Me, around me and my perspectives

An article from my website. How is it?

Me, around me and my perspectives:

The Agenda

Recently, after having gone through a number of personal and academic websites and blogs, and maintained my own blog for some time, I have started thinking about the ideology of blogs and personal websites. The major question is why a person should have a personal website or maintain a personal (not travel, professional, or so) blog? Well, I have not reached a conclusion yet though developed some hypotheses which I reserve for the time being. Having thought all these, when I launch a personal webpage, I must have some specific intentions in mind: this webpage is just to introduce who I am, what I think about my life, times and surroundings, and, in general, what my perspectives are; this page is not to boast about my character, intelligence, achievements, professional and personal skills, my education, my fortunate childhood, social status or travels I have made. They are out of my agenda because I frown upon those aspects of a person, whoever it be, as banal. While explaining my perspectives I surely do not intend to hurt anyone's feelings. If someone finds something objectionable in this page, it is completely unintended, and please be kind enough to point out it to me. Needless to say, all views expressed in this page are mine, and they have nothing to do with the institute--Indian Institute of Technology Madras--that hosts this webpage. Let me also make it clear that the above stated agenda pertains, however, only to this very page, and not to my blogs or any other pages under my website.

Having stated the agenda, I anticipate some questions: why should I write about my perspectives? who cares about them? what is so special about me for someone to understand my perspective? or rather, why me? Well, I am a nobody, or everybody. I don't expect anyone to care either. Still, I express myself because I believe that "I express therefore I am", "in expressing myself, I express man" and "every truth is a perspective truth" (thanks to those three great thinkers for providing me with settings to say these).

My Motherland

I hail from Kozhikode, a district in Kerala state, India. My mothertongue is Malayalam, which is the language spoken throughout Kerala. Kerala lies in the most southern end of India. Kerala is known for its distinct culture, art forms like Kathakali, Mohiniyattam, etc., its own form of martial arts Kalarippayattu, left-leaning politics, a variety of cuisines, back water tourism, etc.. I am very much emotionally attached with most of them. Our literature and films are also very much acclaimed internationally. My favourite writers in my language include Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, O.V. Vijayan, N.S. Madhavan, M.T. Vasudevan Nair, M. Mukundan and Madhavikkutty (Kamala Surayya). We are fortunate to have the great singer ("gana-gandharvan") Yesudas, who has been enchanting every Malayali (Malayalam speaking person, or Keralite) almost for the last four decades with his magnificent voice par excellence; I am a fan of his. Among my people, there is an age old debate as to whether Mammootty or Mohanlal is the best actor (I don't care about it--afterall, how can one compare rose with lily?) Both are internationally acclaimed actors and Padma Shri recipients. Mammootty, a very disciplined and meticulous actor, is better known internationally for his portrayal of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in Jabar Pattel's movie Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar (English/Hindi) besides his other sterling performances in Malayalam films like Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha, Vidheyan, Bhoothakkannadi, Danny, Mathilukal, Mrigaya, etc.. On the other hand, Mohanlal, so natural, vibrant and instinctual an actor, is well known for his breathtaking performances in a large number of movies including Vanaprastham, Bharatham, Kireedam, Manichithrathazhu (all Malayalam), Compnay (Hindi) and Iruvar (Tamil). In Indian movies, I can think only of a few other actors--in this, I admit that I am a bit biased--who are comparable with them (despite the fact that we have a number of stars); Kamal Hassan, Nassruddin Shah, Nana Patekar, Thilakan, Murali are few of them. Murali also has showcased a number of excellent performances in movies like Venkalam, Neythukaran (National Award for Best Actor), etc.. Coming to our actresses, my all time favourite is Shobhana, who is also a classical dancer. Her performance in Manichithrathazhu grabbed her the National Award for Best Actress in 1994. Speaking about our directors, we have Adoor Gopalakrishnan, T.V. Chandran, Bharathan, Padmarajan, Late Lohitadas, Priyanandanan, to name a few. These are all my favourites.

In India, my beloved Nation, peoples with diverse cultures coexists; interestingly, there are more than hunderd spoken languages in the country. In my view, India is not a country or land--it is a feeling, a feeling of oneness and a great culture! It is my wish to travel and mingle with other cultures in my country. But, I have only been to two of my neighbourhood states: Karnataka, where the language is Kannada, and Tamil Nadu, where the language is Tamil. Malayalam, Kannada and Tamil along with Telugu and a few other languages fall in the Dravidian language category. Hence, if one knows one of them well, then he or she can easily get hold of the others languages, of course, with some effort. Malayalam and Tamil are very close, Malayalam is considered to be the daughter of Tamil and Sanskrit. Tamil is the oldest Dravidian language, and Malayalam the youngest. I have found that Kannada is also very much related to Malayalam. I am able to understand Kannada to an extend, and Tamil better. However, Telugu appears to be slightly different. Other major languages spoken in India are Hindi, Marathi, Gujarathi, Oriya, Assamese, Punjabi, Urudu, Bengali and so on. Though I talked about oneness above, sadly, I also understand that there are internal conflicts between the peoples in the country. Despite this, history shows that we have always been able to move ahead together as one people.

My Interests and Perspectives

My most favourite activity is reading. I read novels and general books. I am always bewitched by diverse ideas and imagination. I don't have a good opinion about my taste in Science, Engineering and Mathematics. I like literature more, not to mention politics and culture. My most favourite novels are Sartre's Nausea, Kundera's Joke and Eco's The Name of the Rose. I can say that my life is divided into two periods: before reading Nausea and after reading Nausea! That novel influenced me tremendously; I was very much carried away by existentialism. Reading The name of the rose was very much enjoyable. I started reading it many times and stopped because I found it very difficult. On a train journey, while I had nothing else to do, or rather I could not do anything else, I forced myself to read the novel. To my surprise, the difficulty was only through the first ten or twenty pages. Then,... the actual story begins! I was unable stop now; it was painful when the co-travellers wanted to switch of the lights in the night! I would read the novel without stopping in the coming days, and this is the longest novel I read while in the shortest duration.

Another influential book in my life was Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, which helped me understand myself and, moreover, affirm myself. His Thus Spoke Zarasutra is a book which can always be found on my table. By nature, I am a skeptic and, hence, a non-believer (I have no problem in accepting believers, but some of them have problems in accepting me: they always wants to argue--that they are right!). As Einstein wrote, one who has no faith is not fit for life. Hence, a non-believer is faced with a void, a big void. It is Nietzsche who helped my to fill this void by telling me that "art is the only justification for life" --Nietzsche, Friedrich in Beyond Good and Evil. I at once understood the true importance of arts, and gave up all speculations regarding the meaning of life. To this end, Terry Eagleton's Meaning of Life was also quite influential. As time went by and I read more and more, I derived a philosophy, or rather a personal outlook of life: "when you live, just live, that's all". With this, I reject the concepts of self-awareness, mindfulness, know-thyself-philosophy, positive thinking, etc.. I believe that these are just to confuse a man and destroy his individuality and capacity to think independently. As Zen Buddhism asserts, self-awareness comes by nature. One just has to live his life, without unnecessary interpretations, expectations, prejudice and concepts. Face it as it is! Encounter every experience unconditionally, this develops insight. This is the way to mind: the highest form of all forms. Buddha, who taught mankind a philosophy that considered the problems exclusively conerned with life on earth without referring to an almighty, is my hero, of course, not spiritually, but politically and personally! The immediate question will be: "is Marx my hero?" Well! I don't know. Notwithstanding that I have sided with the left perspectives in politics quite often than not, my knowledge of Marxism is very poor. Rather, Marxism is too big a concept for me yet. Therefore, I evade the current question without answering for now.

There are no other passions or hobbies for me as strong as reading, discussed earlier. One of my dreams is to write. But, I don't know what! Stories? Novels? Poetry? I don't know. Believe me, I have not tried anything yet. Music and films are my interests, especially, semi-classical music and art-house movies. Music has no language, yet I love Malayalam film music more! I have attended a few film festivals, including the 12th and 13th International Film Festivals of Kerala (IFFK). Presently, I don't venture into writing about my favourite movies though I would really love doing it. It requires more time, energy and effort since they are many movies I have to talk about.

Coming to the matters regarding my profession, I have only to talk about Signal Processing because it is the only engineering subject of my interest. It is the one subject which attracted me back to engineering, and the reason that I still pursue my studies and wish to pursue a career that will contribute to that subject. My enthusiasm towards this subject was developed initially because of a single motivation: to understand the Fourier transforms--what it is; why it gives frequency domain interpretation, and not something else; and how it works. If I speak about how I understood it and share what I understood, I'm afraid I would violate the agenda of this page I explained in the beginning. Better I would talk about it in a technical note. However, for completeness, I must say this: the proper way to understand it is through Linear Algebra. Believe me, once you start learning Linear Algebra, then there is no coming back. This subject is utterly seductive. For me, this is my "Name of the Rose" in Mathematics. I was introduced to this subject by a great teacher Prof. Ashok Rao who was formerly with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and currently working elsewhere. Yet another mathematical discipline you will need to do more signal processing is Probability, Random Processes and Statistics. In fact, there are other topics also like Algebra, Algebraic Geometry, Number Theory, etc., but, most of the applications demands only Linear Algebra and Statistics. Once you start understanding these subjects, especially from a Signal Processing perspective (please don't scold me for my perspective that constrains these important and vast mathematical disciplines to Signal Processing alone; it is the matter of my "bread and butter"), then there is no sopt! Today, it is constantly heard that "Signal Processing has saturated" or even "dead". But, you can verify that they (the ignorants) had been saying this for the last three decades. It will never die because it is so ubiquitous a tool that many a time one will be unaware that one is using it; one may be thinking that one is working in Wireless Communication, Soft Computing, Pattern Recognition or Data Analysis, but you can see Signal Processing all over there, possibly hidden! Of course, this does not mean that everything is Signal Processing, but everything uses Signal Processing every now and then.

Conclusion

Is there a need to conclude? After all, what to conclude?

--Sandeep Palakkal.
Sunday, Sep. 6, 2009,
IIT Madras, Chennai.