Only the dim-witted say it's evening
when the sun goes down
and the sky reddens,
when misery deepens,
and the mullai begins to bloom
in the dusk.

But even when the tufted cock
calls in the long city
and the long night
breaks into dawn,
it is the evening:
even noon
is evening,
to one who has no one.

Translation by Shri. A.K. Ramanujan, Poems of Love and War
original verse by Milaipperun Kantan, Kuruntokai 234.

Kurunthokai

yAyum gnAyum yAr AgiyarO
endhaiyum nundhaiyum emmuRik kElir?
yAnum neeyum evvazhi aRidhum?
chembulap peyalneer pOla
anbudai nenjamthAm kalandhanavE

What could my mother be
to yours? What kin is my father
to yours anyway? And how
Did you and I meet ever?
But in love
our hearts have mingled
as red earth and pouring rain

The War within

After death,
veins open into
concrete roads.

kill the dead

with an army

What a war!

Red and green
Saffron and white
The colours of death.

A tongue slain

twitching on the ground
Crime? - speaking.

A wailing child
hiding in the bosom
of dead mother.

A.J.Leggett

Tony Leggett won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the year 2003 for his pioneering work in Supefluid theories especially the physics of He 3. He is currently visiting a Quantum Computing Institute about 70km from Hamilton,ON. I had the good fortune of listening to couple of his lectures and also a one on one session with him and my supervisor! This is I guess one of the closest encounters I have had with the special species that occupy my planet!

Any way I found this awesome quote in his autobiography and I guess anyone who ever had to make a choice between Physics and Maths would stand up and applaud him for giving words to express their predicament!!
Here's the quote:::
I did indeed briefly consider the possibility of going into pure mathematics, but rejected it on the grounds that in mathematics, almost by the definition of the subject, to be wrong means you are stupid: I wanted the possibility of being wrong without being stupid - of being wrong, if you like, for interesting and nontrivial reasons. Physics seemed to fill that bill

rambling

There, in the rustling of the wind, I saw the shapes of love. When the autumn leaf fell on the ground, twirling in the air, its shadow on the ground in the afternoon heat looked like a petrified fish swimming in the waters. Like the petrified fluttering of the insane heart.



Lithograph by M.C Escher - Three Worlds, 1955

For Hamilton, his science was inseparable not
just from his life but also from his death. He wrote a
moving article entitled "My Intended Burial and Why?",
in which he expresses his desire to have his body
dealt with thus: " I will leave a sum in my last will
for my body to be carried to Brazil and to these
forests. It will be laid out in a manner secure
against the possums and the vultures just as we make
our chickens secure; and this great Coprophanaeus
beetle will bury me. They will enter, will bury, will
live on my flesh; and in the shape of their children
and mine, I will escape death. No worm for me nor
sordid fly, I will buzz by the dusk like a huge bumble
bee".

W.D. Hamilton (1936-2000) - British evolutionary biologist

Karnatakam(1)--DKJ(addendum)

as promised(thanks to rohit) two kuttikadhai or anecdotes about DKJ
During his younger days, DKJ was in Kancheepuram...he had 3 children and barely managed 2 make ends meet... he also did not get too many opportunities to sing... so he came over to madras... in madras, he stayed in one of the mada streets near kapali kovil in mylaporehere he started earning by taking music classes... he had many many sishyas and used 2 take class full time... it was only in the last 10 yrs of his life that he became famous and earned a lot of money... the irony is that he used 2 like drinking cold water, but but could not do so in his younger days as he had no refrigerator in his houseduring the days he started earning he bought a fridge but could not drink cold water as he had throat problems and he used 2 regret that a lot :)


he was a heart patient... but he was fond of "ver kadalai"(roasted peanuts)... he always used 2 eat it and continued even after doctors advised him against that... on the day he passed away also, he was taking class for his sishyas and was eating "ver kadalai" when he got a sudden fatal heart attack... even 2day, his sons and daughter dread the sight of ver kadalai which they feel caused their father's death... and j.vaidyanathan recollects till date that he was the one who used to go and buy "ver kadalai" for his father who insisted that he wanted it