My Memoir

I happened to read an article by Gnanavel(titled the same way) on the remains of war.Here are some excerpts…

The author goes to the refugee camp in Rameswaram and finds Rathinavel, a victim of the cruelest aspects of war.
He lived with his wife , and four children happily, in SriLanka. He had three daughters and a son,(whom he claims to have been blessed by
Lord Muruga of Kathirkamam.)And the child did look like his avatar , resembling how Lord Muruga was described , in beauty and intelligence.

His wife , on the middle of a lonely night was raped by the soldiers of the army. The next morning he could only see her dead , hanging herself.
He decided to leave the country and sold his house for a much cheaper price and using the money obtained , gets on board on a boat with his four children.They were nearing rameswaram , and before they could reach , the boat stuck and they were told to swim for life.
His three daughters didn’t know to swim , nor could he save them.He finally decided to save at least his son as his daughters told him they would go to their mother.He grabbed his son and swam for a long time , and realized the shore was far away. His son became unconscious , nor could he carry him and swim anymore.He had no other go than to leave his son , to save himself.When he left him and moved forward , he reached the shore in 5 minutes.
Then , he realized, he could have carried him along a little more and went back to water , searching for his lost son , in vain.The war has thus crushed the family of six into only one.Had he not lost his mental balance , he would have killed himself as well.

The author narrates Rathinavel’s story, and strongly puts forth the cruel faces of war. He says , “Soldiers who die become patriots, rebels who die become brave hearts, but the people ??”.War is always a crushing force , one which is trying to hoist the flag of victory over the innocent people’s dead remains.

I got a chance to understand completely and appreciate the terms that were puzzling me earlier , like “string theory” , the eleven dimensions , unification of forces and so on.I grabbed a copy of The Elegant Universe by Brain Green.Thanks to Sridhar anna.

It started with discovery of gravity by Newton and went on to describe the effort taken , then on by the physicists to know the mind of God.It was so elegant in style and narration that it easily made even laymen understand the mind of Albert Einstein,and his thirst towards the unification of forces.
And how he could not just digest the degree of unpredictability discovered by Quantum mechanics and he said ,”God does not throw dice!!”.

I wondered at the amazing work by physicists like , John Schwartz , Michael Green and Edward Witten (who unified the five different sting theories which were existing and created the M theory).The strings (open ended and closed ended) , branes , parallel universes , collision between them etc were amazingly pictured. I was always not able to fully comprehend the extra dimensions and this video made a lot of effort to make people comprehend it.It talked about , the circles representing an additional spatial dimension that is curled up within every point of our three dimensional space and the six dimensions needed for the super strings to vibrate.One more video which helps in understanding the tenth dimension is here.

Will CERN or Fermilab be able to discover the S particle , the escaping graviton ? Will string theory be proved right ??Will it end up to be a waste of wonderful mathematics and physics over twenty years ?? God knows !! But , we are all blessed to live in an era where we have awesome physicists who try to comprehend the mind of God !! And we are gifted with resources to understand and appreciate their work !!Whether string theory succeeds or not , it will always remain a fascinating idea to me!!!