Bits and Paradoxes #28
Parijat, Dijkstra and Mileva Maric
Hi,
I hope you're doing fine.
This week, I tried minimizing my time on Hacker News, Reddit, and LessWrong because contents are becoming repetitive there. Probably, I need to focus more on consuming long-forms. So, I ended up binge-watching a dozen of [[mathologer]] videos. In a future iteration, I might talk about a few “Woah” moments I had. Not today!
Other than that, I read short biographies on Parijat and Edsger W. Dijkstra. Some of you might know about them. Or at least have heard. These figures have been like shadows I knew almost nothing about.
I vaguely remember reading about Parijat in our school curriculum and from the summaries of her stories, especially [[Shirishko phool]]. There is this particular interview with her I had read a few months back: Conversation with Parijat from 1963. It helped me peek into her absurdist philosophy.
Regarding Dijkstra, he has only been a “household name in CS” as the infamous Dijkstra's algorithm, which is an algorithm for finding the shortest paths between two nodes in a graph.
Anyway, I am mostly dumping my highlights so that nothing will be “lost in translation”.
Understanding Parijat through the Prism of Her Biography
This is a 23-page biography about Parijat by Janga B Chauhan, probably an excerpt from the actual biography.
It's short, yet exhaustive that helps us understand who Parijat was. It touches upon several aspects of her life: from early Darjeeling days experiencing her first "love" to struggles in Kathmandu to playing a vital role in literary movement Ralfa to becoming more and more absurdist (nihilist?).
Early Childhood
Her childhood seems to involve a lot of family deaths which resulted in her father being more and more anti-ritualistic and atheist.
"Parijat grew up in Darjeeling, the queen of hills, under the loving caresses of Mt. Kanchanjangha. She was inspired by poetic feelings from her childhood itself. She had gradually learnt to reciprocate with different facets of nature like green hills, trees, forests, flowers, sunrise, sunset, lakes, rain, clouds, horizon, and blue sky."
She had also fallen in love (teenage love), marked by an exchange of (naive) letters. Ultimately, she broke it. The reason is not clear but probably it has more to do with her increasing existential angst and absurdities of life. And probably the fear of societal constructs. This haunted her with guilt for the rest of her life in some ways.
"Whatever the reason for ending this relation that was begun with a pledge to everlasting faithfulness before Mt. Kanchnajangha, she was never able to get rid of it in her later life. She has reminisced her experiences in this way, "After all, the same sense of guilt got rooted in my heart as a complicated fear."
"It was a great mistake of my life. It was not a pain to myself alone, I pushed in the state of utter sorrow and despair the person whom I loved very much"
"She was perhaps afraid of the life of surrender with a house, a husband and a family. Her repulsion with family life is believed to have been heightened by the life of dejection that her elder sister (from her step mother) had to suffer under the horrid manhandling of her husband. Or this could in itself be a form of absurd rebellion."
There were many intelligent young boys, who loved Parijat not only as a teenager, but also when she was a mature woman, but nobody reached the height of her first love. This means, no one appeared in her life to win her heart as much as the first man. Was the love that she is supposed to have heartlessly rejected really rejected?
The role of one of her cousin brothers is very significant in giving Parijat the impetus to her literary inclinations.
"He had once said to her, "Why don't you write poems, sister?" (Parijat, 1997, p. 15). Then she had written the first poem of her life, but unsuccessfully. It had not come from her heart. The same brother once again inspired her to write stories. She had read stories of "Madhumalati" and "Lalhira", and with their inspiration, she wrote a love story. It only made her friends laugh with an indication that it was not mature enough to inspire readers. However, this did not dishearten her. These initiations and the constant inspiration from her cousin kindled in her the spirit of literary creations."
Struggles in Kathmandu
Parijat came to Kathmandu in 1954 where the struggles began. This struggle was not only financial but also more about her self identity.
"Parijat's arrival to Kathmandu, her studies and the life of struggle here shaped her creative ability. In fact, Parijat became Parijat only after she had come to Kathmandu. Before that, she was only Bishnu Waiba of Darjeeling, a person with desire for expression who was waiting to be expressed."
The initial "writing days" were mostly poetic with romanticism.
"her first collection of poems, Akanksha (longings, 1957) was published. Her poems in this collection and almost all those she wrote till 1961 are inspired by the spirit of romanticism."
Slowly, writing became a way to cope with her existential dreads. This is seen after when she contracted a terrible orthopedic complication that sent her abed for 3 years which put her into life-long physical disability.
"Despite destroying the initial creations, Parijat's enthusiasm for novel writing did not die; it grew intensely in her. But when her ambitions were getting higher, she contracted a terrible orthopedic complication, which sent her abed for three years. This same complication, on relapse, put her into lifelong disability later. Those three years were painful for her both physically and mentally. Regular medication slowly pushed her into deeper financial crisis. In utter hopelessness, she began to see darkness everywhere and perceive the absurd underlying human existence. This state of despair and restlessness gave birth to her famous novel Shirishko Phool (Blue Mimosa)."
“There was no obligation for the philosophical ideas in Sirishko Phool to enter public life, but it did anyway. Now, there is that obligation. I’m proud of the fact that it shook traditional mindsets. I am also proud of Sirishko Phool for introducing an innovative way to write a novel in terms of language, style, plot and character presentation. I was already familiar with the idea that one ought to revolutionize novel-writing. Because no one has actually written a novel in Nepali. No one has the courage to write it, not even as much courage demonstrated by Suyogbir’s acceptance.”
Ralfa Movement and Socio-political involvement
Besides writing to get a release from THE ABSURD, her involvement in the literary movement Ralfa paved the way to her progressive thoughts, influenced by [[Che Guevara]], [[Fidel Castro]] and the likes. She found a way to reflect existing societal constructs through her literary works.
"the formation of Ralfa, the ever popular literary-artistic movement of Nepal in which Parijat was an active part. Parijat's life began to take a different course within Ralfa. Her absurdist/existentialist rebellion appears to have become relatively more conspicuous in these years"
"Parijat wrote absurdist stories and poems while in Ralfa. She had the fire of rebellion within, and it was taking the form of a rebellion against the society itself. She had rather begun to feel peace in this state."
During the Panchayat, because of her leftist alignments, her rebellious nature, and her affiliation with national and international human rights organizations, she was ignored by the state.
My Thoughts
I am intrigued. This biography felt like traveling through time, where a human was struggling to make sense of her existence and THE ABSURD. She tried to "live" among those absurdities.
After reading Conversation with Parijat from 1963, it evoked a sense of "awe" towards Parijat. Perhaps, I can only speculate about never-ending possibilities of a mind trapped in the pages of literature, in thoughts of people she influenced, and in the imaginations of later generations like me who gets hit hard by the absurdity of life itself.
I will have to read her characters in the poems and stories to understand her life through a telescopic vision. Perhaps, she is indeed a flower that can only be picked after it has fallen, a flower that cannot be touched in its youth. :)
"The attempt to understand her beyond her own pace will be either incomplete or partial. Her progressive ideas require to be judged with reference to her own time and context."
"Parijat is the person who has an unfulfilled desire for skating in a smooth pitched road, has a craving for a journey round the world recording the feelings of euphoria in her personal diary, has not yet got a chance to sing in a full-throated voice; and has not yet given her adroit hands to the kitchen. She is the one who longs to pass a peaceful night under a tree, and one who wants to run amok in a garden in a clear night after a rainfall. Deprived of all these opportunities, I feel I have in me a woman whose desires have been murdered, and whom the present Parijat cannot caress wholeheartedly."
“Life is worthless, but it can’t be ignored. What I think of life is– it’s certainly not a joyful experience; humans are born to suffer. Humans have to endure suffering at every stage. One can invent any excuse to survive but whatever excuse one makes, life is very sad; life is purposeless. Even after knowing this, I make several excuses to live and I am capable of making excuses. That’s why there is no point complaining either. So whatever happens, I quietly tolerate and let it be.” - Parijat
Edsger W. Dijkstra: The Man Who Carried Computer Science on His Shoulders
Before reading this, I knew absolutely nothing about Dijkstra except his infamous shortest pathfinding algorithm.
I am mind-blown by the number of works Dijkstra has contributed to Computer Science, mainly relating to Structured Programming and Correctness of programs, plus foundational concepts to concurrency: mutual exclusion problem, semaphores, banker's algorithm...
Dijkstra left behind a remarkable array of notions and concepts that have withstood the test of time: the display, the mutual exclusion problem, the semaphore, deadly embrace, the banker’s algorithm, the sleeping barber and the dining philosophers problems, self-stabilization, weakest precondition, guard, and structured programming.
It's amazing (and inspiring) that throughout his life Dijkstra maintained private reports (journals) comprised of research papers, proofs of new or existing theorems, comments/reviews/opinions of scientific works by others... These are consecutively numbered and had his initials as a prefix. Eventually, they became known as EWDs. It’s amazing to read these EWDs. I felt overwhelmed by just a few. I am definitely reading more of these EWDs.
One such report is EWD 1036: On the cruelty of really teaching computing science where he argues that computer programming should be understood as a branch of mathematics and that the formal provability of a program is a major criterion for correctness.
Also, he didn't shy away from controversy and harsh comments on scientific works. Yet he was respectable because he thought really hard on problems at hand.
Dijkstra did not shy away from controversies. He was a dedicated contrarian who reveled in expressing extreme and unconventional opinions.
Dijkstra often expressed his opinions using memorable turns of phrase or maxims that caught the ears of his colleagues and were widely commented upon:
Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence.
Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
A formula is worth a thousand pictures.
Dijkstra left behind a remarkable array of notions and concepts that have withstood the test of time: the display, the mutual exclusion problem, the semaphore, deadly embrace, the banker’s algorithm, the sleeping barber and the dining philosophers problems, self-stabilization, weakest precondition, guard, and structured programming.
Throughout his professional career, Dijkstra remained remarkably modest. He never had a secretary; he typed or wrote all his publications himself. Most were entirely his own work and even the few that listed coauthors were clearly written by Dijkstra, or in his style.
Another recommended read on this: I remember Edsger Dijkstra which showcases Dijkstra’s contributions to ALGOL 60 programming language.
Mileva Maric: The Forgotten Life of Einstein's First Wife
I am shocked by how little we know about Mileva Maric. :O
Reading this made me think that it was quite difficult for her to get into academia because of the way society was in the past; biasing against women. Given that bias, a publication co-signed with a woman might have carried less weight. As a result, everything was published solely under Einstein’s name.
We will never know. But nobody made it clearer than Albert Einstein himself that they collaborated on special relativity when he wrote to Mileva on 27 March 1901: “How happy and proud I will be when the two of us together will have brought our work on relative motion to a victorious conclusion.”
It’s still not clear how much Mileva contributed because there aren’t many authentic sources. But she seems to be a genius who helped Einstein to be what he is seen now.
How much did his first wife contribute to his groundbreaking science? While nobody has been able to credit her with any specific part of his work, their letters and numerous testimonies presented in the books dedicated to her(1-5) provide substantial evidence on how they collaborated from the time they met in 1896 up to their separation in 1914.
There’s also a HN discussion on this, out of which I found one conversation thought-provoking:
She was failed and denied a degree in spite of having better grades than Albert, probably solely because she was a woman. Albert was probably blocked from employment positions he wanted by the same professor that failed her, possibly because he was treating a woman like his equal.
This reads to me as they coped as best they could with a world that absolutely wouldn't accept a woman as a serious scientist and even with trying to be self-effacing, etc, they both paid a high price -- such a high price, it likely destroyed their marriage.
This also reminded me of a similar story about Betty Shannon, Claude Shannon’s wife, who contributed to a lot of Claude’s works: Betty Shannon, Unsung Mathematical Genius
Shannon valued the help. Though his ideas were very much his own, Betty turned them into publishable work. Shannon was prone to thinking in leaps—to solving problems in his mind before addressing all the intermediary steps on paper. Like many an intuitive mind before him, he loathed showing his work. So Betty filled in the gaps.
But it might not have been so had it not been for Betty Moore Shannon. Aided and challenged by her, one of the 20th century’s great minds found broad new expanses to explore—and managed to wring breakthroughs out of them. Together, the Shannons built distant ancestors to our modern devices, made machines “think,” and helped to lay the groundwork for the Information Age. Their “joint project” was one of the great creative partnerships of our time—and their legacy is wired into our everyday lives.
Reddit: How do we know what the Milky Way looks like if we are within it?
The clues we have to the shape of the Milky Way are (directly copy-pasted):
When you look toward the Galactic Center with your eye, you see a long, thin strip. This suggests a disk seen edge-on, rather than an ellipsoid or another shape. We can also detect the bulge at the center. Since we see spiral galaxies which are disks with central bulges, this is a bit of a tipoff.
When we measure velocities of stars and gas in our galaxy, we see an overall rotational motion that differs from random motions. This is another characteristic of a spiral galaxy.
The gas fraction, color, and dust content of our Galaxy are like other spiral galaxies.
So, overall, it's a pretty convincing argument. Of course, we have to assume our galaxy is not completely unlike the other galaxies we see—once a civilization has accepted that it does not occupy any special place in the Universe, arguments about similarity seem sensible.
#Watching
Building an artificial sun that looks unbelievably realistic
DIY Perks | 24 min
This is a brilliant DIY that tries to emulate real sunlight with:
(a) the light source at infinity (parallel rays) so that shadows don't change in size
If a light source is present at the principal focus of the lens, the rays are scattered parallelly by the lens.
If a light source is present at the focal point of a parabolic "reflective" mirror, the reflected rays are parallel.
(b) blue light with Rayleigh scattering that gives realistic lighting
achieved by using soap bubbles inside a glass. Haha.
Matt makes this look effortless. :D
Autodale
This is one of my favorite short animated series. Bijay’s last week’s Things of Note #27 triggered me to re-watch the Autodale series. In TON-27, he touches upon Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World dystopia:
a Dystopian (Utopian?) world that has no suffering, no pain, illness, even senility. There is no concept of family (people are created in factories) and Love (“Everyone belongs to everyone else”; promiscuity is sanctioned and encouraged by the state and society). Thus there are no complicated feelings—of desire, envy, resentment—that they espouse.
My immediate impulse was “Autodale” which has a similar dystopian “feel”, except this society (world), called Autodale, is governed by a hive-mind.
What happens if you let an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) optimize the world?
It tries to decrease pain and suffering.
In the process, it creates a single automated cycle: adults working in a daily rut trying to have a “stable life”. Children follow the same cycle to adulthood. If they fail, they are killed… Hence, there’s the division of “pretty” and “ugly” humans.
This description is only the tip of the iceberg because there are robots (called Handyman) and other weird creatures (called Freaks).
Definitely recommended.
The very first episode, “Being Pretty”, gives chills.
"Hello, citizens of Autodale! You are pretty. Your neighbours, friends and family are also pretty. But sadly, not everyone is pretty. Some are ugly ...We, here at Autodale, do not want "uglies."
Creator David James Armsby also has “making of” videos about his Autodale idea; how he spent time on refining the storyline. This is my first time watching these “making of” videos and I am mind-blown by the efforts he has put in all his stories.
(Don’t go by the length. The series is short, yet profound; makes you think of many philosophical ideas)
#Poetry
A sick lover's letter to her soldier - लाहुरेलाई एक रोगी प्रेमिकाको पत्र
This is a poem by Parijat. Moving.
जीवनसाथी !
धेरै धेरै प्यार
मलाई लाग्छ ,यी स्वतन्त्र उड्ने
मलेवाहरुका घाँटीमा
एउटा हृदय उनेर पठाउँ
एउटा प्रेम पत्र झुन्डाएर पठाउँ
एकपल्ट दोहोर्याउँ
शताब्दीअघिको प्रमको भावुकता
र आजको सीमारेखा
कुन स्वतन्त्र चराले उड्न पायो र ?
प्रेम मर्दैन, तर यसलाई मार्नु पर्छ।
“Love does not die, you have to kill it.”. Damn!
An English translation can be found here.
Love does not die, you have to kill it,
you must begin with the strength of my end.
Now here is the rest of my letter,
now here is the rest of your phoenix
life companion, here for you
is the remnant of all my love.
Laxmi Prasad Devkota | Pagal
This is one of my favorite poems from Devkota. Always, gives me goosebumps, especially this rendition.
जरुर साथी म पागल !
यस्तै छ मेरो हाल !
म शब्दलाई देख्दछु !
दृश्यलाई सुन्दछु !
बास्नालाई स्वाद लिन्छु !
आकाशभन्दा पातला कुरालाई छुन्छु !
#Music
Been listening to old Nepali songs the whole week. :)
Prem Dhoj Pradhan | Para Laijau Phool Haru
Aruna Lama | Phool Lai Sodhe
This is one of my favorites from Aruna Lama. :)
Narayan Gopal | Swarga Ki Rani
This makes me remember many things. :)
Also, I loved this cover by Shaurya. The bass melody is so good.
Ending Thoughts
One particular morning this week I woke up too early. Stayed on the roof for a while. Moon had a different presence. Too chilly though. Not recommended. Haha.
That’s all for today.
Have your holidays,
Nish
PS: I composed, yet another, music. The longest I've done. Took quite some time to edit many parts (if only editing emotions was that easy… :| )