2020 - Odds and Ends

 'Gometra' to Geometry

My knowledge of Ramanujan's achievements in Mathematics have never gotten much beyond the story of taxicab number 1729. I  always thought of  him as an out and out algebra and number theory chap and with my own involvement with Math  limited to basic geometry (and since I am not very good with numbers or equations),  I never had much of an inclination (or courage) to seek out details of his deeper contributions. I even remember making the irreverent wisecrack somewhere: "Ramanujan didn't seem to have cared much for geometry;  the closest he got to geometry probably was 'Gometra'" 

'Gometra' was of course the rather odd name of the - no longer extant - house in Chetput, Madras where poor Ramanujan spent his very last days a round 100 years ago. 

But I was wrong! I heard Prof. Janos Pach mention during an online lecture that Ramanujan, before his England visit, had thought up a quite intricate (but elementary) geometric construction that achieves an amazingly close approximation to the strictly insoluble problem of squaring the circle. For those of my readers for whom this is a fresh piece of news, details are in Wikipedia.

The Missing 'la'

The name of Ramanujan's influential and domineering mother is given in 'The Man who knew Infinity' as 'Komalatammal'. The same name is repeated on every online and other resource I could consult.

However, the spelling should be 'Komalalatammal' for the word to make sense. Here is how: The divine consort of lord Sarangapani of the Kumbakonam temple (Kumbakonam was Ramanujan's home town) goes by the name 'Komalavalli' - (komala + valli which means literally, 'delicate vine' - let us recall here that the the tree-vine pair is often used as a metaphor for man-woman in Indian tradition). Now, 'lata' is another word that also means vine. So 'komalavalli' could just as well be 'komalalata' - with two 'la's not one. And yes, the last bit 'ammal' in 'Komalalatammal' is an honorific.

It is quite conceivable that a westerner like Robert Kanigel (author of Infinity) misspelt the word as 'Komalatammal' since he probably couldn't have analyzed its meaning; but oddly enough every Desi writer I have seen also uses the same mistaken spelling. Strange!

'Coconut' and India

Very recently, I came to know this: 

"The term coconut, has been used to accuse someone of betraying their race, or culture, by implying that, like a coconut, they are brown on the outside but white on the inside."

There are of course, many such words used by various ethnic groups and social classes to refer to its own members whose sympathies are with outsiders/oppressors - 'Uncle Tom', 'Black Leg', 'Harki', 'Fifth Column'... to name but a few. Curiously, there seem to be hardly any such slang word in any Indian language used by any Indian social group - for example, despite the very real Hindu-Muslim divide and the dozens of colorful words and phrases used by members of both groups to refer to people on the other side, there seem to be no Hindu word for a Hindu who sides with the Muslims in a conflict or vice versa; or for that matter, there don't seem to be a Tamil or Malayalam word for someone whose sympathies are with Hindi. Btw, Mal actively uses literal translations of 'blackleg' and 'fifth column' but they obviously don't count!

Does this indicate that in India, being any kind of blackleg/coconut/harki was always far better tolerated - or even accepted - than in most other parts of the world, so much so that there was no need for picturesque words or phrases for such behavior? Indeed, post Independence, there never seems to have been any kind of backlash against say Desi cops who had actively and vigorously aided the Raj in crushing any kind of Nationalistic activity.

Note: After some intense searching and asking around, I got one phrase from a Bengali friend: "Laater Baat' for Indians collaborators aiding the British regime. This phrase apparently means 'the knob of the white saheb's stick' - the stick the saheb  thrashes Indians with.

A lotus of a 'Yamaka'

Definition: In Indian poetics, the 'yamaka' is a figure of speech  that refers to a word or phrase used twice in close succession with preferably - but not necessarily - different meanings

The other day, I heard a very unique film song from the 1973 Malayalam film 'Chenda'. Beginning 'Charumukhi Usha mandam...', it details a secret erotic tryst between the princess Usha, daughter of mighty king Baana and her secret lover Aniruddha in a secluded bower in the royal gardens. Lyricist P Bhaskaran has chosen words with great care and composer Devarajan has used only traditional Keralan percussion instruments to create an amazing 'Kathakali padam' like feel for the song.

Deep in the first stanza of this song is the line:

'Pankajabaanan avan Baanatmaja tan kara pallavam anpil grahichu'

The word 'baana' has been used twice with different meanings - the first baana means 'arrow' and refers to the lotus arrows of Kama (pankajam = lotus), the handsome god of love and lust and the second Baana is the name of Usha's father. The line as a whole means: 'The Kama-like (Aniruddha) lovingly held the pallavam-like hand of Baana's daughter."  Yes,  'pallavam' means a delicate and freshly sprouted leaf. And obviously, we have a clear yamaka with the word 'baana'.

Now, one could replace the word 'pallavam' with 'pankajam' - thus likening Usha's hand to a lotus rather than a fresh leaf. While the hand-lotus simile is almost a cliche, it would have achieved a 'compound yamaka' with one yamaka embracing the other: the two 'baana's held within the two 'pankaja's. I can't recall ever seeing such a 'nested double yamaka'. Bhaskaran probably missed a rare opportunity there ...

And let me add: is not such a nested structure formed by pairs of balancing braces such a natural way to represent the petal arrangement of a LOTUS? I mean this:  " (())"!

The Flag and the Fiesta

Mid November is when the grand annual festival at Tripunithura temple is celebrated. This covid year, there were many who thought it would be scrapped or pared down to the bare minimum level of rituals but the authorities went for only a scaling down -  for example, the usual 15-elephants procession was replaced with a 3-elephant one - with the beasts made to stand at a respectful social distance from one another. On one of the days it rained a bit and someone took a pic of the ceremonial festival flag and the gilded mast:

The image was reminiscent (in ways not merely visual) of these lines from Hemingway's 'The Sun also Rises':

The flags in the square hung wet form the poles and the banners were wet and hung damp against the front of the houses, and in between the steady drizzle the rain came down .... the streets were dark and deserted; yet the fiesta kept up without any pause. It was only driven under covers.