On Children: Khalil Gibran

Recently  I read 'The Prophet' by Khalil Gibran. It was like wisdom penned down. Giving below the part that I  loved the most.

On Children

An excerpt from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said,
"Speak to us of Children".
And he said:

Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but are not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

 

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and
He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So he loves also the bow that is stable.

अभिमन्यूंची कथा

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संसप्तक सेना: अर्जुनाला मारण्यासाठी कौरवांनी बनवलेले ख़ास पथक
लक्ष्मण, शोण, रुक्मरथ: चक्रव्यूहात अभिमन्यूनी ठार केलेले कौरावांच्या बाजूचे योद्धे  
कृपाचार्य कर्ण अश्वत्थामा द्रोण बृहद्बल कृतवर्मा : या सहा योद्ध्यान्नी अभिमन्यूवर एकत्र हल्ला केला
For more information on Abhimanyu please refer to this wikipedia link.

निवड

I came across this beautiful Robert Frost poem and its equally beautiful interpretation. What a pleasure this poem is!
Trying to capture this beauty in Marathi. If anything is wrong with the following poem then it is my limitation as a poet.

निवड

रानातल्या वाटेला दोन फाटे  फुटलेले
'ही' वाट की 'ती' वाट? विचारत पहुडलेले
वाटांचं द्वैत आणि माझ्या अस्तित्वाचं अद्वैत 
निवडीचं कोडं वाटांइतकचं  प्राचीन

गवतात हरवल्या 'ह्या' वाटेचा शेवट काय कळेना
'त्या' वाटेचाही थांग लागता लागेना
थोडी न रुळलेली 'ही' वाट माझ्या पावलांना खुणावणारी
'ती'ही वाट जवळपास तशीच पावलांसाठी आसुसलेली

गळल्या पानांच्या  भाकरीवरचं  दवाचं लोणी
दोन्ही वाटांवर तसंच नितळ अस्पर्श
शेवटी ठरवलं, 'ही' वाट आज अन ती वाट उद्या
'ह्या' वाटेवरून परतायची खात्री नसतानाही ठरवलं

खूप खूप वर्षांनी सांगीन एक सुस्कारा सोडून
रानातल्या वाटेला दोन फाटे  फुटलेले
मी निवडली न रुळलेली वाट
आजचा मी, कारण एकच, निवडलेली वाट

 

जेम्स लेन: काही प्रश्न

जेम्स लेनची वात्रटिका आणि महाराष्ट्रातील चालू असलेल्या तमाशाबद्दल काही प्रश्न
१. त्या पुस्तकावर फक्त महाराष्ट्रात बंदी घालून काय साध्य होणार आहे? देशाच्या इतर भागात तसेच जगभरात ते पुस्तक विकले जाणारच. जरी त्या पुस्तकाच्या सर्व छापील प्रती जाळून टाकल्या तरी इंटरनेटच्या माध्यमातून ते पुस्तक सहज कोणालाही उपलब्ध होऊ शकते. amazon.com आणि इतर अनेक संकेतस्थळांवरून हे पुस्तक सहजी उपलब्ध आहे. मग त्यातून होणार्या महाराजांच्या मानहानीबद्दल आपल्याला काहीच घेणे देणे नाही का?
२. लेनचा पुतळा जाळणे किंवा प्रतीकात्मक हत्तीच्या पायी देणे असले पोरखेळ करून नक्की काय साध्य होणार आहे?
३. लेनवर राग म्हणून भांडारकर संस्थेसारख्या soft target वर विनाकारण हल्ला का?
४. लेन पुस्तक लिहून महाराजांची बदनामी करतो. मग आपल्याकडचे सगळे इतिहास संशोधक काय करत आहेत? महाराजांच्या जीवनावर ऐतिहासिक पुराव्यांच्या सहाय्याने प्रकाश टाकेल असा उत्तम संशोधनपर ग्रंथ मराठी, हिंदी, इंग्रजीसह अनेक भाषांमधून एकाच वेळी आपण का प्रकाशित करू शकत नाही?
५. मुंबईमध्ये समुद्रात स्मारक उभारणे जास्त महत्वाचे की गड-किल्ल्यांची डागडुजी करणे, महाराजांच्या जीवनावर आधारीत कलाकृतींना आणि संशोधनाला प्रोत्साहन देणे महत्वाचे?
६. शिवकालाची समग्र माहिती देणारे उत्तम संकेतस्थळ विकसित करण्यासाठी सरकार किंवा आंदोलनकर्ते यापैकी कोणीही पुढाकार का घेत नाही? असे संकेतस्थळ असेल तर लेन किंवा त्याच्यासारखे लोक सहज उघडे पडतील. ही दूरदृष्टी अधिकारपदावरील एका तरी व्यक्तीस आहे का?
७. महाराजांच्या नावानी घाणेरडे जातीय राजकारण करून आपली पोळी भाजून घेणाऱ्या नव"जाणत्या राजाला" आणि त्याच्या पिलावळीला चाप कोण लावणार?
८. अनेक तथाकथित हिंदुत्ववादी नेत्यांनी लेनची पाठराखण केली आहे. त्यांना जाब कोण विचारणार?
९. सर्वात महत्वाचं, यापुढे असा विकृत लेखन कोणी केलं तर आपण परत असेच साप साप म्हणत भुई धोपटत  बसणार का?

वेदना

तू थांब सखे

माय

First Draft : The massacre

Countless paper readings, weeks of brainstorming, sleepless nights full of coding, playing around with gnuplot, latex ........and out of all chaos emerges your first draft of the paper. You print it and meet your advisor with a twinkle in your eye. Your minimum expectation? Of course the paper will go through! I have great results!!
Ten minutes into the discussion with advisor and the first page is filled with red marks. She hasn't even crossed the abstract and you start realizing that what you have written does not make any sense. Needless to say that meeting ends without crossing first page. You wonder what made you so excited in the morning while printing that draft.
Back to your desk, you look at the bleeding print out of your draft. One sentence that keeps you going, "Don't worry buddy, everything is gonna be just fine."

How to do Literature Review

Amit Awekar

Points to keep in mind before you start
1. Human beings do research (at least till today) : Talk to your advisor to find out leading researchers in your area of interest.
2. Good research is generally published at a good venue : Better know before hand where to dig.

Here is my strategy
1. Decide your area of interest
2. Find out leading researchers in the field
3. Where they are publishing? Which conferences? Which journals? Who funds them?
4. Which problems or topics are being addressed in last couple of years? Which problems are unsolved for long time? Which problems are emerging?
5. Which are interesting problems/ topics for me?
6. For problems / topics that interest me which are

• Latest papers
• Survey papers
• Key papers

7. Read each paper using your reading strategy. e.g Here is my reading strategy. 8. Build a cohesive story using each paper as a building block. Be creative in establishing links between different papers / problems. Try to generalize the solutions by analyzing them in more abstract way. 9. As a graduate student you are more interested in open problems. That's the reason you did all this review. Work hard over this section.

How to read a research paper

Amit Awekar

My reading strategy is largely influenced by following three papers

1. Keshav, S. 2007. How to read a paper. SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 37, 3 (Jul. 2007), 83-84. DOI= http://doi.acm.org.www.lib.ncsu.edu:2048/10.1145/1273445.1273458

2. Amanda, S. How to read a computer science research paper

( http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~stent/howtoreadacspaper.pdf )

3. Michael M. How to read a research paper

( http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~michaelm/CS222/ReadPaper.pdf )

Keep following points in mind before you start reading any paper

1. Read with a purpose : You don't read research paper just for the sake of reading. If you do, then better read a novel or newspaper. If you want to get idea about research happening in a totally unfamiliar scholarly field then scientific magazines is a good place to start.

2. Time is the key : Everyone can digest any research paper very well. The only difference will be the time required. My advisor might need 30 minutes while I still need three hours. Once gone, time never comes back. Invest your time wisely.

3. Levels of abstraction : Once you go through the abstract you can have some idea about how relevant this paper is for you. You need not understand every research paper you read to the finest details. Sometimes it is enough to understand the problem addressed and the results (if you are reading any general computer science paper). Sometimes you might want to know the solution methodology (if the paper is somewhat related to your area of interest). And there are some papers that you must understand completely (if you are going to build your research based on them).

4. Jigsaw puzzle : Reading research papers is not all that boring as you might think. Once you understand the problem setting and the results, try to guess the solution that authors have presented. Just skim through the paper for section and subsection names and figures, tables, charts. This might give you some important clues. When you are a novice you can be Dr. Watson but with enough practice you can be Sherlock Holmes.

What to get from paper?

1. Problem addressed

2. Why to solve this problem?

3. Claims

4. Conclusion

5. Related work

6. Methodology : Assumptions, Algorithm, Data Set, Experiments

7. Possible improvements

8. Connection to other problems

9. What can I do with this knowledge? : The most important

I find multi-pass strategy of Keshav[1] very rewarding. Reading a research paper requires you to be

1. Efficient : You don't have time to read all the research papers at your own leisure.

2. Critical : Not all the research papers published are good (and at times correct as well!).

3. Creative : Reading research paper is just the beginning of the research. How would you build on this acquired knowledge? I will update this documents as and when I change my strategy of reading (and get time to document it).

August 23, 2008