In my first post, I mentioned a novice blogger's dilemma- how to write what you like so that others like it. The more I thought of it, the more familiar it sounded. Extra-currics or GPA, job satisfaction or package, with family in India or with better opportunities abroad , children or career? All of these are instances of a very fundamental problem. Satisfaction and ambition clash and middle ground is hard to find.
To be honest, I don't know what will I do when offered such a choice. Most of these choices are hard to make because we have to juggle with multiple factors - individual motivations, family, societal norms, risk involved, things at stake and a few customized constraints for each problem. But as is the case with many hard problems, special instances are solvable while the general setting is intractable. So, I thought of restricting the domain of the dilemma to a special case - what if the decision concerns only ME.
This reminds me of some childhood stories. This is a couplet I remember from my school days
नानापुराणनिगमागमसम्मतं यद
रामायणे निगदितं क्वचिदन्यतो अपि
स्वान्तःसुखाय तुलसी रघुनाथगाथाभाषानिबंधम.....
This is the preface (मंगलाचरण) from Ramacharitramanas(रामचरित्रमानस). Roughly translated, it means that "Numerous other people have also written their own Ramayans in agreement with numerous standard authorities. Tulsi(the author) is still binding the legend of Rama to words for the happiness of his own self......."
It is common among Indian authors to pray for fame and popularity in their prefaces. In fact, almost everybody writes for fame. Then why is an author of the highest caliber denouncing even acknowledgement, let aside fame and immortality ? Maybe because he already has his reward. The knowledge that he has made an indelible mark. This is the reason why grown ups head bang like crazy in a rock concert. This is why rockstars are cool not billionaires.
And as I go on, I realize that some things are really not that complicated as we conjure them to be in our minds. Sometimes it is good to do something stupid if it makes us happy. I think I'll take that risk.
This train of thoughts that had started at questions ends, as usual, at some radically different yet related ones, passing through some answers in between.What if write about some not so popular things that I absolutely love ? What if I write about manga and graphic novels - Lone Wolf and the Cub, Naruto, Bleach, Ramayana 3392 A.D. ? They are some of the most profound things I have read. But I have a question - suppose you have never heard of them. Will you give them a try if I insist? implore? request? beg? force? My friends find it hard to believe that these childish pages can have so much intellectual depth. Yet they like my status messages from these manga. And everybody likes the dark, gory, gruesome movies based on manga and graphic novels. (Watchmen, Sin City, 300, V for Vendetta, Dark Knight to name a few) Same goes for Hermann Hesse,
I guess I know the answer. That will make me happy and either bore you or spark your interest in a completely new direction. My apologies in advance, but without them, my expressions are incomplete.
PS: If you haven't noticed, I sound a bit odd .Wading into algorithms considerably alters your vocabulary, especially about what is hard and what is easy (Tractable, intractable. instances, constraints).
- Even the basic idea is borrowed from that field(Valiant-Vazirani Theorem). It explores whether a computationally hard problem is so tough because it has multiple possible solutions to choose from or because each single solution is hard to find. It doesn't give a definite answer. But the answer is most likely the pessimistic one, unless some miracle happens.
- Neglect some spelling mistakes in the Sanskrit part. This is as good as I can do with Google Hindi.
