Finance after all!!!!!!!!

Finance...most glamorous subject, profession, domain and what not...the study of tricks with money or what is popularly or pristinely termed as investment banking, has to have big bucks..after all one is playing with big money and that too that of others..winning some and losing some....Therefore we come to define rather think of the subject of finance as one which deals with money...Ways and means of making money.
However a very interesting paradox is you cant make money from anything or nothing...To make money you got to have money.now where do you get that money from...Before this leads to the usual chicken and the egg scenario let us focus on the subject- as the typical MBA would say-..Money...What is money after all?? One would think what a stupid question was that...It actually isnt...Come to think of it money is nothing but a notional value that one attaches...symbolized by the currency today and barter in the ancient days...Akin to a dot in geometry where it is a symbol which addresses the notion of a point..coming back to the subject, money has now led us to currency as we have to have a material object to represent....But what is a currency or very simply what does a 100-rupee note mean...Contrary to the general opinion it actually doesnt mean Rs 100...It is actually a promissory note by the governor of the RBI saying that he is liable to pay the holder Rs 100...so when we give a 100 rupee note to say a shopkeeper we actually transfer the liability to him. the conclusion- we all are behind wealth which in itself is a notion...
In fact nothing in finance is material...depreciation, cost of capital, net present value, you name it you can see...a subject that has evolved to be the most strategic one in the present times is one which is completely immaterialistic...
Possibly that is why people chase it...a mirage worth chasing all your life...finance...the subject..more you delve into it...more you theorize...more complex it becomes...
As always nature plays a game of quidproquo...you develop theories make more money and more complex it becomes for you to make more money....but the subject the notion lingers on....providing academic bliss to some and mystery to others....prosperity to some misery to others ( again notional mind you)....you give some you take some

Classical music fading away?????

Reading through the latest Outlook’s cover story of lack of heirs to ageing musical maestros hit me hard. Apparently, there are a number of gharanas which have become existential through history books only and there is no one to carry the torch ahead. The magazine itself points out through the words of the masters that the younger generation is not willing enough to tread this path. Reasons vary by the multitudes ranging from lack of financial security to lack of interest. Personally one feels the availability of various other entertainments and the arduous path prescribed by the masters over the generations are the major impeding factors. Today practicing and aspiring musicians will simply rubbish the famous “mombatti ka riyaaz” saying that there is no time. For the uninitiated “mombatti ka riyaaz” is a term employed when practice is measured in terms of no of candles that burnt and not in terms of hours. On an average the candles used to burn for four hours and great ustads like Vilayat Khan used to aspire for title of “paanch mombatti riyaazi” (that is the one who practices till 5 candles are completely burnt). These seem fairly tales to us when these are real stories that took place not more than 3 decades back. In a span of 3 decades situations have changed dramatically as is evident from current scenario when we see there are no heir apparent for greats like Bismillah Khan, Bhimsen Joshi and many others.

Today the music is more an entertainment than a path to spirituality and salvation. The better the PR and hype greater the aura surrounding the artiste. Even the standard of the audience is derogating and the demands are more populist rather than classy. It is also evident from the trends in the more popular musical form of Bollywood film music. The purists might wrench their hearts but people are making money in the business. The correlation coefficient between quality product and business capability is fast tending towards zero. So what is the end of all this drama? As always you have to give lot of time sweat and patience to achieve class in the classiest form of classical music that India has maintained over millennia. It is again a game of quid pro quo…you give some you take some…you put in the effort music promises you liberation and peace….

2- The number The concept

Two. The prettiest number espousing the greatest concepts in logic, mathematics, philosophy, physics, electricity and why even database. The only even prime number in mathematics. The number whose powers can be added to get any integer of any magnitude. The number of logic states (0 and 1). The no of states in which an electric charge can exist. The number of physical states- male and female. The number of sides in a coin. Philosophy says Vidya and Avidya. Hindu Religion says Shiva and Shakti. Jews say Yahweh and Shekinah. Physics says proton and electron, neutrino and anti-neutrino and even matter and antimatter. And in each and every place when the two are fused they become the whole or there is nothing left of them. Or viewing from another angle the two are different sides of the same. Hinduism says Shiva and Shakti are incomplete without each other and truly they are two sides of the formless nameless spirit. Before Genesis the universe was void and thus when matter was created its opposite antimatter also came into existence.

All this brings us to the principle of duality which is the very basis of nature and for the more realized souls it’s the singularity in this duality that strikes.

Einstein showed that light has to be treated as a particle as a stream of photons to explain photo-electricity which thus came as a full circle in Physics after Newton’s corpuscular theory of light which was later disproved by Huygen’s wave theory to support interference and diffraction. It was then accepted that light can be treated as a particle as well as a wave in different conditions in concurrence with Nature’s duality. Similarly Einstein’s E=mc^2 also propounded that mass and energy are interconvertible and they are nothing but two different states in which any thing can exist. De Broglie’s equation also showed that even humans can be treated as a wave when they run but we don’t do that because the wavelength is too small to be significant. But one cannot deny its existence.

Even electricity and magnetism previously treated as separate subjects are now accepted as different expressions of the same force when seen from different frames of reference. The power of 2 and its powers can be seen from the Egyptian legend. It says that once a king was impressed with a farmer and asked to him choose anything as his reward. The clever farmer said that he wants the courtroom measured and for the first square inch he needs a rice grain and for each further square inch measured double the previous number of rice grains would be added. The king laughingly acceded but little did he expect that at the end of the measurement that number would be staggering.

Coming back to duality Nature has very rightly chosen this principle in order to maintain the balance in its scheme of things. The perfect example is the presence of two forms in its most exalted creation-humanity. Masculine and feminine are two completely contrasting forms having different views, ideas, psychology, mental make-up everything so to speak. But no one form is superior to the other as a whole. The feminine might be responsible to for the deliverance of new life but even that is not possible without the masculine. The spiritualists would say a child is the Divine’s reflection because it is a result of the union of the two forms and when the two forms unite in Nature – it might be physics, maths, philosophy- it becomes the whole and either completely destroys itself or creates a completely new form.

The Gita says the events are the results of one’s own actions. The old adage says “As you sow, so you reap”. Everything happens in a two bit cycle of cause and effect. Cause and effect- again two in number. That’s why they say Nature and life- “it’s a game of quid pro quo.” You give some you take some. Give and take.