Violence

===========================================================================

The eminently forgettable Ph D thesis I wrote forty years ago (to impress my Guide SDM) starts like this, somewhat:

"It is remarkable that the discoveries of the present century that did so much violence to our ideas of matter and space left Maxwell's Equations practically untouched"

The violence to my space-idea is best exemplified by the episode in which I was walking to our Village Pond with my Mentor (Class X) while I was in Class VIII in our School. I asked him what was so great about Einstein whom he adored. He replied coolly:

"He showed that space is curved"

I didn't pursue the matter but it left quite an impression on me.

Then I read (in my First Year at AU) the classic paperback by Eddington (a known admirer and 'propagator' of Einstein): "Nature of the Physical World".

Despite being a fan of Einstein and his curved space, Eddington wrote that the greatest violence to our ideas was done by Rutherford who showed that the chair in which he was sitting was mostly vacuum...there is nothing 'solid' about it.

Then I read that the most violent spectacle in our Universe is the explosion of a supermassive supernova. But I came to know later on that it is followed by the gravitational collapse of the inner core into a Black Hole. I guess, between the two, the quiet (?) inner collapse is more violent than the outer outburst.

I mean I don't mind, given a choice, being blown up into smithereens but to get squeezed continually into a point without parts is ignominy itself.

Turning the other Christian Cheek led to more violent dismantling of creeds and credos than the looting and burning of sundry Chengiz Khans. And the proactive 'non-violence' of Gandhijee and Martin Luther King, Jr did more violence to Emperors and Oppressors than brickbats and blows.

Our Superpower lost their Vietnam War more due to the non-violent Flower Power of their youth than the bitter consequences of their napalm bombs...they just sang and danced under their peaceful drugs and dopes...not the violent booze.

Talking of Flower Power, I am dismayed by terms like various Springs...the Prague Spring, Arab Spring and maybe Ramlila Spring (who knows?). Spring is supposed to be a sudden peaceful blossoming of flowers...not a political revolt. And the great man who died the other day invented the Velvet Revolution that overthrew Stalinism...nothing velvety about its consequences...ask Putin...

Sex has always been awkwardly violent...ask anyone who indulged in it...nothing velvety about it. But I rate the 'normal' childbirth that is again in vogue more violent than death. Trying to choke an innocent chap before he is born (and then cooing about him) rates as the most violent and condemnable act. I am told that I emitted just a feeble cry. If I could, I would have slapped my progenitors then and there.

Coming to the dozen odd ailments I suffered, I always rated whooping cough as the most violent...till I achieved what was gently called: Depression. Folks think that a patient of Severe Clinical Depression, sitting quietly in his chair for hours without speaking or eating or sleeping is among the most non-violent of madcaps. They don't know. The quietude is like that of a sleeping top. The mind races at the speed of light and more...at the speed of (uncontrolled) thought. There is an irrepressible chatter. I call it: "Inner Noise". It is louder than the loudest decibels of the hammer drill.

I thought I got cured of it. But Aniket gently hints from time to time that no one without this unceasing inner chatter can blog a nonsense piece everyday for years.

He is right...as always.

May I suggest that my handful of regular readers are, to put it mildly, "born insane"...

============================================================================