Month: October 2023

Shubho Bijoya

Ma Durga. Click to embiggen.

Shubho Bijoya greetings to all. Today is what we Bengalis call Bijoy Doshumi, the final day of our most important festival, Durga Pujo or simply Pujo.

I’m in Bangalore as a guest at my friend K’s home. The above image is from a Durga puja we visited yesterday evening. It depicts Ma Durga and her four children — from left to right, her son Ganesha, her daughter Lakshmi, herself, her other daughter Saraswati, and her other son Kartik.

As a child I learned this story from my mother and grandmother. Every year Durga, who is married to Shiva, comes to visit her parental abode with her four children. Everyone celebrates her visit and she is worshiped, and on the final day of Bijoy Dashumi, she goes back. Continue reading “Shubho Bijoya”

Reagan’s Last Speech

Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States (1981 – 1989) was a hard act to follow. His last speech as the POTUS is emblematic of who he was. With all his faults and mistakes, he was a true American hero.

As a side note, I think Vivek Ramaswamy is the kind of American that Ronald was talking about — the children of immigrants who lead the country of their birth.

Puzzles

We humans are puzzle solvers. We get a certain joy out of solving puzzles. Richard Feynman spoke about “the joy of finding things out.” We are not Nobel Prize-winning geniuses like Feynman but still we do like solving puzzles.

Given that we differ in our preferences, we choose different puzzles we attempt to solve. Charles Darwin wanted to know what was the mechanism that drove biological evolution; Adam Smith wondered about the nature and causes of the wealth of nations; Newton wanted to figure out (among lots of other things) what the nature of light was; Einstein wanted to know what it would be like if one moved at the speed of light, etc. Continue reading “Puzzles”