Trivia
Additionally, I found myself interested in classical Hindi and English literature, movies, and history. Many of these works have a profound impact on my life, and I will try to articulate them from time to time here.
Two years back, I was asked to share my Ph.D. experience by Alumni Cell, IIT Roorkee. The transcript of this conversation can be read here.
The following quotes happen to draw my attention:
For my entrepreneur folks, who, I believe, are integral part and stakeholders of healthy academic institutions:
"Most of you will fail, disrespected, impoverished, but we are grateful for the risks you are taking and the sacrifices you are making for the sake of the economic growth of the planet and pulling others out of poverty. You are the source of our antifragility. Our nation thanks you. " ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile, 2013.
The most confident, ambitious, and optimistic statement for the scope of mechanical world view:
"An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes." ~ Pierre-Simon de Laplace, 1820. ( a cat person approx. 100 years later spoiled the party)