Enough?Truly happy?

She has had enough academic excellence, to know that's not what makes her truly happy;
For, academics have made her literate, not educated, anyway.

She has had enough money, to know that's not what makes her truly happy;
For, there are very few things that matter, that money can buy anyway.

She has had enough social recognition, to know that's not what makes her truly happy;
For, her own approval of herself, and not the society's, matter anyway.

She has partied hard enough, to know that's not what makes her truly happy;
For, she's just superficially having a good time anyway.

She has had a friends' circle that's big enough, to know that's not what makes her truly happy;
For, most friends have been friends for a reason or for a season anyway.

She has had enough men asking for her hand, to know that's not what makes her truly happy;
For, there hasn't yet been a deserving target for her love anyway.

However,

She has a lovely family to live for, and she can never have enough of them;
She knows that their very presence makes her truly happy.

She has been learning interesting things, and she can never have enough of it;
She knows that this makes her truly happy.

She has been visiting deprived kids, and she can never have enough of their company;
She knows that seeing them happy makes her truly happy.

She has stood courageously by her toughest promise until the promisee had enough of it;
She knows that her courage makes her truly happy.

She has learnt to live life on her own terms, has had enough of being answerable to anyone else;
She has learnt how to keep herself truly happy.

Book that Iam currently reading: Wise and Otherwise by Sudha Murty

I miss math

How long would it take to decide?

5 days now since I've been back in bangalore n Im in the process of catchin up with my pals. Just as I was mulling over how euphoric a get-together with old friends would be, M told me her experience arranging a get-together the last time she was here:She planned one but later realized that there were some of our friends who were caught up in ego clashes n break-ups n God-knows-what-all with each other. This meant A wouldn't attend the get-together when B was around, B wasn't fine when A and C were around and so on."Whew!" she sighed, "It was hell getting them all to meet at once. So I had to ditch the idea". She moved on to fill me in on other stuff, while I, who happened to be in a geeky mood then, was stuck right there, mulling over how her problem could've been solved. A few scratches here n there on whatever's left of my grey cells did manage to chalk out what I thought was a very straight-forward solution: (1)Make all possible pairs of 2 from the initial list of people you intend to invite.See whether every such pair matches any pair on the "enemy pairs" list.If it does, eliminate one of them and so on. I wasn't convinced of this brute-force method being the best one though.

A lil more thinking yielded this one (2)Make a list of all people and call this the initial list.In front of every person's name, write a number indicating the number of enemies he/she has and list all the enemies that he/she has.Now blindly include all people bearing the number 0 in your invitees list.Next look at people bearing the number 1.Suppose A bears the number 1 and B is listed as his enemy.Compare the numbers associated with A and B.Choose the lower-numbered one of these two into your invitee list and chuck his enemy into the excluded list. Next move on to persons bearing the number 2,3,4 and so on.

I guess this was somewhat better but I wasn't quite convinced it was perfectly alright.A little bit of googling yielded this. Shux! it hadn't quite occured to me that what I was trying to solve mentally for Ms.M, was in reality a fairly complex problem. Damn!I wanna go back to school.I miss math. Who knows? Black holes must've resulted from God dividing the universe by zero!

Quote for the day: A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
~Paul Erdos

Bangalore calling

I was on an 'official' visit to Bangalore for 2 days, to interview the facchas who aspire to join SP for the PGDBM batch of 2008.5 nostalgic moments quickly captured in a couple of phrases each:

(1) The train journey: Roars of laughter; sound peaceful sleep that seemed to last forever; listening to horror stories and playing spooky school-kids' games of calling the dead ones' spirits for 2 full hours,starting at 12 midnight; pretending to be a major intellectual giant of sorts (:-p) by perching myself at the train's doorstep, deeply buried in Amartya Sen's 'The Argumentative Indian' (lovely book.A review on this, hopefully some time later); the "Suniye,zara yahaan aayiye na...mummy ne aapko aaj shaam ko chaai pe bulaaya hai.Zaroor aana haan?" piece of nonsense that was exchanged between ...ahem ahem, blush blush...the so-voted 'best couple of the batch of 2007' at SPJIMR.

(2) A special gift that I absolutely loved. Rice-writing's such an admirably beautiful art!I wish I can try my calligraphy skills on rice sometime.

(3) Hogging home-made chapatis at 1 in the night, over a dining table that resounded with never-ending stories that I had to tell my folks for the nth time.

(4) The chill early-morning wind that threatened to cut through my skin as we rode at 80kmph to the interview centre, only to find that I was one of the first ones to arrive.

(5) A stupendous day of interviewing, that I immensely enjoyed.It's so much fun being on the other side of the grilling table, except that it's hard to control your laughter at times...times such as those when a faccha who has grabbed vague pathetic economics fundas from God-knows-where, when posed with a question "India has touched a GDP growth rate of 8% but sustaining it is a big question.What would you, as the PM of India do to sustain this growth rate?" throws in an answer like "I will reduce the interest rates!!!!" :) The day witnessed loadsa guffaws, some "Hats-off-to-you-sir,Can I meet you over coffee this evening? ;)" kind of brilliant performances, impressive communication skills and last but not the least,some ruthless stripping of false camouflages of brilliance and some melting of nose-in-the-air-attitude (which I must admit, the sadistic side of me loved doing).

"Great job,girl.Very good show" was what the revered profs left me with."Great job admissions committee,superb organizing skills" was what I left the organizers with.

Book Iam currently reading: The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen