Aloke Kumar's Blog

Dharmic Fiction: The birth of a new literary genre “It’s bigger on the inside!” any new ‘human’ visitor invited inside The Doctor’s TARDIS – his time machine - is bound to exclaim. The Doctor is a ‘Time-lord’, a species hailing from a planet called Gallifrey 1 . The Doctor is not a real man but a science fiction character who, despite his imaginary status, has shaped many lives. Science-fiction stories were a favored staple of my childhood diet . My love for the art of story-telling has continued well into my adulthood and, lately, I have been fascinated by books inspired by Hindu kathas ( कथा ) and Puranas ( पुराण ). One of the first such books I came across was Amish’s ‘Shiva Trilogy’, to which I happily dedicated a few weekends. Keen readers have probably noticed a recent literary varsha ( वर्षा ;rain) of such books, and Amish’s ‘Shiva Triology’ now has many companions. Prime among related that I have read are: Vamsee Juluri’s “Saraswati’s Intelligence”, Saiswaroopa Ii...

Acharya versus Adhyapak “I have a confession to make - I teach, but I am not a teacher”, I matter-of-factly asserted to my colleague from Indian Institute of Technology. Adarsh 1 , a professor at an esteemed IIT was visiting IISc for a short lecture. At the end of the lecture, a mutual friend introduced us and Adarsh handed me his visiting card. As I flipped the card, I saw that one side had been printed in Hindi and his designation was printed as प्राध्यापक .  In Hindi, the term अध्यापक implies teacher and this translation of Ajay’s profession riled me to that point that I was moved to object. “Don’t worry, I ran it by our Hindi Department and they assured me that this was the correct translation” said Ajay trying to calm me down. I wasn’t convinced and that is when I voiced the statement above. That day my colleagues were perplexed as to why I had fixated a simple, almost trivial, translation rather than the complexities of fluid mechanical simulations that had bee...

The Infinity Mantra Have you ever had an opportunity to reflect on the following Shanti mantra from the Upanishads? ॐ   पूर्णमदः   पूर्णमिदम्   पूर्णात्   पूर्णमुदच्यते   | पूर्णस्य   पूर्णमादाय   पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते   || ॐ   शान्तिः   शान्तिः   शान्तिः   || Om Puurnnam-Adah Puurnnam-Idam Puurnnaat-Purnnam-Udacyate Puurnnasya Puurnnam-Aadaaya Puurnnam-Eva-Avashissyate || Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih || This mantra, which I call the Infinity Mantra encodes an amazing paradoxical property of infinities. Not only that, the underlying philosophy of this mantra reverberates throughout the Hindu Jeevan Darshan. Find it interesting? Read my essays on this topic: Essay 1: Poorna from Poorna: Is that possible? Essay 2: Poorna from Poorna: A repeating motif About the author:  Dr. Aloke Kumar is currently an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Twitt...

Poorna from Poorna: A Repeating Motif In the previous essay , we saw that the Upanishadic mantra ( पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ) encodes a mathematical relationship that is consistent with the property of infinities. Since Upanishads were conceived long before modern understanding of infinities and their paradoxical properties, it behooves us to explore deeper on this issue. Were the authors of the Infinity mantra 1 aware of its profound implications or was this a mere co-incidence 2 ? Even worse, are we reading too much into a simple mantra and imagining relationships that do not exist? A rigorous discussion of this issue must tackle these questions.  Ancient India or Bharat is said to have had a strong culture of inquiry and a very rich landscape of scientific thought. On closer observation one finds that the philosophical construct of the Infinity mantra is not an aberration, but rather a repeating motif throughout various aspects of  Hindu...

Bacterial Streamers Our research group works at the intersection of biology and the physical sciences, and over the last few years we have done a substantial work on a class of biophysical problems related to bacteria. As you might be already aware, bacteria represent one of the most ancient life forms on our planet. Bacteria are unicellular organisms, and an average bacterium is microscopic in nature. Think of a human hair – a typical bacterium is 1/10 th of the size of human hair. Despite their size and the fact that they do not even possess a nucleus, bacteria are capable of a fascinating lifestyle. Like humans, bacteria can live a solitary lifestyle in a liquid environment or they can live in community structures. Bacterial communities, of which there can be different types, usually consist of bacterial cells suspended in a gelatinous matrix of their own secretion. Imagine scores of M&Ms embedded in Jell-O – bacterial communities can be imagined as their microscopic coun...

Poorna from Poorna: Is that possible? पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते- declares the second line of one Shanti Mantra 1 . This Shanti Mantra is associated with the Svetasvatara 2 and Isha Upanishads 3 . In English, the mantra translates to: from the poorna (पूर्ण) when when you take out poorna , you are left with poorna . Poorna is a Sanskrit word, which is usually roughly translated as ‘whole’. In the context of the Shanti Mantra, translators 2,3 have interpreted poorna to be a synonym for Brahman (ब्रह्मन्) and the statement to imply that “ Brahman is still full, although the whole universe has come out of it” 2 . Let us take a different route and pretend that we do not know what this statement or the word poorna implies. Instead, we translate the shloka into the following equation: 𝑥-𝑥 = 𝑥, where 𝑥 is this entity to be determined. The Shanti Mantra declares that there exists an entity called poorna that satisfies this algebraic equation. Keeping with...