Mathematics is notorious for being one of the most difficult subjects. Here’s a confession. Even with my physics background, I find maths quite difficult. I know enough to get by in tests but it’s a struggle all the way through. This is the reason why I left the field of astrophysics after completing my masters in it. Many areas of astrophysics are full of difficult mathematics.
Looking back, I can find one major reason for my difficulties in maths. I did not have good teachers. I realized this after getting tutored by a fabulous teacher who made difficult maths a piece of cake. This was during my college years and the teacher was Prof. H. D. Moogat. May his soul rest in peace. Prof. Moogat was a mathematics wizard and he loved to teach. He would sing, dance, crack jokes in the class and while doing all that teach us the most abstract mathematical theorems. His classes would look like sold out cinema halls because students from all over the city would attend them. They would sit in windows, on the floor or stand for two hours, trying to absorb the magic that was Prof. Moogat. If I had teachers like him in my school, I would probably be a person with a different expertise and certainly better at mathematics. Having teachers who love teaching is the best thing that can happen to a child.
Later on I realized that there are problems that even Prof. Moogat would have been unable to solve. These are real life problems where millions of lives are stake. I consider myself very lucky that I am not a lawmaker or a judge where I have deal with such problems everyday.
For instance, should death penalty be abolished? I understand the arguments for abolishing it. Law is not about revenge. It is most probably not a deterrent for violent crimes. At the same time, I would be lying if I don’t confess to a feeling of ‘justice being done’ when I see a mass murderer getting the death penalty. Maybe this is because some remnants of our hunter-gatherer ancestors still reside in me. This is a battle between my logical mind and my emotional mind. I have no idea how to resolve it.
Should abortion be legal? I am like the proverbial deer staring into headlights when I try to answer this question. Carry a living thing inside me for nine months? I cannot even imagine what women go through when they are pregnant. I don’t think I will ever be able to form an opinion on this. It’s for women to decide.
Next question is a rather hotly debated one in India. Should censorship be abolished? On one hand is the opinion that there should be no censorship as long as the audience are adults. I mostly agree with this view. But then these same people are outraged when movies show patriarchal behaviour or show women in a secondary role. This is confusing. If you are in favour of no censorship, it must also include movies that show stereotypical behaviour.
One argument made in favour of no censorship is that movies do not affect our behaviour. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are affected by movies everyday and this includes not just the blockbuster movies but also the critically acclaimed ones. Robert De Niro based his cop roles on some of the NYPD officers at the time. These roles in turn were an inspiration for the next generation of NYPD. On the Youtube video of Kenny Loggins’ song Danger Zone from the movie Top Gun, someone had commented, “I became a fighter pilot because of this song.” Movies do affect our behaviour both in good and bad ways but this does not mean we should curtail the freedom of our artists. What’s the solution, then?
I have no idea.
Today’s world places high value on finding answers and for good reason. That’s the key to all the progress that we have made. Saying that ‘I don’t know the answer’ is not very popular in any culture. But some problems do not have neat solutions. How do we deal with such problems? This itself could be an unsolvable problem – or a problem with more than one solution.
