A Big Night (Movie review)

Big Night movie is a story of two brothers Primo and Secondo from Italy, who has emigrated from Italy and had open a restaurant Paradise in America. But, there were not able to flourish their business and the banks required repayment of the loan by the end of the month as there have been lots of delays already.

Primo was a conservative man. He didn’t want to alter the food as per the people there wanted. For him food of Italy was more sacred. There was an Italian restaurant opposite to them that was getting more and more popular day by day. It was because of the fact that they were serving what the people wanted. On the other hand, Primo was not at all okay to serve two starch together when the customer wasn’t able to find any seafood in the perfect seafood dish risotto and orders spaghetti and meatball as the side dish.

With a view of taking some valuable feedback from his competitor, the neighboring Italian restaurant, about the business, Secondo approaches the owner Pascal. Pascal gives a very motivating speech to him and tells him that he will arrange for Louis Prima, the great Italian-American singer for a dinner at their restaurant as he was one of good friend of his.  This would lead to the publicity by the media in all the newspapers, business will pick up and that the restaurant can be saved.

Secondo starts making the arrangement for the big night with all the money he has. He arranges for the flower, bakery, etc. Primo also starts cooking at his best. He makes dishes like lasagna and many more to name Italian dish at its best. There was a moment when the brother Primo gets to know that the famous singer Louis was arranged by the owner of his competitor restaurant, Pascal. The big feast begins when hours later; it becomes apparent that Louis is not coming and Primo sends one magnificent course after the other from his kitchen. As the audience eats the food, they all become emotional by the taste of the same. They even comment that Louis doesn’t know what he is missing. Still, Secondo keeps the food for just in case Louis turns up! For Primo too, the food was a way to talk to the divine as he tells the flower woman, to whom he was secretly in love and was shy about to say the same.

Gabriella, the mistress of Pascal had a secret affair with Secondo. When Secondo’s girlfriend Phyllis catches both of them, she went to the seashore and Secondo follows her to find her. Meanwhile, being very much influenced by food and hard work of Primo, Gabriella tells him that Pascal never called Louis. Primo goes to find Secondo at the beach which is accompanied by a small fight between the two. Primo puts his suggestion to return back to Rome as his uncle has arrangements for both of them there, but Primo rejects the proposal.

The following morning, Secondo makes omelet and distributes the same between himself, his worker and his brother Primo and movie ends with both of them hugging each other while eating.

Talking about the character of Secondo, he was a very flexible personality. He was open to almost anything to make his business work. But at the same time, he didn’t want to hurt the feelings of his brother Primo. He was so open that he approached his competitor Italian restaurant next to them for suggestions. This made him vulnerable to the manipulation by the businessman. He got inspired by his speech so much that he didn’t do any background check on the same. The loan and the down going business had such a pressure on Secondo’s mind that he didn’t want to commit to his girlfriend Phyllis.

Primo was a very conservative person. He didn’t want to change the cuisine as per the people demand. He rather wanted to make them understand about the significance and relevance of the existing cuisine. Even when, Primo discovers that his brother Secondo went upto Pascal for help, despite of his sadness, he doesn’t ruin his brother’s motive. Primo was very much passionate about cooking. That’s he hated the neighbor restaurant, which provided the food that people want in the name of Italian food. He referred the same as the rape of the cuisine. Again, he puts forward his plan to go back to Rome in Italy in front of his brother Secondo with a belief to include him too. He postpones disclosing the same after the big feast.

But Secondo was very much positive not to leave America, as he tells while they fought at the beach. Instead, Secondo argues with Primo that he doesn’t know how hardly he has been managing the business at macro-level so far.

Pascal, with a mind of businessman, wanted to make the two brothers broke, so that they either join him in his restaurant or return to Italy. He clarifies at the end that he didn’t do so because of the secret affair with his mistress but for the interest of the business. But the godly food of Primo, made him admit his mistake, when his mistress Gabriella discloses his real motive, seeing the hard work of Primo.

The two brother affection towards each other at the end showed that nothing matters to them the most then each other. Primo was staying back in America just because his brother Secondo wanted to and Secondo was not telling Primo to change the way he cooks food. They both have understanding and support for each other.

Caste aside: Ambedkar vs Gandhi

Among the various concerns raised by Ambedkar in his speech, the most prominent one is that social reform is necessary for political reform. He has raised many issues which might appear equally important like social reform being a precursor for economic reform or caste system as division of labour and not labourers or debunking the idea of racial purity as the objective of caste system. But on no other topic, he invests so much time as on the issue of political reform. He has dedicated considerable part of his speech explaining the nuances of political reform in India. He goes back in history to explain how congress and social conference started under the same roof and how they gradually drifted away so much so that turned hostile.

The fact that this speech was to be delivered in a politically charged environment, where the country was at the cusp of political change, puts the issue of politics at the top slot. Ambedkar has done intensive research and cited many examples to bring out the social inequality that was prevalent in the country. He cites example of Peshwas in the Maratha country,where the untouchable was not allowed to use the public streets if a Hindu was coming along. He provides several other examples to drive home the point that ‘lower’ caste was not being allowed to get education, food etc of its choice.

The reason why Ambedkar decides to raise this concern in the beginning is that it sets the context for other arguments that follow. It provides the genesis of political reform and social reform and how political reform got precedence for social reform. It also explains how the social reform itself was steered by upper caste and hence had myopic vision of the problems faced by the families of upper caste.

All other issues raised subsequently emanate from the issue of political reform. Moreover, this idea of social reform echoes in the entire speech. Whether Amebdkar is talking about economic reform or of racial purity or of national integration, in one way or the other he refers to the political reform. While talking of economic reform, he concludes by saying –

“You cannot have political reform, you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster.”

Ambedkar has backed his claims by referring to the speech delivered by Mr. W. C. Bonnerji in 1892 at Allahabad, as President of the eighth session of the Congress, where Bonnerji says –

"I for one have no patience with those who say we shall not be fit for political reform until we reform our social system. I fail to see any connection between the two. . .Are we not fit (for political reform) because our widows remain unmarried and our girls are given in marriage earlier than in other countries? Because our wives and daughters do not drive about with us visiting our friends? Because we do not send our daughters to Oxford and Cambridge?"

This excerpt, as per Ambedkar, proves the apathy of congress towards social reform. He then turns to history of Ireland where Ulster debunked Irish Home Rule. He also cites many religious reforms like reform by Buddha,saints of Maharashtra and Guru Nanak which preceded the political reform. Hence Ambedkar puts the religious reforms in the ambit of social reform. Hence making a compelling case in favor of social reform.

Freedom Struggle: From Within and Without

Ambedkar’s speech “Annihilation of Caste” was prepared as the presidential address for the annual conference of a Hindu reformist group, Jat-Pat Todak Mandal on the ill effects of caste in Hindu society. Reading through his speech, I got new insights into the caste dynamics and its impact on the freedom struggle. At the cusp of independence, Country was politically charged. My idea was that we collectively fought the foreign forces and threw them away. While we might have stood united, we had internal divisions as well. We were fighting battles within ourselves. This also helped me understand how England ruled over us for years, even though we outnumbered them. While historians often claim that British divided us and ruled courtesy their ‘divide and rule’ policy, we were already divided on the lines of caste, which must have served as a fertile ground for England to rule.

Ambedkar cites examples of how untouchables were not allowed to get into the mainstream. They were not allowed to have food of their choice or move around freely. They had limited access to public places like wells and temples. While untouchability as a concept is not new to me, the extent and nature of it is beyond human purview. I have seen my acquaintances in village maintaining a safe distance from certain set of people. These are the same people who are not allowed to enter the temples. But I have always been on the other side and could never feel the pains and pangs of untouchables. The idea that an untouchable should not walk on the streets when an upper caste Hindu happens to be on the street testifies the injustice and inequality in the society. “It is foolish to take solace in the fact that because the Congress is fighting for the freedom of India, it is, therefore, fighting for the freedom of the people of India and of the lowest of the low.” [1]

Ambedkar, in the above lines, makes a distinction between the freedom of India and freedom of people of India. For the people of lower caste, freedom would have simply meant a change in the face. They were oppressed by the British under colonial rule and would have been oppressed by their own people under ‘swaraj’. Ambedkar displays commendable foresightedness to suggest during freedom struggle that social revolution was as important as political and economic revolution, if not more. It also hints towards a flaw in the approach mainstream leaders followed for freedom struggle. They should have first tried to stand united. Had we been united, we would have been free long back.

Does this imply that Hindu leaders were unaware of the importance of social revolution or of it being a precursor for political revolution? Ofcourse not. “It is necessary to make a distinction between social reform in the sense of the reform of the Hindu family, and social reform in the sense of the reorganization and reconstruction of the Hindu Society. The former has a relation to widow remarriage, child marriage, etc., while the latter relates to the abolition of the Caste System.”[2]

Ambedkar makes a clear distinction between the reform of Hindu family and Hindu society. He suggests that reformers who belong to upper caste ignore the demon called untouchability. Their area of concern is limited to the problems faced by upper caste Hindus, while the cries of lower caste Hindus go unheard.  Arundhati Roy also endorses this view and labels Gandhi, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Swami Vivekananda as ‘privileged-caste Hindu reformers’. [3]

Having said that, Ambedkar’s suggestion that Hindus are divided and all other religions of the world stand united is unacceptable. Even today we see all the religion be it Hinduism, Islam, Christianity or Sikhism have their own differences. Ambedkar’s argument that lower caste are preferring to shift to other religion is valid. But he exaggerates it by saying,

“Among Sikhs and Muslims there is a social cement which makes them Bhais. Among Hindus there is no such cement.”[4]

My intention here is not to justify division within Hindus by pointing finger towards other religion, but to drive home a fact that all the religion end up dividing people and hence fails the entire purpose of religion. A true religion is one which unites people. I also believe that British helped us shed our caste differences and come together for common good. For example, Ambedkar shunned his inimical relations with Congress and joined hands to draft the constitution. Also, as the people from lower caste got representation, their concerns could no longer be ignored. They made their presence felt and safeguards were put in place to provide a level playing field for them. One of the safeguards being reservation of seats for untouchables, who were put in the bracket of Schedules caste.

Hence the freedom movement not only marked the change of power centers, but also witnessed a reversal of trend. With the untouchables, initially being oppressed, they now enjoyed special privileges. While before independence, various castes tried to move up to the upper caste, today they want to be included in the backward castes to get the privileges of reservation. A recent demand by Gujjars stands in testimony to it. Hence Ambedkar’s text helps understand the caste dynamics.

Gandhi’s response “Vindication of Caste” published in ‘Harijan’ helps understand the genesis of caste system. He provides the ideal view of how caste system should be. The chaturvarna system and each varna complementing each other brings out the picture of harmonious and united society. It also establishes the crucial difference between varna and caste and establishes the fact that Hinduism as religion does not endorse division of laborers and keeps all the occupation on the same pedestal. So putting views of both Ambedkar and Gandhi together, one realizes that untouchability and rigid caste boundaries are the adulterations that crept into the religion gradually.

The overall tone of Ambedkar in his speech was defensive, while that of Gandhi was complacent and paternal. Was it the inherent trait of the caste they represented? We don’t have enough evidence from the text to support this, but it can’t be denied altogether. When Arundhati Roy says, “Ambedkar was a prolific writer. Unfortunately his work, unlike the writings of Gandhi, Nehru or Vivekananda, does not shine out at you from the shelves of libraries and bookshops.”[5] And further adds, “History has been unkind to Ambedkar. First it contained him, and then it glorified him.”[6] She clearly highlights the injustice done to Ambedkar. But whether this was due to his caste would always be hard to ascertain.

Ambedkar’s work brings to life the caste system prevalent in the pre-independence era. While many of us today abhor reservation, it justifies why certain set of people needed safeguards and privileges. Ambedkar and Roy expose ‘the gap between what most Indians are schooled to believe in and the reality we experience every day of our lives.’[5] And in the process, I realized how history might have been tailored to favor certain individuals. Connecting the dots looking backwards one can say that Caste was a bigger demon and threat to nation than the foreign forces. Hence Ambedkar’s concern were not misplaced. On the contrary, all those who jumped the guns and advocated that political revolution should get precedence over social revolution, did a great disservice to the nation.

Caste boundaries might have blurred over time, but it has failed to vanish. Today, no one is barred to fetch water from the well, mostly because there are no wells and even if certain villages have wells, the water has long dried.  Inter-caste marriages are still looked down upon. Riots still occur. Politicians still appeal to caste sentiments and manipulate the voters on the lines of caste. Such incidents would have found place neither in India of Gandhi nor of Ambedkar. It’s time we introspect, what good has the caste division done in the last so many years. If we have reasons good enough to hold on to it, we must. Else, let’s work towards a new religion, a new caste- that of nationalism.


Citations:

1. Section 11, The Doctor and the Saint by Arundhati Roy

2. Para 1, Page 5, Annihiliation of Caste   by Dr B. R Ambedkar

3. Section 3, The Doctor and the Saint by Arundhati Roy

4. Para 4, Page 14, Annihiliation of Caste   by Dr B. R Ambedkar

5. Section 1, The Doctor and the Saint by Arundhati Roy

6. Section 13, The Doctor and the Saint by Arundhati Roy

Smallpox disease in formal and popular thought in Indian society

Smallpox has a long history in India. Science and philosophy were both highly developed discipline in ancient India. It is therefore highly expected to have an Indian Medical response to the disease. To its rescue, Hindu scriptures do mentions the disease along with its inoculation treatment and even has a goddess devoted exclusively to the cause. The paper will focus on differentiating the popular as well as formal culture amongst the Indians and try to find out the linkages between the two. Intelligentsias of today’s world are often skeptical about the personification of the disease and its worship to have something to do with relating it to the supernatural power driving the universe as the ancient people did to natural activities such as rain, thunder when they had no reasoning to answer it. But it’s possible that these practices were the code of conduct issued by the academic class to handle the giant epidemic and communicate the measures effectively to the general public in a way they are more familiar and bound to. The article will also try to find if any rationale practices of treating smallpox have changed overtime into superstitious belief in contemporary India. It will try to dwell the fact of coexistence of medical treatment as well as religious practices.

Religion holds a place of paramount importance when it comes to viewing pattern of life of the people in different parts of India. Smallpox is usually identified with the goddess Sitala (literally, ‘the cool one’), or mata (mother) in northern India. A similar framework is seen in the worship of Tamil deity Mariamman (and also amma). Anjum Katyal [13], an editor in Bengal argues the Sitala worship to be pre-Aryan, done by the tribes of Bengal, Assam, Bihar and Orissa. It was latter on Brahminised or gentrified. Rulers and religious leaders of early India often used to take the help of local tradition to spread the religious message. One such context can be seen in Sitala Sastri Yatra that happens in Sambalpur, Orissa. It is a folk drama indicating the cultural elements of tradition. The popularity of this folk drama has attracted people from diverse areas of Orissa and neighbouring state of Chhattisgarh. Having seen the popular culture prevalent even today in Indians, let’s explore the formal societies of ancient India.

Caraka-samhita [1] is an early text on Ayurveda (Indian traditional medicine), which existed even before the Christian era, but were put to writings only in the 4th century AD. Smallpox was described under the name of masurika (roots from a type of pulse masur, which happens to look like the pustules eruptions due to the similarity in color, shape and consistency) in the text. Arab Physician Al Razi [8] refers Caraka as the authority for statement in Plants and drugs and described the way Indians prepared syrups of pearls in a different manner that is known to only them; and claimed that if nine pustules have come out and one drinks this syrup, tenth will not appear. Alongside the same timeline, another text Susruta-samhita [2] provides more elaborate description in his Bhishagratna. Later in seventh century, the physician Vagbhata [4] provides significant description of masurika in his Astangahrdaya-samhita. This was the first attempt in Indian medicine, were Smallpox was shown to be fatal. In eight century, Madhava-kara [5] composed a more extensive chapter in masurika in his book Nidana. Along with describing the numerous types of pustular eruptions, he also provided the humoral and dietary explanation of its various forms.

An anthropologist, Nicholas [11] argued that nature of Madhava treatment was exclusively biological, until late fifteen or early sixteenth century, when parisista (appendix) on ‘The Pathology of Sitala’ was introduced to his text. Unlike the existing text, this part pictured Goddess Sitala as the cause of disease. Following this in the very same century, Bhava Misra compiled a medical text Bhava-prakasa by repeating everything from the Madhava’s text including the parisista and further included both recommendation on medical treatment and worship of the goddess Sitala. Otherwise, there is no such account of worship in the Atharva-veda [3], or any other ancient texts. Thus, the sixteenth century India saw two very different interpretation of smallpox: one based on Ayurveda and other on Sitala worship. One can relate this to the Thucydides account [7], where he mentions that Plague was no longer thought to be regarded as the something given by God as misfortune leading to the end of traditional religious belief, but some survivor of the plague started healing cult of Asclepius, the son of Apollo, who became the embodiment of the conventional religious sensitivities. Skandapurana [6], a text written in 18th and 19th century mentions her to be born out of the mind of Brahma and that he asked Shiva and Vishnu to worship her, granting her the power of visiting sickness. It also mentions about her attendant, specially her son Jwarasur (the fever demon). To add more credibility to the sacredness of the performance of Sitala worship, Nityananda wrote Sitalamangala text. Adding to the same, various performing troupe, like that of New Loknath Opera, led to the wide spread nature of the Sitala worship.

The onset of Smallpox is considered to be the manifestation of the goddess as if it were her khel (play), and so it should be tolerated with respect and honour. It is said that the patient becomes the abode of Sitala. The patient and the goddess are fed basora (cooling food) such as cold rice, plantains, and yoghurt. Cooling drinks are officered to the patient and heating foods are banned, sexual activity is minimized and all other heating activities are abstained from. The patient’s body is rubbed with neem patta (leaf of a cooling neem tree) by a mali (gardener). If the disease progressed, a cooling mixture of turmeric and flour is applied. Finally, when the boils of smallpox ripen, a small thorn is used to prick them and give relief to the patient. When the fever subsided, prayers are offered to the Sitala along with cooling offering of coconut, rice,and flowers. Thus, smallpox was treated as a case of being possessed by Sitala. The best physician could do was to prescribe cooling drafts, use purgatives to relieve the body of its poisons, and to prescribe items that could prolong the pittam (bilious humour, generates the heat which is responsible for metabolism) imbalance in the body. The rest was under the control of Sitala.

The one other practice was that a special vaidya (medical practitioner) or tikadars (innoculator) could use was varolation, which was latter largely taken over by vaccination. Arnold [14] argues how the practice was locally understood as a way of invoking the protective power of Sitala’s right over the patient’s body, instead of violating it. This allowed the practice to be viewed as a celebration of the Goddess compared to violation. Holwell [8], a British EIC physician mentions the prevalence of inoculation technique (Intentionally mildly infecting a person with no pox history in order to achieve immunity) in Bengal during the eighteen century India, even before the introduction of Jenner Vaccine (1798) came in. This was popularly known as tika (derived form of vatika, which means a small globule). There was no such use of inoculation in the western world before the tenth century. It is now used to refer vaccination. It was based on the theory of bija (seed) mixed with the blood of a person, which was not present in the Ayurvedic explanation of the disease. An Indian historian, Dharampal [9] found that the inoculation was to be prevalent in Bengal in the mid eighteenth century. It was pointed out that the inoculators were the low class of both Hindu and Muslim people such as small cultivators, garland maker, barbers, low ranking astrologer Brahmans and not as esteemed as physicians. It was later found that a text called Vasanta-tika (smallpox inoculation) existed amongst the Napit (barbers).

One can’t deny the fact of coexistence of the both the Medical practices of inoculation as well as its view in term of Sitala worship. There is a sharp bonding between the two. The Hindu scriptures also seemed to support the same eventually. Probably, this was the way the elite academic class used to propagate the idea of handling the disease amongst the people. It seemed to be coded version of rational practices. The propagation of the idea in terms of storytelling definitely has a much wider impact to the society and spreads with a faster pace. Some of the contemporary practices might look like superstition but beholding the rationality behind some of the practices shows that it’s not just blind faith but has some essence of science and philosophy embedded in it.


References

[1] Loon, Gabriel Von, “Caraka-samhita” 2 vols, P V Sharma and Chaukhamba Orientalia Publishers, 2002-03

[2] Bhishagratna, Kunja Lal, “An English translation of Susruta-samhita” 3 vols, Calcutta, 1911

[3] Whitney, William Dwight, “Atharva-veda samhita”, Harvard Univ, 1905

[4] Hilgenberg, Luise, and Willibald Kirfel, “Vagbhata’s  Astangahrdaya-samhita”, Leiden: E J Brill, 1941

[5] Madhavakara, “Madhava-nidanam”, Edited by Yadava-sarmana, Bombay: Nirnaya-sagara Press, 1920

[6] “Skanda Mahapuarana”, Bombay: Venkatesvara Sream Press, 1908-09

[7] Thucydides et al, “History of the Peloponnesian War”, 1954

[8] Holwell, J Z, “Accounts of the Manner of Inoculation in East Indies”, London, 1767

[9] Dharampal, “Indian Science And Technology In The Eighteenth Century”, Delhi: Impex India, 1971

[10] Greenhill, William Alexander, “A Treatise on Smallpox and Measles by Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Rhazes)”, London: The Sydenham Soceity, 1847

[11] Nicholas, Ralph, “The Goddess Sitala and Epidemic Smallpox in Bengal”, The Journal of Asian Studies, 1981

[12] Holwell, J Z, “An account of the manner of inoculating for the smallpox in the East Indies”, London College, 1767

[13] Katyal, Anjum, “Performing the Goddess: Sacred ritual into Professional Performance”, The MIT Press, 1988

[14] Arnold, D, “Colonizing the body”, UC Press, CA, 1993

Mathematics as a form of art...

I came upon with this thesis as I have been mostly obsessed with mathematics day in and day out. I have worked in various technical fields such as electrical, electronics, computers and mechanical but throughout, I have always been involved in tweaking mathematics. One of the key things that I personally felt was that at the end of the day, whenever I derived something such as a formula result, at the end, I tend to beautify the same by aligning the different part of the equations. Even in the book if one sees, most of the final results are beautified and this also helps in remembrance of the same. This is much common activity in the physics textbooks, where one has to remember a lot of formulas. Further, most of the questions asked in a mathematics paper are so much so beautified to create patterns out of it. Even the solution can be beautiful. One of my mathematics teachers was very much obsessed with questions that are beautifully solved. He used to compile all these solution in a file. A great example here would be puzzle. What exactly puzzle is? – It’s an art on building blocks of mathematics. All these thought process along with my readings on art appreciation class led me to a question – ‘Is Math Art?’ Answer that I finally discovered to this open ended question was – ‘Of course it is!’

What can drew one to think is the idea that ‘Is all a tautology?’ i.e. A implies B, B implies C to C implies A. If it's all logic, there really shouldn't be anything to understand. The early one figures out that it's not logic, the better it is. What keeps one from understanding it and that one couldn't follow the logic is that these ideas are so different and new. One can finally realize that it wasn't all about logic but rather about the creative process. Sometimes it gives a feeling of ‘writing a book’ or ‘providing piece of music’ as one solves a math problem, because it's not about the tools, everyone knows about the tools, it's about how one put them together. There's a little bit artistry involved and that's what drew one to it. One gets drawn into geometry just because it really emphasizes the ‘visual’ aspect as well as the ‘aesthetic’ aspect. One honestly can find a kind of beauty in thinking creatively about problems because somehow something doesn't click until two dollars. There's a little bit of mystery to the creative process. What exactly clicks in your brain that takes you from not being able to solve problem to solving it. One really enjoys their thinking about beautiful problems. Mathematics is known for the use of aesthetic terms in describing their way of work. Nobody can deny the fact that beauty lies in the eyes of beholders. A lot of people, irrespective of whether they are from a mathematical background or not, they seem to appreciate the state of art that mathematics provide. Vi Hart, a self described ‘recreational mathemusician’ from National Museum of Mathematics performed dance with music by representing each figure as a digit. She represented a series of numbers using the powers of 2. She also danced for the value of pi in binary. Finally, she made a painting out of that hand dance by having different color for her different fingers. Scott Kim is an artist and use mathematics as his language. He is the author of many American puzzles and has also designed many computer games. He describes his work as the relationship of mathematics with various shapes and sizes.

Mathematics is as valid a form of art, as any other. Now it's difficult to put into words, exactly what it is that makes numbers and symbols so appealing - but according to scientists, it boils down to simple brain chemistry. In a recent study at University College in London, researchers showed a group of mathematicians 60 different mathematical equations, and asked them to rate those equations on a scale of "ugly” to "beautiful," while inside an fMRI scanner. The results showed that the more "beautiful" an equation was - according to the test subject - the more likely it was to elicit activity in the A1 field of the medial orbitofrontal cortex. This is the part of your brain that's typically associated with emotional responses to visual and musical beauty. Thus, people like us respond to numbers and equations, the same way other people do to music or art. But even people with no musical talent can still appreciate good music - so what constitutes beauty in math? And does the appreciation of it require some understanding of its meaning? Well, not necessarily. To test that idea, researchers performed the same study on a control group - with no special appreciation of math. And while those subjects did show a significantly lower emotional response to the equations - a handful of them were still capable of finding their beauty - even with no understanding of what they actually mean. So what makes an equation "objectively beautiful"? Is it just a formula of curves and shapes, maybe symmetry that makes it pleasing to the eye? It's difficult to quantify the exact reasons, but there is one equation consistently rated to be the most attractive - and that's Euler's identity (1+e^iπ=0) – perhaps because it contains the 3 most fundamental numbers in the mathematical universe, e, π, and i. It's a pretty hot equation. What's the ugliest, if one asks, according to the mathematicians in this study, it's the Srinivasa Ramanujan's rapidly converging infinite series of π.

                                            Figure 1                                                                             Figure 2

Data visualization is a way of representing information and an artistic and interesting way. Scientists might be happy with scatter plots in black-on-white laps, but if one wants to communicate information and data to the public, he or she would want it to be enjoyable as well as colorful. To quote one of the chief icons of such form is Martine Kaminsky. It is quite interesting to look at his artistic work, finding beautiful artistry in the randomness of pi. His painting as seen in Figure 1 is pi in a beautiful colorful way. What make it so special is that, it is done in the simplest way one could have think off. He takes the digits of pi and gives each digit a different color to start with three. Three is an orange color there, then one is a red, four is a yellow, one again is red and then five is green, nine is purple and so on. it makes a really beautiful poster, one can kind of see the randomness of it, but one can’t see it as any particular pattern to the colors; which is which reflects the randomness of the digits of pi is well. To take that further, he started to kind of make the center of the circle using the color of the next digit. Probably he did so, just to make it a bit prettier at produced. He might have found it interesting because he had to join up digits that had the same colors in them. In a research like this, they care to go a bit further and in this art, she connects digits adjacent digits in his poster that have same color, so actually they are the same number, which makes the disconnected networks. One doesn’t need to use any great mathematical truth defined underneath this. This is a thought and Martine is very clear about himself that this is less about the mathematics and more about the beauty of it. But it is intriguing as well. The other way one could do this is if he put the digits of pi in a spiral as seen in the Figure 2. This looks similar to tiling in a Roman bath house. Something that makes one happy, maybe that's because of the colors she used. But to take this a step further is one of Brady's Patriots. It makes us think that we should just appreciate the beauty of that before we describe it and not merely bringing the beauty of it by describing it and not doing the justice to appreciate it. Now what he's done there is connected the digits together as you go through the digits of pi. So he started at three and he has connected three to one and then connected one to four and so on. He has also given each digit a color as well to a psychopath. He's made a package by putting numbers in a circle zero one two three four five up to nine and one have made a path and makes this beautiful piece of art. About data visualizations, which is hugely important, it goes way back! Florence Nightingale once had to represent the statistics that she had in Crimean War, where she was a nurse and the deaths that she was suffering on the wards. It was because they weren’t clear enough and she had to represent it to the state. She was a mathematician herself and she used diagrams for representing the data in a visual way. A simpler example is a pi graph representing data in a visual way. What these guys know and has become quite a thing recently is to make it beautiful as well. This is important because to communicate especially to the general public, one should be able to look at the information, understand it and enjoy looking at it and then only one appreciates it better. While talking about serious mathematics subjects like combinatorics, which is very visual as well and one can and do the maths through pictures, diagrams, networks, graphs and things like that. In the present example, we saw how pi is pretty random. Martine actually compared pi with a few randomly generated numbers. She generated all sorts of ways to randomly generated numbers and did the same sort of artistry and one can see the similar sorts of patterns coming from pi has the appearance of any of the randomly generated number. Another piece of art by Martine is the same idea again i.e. circular paths, but here there is little dots on the outside just to show that where the lines are coming from and where they going to. If it's 3.141, then above the three, is shown in with a little dot that it's going to the number one; and above the number one shows that it is coming from the number three. It's basically showing where it is going to and where it is coming from. So the size of the dots means that it occurs more often. There is a big purple-topped in the piece. Purple means nine and what it is showing is that there's a sequence in pie where there is just 9999, called the Feynman point, which is eighty six consecutive nine's, which is 762^nd digit in pi. One can see it right there in the piece which are just six consecutive nines and it makes a big blob because it's coming from 9 repeatedly. Martine has done this with other numbers as well. He has done it for the golden ratio, another famous mathematical number, also e, another famous mathematical number and what he was interested in was to find out where they coincide. When he did this, he lined up these three special mathematical numbers and looked at where they had the same digit. Now, because these numbers are kind of random, he wanted to find out when they have the same digit. So, for all three numbers to have the same digit that happens with the probability of one in a hundred, when one line them up he got something, which he called the accidental similarity number and he discovered that yes they do lined up with the same digit about one in a hundred which is what probability tells us. So the average gap between linings up is about 100. He started to experiment with his accidental similarity number and made some piece of art based on that as well especially circular ones which look pretty.