This week-end was extremely well suited for cozy pursuits.
Rain slashed down, our surrounding hills sported snow caps and we proudly reveled in the rare beauty of green hills, snow capped peaks, gushing rivers, brimming lakes, rains that sometimes lashed down, other times, lulled and drizzled. In fact, one afternoon, we saw the sun light illuminate the clouds in so many different ways: there weren’t words to describe the crepuscular wonders anymore. The infinite ways in which watery sun and waxing moon can dazzle white, gray and thunderous clouds, is entertaining enough.
But as evening crept in, we found ourselves wondering whether a cozy family movie night might do the trick instead.
So, we settled down on both week-end nights to watch two movies that we knew would fascinate the son:
∞ The man who knew infinity – a movie about Ramanujan Srinivasan, the mathematics prodigy. Thomas Hardy , a mathematician at Cambridge who helped Ramanujan publish his works. Ramanujan eventually was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. The movie, while it had its good moments also felt oddly fragmented in parts.
The life of Ramanujan for a person of Indian origin is fairly well known. The poor man who lost his health and vigor to tuberculosis and died at the age of 32 leaving a younger wife behind is tragic.
It is also unnerving to see how hard belonging is. Our immigrant experience is so vastly different from the one Ramanujan braved a century ago. Yet, some of the questions remain: Do we belong to a geography? A culture? Or with like-minded human-beings?
Human kind’s need for social connections is a fascinating aspect (introverts, extroverts, families, friends, colleagues, the importance of whimsy, the energy of youth, and the wisdom of those wiser – every aspect seems to play a part in the worlds we construct around us)
None of this seems easy, and in that struggle lies the beauty of messy human lives.
🚀 Hidden Figures – the movie depicting the lives of 3 African American women who worked at NASA and were stalwarts in their respective fields.
As we sat watching the movies, there were places where we stopped to thank the stars that things seem to have improved for the better. Progress is never easy and the ones who braved the struggles placed in their path with resilience, hard work and good humor, are truly inspirational. The movie was also a good reminder of the human spirit and its capacity for the impossible. With computers having far less than the computing powers in our cell-phones, humankind was able to leave Earth’s atmosphere, orbit the planet, land on the moon and launch space vehicles to explore the solar system.
The movies were good reminders of a philosophy that is often not given as much importance as other aspects of philosophy: the pursuit of happiness via the pursuit of knowledge is tough, but endlessly rewarding. The truths we come to understand, the worlds we get to unravel are all gifts that keep on giving.
Nourish-n-Cherish 