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Hi, this is Cochin Blogger at your service. I’m based in a town called Cochin (officially, Kochi) in the state of Kerala, which is perched at the southern-most tip of India. It’s just a stone’s throw from Sri Lanka, and is famous for its unique natural beauty. Kerala is a slim, blue-veined beauty, with canals, backwaters, lagoons, rivers, lakes, ponds, and puddles galore, a thin strip of land caressed by the waters of the Arabian Sea.

Kerala’s trademark is tropical fecundity. It’s a paradise that is still largely unspoiled because of the low level of industrialization. Kerala first hit the international headlines when it voted the communists to power in 1957, this being only the second time communists anywhere in the world have formed a popularly elected government (the first time was in the tiny republic of San Marino).

Right, I’m signing off now. I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

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Walking back after the 7:30 am boat ride with my 84-year-old father, we’d entered the hotel (Periyar House at Thekkady) grounds and were making slow progress on the gentle ascent leading to the building. Something made me look up to the right — and there it was, a flaming red bird I’d never seen before! I asked my father to stay where he was, extricated my camera from the camera bag, changed lenses, and took three shots in quick succession. I’d just switched on the flash for another shot when the bird had had enough — it flew away.

One of the photos came out alright; the others were blurred. I had to do some research on the Net to identify this beauty. It’s the relatively rarely spotted Malabar Trogon, found in the Western Ghats. I showed the photo to the hotel staff, but they’d never seen the bird before. This is the brightly colored male; the female is plain in comparison. I love the apt Malayalam name for this bird: Thee kakka (fire crow).

Thirty minutes after this sighting, we’d checked out of the hotel and were speeding out of the Periyar Tiger Reserve. It now seems to me that the bird was bidding me farewell. This sighting alone made the trip worth while.

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The boys have been enjoying their summer holidays, spending most days parked in front of the PC. I tried to get them out of the house whenever I could make the time. One evening last month I took them to the lighthouse on Vypin island. I first toyed with the idea of taking the boat to Vypin, and then catching a local bus. Finally, I thought that might be too uncertain a journey for two young boys, especially in view of the intense spells of summer rain we’d been getting. I finally hired a taxi, and the sky was clear when we set out.

Forty-five minutes later, after crossing the Goshree bridges, we were at the lighthouse. After I’d bought the tickets, the boys told me we must be careful about the wild bees. “This is a lighthouse, not an apiary,” was my baffled response. They then showed me this notice.

No footwear, umbrellas, sticks, or bags. I assume there must be some logic behind these prohibitions, though I can’t think of any. A couple of years ago, cameras were not allowed; I was thankful they’d dropped that silly restriction. We began climbing the steps (over 200 of them!) with our bare feet. Three quarters of the way up, my younger son, clutching at his crotch, expressed an urgent desire to pee. “Why didn’t you tell me when we were down?”, I asked, exasperated. Well, we’d climbed too far up to retrace our steps. “Try and hold it,” I advised helpfully. We continued wending our way up. It was hard work!

The views from the top were spectacular. By now, the sky had become cloudy and overcast.

This church stood out among the coconut trees.

The Ernakulam mainland was faintly visible in the distance.

And here are the wild bees we were warned against. They seemed peaceable enough. Perhaps they had been provoked into attacking visitors earlier?

The coconut trees that Kerala is famous for flexed their green power:

By now it was clear that the heavens would open up any moment now, so we made our way down and walked to the beach. This lone tree, defiant, stood etched against the lowering sky.

And as the first big fat raindrops began falling, we opened our umbrellas and huddled under them. This was the last shot I got before I had to pack my camera.

Before I close, there is one little detail I must mention. On top of the lighthouse, the pressure finally became too much for my younger son to withstand. I looked around. There was nobody on our side. I moved him a bit more inside, farther from and safely out of sight of the other visitors, but closer to the bees. And as I apprehensively watched the the bees hovering around, my son let fly, joining a select handful of 9-year-olds worldwide who have been lucky enough to pee from lighthouses.

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Note the misspelling of Indonesian!

Also see Hijab Fashion

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A gospel singer at Fort Kochi put on a spellbinding performance one evening that captivated the audience, consisting mostly of tourists. This group of Buddhist monks from Ladakh (the other end of the country) was among them, listening silently. After the song, they moved forward slowly and inspected the singer’s equipment. The singer kept telling them, “Jesus loves you!”

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I mentioned the book Prime Obsession by John Derbyshire (Prime Obsession) in a previous post (In Flagrante Delicto: The Death of President Faure). The book attempts to tell the story of the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of all time (the Riemann Hypothesis) and make the problem itself intelligible to the lay reader who has just a high school mathematical background. One of the greatest mathematicians of all time, David Hilbert, was once asked what he would do if he could be revived after a sleep of several centuries. He replied that he would ask if anyone had proved the Riemann Hypothesis, showing the importance of this unsolved problem to mathematicians. The book is a brilliant achievement, though I must confess I skipped most of the math and soaked up the math culture and personalities instead.

Mathematicians, like chess masters, are legendary eccentrics, and here are a few anecdotes about David Hilbert from Derbyshire’s book. The first one is quoted from Constance Reid’s biography:

Hilbert had a student who one day presented him with a paper purporting to prove the Riemann Hypothesis. Hilbert studied the paper carefully and was really impressed by the depth of the argument; but unfortunately he found an error in it which even he could not eliminate. The following year the student died. Hilbert asked the grieving parents if he might be permitted to make a funeral oration. While the student’s relatives and friends were weeping beside the grave in the rain, Hilbert came forward. He began by saying what a tragedy it was that such a gifted young man had died before he had an opportunity to show what he could accomplish. But, he continued, in spite of the fact that this young man’s proof of the Riemann Hypothesis contained an error, it was still possible that some day a proof of the famous problem would be obtained along the lines which the deceased had indicated. “In fact,” he continued with enthusiasm, standing there in the rain by the dead student’s grave, “let us consider a function of a complex variable …”

The second anecdote is sourced from Martin Davis’s The Universal Computer:

Hilbert was seen day after day in torn trousers, a source of embarrassment to many. The task of tactfully informing Hilbert of the situation was delegated to his assistant, Richard Courant. Knowing the pleasure Hilbert took in strolls in the countryside while talking mathematics, Courant invited him for a walk. Courant managed matters so that the pair walked through some thorny bushes, at which point Courant informed Hilbert that he had evidently torn his pants on one of the bushes. “Oh no,” Hilbert replied, “they’ve been that way for weeks but nobody notices.”

And the third, Derbyshire says is apocryphal but probably true:

One of Hilbert’s students stopped showing up in classes. On inquiring the reason, Hilbert was told that the student had left the university to become a poet. Hilbert: “I can’t say I’m surprised. I never thought he had enough imagination to be a mathematician.”

Hilbert was also fond of the fairer sex:

By no means antisocial, he was a keen dancer and a popular lecturer. He was also something of a skirt-chaser, to the very limited degree that was possible in the ambience of provincial Wilhelmine Germany. (It is not likely that anything very improper took place.)

The next anecdote brings together two other German mathematicians, Landau and his colleague at Gottingen, Emmy Noether. The latter was that rare bird (pun unintended!), a first-class female mathematician (here is an appraisal of her mathematical achievements: Emmy Noether, The Most Significant Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of):

Noether was mannish and very plain. Asked if she was not an instance of a great female female mathematician, Landau replied: “I can testify that Emmy is a great mathematician, but that she is a female, I cannot swear.”

An uncharitable thing to say, Landau. Shame on you!

In most people’s eyes, mathematicians conform to the stereotype of the absent-minded professor. Here is what Derbyshire has to say:

Much is made of this stereotype, and there is something to it. Because of the purely abstract nature of the material they work with and the need to concentrate on that material for long hours at a time, mathematicians tend to be somewhat detached from more earthly matters. It is not impossible for a mathematician to be worldly, and there are many counterexamples. Rene Descartes was a soldier and courtier. (He survived the first but not the second.) Karl Weierstrass spent his years at university drinking and fighting and left without a degree. John von Neumann, one of the greatest of twentieth-century mathematicians, was quite a boulevardier, fond of pretty women and fast cars.

Jacques Hadamard, on the evidence, was not one those counterexamples. Even discounting the apocrypha that develop around any great man, it seems plain that Hadamard could not knot his tie without assistance. His daughter claimed he could not count beyond four, “After that came n.”

My father happens to be a mathematician, and I’m afraid he’s no counterexample either. He can knot his tie without assistance, but is unable to change a light bulb.

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We were vacating our hotel room in Thekkady. I’d double-checked that there was nothing left behind by way of toothbrush, mobile charger, etc. As my 12-year-old son and I walked out of the room, I said rhetorically, “I hope I’ve left nothing behind.” Pat came the reply, “Appa, all we’re leaving behind here are our footprints.”

I was taken aback at my son’s ready wit. He’s growing up fast!

A little later, we were in the car, whizzing out of the Periyar Tiger Sanctuary. The road was lined with educational messages, and one of them was “Leave only your footprints behind in the forest.” The message was loud and clear: No littering in the jungle.

And equally clearly, this was the source of my son’s inspiration. This is not to take away all the credit from him: he’d picked up the message, recognized its creativity, and transplanted it to a fresh context.

In fact, the KK (Kottayam-Kumily) road, which leads to Thekkady, was lined with catchy messages whose purpose was to sensitize drivers to safety issues. One read “Impatient on the road, in-patient in hospital.” And I loved the paradoxical “Accidents are not accidental.”

Let me close with a thought directed at motorists that I found on the wall of the Vallarpadam Container Terminal Project offices near the Vembanad Bridge:

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I’m reading a popular account (Prime Obsession by John Derbyshire) of the most important unsolved mathematical problem today, the Riemann Hypothesis. More than the math, I find the the historical setting and the lives of the mathematicians who people the stage fascinating. From a discussion of the Dreyfus Affair, I came across this delectable tidbit:

There were impassioned trials, dramatic reversals, the suicide of one of the conspirators, and numerous other colorful events. (Perhaps the most colorful, not arising directly from the Affair but influencing its course, was the death of President Faure while he was in flagrante delicto with his mistress in a back bedroom at the Elysee Palace. He suffered a massive stroke and in his death agony seized the poor woman by the hair with such force she was unable to separate herself from him. Her screams brought the Palace servants, who disengaged the lady, dressed her, and hustled her out a side door.)

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