The Man Who Knew Infinity - A Life of the Genius Ramanujan
It has been a long time since I blogged on books that awed me, the reason being that when I am in awe, blogging is the last thing on my mind 
I came to know of this book thru this blog: http://chennaikaran.blogspot.com/2008/01/visa-master.html
LUCKILY, it was available in Davis Library, unlike the looming towers, which I have not been able to get a hold of for more than the past year, 2007.
In addition, I needed the meditation effect reading brings on me, me, book, me thinks, me reads, me reads, me thinks,…wow!
Author Robert Kanigel has done a great job in detailing the backdrop of Ramanujan’s life. Detailed Indian caste and political system, mathematical series, human psychology, inferences, etc. Job well done, no one else could have done more justice in recreating this past.
All previous times when I read biographies I was inspired and wanted to be the personality I was reading about. Ramanujan - I don’t want to be. I can feel the pain of being a genius in his life.
Look at his cover picture ya(chennai slang), grumpy, serious kind, cannot even imagine me like that..
To me, life is fun when I have warmth of friends & relatives, romance, frankly, hugs & kisses. Ramanujan did not have it. That makes his entire life a waste to me, sad. PERIOD.
When I try not to be so judgemental, I remember a short, real sharp conversation I had with a friend very recently. He said his work, and his work-out are his passions in life. Soon, very soon - it felt like, I disconnected the phone, not because I was mad at what he said, or did not believe it, but because I could not relate to it at all. How could a human be so devoid of emotions? He did tell me that the object of emotions/interests can be relatively individual. That is, in his words, what gives me happiness doesn’t have to evoke same feelings in him. Later, I REALIZED THE TRUTH in his statement, bitter as it was.
And as fate would have it, I am reading the great Mathematical genius who was detached of everything till 2 years before he died. I am sorry for him. I am sorrier for his wife who married him at age 9.
Of all the 423 pages I read, I enjoyed this the most:
"Where is she?" asked Ramanujan of his mother as he stepped off the ship into the maw of Bombay on March 27, 1919. She was Janaki.
….
And there, on August 11, 1919, at the time of the Sravanam ceremony that marked the annual changing of the sacred thread, Ramanujan openly rebelled against his mother.
Trouble had been brewing for weeks between the two of them, from even before they’d arrived in town; Ramanujan had wanted to travel first class, but his mother insisted on second or third class. Now, Ramanujan was heading down to the river to bathe, as part of the Sravanam rites. Janaki wanted to go with him. Ramanujan said yes. Komalatammal said no.
And Ramanujan insisted, yes.
….
He told her, more than once, "If only you had come with me to England perhaps I would not have fallen ill."
Ramanujan’s own Mentor at Cambridge, Hardy, seems to think like me
Hardy’s Mathematician’s Apology…
It is undeniable that a good deal of elementary mathematics…has considerable practical utility. [but] these parts of mathematics are, on the whole, rather dull; they are just the parts which have least aesthetic value. The "real" mathematics for the "real" mathematicians, the mathematics of Fermat and Euler and Gauss and Abel and Riemann, is almost wholly "useless."
Hardy went on to pity the mathematical physicist who might use mathematical tools to understand the workings of the universe; was not his lot in life a little pathetic?
If he wants to be useful, he must work in a humdrum way, and he cannot give full play to his fancy even when he wishes to rise to the heights. "Imaginary" universes are so much more beautiful than this stupidly constructed "real" one; and most of the finest products of an applied mathematician’s fancy must be rejected, as soon as they have been created, for the brutal but sufficient reason that they do not fit the facts.
Yes, Ramanujan knew Infinity, real well too. But, he failed to see who he was inside.
Postscript: I can imagine Ramanujan smiling slyly at me, "buddhu, idhu ellaam enna pesuthu, nalla velai, ithai kekka naan uyiroda illa!" Laughs apart, I am sure Ramanujan should be proud of himself for achieving what anyone else subject to his poverty and race cannot even dream of. I am proud of him too, as he is an Indian, Tamil, Chennaite, but if he were my family, I will only feel sad, again.
