Priya Narayanan

writer/poet l traveler l mother l built environment designer, professor & doctoral scholar l children's author @ rupa, harpercollins, leadstart, cbt & tulika

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

Happy to share the release of "Dictators: The World's Most Notorious Tyrants" that presents candid portraits of 8 complex personalities who went on to become the most terrifying #dictators of the 20th century. https://t.co/TnEYtlOA6c
#books #bookstagram #NonFiction @Rupa_Books

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

The Tata EV showroom in Crown plaza, Ahmedabad is pathetic. Dripping ceiling, dirty pantry and washroom,smelly showroom. Customer lounge is a store room. Not what you expect from the #Tatas To top it all the salesperson has no interest in explaining!

@TataMotors
@TataCompanies

[Parimal @Fintech03]

The Final Equation: April 26, 1920, The Ghost Who Forgot to Die.

It is April 1920. The heat in Madras is stifling, but inside a small house in Chetpet, a 32 yr old man is shivering. He is skeletal, his body ravaged by a mystery illness (likely hepatic amoebiasis), but his eyes are glowing with a terrifying, supernatural light.

He is scribbling. The floor is covered in scraps of paper. His docs tell him to rest. He ignores them. He is writing down Mock Theta Functions... eqns so advanced that no human mind would understand them for another 90 yrs.

On April 26, the pen finally falls. The man who saw the Goddess Namagiri write on his tongue closes his eyes. The world thinks the story is over. The world was wrong. 106 yrs ago today, a man died in a small house in Madras. But the universe has not stopped hearing him whisper.

Ramanujan’s death was a time delayed explosion. For 56 yrs, a disorganized pile of 138 pages sat in a Silo at Trinity College, forgotten. When George Andrews found it, he realized Ramanujan had solved problems in his final days that modern mathematicians had not even dared to ask yet.

In 2012, physicists realized that Ramanujan's deathbed scribbles written while he was literally coughing up blood are the exact formulas used to calculate the Entropy of Black Holes. He was mapping the edge of the universe from a straw mat in Madras.

He died in poverty, struggling for a small fellowship, while the British elite debated his eccentricity. Even today, we celebrate his name, but we do not realize he was a Quantum Physicist trapped in the body of a 1920s clerk.

His wife, Janaki Ammal, lived for decades in his shadow, a Ghost herself, guarding his papers w/o knowing that her husband’s ink would 1 day explain the birth of galaxies.

He just had a Silo in his soul where the Goddess spoke in numbers. Today, we mark his death anniversary, but Ramanujan did not die. He just moved into the eqns. He is the ghost in every signal, the logic in every star, the man who proved that the human mind is bigger than the universe itself.

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

@Fintech03 I'm not a math person but Ramanujan has inspired me in ways unexplainable. He's my forever muse whom I have tried to understand through my children's book Srinivasa Ramanujan: Friend of Numbers (India) , Friend of Numbers: The Life of Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (US).

[The Paperclip @Paperclip_In]

This is a photograph of Albert Einstein with an unassuming Indian man you probably haven’t heard enough about. He spent his life working on one idea: women should be able to live with dignity and make their own choices. Thread.

1/14

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

@ncbn sir, what provisions will you make for women who are crucial to your plan? Their bodies, their work outside of home, their physical & mental health... their leisure time? Child bearing & rearing are tedious, yet women manage single handedly with no respite from other work.

[Joy Bhattacharjya @joybhattacharj]

Chances are, the first name that comes to your mind when you hear 'painter' is Vincent Van Gogh.
And yet, only one canvas was sold in his lifetime, and the citizens of the city of Arles where he lived signed a petition declaring him as dangerous and asking for him to be sent back to the Netherlands.
And today, his old haunts in Arles are huge tourist attractions and the city offers a special Van Gogh route for the millions who throng there
In fact, the only reason he painted so many self portraits was that he was often in an asylum and even when out, found it difficult to convince people to model for him.
Vincent Van Gogh was born on this day in 1853.

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

@sathyashrii Who says service should not be paid for? We have a humungous service industry in India with services of all kinds and scales being provided across sectors. These are services that are charged for & the more in demand or niche your service, the better you get paid. @raghav_chadha

[Karthik Balachandran @karthik2k2]

Those who saw’A Beautiful Mind’, would remember that John Nash’s doctoral thesis had just 26 pages and 2 references, yet it was instrumental in advancing “Game theory”. What if I told you there is a scientist whose achievement is so astounding that he is perhaps the only Indian to “create” an intersectional branch of science? What if I told you that every year, his name echoes across the hallowed halls of science in foreign lands, but most of our students haven't even heard of him?

Aneesur Rahman was born in Hyderabad in British India in 1927. His father was a professor and a philanthropist. His family generously donated their property for the creation of Urdu Hall in Hyderabad. His maternal uncle was a professor too. Rahman had a natural flair for subjects that would terrify ‘normal’ students — maths and physics. After getting BSc in Mathematics, he went on to get Tripos in Mathematics and Physics at the prestigious Cambridge University in the UK. From there, he went to Louvaine University in Belgium and got DSc in Physics under Professor Mannenbeck. It’s here that Rahman met a Chinese student Yueh-Erh Li who was doing MD( called Dr Jady by friends). They fell in love and got married.

He came back to teach in Osmania university along with his wife. Soon after, he developed interest in the structure of water molecule - especially the polarisation of the hydrogen atom. Unfortunately research in India was at infancy in those days and Dr Rahman realized he was a whale in a tiny pond. He had to move to the ocean. He joined the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

His foundational paper in 1964 birthed “molecular dynamics” , one of the two pillars on which a vast body of computational physics rests.(the other is Monte Carlo method). His equation made it possible to calculate the trajectory of large number of interacting atoms with ease.

His work, like Ramanujan’s , was so ahead of his time - that even today, potential applications are being discovered. The Nobel prize in physics for 2013 went to Karplus, Levitt and Warshel whose work depended heavily on Dr Aneesur Rahman’s.

Some say there is an inverse association between genius and compassion -Dr Rahman was a prominent exception. He was known not just for his intellect, but also kind nature and mentored many students all over the world. His quiet, unassuming nature made him a much loved professor — and he remained so, until he got Non Hodgkin’s lymphoma — a cancer that took him away from us prematurely, at the age of 59. Perhaps he might have got a Nobel, if only he had lived longer.

American Physical Society honors him as the father of computational physics and has instituted an annual award in his name.

As a doctor with little idea of theoretical physics, writing Dr Aneesur Rahman’s portrait has been difficult , because of the complex nature of his work that straddles so many areas of science : mathematics, physics, computer science and chemistry. His equations are mind boggling, even intimidating, but
what I do understand is this : Dr Rahman didn't just have a beautiful mind, but also a beautiful heart.

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

@readswithravi Me!

[KV Iyyer - BHARAT 🇮🇳🇮🇱 @BanCheneProduct]

In India, you have to be corrupt to work peacefully. If you aren't corrupt, you will be publicly humiliated and then transferred. Oh, and your life will be in danger too. So you have to be corrupt to survive.

He completed his early education from a government school, and after passing class 12, he received a scholarship and graduated from the Tata Institute. Rinku Singh appeared for the UPSC CSE exams under the disabled quota and secured 683rd rank in 2021 in his 16th attempt.

An IAS Officer in Uttar Pradesh, Rinku Singh Rahi, was transferred just 36 hours after his posting, where he took charge as sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) in Shahjahanpur's Powayan.

His crime? For cancelling two unpublicised land auctions. He was forced to hold his ears and do sit-ups, after which he was transferred by the government.

The land auctions were scheduled without any public announcement. That prevented a fair bidding. Rahi felt that the auction process should have been more transparent, and hence, he cancelled the auctions. And then, he was transferred because he didn't allow the auctions to be held in an unfair manner.

This is the same Rinku Singh Rahi who took 7 bullets on his body when he exposed a scholarship scam worth 100 crore rupees in Muzaffarpur back in 2009. That led to an attack on him by local gangsters, who shot him seven times, leaving him with a disfigured face, a damaged jaw and one eye blinded.

[Prof. Carl Sagan @ProfCarlSagan]

Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vanish the barriers of nationality.

[Kaushik Basu @kaushikcbasu]

The embarrassment caused by Galgotias University at Delhi’s AI meet is what happens when people instead of spending time doing science, maths, literature, spend their time showing that 5000 years ago their ancestors did science, maths, literature.

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

In the 1979 #Referendum, 99.3% of #Iran voted in favour of the country becoming an #IslamicRepublic ruled by the 'government of God' -choosing #religion over liberal #Democracy. To know why, read #Dictators: The World's Most Notorious Tyrants. 
https://t.co/jMT3xI8yCw
#theocracy

[Rupa Publications @Rupa_Books]

From Stalin’s Great Terror, to Khomeini’s strict implementation of the Sharia and Pol Pot’s notorious S21 torture centre, they built terrifying regimes that spelt the death knell for civil liberties and basic human rights. 

In an era where modern-day despots are posing a threat to democracy, this book is a stark and urgent reminder for citizens to stand up to dictators if they truly cherish their freedom. 

Dictators: The World’s Most Notorious Tyrants, get your copies now. 

#History #WorldPolitics #Dictators #WorldHistory #RupaPublications

@moonspotting

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

@rakeshvt @Rupa_Books Thanks!

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

Happy to share the release of "Dictators: The World's Most Notorious Tyrants" that presents candid portraits of 8 complex personalities who went on to become the most terrifying #dictators of the 20th century. https://t.co/TnEYtlOA6c
#books #bookstagram #NonFiction @Rupa_Books

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

"It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken."

To read candid portraits of 8 deeply complex personalities who bamboozled their people & went on to become the most terrifying #dictators of the 20th century, visit https://t.co/jMT3xI8yCw

3/3

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

@ProfCarlSagan nails the meanings & manifestations of power so well. Which is why I start my introduction to "Dictators: The World's Most Notorious Tyrants" with a quote by him that goes... 1/3

#dictator #booktok #BookLovers #biography

[Prof. Carl Sagan @ProfCarlSagan]

Experts are by definition the servants of those in power: they don't really THINK, they just apply their knowledge to problems defined by the powerful.

✍️ Slavoj Zizek

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

"One of the saddest lessons in history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozled. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. (contd.) 2/3

[Priya Narayanan @moonspotting]

@JioMart your quick delivery is a joke. Ordered some stuff needed to make dinner an hour and a half ago. Still waiting. No customercare number to talk to anyone, chatbot gives the same delayed delivery response without a clue abt when it will actually be delivered. Pathetic.