. Most of it is irrelevant trolling, but it also gives some window into the general public's psyche.

Not surprisingly, there were many comments initially dismissing Ramanujan's notion that the formulas were revealed to him by the Goddess. Alternate explanations were Autism, Asperger's Syndrome, etc. - anything other than spiritual intervention.

Now, if you haven't read the famous biography of Ramaujan - "The man who knew Infinity", I strongly urge you to do so - it's a fascinating read.

 

In the biography, the author reaffirms Ramanujan's spiritual beliefs and some insight into how his 'genius' originated. The comments reminded me of a notion by Elizabeth Gilbert that I had mentioned in my earlier post "Will we ever be alone with our thoughts again". In her talk, she mentions the notion of ideas passing through as waves and that inspiration is essentially who happens to be at the right time and right place to catch the wave.

Maybe in Ramanujan's case, he happened to catch the 'wave' that contained the mock theta functions. Maybe what differentiates genius and mediocrity is the level of luck - geniuses are more lucky and tend to catch more waves, while others are not so much! Then the question becomes "who creates the wave in the first place?" and that's a nice little space for the spiritualists to play in!

Of course, the alternate explanation is also rooted in chance or probability - may be Ramanujan's brain happened to wire itself in such a way as to figure out the formulas. Spiritualists can argue that the wiring was done by the Goddess and atheists can argue that it was mere probability and that he happened to luck out.

So, we can go either way - believe that it is all probability - a quantum fluctuation if you will - and that nothing has anything to do with God, or we can believe that there is a 'hidden hand' that creates waves or rewires brains to surface 'genius' every once in a while. Whichever may be the truth, I think the latter assumption is worth pursuing because a) if it is pure probability, it doesn't make a difference what you believe in and b) if there is a hidden hand, maybe the belief will make you more tuned to catching the waves than others who may not realize it passing through!

Honorable Plagiarism

"Don't plagiarize" - this message is drilled into every student in school and college. With abundance of information and increasingly easier and smarter ways of finding that information and match it to your needs, it is becoming more and more difficult to adhere to this even as teachers are doing their best to use smarter software to detect plagiarism.

However, everyone 'copies' - be it a Bollywood music lifted (or as the artists say - 'inspired') from earlier works or even major innovations like the one witnessed via the Apple vs. Samsung battle. So, with copying of intellectual information happening all around us, the line is getting blurrier on what is considered plagiarism and what would be an acceptable 'inspiration'.

Working in the Content Management space, this particular issue crosses work and life for me, as part of an effective content management solution is in securing intellectual property so that only right content is available to the right person at the right time. In addition, the issue of "plagiarism" becomes all the more confusing (and critical) in the IT consulting space where we are generally compared to 'bees pollinating flowers'. We move across companies, working at different projects. While there are well-defined guidelines in terms of what we can and cannot take from an organization once the project is completed, putting a restriction on what the consultant internalizes and potentially uses that as an inspiration in another project becomes more murky, unless we have a Men In Black style pen that would erase memory when leaving a project!

My general take is that we are a sum of our influences and our environment. So every action we perform (book we read, music we hear, person we listen to, etc.) will inevitably tend to have its mark something that we may create down the road. So, the best we can do is to ensure that we use the essence of an idea infused with our own thoughts rather than make a copy of something that exists and worse, without attributing it to where it came from.

With that said, I was pleasantly surprised when I read my recent book - "Steal Like an artist by Austin McKleon".



The premise of the book is that there is nothing new to create - everything has been created already. So, all we can do is to read and experience and get influenced by many things and  then come up with our own "remix" or "interpretation". This especially resonated with me, as I recalled a verse in Mahabharatha:

yad iha asti tad sarvatra yad na iha asti na tat kvacit |

imaM samasta-vij~jAna-shAstra-koshaM vidur-budhAH || (thanks Vasu)

"Whatever is here is mentioned everywhere else, and whatever is not here cannot be anywhere else.
This, the wise consider to be the complete collection of science and scriptures."

The book itself seems to be part motivational and part pragmatic, but the author does a pretty good job of balancing the two and not making it sound too preachy or 'self-help-y'. While most of the content is one that you may already have known (evidenced by the many "that's what I'm talking about" moments I had while reading), I think it's still worth a read as he puts them together nicely, supplemented by a number of quotes from famous thinkers/artists/philosophers.

It's a pretty small book (I read the whole thing in two to three hours) and fairly inexpensive and lends itself to giving it away to others easily.

So, at the end, what is the difference between plagiarism and inspiration? I will quote the book in this regard.

Good Theft	Bad Theft
Honor	Degrade
Study	Skim
Steal from many	Steal from one
Credit	Plagiarize
Transform	Imitate
Remix	Rip off

Plagiarism transforms to inspiration if you - "reference many places; go deep into links; understand the concepts; summarize in your own words; cite your sources; augment with examples from your experience."

Duty, Reward, and Performance

I grew up watching the long running Mahabharatha by B.R.Chopra in Doordarshan. One of (if not, THE) great epics of all time, Mahabharatha was fun to watch, especially with bows and arrows with cheesy special effects almost always guaranteed in each episode.

As a kid, this was a good Sunday show with fight sequences and fancy costumes. The story is so captivating that the language barrier (I had even little knowledge of Hindi back then) was not an issue. Of course, I never really understood the philosophy or the moral behind the stories, and I can fairly bet that no one else cared much either.

However, thanks to the magic of TV repetition, some verses - especially the ones in Bhagavad Gita, which is a subset of the epic - were stuck in my head. One of them has stuck with me longer than others.

कर्मन्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भुर मा ते सनगोस्त्वकर्मनि ।।

karmaNi eva adhikAraH te mA phaleShu kadAcana |
mA karma phala hetuH bhU mA te sanghaH astu akarmaNi |

This is an often quoted verse typically to describe the essence of Karma Yoga (the work-oriented way of life - roughly) - like the pithy one-liner in most ads (or a jingle that you can't get out of your head). As in most cases, it has been further condensed into a "do your duty, don't expect results" format.

Over the years, I have come to understand and appreciate the depth in this simple statement. The verse itself translates as follows (thanks to my brother who teaches Sanskrit)

"You are entitled to perform actions but never to its results. The results should not be the motivation for your actions".

The subsequent verse continues to expand on this to say "When you are detached from the results and follow a righteous path (yoga) you will be equipoised regardless of success or failure".

There are similar statements out there such as Alexander Pope's "Blessed is a man who does not have expectations, for he shall never be disappointed". However, I believe there is more to it than just that. 

My personal interpretation is "to do the work that you have undertaken without expecting its benefits" - be it expecting a promotion at the end of the year, kudos from friends, family, or colleagues for a job well-done, or even criticisms that may arise if the job well performed did not end as planned. 

When I have tried to explain this to those who bothered to ask, I've received either skepticism ("You would be stupid not to ask for a promotion - you have to fight for it - that's how it works") or tangential statements ("does it mean you shouldn't have any goals or ambitions in life that you work towards?"). 

I believe that neither are warranted. Yes, it is true that sometimes you have to fight for a promotion, but that doesn't mean you have to do your work to the fullest because you are expecting a promotion. The fight comes AFTER you've worked without expecting a promotion and during annual feedback you are simply stating your case as best as possible - without expecting a result. Similarly, a goal is different from result aka "aspiration" is not the same as "expectation". It's good to aspire for something, but what is important is not to expect that your aspirations are realized because you've worked towards it.

As a New Year dawns, I hope to continue to give my fullest to my work without expecting its rewards - hopefully it won't be as ephemeral as a New Year resolution!