Monday, December 18, 2006

Code Name God

"Code Name God"-I first came across this title, when I was preparing a list of books for our 'Ranade Library'(Well I am the convernor of that library) 2-3 months ago.Its a novel(possibly) written by Mani Bhaumik and to be honest I have not read any bit of it, not even the prologue.So, I don't know what actually it deals about.

But, some days back, I felt that this title has got some sense in my unconventional thinking.(I pardon if it does not show any resemblance with the theme of actual novel or may be its contradictory). This may be beacuse that time I was actually busy in writing a new (CFD)code for solving 'Navier-Stokes Equation'.That project has been assigned to me with one friend, but was really a herculean task to make it possible in a span of three effective months with four more courses going parallely.In addition to that, the more frustrating thing was none of us has the idea of writing code in 'Fortran' and we'll have to start from the zero.

Anywaz, we started it by taking help with some of our seniors.I came close to my friend while working with him and I found him a very funny, simple and straight forward guy.While working with him, I noticed a very interesting thing in him.He always has a picture of Lord Krishna on his desktop and after each time he booted his computer, he actually prayed first and then he started anything.Here I would like to mention one thing, that actually he has written the major part of the code and I was helping him in debugging that.

Somehow he has written the code and now the main task was to debug that.Each time we saw the code, we observed some error, we fixed that and run the fresh code for the given test code.But, before giving each run, he has closed his eyes, like praying to God and then pressed 'enter' to actually run it.But it was still showing some error.

We(mostly he alone) were spending around 5-6 hours daily at night to debug the code and before giving each run, he was repeating the same hoping that may this time the code will work properly but all invain.Sometimes it blowed up and sometimes it gave spurious results.We were applied all our limited knowledge and resoureces to make that possible, but we were not sure where the error was?
I also don't know, why Krishna was not helping us especially him.

I finally got frustrated and gave up, but he was still fightting with the bugs and after a long fight of around two months, he gave me the news that our code is working well.It was a fantastic news and I knew it was next to impossible to crack that if he had not been with me.He told that he was able to crack it only because he had the support of Lord Krishna and so he wanted to go temple next day to thank Krishna.

I was a-bit surprised that How Krishna actually helped him in 'particularly' running the code, but anywaz I went with him to the temple.I also thanked Krishna for his kind support.After coming back from there he was doubly charged and he was so confident that he told that now he is now going to add some advanced techniques also into this code and believe me he actually did it.

Two days before, when we were preparing for viva, I was actually looking again at the code.He has almost written all the physics involved in that code in comment so that we can recall it later easily..But one place, at the most important subroutine, he has just commented 'Think and Thank'.When I asked him about it, he explained me the logic and told he write it because he has written code in a naive way so in future whenever he'll see it he will understand the physics and at the meantime he will also not forget to thank God.So, finally we apppeared in viva, we made presentations, we did well.Our teacher was also happy with us.

After all these over, I just sat and started thinking about me, Where I lost?Why I gave up? or more explicitly after a long series of frustrating failure why didn't he got frustrated and give up? Was really God helping him in making the Code?It sounds like a strange combination of science and spirituality but I think its true and the proof is our code is working well.

May be its not a very good example or I also don't claim that those who don't believe in God can't write these type of codes, they may be much more efficient than us but I feel the goal looks nearer or the path becomes easier inspite of various hurdles, if something is there which regularly gives us confidence, a push-back, a hope for sure that one day we are going to achieve our goal. Is there any problem if one gets this confidence to move ahead by Krishna or Rama or Allah or Isha?

I think I have discovered the God.God is nothing but a confidence, a feeling which always push you ahead, not to give up under any circumstances, not to be impatient, not to loose your temper because God says:

"You have a right to perform your prescribed action,but you are not entitled to the fruits of your action.
you should never be motivated by the results of the actions, nor should there be any attachment in not doing your prescribed activities"

("Karmanye Vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana,
Ma Karma Phala Hetur Bhurmatey Sangostva Akarmani
")

Sunday, December 3, 2006

Love Vs Life



"........I am so sad that I don't have 'Kelly'
........But I am so grateful that she was with me on that (lonely) island.
........And I know what I have to do now.
........I gotta keep breathing.
........Because tomorrow the sun will rise.
........(And) who knows what the tide could bring?"

These are some dialogues from Tom Hanks movie -'Cast Away' that I watched yesterday.I found it very interesting as it deals about story of a FedEx employee who has been trapped alone in a lonely island near pacific ocean after a plane crash.He has no hope that he 'll be rescued.But, he struggled to live and the only thing that kept alived his interest in living life was the photo of his girlfriend(Kelly) whom he loved too much.
Finally somehow
for 4 years, a tide brings him something that he can think of getting his world again.He struggles hard and somehow comes back to his world again but then he finds that his girlfriend has been married to someone else..............

I am forced to write this article because everybody fall in love at time, of them some gets trapped in ignorant world for sometime, of them some manages to fight back, resist against all the odds, wait for tides to come and get rescued because they have a hope called love but how many of them can resist their emotions if they find that they have lost their reason for hope, how many of them wait till next tide to come?
Recently, I went through a very unfortunate event that a student from IIT,Kanpur committed suicide (http://indianexpress.com/story/16149.html) and when I tried to peep inside I found the story was resembling somewhat like this.

I sometimes think that 'Is this love the necessary and sufficient reason to live a life ?' Is it that much important that without that a parent loses his son, a sibling loses his/her brother and last but not the least, a nation loses a talented citizen.

I am very sorry if this discussion is hurting someone's emotion but I want this discussion to be continued because it hurts me like anything when I find someone ends his life because he couldn't find a way how to suppress this emotion.From my childhood to being a so-called somewaht matured person I have seen thousands of such cases, in my village, in my hometown, in my school, in my college.
Love is the consequence of Life and Life is not a consequence of Love, than why 'Ending life becomes a consequence of End love'?

I am not a preacher or philosopher,but I am writing all these because sometimes I also have experienced such type of emotions but then I remembered one definition of life we often used to laugh during our easy moments( special thanks to Rupesh sir for his innovative mind)- "Life is like a running Trekker(a cab like Gypsy) over a road, you'll have to be fast to catch that but sometimes you find that you are so sluggish or the trekker is so fast that you can't catch that then just start walking along the road, may be you can invent life inside you some day"