Optimistic philosophy to thwarted love

Its raining outside...its a pleasant Saturday evening..I am wondering how come I cannot spend this romantic evening with someone special. As I lay thinking, I noticed the soft copy of a poetry that I had downloaded from the internet the other day. I read the poem again and a thought crossed my mind. Why is the failure of love celebrated as the most perfect instances of love?
I realized that unreciprocated/thwarted love is central to the romantic visions carved in many poems and novels. Goethe in The Sorrows of the Young Werther paints a beautiful vision of love, love as a feeling. Love according to this view is a sequence of special and intense emotions.
Werther is continually longing for his beloved:
“‘I shall see her today,' I exclaim with delight when I rise in the morning, and look out with gladness of heart at the bright, beautiful sun. 'I shall see her today' and then I have no further wish to form; all- all is included in that one thought."
He is exited by her contact:
" How many heart beats when by accident I touch her finger, or my feet meet hers under the table! I draw back as from a furnace, but a secret force impels me forward again. Sometimes when we are talking she lays her hand upon mine and in the eagerness of conversation comes closer to me and her balmy breath reaches my lips,- when I feel as if lightning had struck me and that I should sink into the earth."
He is Doubtful:
“I watched Charlotte's eyes, they wandered from one to another but they did not light on me- on me who stood there motionless, and who saw nothing but her. Her carriage drove off and my eyes filled with tears. I looked after her; suddenly I saw Charlotte's bonnet leaning out of the window and she turned to look- was it at me? Perhaps she turned to look at me. Perhaps."
He values love and its beauties:
“What is the world to our hearts without love? What is a magic lantern without light?"
Essentially these 4 intense experiences: Longing, Rapture, Doubt and the fact that he is in touch with the source of all value defines the vision of love. However when he meets her she is already engaged and emotionally attached.Werther eventually kills himself as he has no possibility of bringing his love to fruition. His longings are never converted to satiety. He is desperate to see her but never finds out how it would be to see her every day. He is exited with the touch of her feet essentially since he feels they were not supposed to touch. I wonder if the intensity would remain if he could touch her whenever he wanted to?
Similarly in the highly acclaimed story of Romeo and Juliet, we find an instance of love for the same reasons. Death after a single night prevents the couple from having to sustain their passions. They cannot be bored or have to confront any difference in opinion.
Coming back to the poem which initiated the thought. Its a Robert Browning special called 'Porphyria's Lover'. The poem is about a lover who wanted to make his love eternal, kills his beloved the moment he realizes that she worships him. It begins with a picture of heavy storm and rains which could implicitly imply the trials and sorrows which the lover is going through in his life and how his beloved shuts the coldness and the storm in his life with her presence.
"The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm"

This is followed by a beautiful and romantic description of how Porphyria tries to convince her lover of her affections for him. She put his arms round her waist, made her smooth white shoulder bare, made him lay his cheeks there and proclaims her unconditional love. The lover realizes that she has submitted herself to him and is proud of the fact that she worships him.

"Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever."

The lover wonders how he can make this moment of romance an eternal moment as he debates with himself. And then he finds a thing which he can do. He strangles her with her hair.

"That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string
l wound Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her."
The lover is convinced that she has not felt any pain and as he kisses her cheeks now he feels assured that he has gained her love for eternity. He claims that even God has approved of his act.

"And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said aword!"

Yet again a failure of love is seen as a beautiful instance of love. I have not been able to convince myself on this philosophy. Hope i can get some explanation soon.

We are all Optimizers in Life

What is Life??
People have different perspectives, different views, and different thoughts on this classic mystery. Many have devoted their life to understand the purpose of living and the implications of life. The other day I was browsing for some definition on life and I came across various perceptions to life. Some defined life as a gift of God; some claimed that for a human being to be considered to 'have life' it must possess the following characteristics:
1) Living things need to take in energy 2) Living things get rid of waste3) Living things grow and develop4) Living things respond to their environment5) Living things reproduce and pass their traits onto their offspring6) Over time, living things evolve (change slowly) in response to their environment
And Shakespeare claims that human life is like a dream from which they never really awake, in his own words
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep"

I was left confused by the end of it and decided to try and give an explanation of my own. I stormed my brains, spent hours in intense thoughts an finally decided on my definition.
I would define life as “A real time constrained optimization problem". The objective function for such an optimization is dynamic in nature and so are the constraints. However there is a Universal Constraint which is applicable for all. Its the Time Constraint. I would view our actions throughout the day as optimal solutions to the various optimization problems where the objective function and constraint keep changing frequently, maybe in seconds. The rationale for such an Optimization Solution could be that we all operate below the bliss point given our limitations and hence as rational individuals satisfying the assumption that more is always preferred unless we are on the bliss point, we optimize our actions to reach such blissful state.
However this objective function and the constraints vary not only with time, but also over different people. Essentially because everyone has their own subjective perception of bliss point.

I am not sure how I have fared in defining life...but I am happy with my explanation.

Days of Romance-St.Xavier's College,Kolkata

Time and Tide waits for none.
It seems just the other day when I walked into my 1st year classroom at Xavier's College, Kolkata. I was timid in my school days and more importantly had very little acquaintance with the opposite sex. The idea of a college made me nervous and more so since I was about to join a department which took pride not only on the scholars it produced but also on the beauty that it ensured on campus :). Yup I am an alumnus of the department of Economics. However by the end of my first day most of my apprehensions subsided.
My experiences in Xavier's have instrumented many changes in me which has left me more confident and determined. This phase witnessed few of the significant events in my life which has initiated many changes in me. I felt like a student to life and the experiences that taught me so much. I have learnt greatly also from the long conversations (called adda in Kolkata) which I had with my batch mates, both on the subject of Economics and on perception of life. This makes me nostalgic of the famous green benches of my college. Almost every day after college hours we used to sit on those green benches surrounded by trees and discuss the past, present and the future. Those days were intellectually stimulating, sipping on a cup of tea and taking a long walk down the path which leads to the back gate of the college, I dreamt thought learnt.

It was during my days in Xavier's that I came across some of the writings of Shelley,Owen,Keaths,Robert Browning, Shaw and Wordsworth. I was greatly moved by their love for nature and the power to perceive and appreciate the beauties surrounding us. It’s fascinating to read the Ode to Skylark and Ode to the West Wind where Shelley tries to appreciate and learn from the qualities of a skylark and the revolutionary power in a West Wind. I thought about them during my long walks along the trees and sometimes beside the lush green playground that overlook the college. Like Shelley,Robert Browning was another poet whose writings moved me greatly. His philosophy that we live half our life on earth and the other half in heaven is core to most of his poems. He celebrates the murder of a mistress in hands of her lover by justifying that her lover wants to make this last moment of love an everlasting moment. In Last Ride Together, the lover will ask his mistress for a last ride before she departs from him. But little she knows that her lover wants to make this ride an everlasting ride and the fact that she dies makes him believe that even the Gods are approving of their love. Each time I read these poems I somehow sympathize with the lover even after his act of cruelty.
Those were the Days of Romance- Romance with Economics, with Poetry, with Nature, with Power and with a girl too. Romance with Power came when I stood for the general elections contesting for a post in the college union. I was already chosen a class representative during my 2nd yr and wanted to make it to the general body of students union. Surprisingly I won the election and had my first taste with power. Even though Students Union at Xavier's was non-political we had our own politics. Not to say it helped me even a bit to frame my political ideologies, but it was a challenging journey.
Today 3 years after graduating from College, I wish I had a time machine and go back to those days of bliss. I never understood the many people who used to tell me how much I would miss the college days, I guess I can understand their views now.

Proud to be a Xaverian

Importance of Aesthetics

Importance of Aesthetics in Life had never occured to me till now when i was asked to give a blog name. I had heard this word some where i realized so i went back memories to see if i could remember. Oh yes i recall...My professor at Delhi School of Economics had asked Dr.John Nash( During his visit in DSE) for his views on the Aesthetics in Mathematics. I can hardly recall his answer, nor can i boast that i could comprehend most of his views, but the thought that Aesthetics had an importance in Mathematics struck me. Long after the session was over i kept wondering how aesthetics could influnce a mathematician,who are believed to be abstract thinkers. My thoughts faded soon, well i guess there was no room for philosophy in my life as an Economist at DSE.

Today the thought occured to me again, the question still unanswered. Though i may never be able to appreciate the role of Aesthetics in Mathematics, i would certainly try to understand its importance in things that are less abstact than Mathematics...and more importantly in my life. I am happy that i have taken up a challenge that is thought provoking unlike the monotonous work in office.



Cheers to my new challenge