Uh..There's a Singularity in my Soup....!

“A stitch in Time will confuse Einstein”

“At every singularity or point of inflexion in the Universe- whether physical or abstract- strange, unpredictable and exciting things start to happen-say, at the brink of a black-hole, or at a spot where geography takes a sudden turn, or at sunset - the sandhikaal where dark embraces light. ..when…mundane objects assume weird dimensions…Make for the spot, if ye seek for Adventure in Ideas..”

The first quotation is from JIR- The Journal of Irreproducible Results, and the second manufactured a while back by the author of IK, that is Yours Truly, beg pardon…

For those who came in late, etymologically the word ‘Singularity’ arose in a mathematical context, and was subsequently borrowed by various other disciplines including Humanities. In the context of Mathematics, it is “a point at which the derivative does not exist for a given function but every neighbourhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists.” Derivative, as students of Calculus will tell, is the change in value of the function for a small change in the value of the variable, and is the indicator of ‘area of predictable-ness’ here..It could also be defined as a point where a measured variable reaches un-measurable or infinite value, for example in the function f(x)= Lim 1/x as xà0. Thus, things are predictable at every point in the neighbourhood, but not at the singularity. Naturally the gender of the noun ‘singularity’ is feminine, ha, ha, ha…just joking बरं … 

John von Neumann used the term in relation to technological change thus:

"the ever accelerating progress of technology ... gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." 

We suppose a time-warp could be cited as an example of 'singularity'. A geometric example of a singularity is explained in the accompanying picture.

Tschirnhausen's_cubic: singularity at (0,0)

Our hypothesis today is that what makes the North East so wildly fantastic is the existence of major singularities in the terrain, as well in the affairs of humans, plants and animals, he, he, he..!

CHERRAPUNJI AND JATINGA HILLS

These are two places in the North East, which have no duplicates anywhere else on this globe. Why Cherrapunji (or Mawsynram, a few km away) is the rainiest place on Earth or why birds commit suicide in Jatinga Hills, has always been a mystery. After a series of personal visits to these exotic spots, and after interaction with the local tribals, we conclude that the apparently unrelated phenomena are but two aspects of the peculiar geographical placements of the spots. That is, geographical singularity lies behind the shenanigans.

THE LUMDING HAFLONG RAILROAD

You’ll find videos of this trail on Youtube, many of them prefaced with the words: “The most dangerous railway in the world..”. Till last week perhaps, we ascribed the sensational words to the endearing propensity of You Tubites for exaggerating things, in order to magnify their own cause. The journey last week with Missus converted us to The Cause!

This treacherous track extends from Lumding in Central Assam, south of the Brahmaputra, to Silchar, deep inside South Assam. The whole 130 km route bristles with Military presence, and the fire-power is unbelievable. Ordinary soldiers carry SLRs and revolvers, and the rest, especially the PSOs, carry the more compact AK 47s along with their revolvers. The commandos are shielded 24x7 with bullet-proofs and helmets, so deadly are the insurgents. We travel in the sole AC Chair Car in the procession of bogies in the Hill Queen Express, which is guarded by five AK 47 wielding PSOs each at either entrance. That makes our task of shooting the trail with our camera quite tedious, but we did it with due cooperation from the personnel who all bank with us, God bless Chabiwala Bank!

For a large part of the year, the NE Railway is constrained to suspend the service on account of breaches and explosions on the tracks engineered by the Groups. The latest such break taken by the Railways was in October 2012. A few days before our own journey, two Kuki Militants were apprehended removing fish-plates just before Lower Haflong station. The strife is as usual for and against autonomy.

“Haflong”- the name has an exotic ring. Its beauty is haunting. It’s one of the cleanest places in the North East, elevation being around 1700 ft. The place is surrounded by the Borail Valley and at least 200 days in a year, clouds descend into the valleys and it invariably rains in the town. Strong winds sweep the Jatinga Hills. That partly accounts for the cleanliness and the low temperatures. A new lesson is learnt by us this time- that the ‘absolute’ altitude of a place does not have any bearing on the beauty of hills so long as the valleys and ravines are deep. Only you’ll not get as breathless, and maybe the temperatures are higher by a couple of degrees…But then Haflong is Haflong because of the ‘singularity’ we are going to talk about..

The Dimasa tribals are the originals here. Since they are one of the Bodo like tribes, they are supposed to have settled in Assam even before the Ahoms came. Di masa  stands for ‘large water’, that is, the Brahmaputra, and they were the original rulers of Dimpaur, now in Nagaland plains. The Dimasa form 43 % of the population of Dima Hasau district (earlier NC, that is North Cachar), rest being the Kukis and Nagas (Mar). The warring groups are the deadly NSCN (I-M), that is the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), DNRF or the Dimasa National Revolutionary Front, KLA that is the Kuki Liberation Army, and IPF or Indigenous People's Forum, a non-Dimasa tribal body. The local Government is with the Dimasa Autonomous Districts Council.

If you recall our tribute to the gallant Col.H.S.Kohli, the ketchup episode took place right in the Cachar forests, and as we pass the village Bada Nagadun where it all happened, we silently bow to the Guru’s True Son, and mumble….Satt naam waheguru..!

So, Cherrapunji and Jatinga. The Google terrain map of the area is quite graphic. We give below the HTML output which can be explored to one’s heart’s content.  Both Cherra and Haflong lie in the terai of the lower Himalayas which commence their ascent after the Bangladesh plains. Cherra is  200 km to the west of Haflong. They both are thus in the ‘twilight’ area on the Bangla border, lying in the shadows of a singularity where the flat surface suddenly wakes up, shakes itself, and starts a steep jog northwards. The joint where She[i] welded the plains to the mountains is our ‘singularity’! You have to click (-) 6 times and then click TER- 

View Larger Map

Sohra or Cherrapunji is an unusual place, both ethnically and geographically. Ethnically, it is an area with a substantial quasi-Hindu population, and a dominant tribal allegiance,  the Sacred Forest of Mawngap having an overbearing presence. An Ashwamedha like ritual is performed here each year around during tribal festivities. Don Bosco, the Evangelist of the North East, had vision enough to accommodate the tribal aspirations, while Sankardeva proved a little less flexible..and hence the predominance of Christianity in the North East..

From the MSL to an altitude of 5000 ft., the Cherra ascent is abrupt. Clouds which when hovering over Bangladesh, considering themselves exalted, suddenly come up against the Cherrapunji hills, and naturally precipitate in no mean measure.  This kind of precipitation is technically called 'orographic'.  One night, when YT and Missus were put up in a Cherra resort, it rained 12 inches flat is a period of 8 hours..Annual rainfall here is 500 inches…

The wonder that is Cherrapunji therefore, owes to the singularity subsisting on the Bangla-Meghalaya border.

Jaitnga is more complex. This is ‘arguably’ the theatre of the most intriguing avian phenomenon, anywhere on the globe, and has received the attention of no less a bird than Dr. Salim Ali….

Dr. Salim Ali: Shankar Paramarthy's interpretation

The North-easterly winds have a run of Jatinga valley in the months of September to November . Most of the 40 odd suicidal species breed after the monsoon, and the birdlings are in the learning mode during the post monsoon months.  The birds with the suicidal tendencies are the Pond Heron, Kingfishers, Tiger Bittern, Black Bittern, Little Egret etc., around half the casualties being Kingfisher kids. The Kingfishes, any way, is not a bird of flight. Winds of over 20 km/h, qualifying to be called ‘strong breeze’, funnel down towards the Bangla plains during September-November when it all happens. Here is the governmentspeak (www.dimahasao.com) on the climate:

“The Dima Hasau district can be divided into three distinct Zones South to North. The Southern face of Borail Range receives considerable high precipitation. The northern face falls in the rain shadow of the Range and consequently precipitation is much lower. The northern part of the district around Langting is one of the driest and hottest parts of Assam. The central part has a cool and equable climate. Cyclonic disturbances and storms occur frequently in Surma valley but seldom visit Dima Hasao district. This is due to shielding effect of Borail Range. Thunderstorm is quite frequent during summer months. Mist and fog occur the winter months. Frost is unknown, even in depression. Light to moderate winds blow from North or northeast, expect during monsoon when the wind blows from southwest.”

As our Dimasa friends posit, the birds, by the time they reach the Jatinga valley turning, are worn down by the winds to a vegetable state, and they head for succour following the beam of the nearest light source in sight, and in the process become food for the tribals, there being no PDS…

Our Dimasa driver says all birds taste just like pigeons..for another authentic report, check http://en.articlesgratuits.com/jatinga-phenomenondo-birds-really-commit-suicide-id984.php

We end the dispatch with some snaps we took and movies we shot.

Cherrapunji view point

You enter Cherra here

Haflong from Haflong Point

Jatinga Valley

Baby kingfisher on tower parapet wall

Missus with Rajanikanth @ Jatinga watch-tower

Penitentiary for surrendered militants @ Haflong (ha,ha,haaaa...) 

Feel the Jatinga valley winds, North Easterly clouds swooping down. Peak in the middle is 7000 ft.

Valley view from Abraham's Point

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[i]  From the feminist slogan “I saw God. She is black.”

PRINCE OF SARDONIA

The tail-piece of the last blog posted in April makes us reach for ‘ Fowler’s Modern English Usage’ ; after a long long time, it must be confessed. ‘Volumes of forgotten lore’ to quote from another blog of ours- The Raven. But we always carry the volume, like a talisman, being without it maketh us insecure.

If you remember, in our post script, the mongoose buyer smartly side-steps possible grammatical ghallu-ghara by placing two orders instead of one. Thereby he avoids the dubious ‘moongeese’ as well as the unwieldy ‘mongooses’.

A cursory reading of Fowler’s classic leaves us startled. To our consternation or should it be delight, we find that we have unconsciously copied many of Fowler’s stylistic attributes. For instance look at the following para from the book (the entry ‘split infinitive’):

“The English speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is;(2) those who do not know, but care very much;(3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish.”

We always believed this one-to-many appositive construction to be economical, direct and terse, and ergo, make liberal use of it.

And then the effort to eschew the use of the first person singular.

Interesting in this connection is the entry ‘one’. Nine types of ‘one’s are discussed . The principal discussion is on the use of ‘one’ in place of ‘I’ the first person singular, our bee-in-the -bonnet. As in “He asked me to save his life, and how could ‘one’ refuse?” As it substitutes a noun, it is a pronoun. On the merits of the usage, he says, among other things ( no inter alia/ winter alia, we are not on duty) :

“The writer should make up his mind that he will, or he will not, talk in the first person, and go on the sound assumption that one and one’s do not mean I and me or me and mine.”

Then, the entry ‘cliché’. The most ‘well-worn cliché’ in view of YF is : “ to use the well-worn cliché”. It shows that the author using this deadly expression is (he, he, he, sunbaai) (i) a prig and a muggle (ii) he or she is not really third rate, but only second rate, and (iii) carries a guilt-complex or an inferiority complex and not an industrial complex. We would rather be into-your-face, and Fowler approvingly quotes another expert, J.A.Spender:

“ The hardest worked cliché is better than the phrase that fails......”

We would like to ‘flag’ (missing C-W Bank) ‘split infinitive’, for that’s where the action used to be in the good old days when people were not linguistically deprived or depraved. Aar ekta ‘Gerund’ o' chilo.

“Let us take an example: ‘in these circumstances, the Commission, judging from the evidence taken in London, has been feeling its way to modifications intended to better equip successful candidates for careers in India and at the same time, to meet reasonable Indian demands.’

‘To better equip’? We refuse ‘better to equip’ as a shouted reminder of the tyranny ; we refuse ‘to equip better’ as ambiguous (better an adjective?) ; we regard ‘to equip successful candidates better’ as lacking compactness, as possibly tolerable from an anti-splitter, but not good enough for us. What then of recasting? ‘Intended to make successful candidates fitter for’ is the best we can do, if the exact sense is be kept; it takes some thought to arrive at the correction; was the game worth the candle?”

We would like to place ‘The Mongoose Theory’ on a pedestal. Beside Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

The issues that ‘emerze’ (Chabiwala Bank back at work again, tomorrow, Black Monday) are obvious. Do we really require that kind of gyan in today’s world?

We recall ₭’s views. After a futile vigil for nilambari, he is arguing with A on the correctness of what the hawai-sundari announced on A’s first excursion into the skies. “Passinjers are requasted to kindly fasten their seat-balts”. Great, he forgot what the lady looked like, but notices what she said. If you revert to 1,2,3,4,5 above, we can safely say, ₭ ijj (3) and A ijjjj (4). The end of their sparring is “ A: baba, meaning ta konbhey hoyegachhe” and ₭ retorting, “baba, wordser ki dorkar, she could have just gestured like in the Sunday 2 o’clock news, if conveying meaning is the purpose of it all”. Touche, and banggg! - there appears nilamabri, as if Saraswati appearing by way of vindication.

We recall (of all), Yogi Deveshwar’s views on the subject. He is the Chairman of ITC. The views changed our perception of Corporate Top Management, until we noticed that he was alone at the bus-stop. He said something to the effect that “ my daughter sends SMSs in that odd vowel-less lingo, but I detest it. I prefer to be grammatically correct.” It’s linguistic manners, maannn!

It’s clear now, the Cherrapunji clouds suddenly vanish. Weeeeee…. adopted Fowler’s style unconsciously, for our mental make up appears like- mince no cheating-beating haaaaan!

Tip of the leap year: sell ITC, he, he, he.

Like any other person who has applied his mind to the business of language, we occasionally mused about the tyranny of Grammar. The whole thing is that ke bhaiyya at school, it was part of your ‘studies’ and not part of your recreation. We developed interest in the works after we returned to it with holy curiosity, and when it was ejected by other subjects on the curriculum.

Most important in favour of equipping yourself grammatically- how do you prove your linguistic point if you do not know grammar?

Suppose your friend says “ I sat him in the train” (after taking snakes in the hole). You know it is incorrect. But how will you convince him? You should tell you that there are beyyyy types of verbs, intransitive, which end with the subject, and transitive which require a subject and an object for performance. ‘Sat’ is intransitive, YOU can ‘sit’ but cannot ‘sit’ anyone else.

You find a wealth of ideas, explanations and revelations in Fowler. What always lay at the back of your mind, but was latent, and Fowler throws a torch beam on it, making it alive and kicking. Read ‘road’ vs. ‘street’, for instance. The book forms one organic whole. Has to be read from cover to cover. It is like a treasure hunt. Refreshingly sardonic. We’d bet our last shirt on its eternal relevance (darling make it the one kept for holi.)

Now for a post script.

Robert Frost of “ the woods are lovely, dark and deep” is spending a vacation with a friend in the Alps. They survey the snow-clad peaks and friend talks about the beauty of nature, asking for Frost’s expert comments. “Well……., I don’t talk shop when on leave, sorry boss!”