Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s Vasco Da Gama

A must-read and strongly recommended: Sanjay Subrahmanyam does a fabulous job of summarising what the book is all about in the last two paragraphs:

… In adding one more to the many contested portraits of Vasco Da Gama, this books has intended to make an implicit plea for a rather more nuanced, indeed ironical, look at the history of `European expansion’, … No dramatic shifts of paradigm have been proposed, merely the careful sifting of mass of tangled materials, to which the continuing  research of other historians will doubtless add over the years. For the task admits of no easy solutions, with perhaps the greatest of our burdens being the historian’s classic sin: anachronism.

In a recent essay, a well-known Portuguese historian (…) begins by quoting Spinoza: `Concerning human actions, I have tried not to laugh, not to weep, not to detest them, but to understand them.’ To the reader of this volume, I hope the message that I have conveyed has been somewhat different, and rather less `Christian’: concerning past human actions, to laugh when they are ridiculous, to weep when they are tragic, to detest them as they were often detested by those who were their victims, for how else would we ever come close to understanding them?

Have fun!

When passion becomes the daily grind!

Bharadwaj Rangan has a few words of wisdom:

Over the past few years, I’ve been speaking in various colleges and institutions, and the thing they always want me to talk about is how I left engineering and carved out a new career for myself. It makes me laugh, because most of these colleges are engineering colleges, and the kids want to know how to get out of engineering. So along with the usual spiel about how I went about the whole thing, I also tell them this — that following your passion, your dream, is fine, but just keep in mind that one day it becomes a job.

That’s one thing you’re not really prepared for when you begin to “follow you passion,” that one day it will become a job, and the pieces you used to write at your leisure, for fun, for a break from the daily grind, now come with deadlines. No one tells you that, one day, the passion becomes the daily grind.

Take a look!

A couple of recent reads

Sister Devamata’s Days in an Indian monastery and Kiran Nagarkar’s Cuckold. Recommended.

Advice to young researchers

Via MR from here:

Work on your own ideas, not your advisor’s ideas (or at least in addition to her ideas). And spend more time thinking and less time reading. Too much reading leads people to think of small variations on existing studies. Admittedly my strategy of writing the paper first and only then reading the literature (or, more likely, letting the referees tell me what they think I should have read) is an extreme one, but it is better than trying to read everything. Try writing the first paper on some topic, not the tenth, and never the 50th.

Strengthening public broadcasting

T T Ram Mohan calls for strengthening of public broadcasting. I also agree with him about the quality of Doordarshan programmes. Podhigai and Bharathi give so much of music, for example, with very little interruptions for advertisements, if any. Their news coverage is also much better and well balanced. So, these days, DD is one of my first flips before I start browsing channels.

Pt. Venkatesh Kumar: a profile

Arunabha Deb’s profile is nice, and it captures the same feeling that we had when we listened to him first a couple of years ago:

First-time listeners share a common confusion: a man in his fifties, singing as well as any other reigning maestro of the day, but relatively unknown. Why hadn’t they heard him as an upcoming star?

Take a look!

Sawai Gandharva in Pune! Or, …

A musical antidote to regional chauvinism:

It was around 1930. In Pune, the cultural capital of Maharashtra, a play was being performed. An actor came on stage and began to sing in a unique voice. There was a commotion amongst the spectators, and someone called out: “Kaanadi appa” (a derogatory term used for Kannadigas in Maharashtra). Others picked up the cry. The accompanying instruments stopped playing. The actor came to the front of the stage, and said: “You are showing this intolerance because I am from the Kannada desh. Show me someone amongst you who can sing as well as I do, and I will engage him in a contest.” Having said this, he sat down for a baithak. He sang for a good three to four hours. The spectators fell silent. As the man finished singing, garland after garland was heaped around his neck. Everyone began to praise his display of erudition. The actor who conquered Marathi intolerance with the light of his knowledge was Sawai Gandharva.

From Tejaswini Niranjana’s Music in the balance: Language, modernity and Hindustani sangeet in Dharwad at EPW.  A must-read!

There are more interesting stories too — like the one about Pt. Mallikarjun Mansur and Ustad. Bade Gulam Ali Khan (which also involves Ustad Alladiya Khan) and the role of chillies in promoting Hindustani music in Dharwad. Have fun!

On writing papers and what it means to be a professor

Professor Buchanan’s comments on my papers followed a somewhat predictable format.  He would always start by saying something positive about the content, perhaps focusing on how well the paper was written, if lost for positive comments on content. He would then add his incisive comments, which sometimes forced me to set the paper aside.  But on one paper I remember well that he didn’t start with his usual positive remarks.  He wrote to this effect: “Dear Dick, we all write good papers and bad papers.  With some papers we pursue publication.  With others, we trash them.  In the process of writing any number of papers, we acquire great wisdom in deciding which papers are which.  You will acquire great wisdom in deciding what to do with this paper.”  I didn’t need for him to say more, which he didn’t.  I never tried to revise that paper.

Today, I am pleased to call James Buchanan my professor for pressing on me a remarkably simple but important point that escapes so many colleagues across the country:  Being a professor is a privileged position.  It demands scholarship, but it also demands that you give of yourself in ways that will never show up on your resume, or in your obituary.

From here; the entire thing is a must-read.

MSG passes away

Hindu reports on the passing away of violinist MSG.

Pais on Whittaker

Here is Pais on Whittaker’s book on the history of relativity:

His treatment of the special theory of relativity in the latter volume shows how well the author’s lack of physical insight matches his ignorance of the literature.

Pais has good things to say about the first volume of the book though:

This work covers the period from Descartes to the close of the nineteenth century. Colleagues more knowledgeable on this period than I, confirm my impression that it is a masterpiece.