Tow-Path

Towpath. Not toepath. Apparently it's a thing. First, I thought that this particular path near Carnegie lake in Princeton was called by people `the toepath'. "Did you go on the toepath yet?" Well of course I did, it runs next to my home. 

Then I got to know that the `toepath' is a universally accepted name for any path on which people can walk on their TOES. "There is a nice toepath next to the Charles in Boston, right?". Me: "Oh, yeah, yeah."

But in fact, the toepath has got nothing to do with toes. It's actually a towpath, as wiki just taught me. It's like the moment you realize that it's not "wet your appetite", but "whet your appetite". Moment of clarity which ends up making less sense than it did before. 

The towpath near my home is especially pretty and conducive to running. I wish I was amazing at this running thing, because this one runs all the way down to Delaware. So I could run a marathon on this, if I was good enough to do so. 

An uncle. Oops. A nice old middle aged person (I wish the Americans would adopt the usage of the word uncle, it's so convenient; my Canadian co-postdoc approves) is seen taking a photograph in the picture. This person (that just sounds so impersonal), rather, this uncle showed me a bird, and I realized that it's the same bird that visits my office tree every other day. It's called a `downy woodpecker'. Now I know the name of the bird that I've been searching on the internet all this while. Unfortunately, he could not explain why the squirrels on my office tree like to tear up the bark and chew on it. He suspected the bark had some nutrition. I told him that I'd read on the internet that pregnant squirrels do it to de-stress. He didn't buy that so I continued my run. 

Some ducks. 

It is important to reach home early enough, especially if you've been watching too much of American Horror Story recently.

 Other good things about New Jersey: Indian food and indian grocery stores. All the full fat yoghurt I can bring home. All the ghee. I mean, it's insane. In Newark, you can even get fresh Paan; how much I've wanted to eat fresh paan here after a meal. 

The paan chewing reminds me. My co-postdoc who is Canadian seems to have only Indian friends and he introduced me to some of them here in Princeton. They were all south indians and we somehow got around to talking about the development in various states, which is a conversation anyone from UP of all places would like to avoid. So my friend Panji's wife then turns around and tells me, "you know, UP may suck in general, but you guys have culture, man. And what's up with the politeness? So much `aap'". That just made my day so much. Yes, we are shitty and poor but we are a polite people. I got this from a Pakistani couple as well when Saloni and I were in Hawaii. They were from the sourthern part of Pakistan, abutting Rajasthan, so they spoke Hindi in the Rajasthani/Gujarati way, like Saloni, using `tu' for you, which a lot of us in UP consider an indecent/uncultured way of speaking. Heck, even my grandfather never once addressed me with `tu', not even `tum', always `aap'. After Saloni told the couple that my parents are from UP, she said, "ah, that's why you speak with such an Urdu accent", which is basically another way of saying, "ah, that's why you speak so politely". 

Another good thing about New Jersey, I have some family: 

This cute guy better start showing that he's also got Indian blood at some point. 

Afreen Afreen

Happiness: link.

It is impossible to praise enough her beauty.
Oh beloved, oh beloved.
If you saw her, you'd be spellbound too!

Aspen

1] It's a great place to organize a physics conference -- you can just relax and think and there's an ample amount of white noise all over the place from birds, and the wind etc. to make this possible. The conference structure also helped -- just 7 half-hour talks a day, and at most 50 people attended.

The hotel is like a dorm-house. 

Daily walk to the Physics center. 

Hiking around the place is a goddamn pleasure. 

And yes, there are plenty of reminders everywhere that this is weed town.

2] The air is thin and you can often feel out of breath. I was fine after the first day but many people had trouble sleeping throughout the conference.

This place is high up -- 3000 ft. and the air can be thin.

3] The most common bird here is the Magpie. Here they have a very nice blue plumage and are exceptionally fat. The fatter they are, the more sophisticated they look, in a weird way -- the word that comes to my mind is sophistacado (fat like an avocado, but sophisticated, because of it).

A sophistacado striking a very elegant pose for my camera. 

I think I pestered them a lot because I sort of hung around trying to reach them for 10 minutes at times. But these birds weren't aggressive. I probably wouldn't have been so pesky had I first seen videos of them harassing people on youtube.

The sophistacado looks better when it has more fat on it. 

4] Skiing is actually super-duper easy -- at the bunny hill level at least. The boots are kinda weird because they literally force your legs to bend forward at all times -- that took a bit getting used to, but it helps with the balance.

That said, I felt like a total pro amidst all the cool-as-fuck 5 year olds. I sort of ditched (aka cool-as-fuck) the instructor right away and went down the slope at full speed but I didn't fall! A little bit of that, I'll admit, happened without me knowing what was happening. Later on, I did fall, I think 2 times, when I was learning to do pizza/french-fries/turning but it's no problem because you land on a bed of snow.

I think I have realized my ideal week-long vacation: go to a ski resort, ski for 5-6 hours a day (should be enough to become a mid-level pro, if that makes any sense) and then, in the night, find a place where you can see the Milky Way.

Bunny slope (honestly, it seemed steeper than it looks, so much steeper).

Pro-ing it up amongst little kids. 

5] You can see a bunch of stars here -- it was easy to spot Orion, Big/Small Dipper etc. but you can't see the Milky Way. It's strange but I never really looked at the stars as a kid. The only association I had with the sky growing up in Moscow was the cloudiness and lack of sunlight -- it was clear to me even at that age that I used to get depressed because of the lack of sun. And somehow I never looked at the stars much in Delhi either... strange. But now that I've looked at a decent sky full of stars, I really want more and seeing the full Milky Way has become the most important short-term goal I have in life.

My best attempt at capture the stars. 

(Not) another way to do it?

6] It was fun explaining localization physics to a Nobel Laureate over breakfast. Ah, I wish I had gotten a picture of that.

Thoughts from Tyexas.

Was in San Antonio, Texas for the March Meeting this year. Good things about the trip: physics, lots of walking, interesting Texan people, didn't feel tempted to suck on the old 84mms even when drunk and amongst smoker friends. Bad things: only one, food. Tex Mex is only OK up to a point and you even start to hate cheese beyond a point. Also, the steak here is massively overrated, at least going by the one time I tried.

A collection of random thoughts about Texas from the trip :

1] The Mexican influence is strong. After all, Texas was a part of Mexico, and Mexico tried very hard to populate Texas with Americans by offering them great land deals in the early 1800s. Eventually of course, the Americans outnumbered the Spanish speakers 10-1 and got their own Tyexas. Still, Texas = lots of Mexican arts and crafts and food.

2] Airbnb is cool if the original residents of the place are art majors. Some very poetic advice and beautiful artwork made my stay so awesome. Need to read stuff from this person called Ellen Gilchrist. 

3] Texas people are big. You can't see them biggies on downtown streets, but as soon as you hit the burbs, they come flooding in. Especially if you end up at a steak house. The steak unfortunately wasn't what it was billed up to be.

The people are big but they are also extremely nice and polite. I illustrate my point using a picture of Starbucks coffee at the airport. The two milk options for your coffee here are...

4] Texan truck-drivers love the rodeo. We honestly felt pretty out of place there amongst a sea of very big and very red-colored people, but like I said before, the people are really nice and chatty so it was fine. I finally got to hear the beautiful Texan accent which I was yearning to hear but could not in the city (sadly).

Also, I absolutely love the fact that these people love their animals so much. Yes, sometimes the competitions seemed a tad cruel, but overall, the people were pretty respectful to the animals and were generally just trying to have a good time. Not only did I see rodeos on bulls (which was absolutely frightening to watch because it seemed like someone getting badly hurt was a forgone eventuality), I also saw tiny 5 year old kids rodeoing on sheep by grabbing their ears! And these kids are absolutely insane. At one point, they let these tiny kids (about 30) out into the pen with 10 cows (young uns, but still twice bigger than the kids) and these kids ran around trying to grab the cows with absolutely no fear even when the cows were heading straight for them. Fucking loved the insanity. 

5] The trip back to Boston was just long enough (about 6 hours total) for me to complete my first cryptic crossword!!! My English has now reached a new high! :O Well, I also did need a few more minutes at home and Saloni's help to complete it... She filled up the remaining 5-10 entries pretty quick which makes me question my awesomeness a little bit, but damn was it fun. I will blame the tiredness :)))

My finest culinary achievement to date.

It's not complicated stuff - but simple food, with some simple variations and it tasted unbelievably good. Saloni was certainly impressed!

Starter : Aloo and Parwal ki tikiya (potato and parwal cutlet) : I stir-fried the parwal on high heat for just a little bit to make it feel a little cooked, without loosing any of its green freshness. It was a cool addition to the usual aloo tikki.

Main Course : Paraantha with Baingan ka Bharta, and Kaali Daal (Paraantha with smoked eggplant and black lentils) : Awesome new thing I did was to stab the eggplant with garlic before smoking it, adding lots of ginger to the tomatoes and a little bit of garam masala. I didn't add any coriander powder, and that was definitely a smart thing to do. With these changes, I really think I've perfected baingan ka bharta.

Final : methi-pudeene ka raita (yoghurt with Mint and Fenugreek leaves) : I blanched the fenugreek leaves to reduce their pungency, ground them with mint leaves, and a green chili, and gave the yoghurt a cumin tadka. This is the perfect thing to cool your throat down and end the meal. 

Success!!! 

Some thoughts on Van Gogh's personality.

Vincent Van Gogh led a pretty sodded life, some of which was due to his brain chemistry, some his own doing, and some possibly due to others. In any case, his art never really got appreciated while he lived. He was highly prone to depression from childhood. This is something he knew very well, and made mention of in his several letters to his elder brother Theo (these can be found here). He failed with women constantly, and had a very hard time accepting this. This much was summarized in this article (link) following his first failure at love :

"Vincent Van Gogh did not understand the mechanics of interpersonal diplomacy,
or the principles of salesmanship. During this period he fell in love for the first time,
and openly professed his love for Eugenia, a respectable upper class woman. 
Eugenia was insulted by his unwanted advances, and she harshly rebuffed him.

Van Gogh's inability to read the intent and emotions of others, caused him
to fail to see that she had never  expressed any interest in him. 
Failing in his first romantic experience, he also blundered miserably in his 
first job as an art dealer. He was dismissed by the art firm ..."

In such moments, he often ended up acting like a maniac. The famous Van Gogh ear incident, for instance, was probably a reaction to rejection by a woman in favor of his room-mate and the equally crazy Paul Gaugin. (This version of the events is disputed in this long but very interesting New Yorker article : link.) Fine, the chap was somewhat crazy, and often a failure, but also a genius. This much is well established.

The questions that I would like to ask and elaborate upon are the following two --

1) Van Gogh was supposedly a very empathetic man. But was he not also deeply narcissistic?

2) Was Van Gogh addicted to depression?

I don't have clear answers but I would like to discuss these questions in the context of Van Gogh's choice of women. Van Gogh's first love was Eugenia, who was out of reach because she was a different class to him ; his second love was his cousin Kee, who was out of reach, for obvious reasons ; and his third love was a prostitute, Sien, with whom he could not maintain any form of exclusivity, for he did not have enough money to offer her. There is a pattern here : Van Gogh obsessed with women with whom he had no chance of a true, mutually fulfilling relationship. And I think these three women highlight three key aspects of Van Gogh's personality : narcissism, fatalism, and empathy, which hid under it some more narcissism.

Everyone suffers from these to relatively different degrees. And possibly every love has some element of narcissism, as unfortunate as that might be -- you want to associate with a particular partner not just because you like spending time with them, expect them to be a good parent to your children, but also because, you see them as an accomplishment of sorts. Women often go for men for are rich (or status etc.), and men, for women who are beautiful.

Van Gogh's empathetic nature is very well documented. He yearned for a socialist cult of artists who could sustain themselves by helping each other out financially, and artistically. He developed a strong aversion to the art-gallery culture because it appeared to make art a commodity only for the rich. He also felt very strongly for the cause of peasants, their poor subsistence, and painted extensively on the topic of their daily labor and struggles. So how could such an empathetic man have loved just to appease his own ego, that is, loved out of narcissism? Well, empathy is an obscure concept. It is something narcissistic individuals can choose to believe in (and in fact, imbibe), because it is a quality that is respected by everyone. Whether they are truly empathetic is difficult to ascertain. Whether empathy has any other origins other than narcissism is also not clear to me, although I certainly hope this is not the case. Regardless, one has to question why Van Gogh was happy in his job as an art dealer, and only started to worry about the questions of poverty and the exclusivity of art after his failure with Eugenia - was this simply the development of a side that Vincent wanted to project to the world, to fuel his narcissism, something that was hurt by the rejection he received from Eugenia? But Eugenia's rejection also made Van Gogh pick up the paint brush and paint!

The second instance of love is far more puzzling. Surely Van Gogh knew that his incestuous advance towards Kee was never going to be accepted? Love is certainly a strange thing. There is a magnificent beauty in the heart of a beautiful person -- something that is, personally, the most affectionate quality of any love that I've experienced. I'm going to give Van Gogh the benefit of the doubt and say he loved his cousin for these, fairly pious reasons as well. But to take it to the other level, in such circumstances, is strange. He actually went up to her father's door and put up a flame under his hand and told his uncle that he won't leave until he sees his cousin. (The piece of fuck!) In my opinion, perhaps the only acceptable reasoning of his behavior is that, he knew this would never work out, he knew that he would then go into an episode of terrible depression, and he liked it. It is no coincidence that Van Gogh's best work followed moments of sadness which were set in motion by either the loss of a loved one, or failure in a romantic endeavor. This is fatalism.

And finally, for his love for the third woman, the prostitute Sien, the less said the better.  A man, lost in the eyes of the world, wants to reform a prostitute, how charming! This is the definition of narcissism hiding behind empathy. I don't mean to denigrate Van Gogh (who am I to do so anyway?). Honestly, I feel for the guy. I know depression, and I also maintain that I occasionally force myself into it. It gets me to write, to draw, to think. It makes me a richer human being, always. It's a bitter-sweet relationship. Only that Van Gogh knew no bounds and took it too far.

.. .. ..

The links :

Van Gogh's Ear : link (New Yorker)

The troubled life of Vincent Van Gogh : link

A Biograph of Van Gogh : link
Archive of Van Gogh's Letters : here

Experiences in Italy

Recently, I was in Italy for a 10-day long summer workshop on developments in various aspects of ultra-cold-atomic physics. I have to say, the workshop was pretty tiring, with 5 one-and-a-half-hour lectures every day, dispersed between 9 am and 7 pm. But it was also very exhaustive in its scope and very enlightening from a scientific point of view. I previously did not have much of an interest in ultra-cold atoms but the scope of experiments that are possible in the field is truly breathtaking and so the developments are worth watching out for, even from the point of view of a general condensed matter theorist. Of particular interest to me was the discussions on the possibilities of studying disordered systems via ultra-cold atoms, as recently I've been doing a lot of interesting stuff in the general area of disordered spin systems, noise and localization - there are many universal issues in these systems that in my opinion, deserve a more comprehensive answer than what has yet been provided. Back to the school. A lot of things piqued my curiosity, and this resulted in me asking a ton of questions during the talks. So much so that at some point I wondered if people might be getting a tad upset. Or maybe not, because, perhaps on the basis of this, the director of the program was kind enough to ask me to join his group in Florence as a theorist. I told him that I just like America a lot :P

Now, about Italy itself. My first site of Italy was the Linette airport in Milan. The airport is pretty tiny, the customs check virtually nonexistent, which was great. A slight peculiarity was the presence of many emergency buttons all over the baggage carousels, reasons for which seemed fairly obscure to me. As I got out, my first thought was, well, this reminds me a lot of Delhi, and the shuttle bus ride I took to the Milano Centrale (the Milan Central Station) reinforced that notion to some extent. It's an interesting city. I think we passed through a few small neighborhoods with small roundabouts encasing small parks, which were surrounded by some sort of community building complexes. This reminded me a lot of the neighborhoods in Rohini which have big apartment complexes and lots of community parks between them - but the comparison was not because of the architecture, because things here were rather diminutive, and distinctly Roman in form, but perhaps because of the yellowness that permeated the sky and greens, and the texture of the soil and grass, that seemed so reminiscent of home. While the areas were generally clean, unfortunately, each and every single wall was donned in an excess of graffiti, and graffiti that was far removed from any notion of art - this was just a bunch of words spray painted in an ugly fashion, most of them were simply names of footballers of local football teams such as Inter and AC Milan. I'm guessing these were primarily poor neighborhoods that we were passing. Interestingly, the people seemed to be a somewhat diverse mix of immigrants and locals (honestly sometimes it's very difficult to tell). The roads were also somewhat peculiar in their construction - there were 2 poorly maintained dividers on the road, with a central space earmarked for buses. It didn't look pretty and I'm not sure if it worked well. At Milano Centrale, I quickly found myself being ambushed by some poor people, who wanted to help me punch in the address of the place I wanted to go to on the ticket dispensers in exchange for a coffee. This perhaps sealed the deal for why I felt so much at home :D Instantly, I was like, I know how to handle you guys! And I basically went about shooing these people from the get go, knowing that if I let them do anything for me, they will ask me for money. I felt like a pro, for once, amidst all the confusion of a foreign language, and at home. It was just, honestly, the most homely experience I've had in a long time, in a weird way. Perhaps the one bad thing in the whole place was the smoke. There are smokers everywhere. I get this stuff, or at least, I used to. But smoking next to toddlers is not OK. It was curious to note that an overwhelming majority of the smokers were women. On to Varenna.

The coolest thing about Italy are Italians. It was never difficult for me to pick up a conversation and I cannot remember spending any of my time on Italian trains without talking to someone. The people are very open and expressive, and very welcoming. There is also a very homely air to their way of treating strangers, which I'm guessing if a facet of the collectivistic nature of their society. So for example, the lady who was the keeper of the hotel we stayed in (the participants of the school were distributed over many small hotels, each with maybe a dozen residents), in Varenna, would literally urge me every morning , 'How you focus, if you not eat breakfaaaste' (imagine the Italian 'e' at the end of every word, and you wouldn't be far off from knowing what it sounded like). And another example is of the conversation I had with an Italian kid also attending the school. I think I was dangerously traversing the border of `fun' and `rude' when I mentioned to him how the Italian hand gesture reminded me so much of a person begging for food. Admittedly, I did it get a provocative response and he was quick to oblige! Thankfully, he took my comment in, what can only be described as a very Italian spirit, and instantly replied with, "Non No! Not four fingers. Two fingers. Not this. This. This, is to make a point, not to beg for food". And I was happy to have learnt something new that day :) Also, the locals seemed very keen to help tourists. I had a bit of a misfortune in that, the one day of the workshop that was free, and I wanted to use to go to Switzerland and see the Alps, the Trenitalia (an Italian rail company) employees went on strike. So I had to make do with what I could, and which was, by no means, a lesser treasure - Lake Como on which the hilly town Varenna is based, is also home to many other gorgeous towns, including Lenno where George Clooney owns a villa, and Ocean's 11 and Casino Roayle were shot, and Bellagio, the town that inspires the eponymous hotel in Vegas. Nevertheless, I was notified that there still may be a chance that the trains would run and so I ended up at the train station at 7 AM, and was duly left disappointed. As I tracked back up the hill to reach my hotel, I met the director of the program to whom I narrated my disappointment. He asked me if I wanted coffee, and I replied with, "it's OK, I will buy it myself, don't worry", to which he again asked, "do you want the coffee or not?". At this point, I accepted the coffee, no questions asked. Very kind man, he tried to find out if I could still make my connecting train in Switzerland, but realized that I could not. Anyway, so I then decided to take the ferries around and see the various towns on Lake Como. The ferry system is a tad complicated and all the route timings and details are all in Italian, which makes it a little worse. But I was helped then by a ferry operator who literally spent 15 minutes chalking out a whole plan for me on how to spend the whole day on Lake Como - again a shining example of Italian hospitality. I ended up visiting the towns of Lenno, Bellagio, Mennagio (pictures to follow). In Bellagio, I met a really wonderful oil-painter. His work was very original, and of course, cost quite a lot. I left the place apologizing for my inability to purchase any of his work, and I could sense a wry smile take form on his face as I left.

The region of Lake Como is a region for the rich. A lot of the people, especially the British and American folk (and possibly the other folk, who I could not understand) seemed to be property hunting and figures of a couple of ten million dollars and such were being bandied with remarkable regularity. But enough of that - the place is absolutely stunning. Words cannot describe the beauty of the place, and so for this reason, I will let the pictures do the talking here.

The view of Lake Como from the School in Varenna - 

Bellagio from the Ferry.

Approaching Lenno 

Lenno from afar

The Alps lie beyond

Some wine for lunch and some wine for dinner and a view. 

Menaggio

Me in Menaggio

Lake Como, another view from the Varenna school area. 

Stairs going up hill in Varenna. 

And downhill. 

Varenna from the ferry. 

Another view of the lake. Just imagine swimming here. :)

ہر ایک درد کی دوا : فیض احمد فیض

پھر کوئی آیا ، دل زار ؛ نہیں ، کوئی نہیں
راہ رو ہوگا ، کہیں اور چلا جاےگا
ڈھل  چکی رات، بکھرنے لگا تاروں کا غبار ،
لڑکھڑانے لگے ایوانوں میں خوابیدہ چراغ ،
سو گیی راستہ تک تک کے ہر ایک راہ گزار
اجنبی خاک نے دھندھلا دے قدموں کے سراغ ،
گل کرو شمعیں ، بڑھا دو می و مینا و ایاغ ،
اپنے بے خواب کواڈون کو مقفل کر لو
اب یہاں کوئی نہیں ، کوئی نہیں، اے گا

- تنہائی میں ، فیض احمد فیض

फिर कोई आया दिल-ए -ज़ार , नहीं कोई नहीं
राह-राउ होगा, कहीं और चला जाएगा
ढल चुकी रात, बिखरने लगा तारों का ग़ुबार
लरखड़ाने लगे एवानों में ख्वाबीदा चिराग
सो गयी रास्ता तक तक के हर एक राह गुज़ार
अजनबी ख़ाक ने धुंधला दिए क़दमों के सुराग़
गुल करो शमाएँ, बढ़ा दो माय-ओ-मीना-ओ-अयाग़
अपने बेख्वाब किवाड़ों को मुक़फ़्फ़ल  कर लो
अब यहां कोई नहीं, कोई नहीं, आयेगा ।

तन्हाई में, फैज़ अहमद फैज़

Suggested Translation : (By Agha Shahid Ali)

Someone, finally, is here! No, unhappy heart, no one -
just a passerby on his way.
The night has surrendered
to clouds of scattered stars.
The lamps in the hall waver.
Having listened with longing for steps,
the roads too are fast asleep.

A strange dust has buried every footprint.
Blow out the lamps, break the glasses, erase
all memory of wine. Heart,
bolt forever your sleepless doors,
tell every dream that knocks to go away.
No one, now no one will ever come here.

Note : I wish our school curriculum had more poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz - there is really no one quite like him. I read somewhere that Nehru was a big fan of Faiz and personally requested him as much to stay back in India during the partition. Apparently, Faiz replied that he would've loved to live in Delhi but his wife's heart was set in Lahore.

Note : It is a grave injustice to Hindi itself that it must be restricted within the confines of words of Sanskrit origin. This is never how Hindustani was spoken, and the post-partition Sankritisation of Hindustani is remorseful. There can be no good reason to cull the richness of a language by rejecting a huge part of it's vocabulary, especially one that is closer to the spoken language. Second, the prudish nature of Indian society has permeated into the school system in such a way, that there is no room for poetry that talks about grief, wine, or women - but really, what is poetry without them?

Random pics from Amrikaa :D