The name is Zopher

 The first time I asked the question “Who am I” was when I was in 10th Std. The identity crisis made me insecure. I had to deliberately boost my confidence to convince myself that I was cooler than others. I strongly believe today that no one else would have felt the same about me back then.

I wanted to be a rebel. I was never one. The best I became was a show-off with below average talent. It attracted sufficient attention for me to be satisfied with my life. I felt that the name, “Viswa Narayanan” was too old fashioned and that it was the reason why people didn’t find me cool. So, I wanted a cool name, which would also sound strong to compensate for my physically weak body.

When I watched “Fantastic Four”, the name “Victor Von Doom” grasped my attention. Then I went home and looked at my dictionary to see what the name meant. The word, “Victor” meant “a person who is victorious”. Co-incidentally, my family called me by the name, Vijai, which would translate to Victor in English. I knew that it would be my name for the rest of my life. 

However the second name, “Doom” sounded evilish. Who would dream about becoming a supervillain? I wanted to save the world. I was inspired by Dr. Read Richards. In fact, I wanted to dye my hair white to look like him. So, I sorted out the missions that I wanted to accomplish in life. Then I realized that I hadn’t done anything worthwhile to call myself “Victor”. So, I thought that I could change my second name, whenever I complete a mission, something like “Victor Zero”, when I hadn’t achieved anything; “Victor One”, when I had achieved one goal and so on.

I fell in love with the number Zero. I found it beautiful because it didn’t have any value but still not negative. That felt like a zen-philosophy to me. A person can be a zero without doing anything good in his life and still he can remain a non-bad person. Just because someone is not doing anything good, it wouldn’t make him bad. Even today I am attracted towards this philosophy.

So, I looked for synonyms of ‘zero’ to make my name cooler and I found the name “Zilch”. I started using it frequently to make everyone familiar with the name. Most of them didn’t know that “zilch” meant “nothing”. When I told everyone that I was Zilch, they felt that I had a cool name but they didn’t know that I was trying to say that I was nothing. I still believe that I am nothing significant in this universe.

Whenever I was demotivated, depressed or insecure, I found refuge in calling myself Victor Zilch, the man who hadn’t achieved anything. Even when I achieved one of the goals in the list that I made, I realized that the goal was too insignificant for me to be happy about it. In fact, nothing in the world was worthy enough for me to change my name from Zilch to One (or Ace, the synonym I chose for one). When I joined my college, I got enough exposure to see how truthful my philosophy was.

No matter how much impact we create, we are still insignificant in this universe.

In a way, calling myself as Victor Zilch made me feel honest. After a few years, the world had taught me lessons for being too naive. I was betrayed and thrown into unbearable depression from which I couldn’t recover for a long time. I felt that I was exposing my emotional weakness by being a nice person. I was so pathetic. After whatever people had done to me, I didn’t even want to seek revenge. I just wanted people to have a better life so that they won’t have the need to harass innocent people like me. I prayed to God for that. I was literally becoming a zero. I lost my self-respect and ego at once.

It was ruining my mental health and I could really see my friends trying their best to cheer me up. It was childish how we do crazy things to make ourselves feel better. I wanted to look strong. I wanted those betrayers to not take me for granted. I thought adopting a supervillain name would make me look strong. I had tried every possible way to save me from the never ending cries. Interestingly, a dialog from the Naruto episode, “Zabuza returns” reminded me of what I was telling myself repeatedly during that phase.

“So you’re gonna cry all day in a tragedy? An idiot like you can just cry forever, crybaby.”

I went to extremes and tried ridiculous methods to get strong. I believed that the name Zilch Von Victor sounded like a strong man and that my personality would change when I change my name on Facebook. It did change my personality. I burnt the innocence and childishness that were inside me.

I became Zilch Von Victor (Zilch of Victor), the achiever of nothing, or the man with zero victories. When I moved out of the miserable phase, I also wanted to remove the vile tag. So, I compressed “Zilch of Victor” to Z’Ofor, which I then respelled as “Zopher”, the philosopher.

Thanks for reading. This is my most personal and emotional post. Today I know that exposing my inner feelings and ridiculousness wouldn’t make me weak. I am glad that I could come over everything strong. The name played a vital role in shaping my personality. So, Zopher I am.

Let's say no to convention and build an elasticopter

 “Dude! I’m done with this. Let’s do some real research. Look at these reconfigurable drones. How cool they are!”, he said to me when we were doing a course assignment together. That’s when an imagination transformed into a creation. Or at least that’s when it started.

I was pretty new to research back then. I was juggling between vision, path planning and control. When he proposed this idea to build reconfigurable drones to me, my mind was fixed to it and all I did after that was to get myself equipped with the skills, knowledge and experience that would be required to work on it.

His vision was clear. He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He would call me out for a walk and initiate a discussion about how cargo carrying is so inefficient with existing drones. We would start brainstorming about the possible mechanisms that would solve the problem. We would go deeper and try to visualise the challenges that would arise while using our hypothetical mechanisms. Most of the time, we would come up with exaggerated ideas to solve almost all problems with the human race. A lot of laughter and happy moments would follow after every discussion.

We approached our supervisor immediately and proposed the idea. He was skeptical initially because he could see the level of dedication and perseverance required to realise such a project. He didn’t give us an assured go until Suraj demonstrated a toy model to visualize his idea. From that moment on, he had been one of the most supportive people towards this work.

There had been sleepless nights ever since then. Everyday would start with the implementation of a new idea, go on with constant arguments about which approach to proceed, and end with finding a new problem in the implementation. We used to window shop in all online electronics stored and then walk to the nearby gully to buy their inexpensive alternates. Our day wouldn’t end well, if we hadn’t told each other, “Stop scamming”. In fact, some days literally didn’t end. We had been sleep deprived for weeks trying to fix major problems.

It took a while to understand each other’s strengths and distribute the workload between us. When everything was at its peak, Covid also reached its peak. So, we had to take a pause. It wasn’t a comfortable pause to me. Restlessness and anxiety delayed my progress completely. However, he recovered from all his problems quite soon and focussed completely on getting the elasticopter (Roll Credits!!!) up and running.

For months he had to take a double shift and compensate for all the work that was lagging in my absence. I might have never had the courage, motivation, or determination to accomplish such a mammoth task alone. One fine morning, he called me and said, “I am ready to take it to air. Get ready to celebrate our success”. That and a few other doses of motivation helped me to recover from my slack and resume the pending works.

It was weird to access a camera fixed on the lab and his laptop screen from my home, and implement localization and control for the drone. It scared the visitors in my house, who saw a masked man handling mechanical objects in a closed room through the low resolution camera stream. That’s probably my best experience during the pandemic. When we finalised the localization system, the country opened interstate transport, which enabled me to get back to the research center.

We experienced a set of adventures carrying drones from the lab to various places inside the campus to test it. The stares of visitors, who saw our adventures were unforgettable. I knew back then that they wouldn’t be surprised to read about the project in newspapers. And now it is on everyone’s Google feed thanks to the support of IIIT’s incubation center, in which he had registered his startup.

Most exciting part about these news articles is our supervisor’s comment on the project. Back when we took one of his courses, he used to praise one of his former students, who had worked on a revolutionary project more than ten years ago. He said, “Once in a while, we get people like this, who go beyond what others can imagine. I am fortunate to have had him in the lab”. After the class, I told Suraj, “When the elasticopter starts flying, he is gonna tell the same about you”. But back then I never imagined that he would be telling a similar statement to the news media.

It has been a wonderful journey. It often reminds me of my favourite digital art. Please take a look at it. Follow your dreams. They do come true when you put your heart and soul into them.

Scene 24: Ashok ruined it

From Abinaya's perspective

"I am on my way", I said and cut the call. Pushkar, the second guy, whom my mom asked to meet for a wedding proposal. During those meetings I realised how idiotic I had been to not find a loving partner myself. This matrimony based system was so dumb. I had to meet and talk with all types of random idiots and reject them.

It wouldn't be appropriate to use a plural because till then I had met only one person, that stupid Ashok. He simply acted creepy. Probably he had the qualities of all types of idiots that I felt that I had met too many idiots at once.

I was hoping that at least this date wouldn't get ruined like the previous one. "One ruined date was more than enough", I thought. My mind continued, "No. This is not a date. It is an engagement meeting. No. It could be a proposal meeting. Or simply a coffee time. Or something. One horrible something was more than enough". With that thought I reached the entrance of the cafe. It was a huge one, larger than the one, where I went to meet Ashok. Geographically it was on the opposite side of that cafe. So, I was hoping that everything there would be much different.

When I parked my car, I realized that I was five minutes early. I remembered how I went in the last time with all the hopes of meeting a sweet person, who could carry himself like a real man, who would muscular and tough outside, sweet and soft inside. All I got was Ashok, the complete opposite of my expecations. He had zero discipline, zero communication skills; He wasn't even punctual. He should have waited for me. "Why would a girl has to wait for a man", I asked myself. 

My phone was ringing. "Where is he", I looked around without getting out of the car. All I could see was the wall of the parking lot and cars on both sides. I took the phone and as I guessed, it was Pushkar. I answered it.

"Abinaya! I am in parking lot. I will be there in five minutes. Have you reached already", he asked. I paused for a moment and said, "I am yet to reach. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. There is heavy traffic here". He said, "No issues. Take your time. Hoping to have a delightful time with you" and hung up the phone. I burst out laughing immediately after he cut the call as I had successfully lied to someone and made him wait for me. It took a while for me to come back to normal.

"This guy is really sweet. He reached on time and knows how to be polite", I thought. I didn't know what to do for fifteen minutes, so I just lowered my head and started checking my Instagram feed. It was weird to think about how badass it was to deliberately lie to someone and make them suffer. I knew it was wrong but I badly needed that to overcome the previous experience.

After a while, I ran out of new feed in Instagram. I checked my watch and I still had about five minutes. "Oh! Let's prepare to do everything different this time. What did I do last time? I smiled at Ashok. Let me not do it. I initiated the conversation. Let him initiate it this time. Ok. Last time Ashok went straight to washroom. Should I try that? No. It would be awkward. Let me be normal. Am I getting nervous? Oh shit! I have been thinking here for a long time. What's the time now", I was thinking. My mind was already sending panic messages. I checked my phone. The time was 5:07. Still three minutes to 'late by ten minutes'.

I thought that my phone was showing the wrong time and checked my watch. It was showing the same time. For a moment it felt like time was going slow for me. It looked like it would take forever for the five minutes to pass. I started to yell out my thoughts, "why is the time stuck at 5 hours 7 minutes and 41 seconds, 42 seconds, 43 seconds. No. I mean 5 hours 8 minutes. Whatever. Why is it running slow? I just saw in Instagram that time is dependent on gravity. Am I in a gravity zone? What is wrong with everything around me". I was sweating a little out of anxiety.

The time was almost 5:10. I thought that it would anyways take some time to walk to the entrance and I prepared myself to exit the car. I checked my face and saw a few sweat drops. I let them be there so that it would look like I was really making an effort to rush as fast as possible and not deliberately making Pushkar wait. I opened the door. The adjacent car was too close for me to get out. "Oh God! Why are you spoiling it again", I yelled. I closed the door and moved out to the other side with a lot of trouble. I opened the door and got out. I locked the door and really rushed to the entrance.

When I was nearing the entrance, I looked through the transparent door to find where Pushkar was sitting. I couldn't find him from that distance and I was growing impatient. I moved even faster only to be stopped by a muscular hand of a man standing near the door. "Abinaya! No need to rush. I am Pushkar", a voice came out of the man.

I looked at his face and I was speechless. He really waited near the door for me. He was tall and fit with trimmed beard and moustache. His hair was gelled and combed. I had never expected such a well-groomed man. I took a breathe and realised that I was standing too close to him. So, I stepped back.

"Are you alright", he asked and made sure I felt comfortable. "Take your breathe. We can go in any time. I had reserved a table for three hours", he said. Oh! He was really sweet. All my expectations about getting married were back again. I finally got my hope in a dream wedding. I just wished that it had been the first date (or that something).

My phone rang again. It was my friend Swathi this time. I kept it inside and signalled him to go in. He looked at my eyes and smiled. That was the cutest manly smile I had ever seen in my life. He kept making me speechless. "Answer the phone call and talk. I will wait", he said politely. I followed his words without thinking anything. I answered the call but I wasn't speaking. My concentration was on his face. He got the wrong signal out of it. "Oh! Am I disturbing? Let me turn the other side. Have your privacy", he said and turned away. I went two steps back and finally started to speak to her. She was speaking about her boyfriend. I was in no mood to listen to it. So I said, "Mein thoda busy hun. Will call you back" and cut the call.

I called Pushkar and signalled him that we could go in. "Sure?", he asked. I nodded and we went near the door. He was smiling at me casually and tried to pull the door. He couldn't. His eyes were on me trying to make me comfortable. Meanwhile I looked at the door sign and told him, "Push kar", because the door sign said "PUSH". "Ya", he replied thinking I was calling him. I just realised what just happened. My face turned serious and I yelled, "Oh God". He left the door and looked at me trying to understand what was happening.

There was a gigantic image of Ashok standing behind him and laughing at me. The imaginary Ashok pointed his finger at me and said, "See. You are just like me" and continued laughing. I was frowning at Ashok. Pushkar came near me and asked, "Is there a problem".

I looked at his innocent face and said, "Nothing. Why did you pull the door? You should have pushed it". He looked at the door sign and looked at me again. "Oh! Sorry. I forgot to notice it", he said as he opened the door. "Please come in", he said with all possible smile in his face.

The image of Ashok walked with us inside through the closed door. It was a similar seat facing the washroom. I started to think, "Oh no! It was going really well. Why did it take an U-turn? Why should Swathi call me at the wrong moment? Why should he insist me to answer the call? Why should she speak in Hindi? Why should he not look at the door sign? Why should the door even say PUSH? Why couldn't there be a two-way door? Why should there even be a door? The dream husband is sitting right before me and all I could think about is Ashok". I felt exhausted. He saw me getting tired and told, "No worries. Just make yourself comfortable".

I didn't focus on anything that was happening after that. My mood was off and Pushkar kept trying to make me feel better. For the first time, I got annoyed by politeness. I just wanted to go out from there. Whenever I gained confidence and looked at Pushkar, I could hear Ashok whispering near my ear, "Pushkar, please push kar". I didn't utter a single word while consuming the hot chocolate that he had ordered for me. His confidence was high, face was smiling, and energy was up the entire time.

After a while, he said, "Abinaya! I don't know why you feel so uncomfortable. It could be something personal. I don't want to ask you about it unless you want to talk about it". He expected me to reply but I was in no mood to reply. He continued, "However, this conversation is too one-sided. So, why don't you get back home and leave a message? When you are ready to talk, we can meet again".

I felt pathetic about me. I finally spoke, "Sorry Pushkar. I didn't intend to ruin this. In fact I was so happy to meet you but when you couldn't open the door...". I stopped it right there. He asked, "Was there a problem". I replied, "No no no. I can't explain you now. It has got nothing to do with you. Maybe you're right. I'll go home and text you. Or call you. Let's meet some other time. I am not usually like this. Please don't judge me based on what happened today".

"Ok. All good. It was wonderful to have met you. Hopefully we would meet soon", he said and stood up from his seat. He left some cash on the bill and waited for me to get up. He walked me to my car in the parking. There was a disturbing silence between us. When we reached the car, he said, "Don't worry. It is usual for people to get nervous and behave unusually during such meetings". "Or maybe act weird during such meetings", I replied. "Don't be too rough on you. It's OK", he said. I was about to say, "I wasn't talking about me. I was talking about Ashok" but fortunately I stopped and zipped my lips.

He waited till I got in my car and said, "Drive carefully. Text me when you reach". I smiled but in my mind I said, "Man! Don't be so sweet. I am no more impressed. This date or meeting or something is officially ruined. No. Ashok ruined it yet again".

How fake Tamil patriots are scamming about ancient science

We are living in an era where we have scientific solutions for almost all possible problems in our life. In fact, we are even thinking whether to proceed further with technology or to go back to traditional methods based on scientific arguments. However technology in the hands of ignorant people have paved way to mass spread of fake propogandas. Tamil politicians are experts in misusing the ignorance of people for their fake propoganda, especially in claiming ownership for all the modern scientific theories. The best example of this propoganda is the following image:

This meme claims that since Brahadeeswara temple (Thanjavur big temple) was built a thousand years ago on the basis of gravity. Hence, Newton shouldn't be credited for the universal theory of gravity. In case you are wondering what is wrong with this meme, here is a brief history of gravitational theory. Aristotle is said to have proposed the first definition for gravity in 4th century BCE. He believed that every object tend towards a point because of their inner gravitas (heaviness). Several other scientists have had their explanation of gravity. Even Indian scientists have understood that gravity as an attractive force in the early centuries of CE. 

This vague definition of gravity could be easily understood without any mathematical knowledge just by observing all the objects on the Earth. This understanding is more than enough to build temples or any other architectural wonder. But then why is Newton (who was born in the 17th century) credited for the law of universal gravitation?

For that one, who needs to understand what it takes to get recognition among the scientific society. The term theory in the context of science is often misleading. Theory in general context would mean an idea that tries to explain something. This theory doesn't have to be proved, validated, or verified (Yes, these three words have different meanings in scientific context). 

In the scientific context, a theory is totally different. The method to arrive at a theory is as follows:

1. Make an observation.
2. Frame a question.
3. Propose a hypothesis.
4. Make predictions out of the hypothesis.
5. Test the prediction.
6. Verify the results.
7. Let your rival validate the predictions and resulrs.
8. Get a theory on your name.

Coming back to the universal law of gravitation, Sir Isaac Newton took up the understanding from his predecessors that objects tend to accelerate equally on free fall irrespective of their masses, and extended it by calculating the gravitational constant and proposing a new defintion, which is stated as,

Every particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.

He has derived the mathematical expressions that are required to prove that planets are orbiting around the Sun because of gravitational force. He proposed his findings before a group of people, who couldn't understand what he was trying to say. Then they tried hard to disprove him through various experiments and rigorous testing but ended up making his theory world famous.

To give a clarity, THE GIGANTIC BRHADEESHWARA TEMPLE BUILT BY CHOZHAS IS NOT ENOUGH TO PROVE THIS LAW.  It doesn't say anything other than the fact that there's attractive force.

Initially I thought that this is a simple matter of ignorance and muted the user, who posted this image. A few days later some other guy reminded me of a chapter from my high school Tamil textbook. It is called "Tamizhan Ariviyal Munnodi", meaning Tamils were pioneer in science. I remember how proud I used to be to have a Tamil origin when I was reading that chapter. It had the following claims:

1. Avvayar discovered Pascal's law.
2. Seethalai Sathanar discovered Raman effect.
3. Kabilar invented telescope.

Only in the wildest of fantasies can one make these claims. It is so comfortable to the Tamil patriots with fake science enthusiasm to read these books and believe that Tamils had been deprived of the actual credit for all the scientific discoveries. But when people with even minimal knowledge in science read the chapter, they would understand that they were all false and misguiding information.

As mentioned earlier, just because someone had the intuition that something could work one way doesn't give them the scientific ownership for that idea. They need to follow the scientific method of formulating a theory.

Avvayar had written an anecdote to say, "just like how all the water in the ocean could not be compressed inside a watercan...". Kabilar had written something like, "how you could see the whole image of a mountain in a small dew over the grass...". The first one is merely an intuition and the other one is a small observation. Nothing really had gone to the level of formulating a hypothesis.

These kind of intuitions need no scientific knowledge. If an artist is mixing red and blue colors to produce pink color, that doesn't prove that he had the knowledge about how our retina perceives colors. It only means that out of experience, the artist had understood the right combination of red and blue to get the pink shade. Just because he is able to find the right combination, it doesn't mean that he is an expert in chemistry. He doesn't need scientific knowledge. He gets that through practice and experience. Similarly, for observing and making wild guesses, one doesn't need scientific knowledge. 

When it comes to Raman effect, let's first ignore the fact that C. V. Raman was also of Tamil origin and hence stealing credits from him would be to shame real Tamil scientists. The author simply quotes lines from Seethalai Sathanar's work which goes like, "Lovers were separated through a glass wall so that they can see each other but cannot speak". He then uses this reference to say that he discovered Raman effect way before C. V. Raman.

The irony about Raman effect is that it is so popular but nobody knows what it is. Raman effect has got nothing to do with properties of light and sound travelling through glass. It speaks about change in wavelength of light when light is deflected through molecules. The author conveniently twisted the facts just to defame C. V. Raman and steal the credit for his Nobel prize winning work.

If we observe critically everything is aligning completely with the political propoganda of separatist politicians, who are manipulating facts and manufacturing evidences to create fake identities to their people. There is no other explanation of why such a scientifically inaccurate piece of text would be published in a school textbook.

Ignorance of Tamil people and carrying the fake pride is one of the major reasons that cause national disintegrity. Either people should be aware of scientific facts and verify it when politicians are twisting the facts. Or they simply have to shut up and not take pride in something that they don't understand. Until then fake history and science would keep spreading through generations.