Saint Venant's Principle And Our Insignificance

We are all so absorbed by the happenings around us, that we feel, the events happening "Now" and "Here" are the ones which matter at all. Have we ever paused to think, what significance, these events will have, if we view them from a vantage point far removed in space and time?

We are tickled by the "Accountant-Businessman" in St. Exupery's "The Little Prince", who does not have a moments respite from his occupation of counting and enumerating stars, which he believes will belong to him, once he has recorded them in his ledger. This seems humorous to us, because we think of stars as too far away to be owned by any one. Pondering on this a little deeper, we can understand how utterly insignificant we and are affairs are, when viewed on the cosmological scale, and our insatiable desire to "own" is ludicrous indeed.

Study of "Cause" and "Effect" has occupied human thought through the ages. When ever the causal link could be established with a degree of certainty, we have cried "Eureka". At other times we have been stupefied at "disproportionate" effects of small causes. The title from the seminal paper by Edward Lorenz, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" succinctly called the "Butterfly Effect", describes the import of small triggers in causal relationships in chaotic systems .

In Structural Mechanics, which is a study of "Loads" and their effect on "Structures", predictions would have been extremely difficult, but for the "Saint Venant's Principle", which essentially states in layman's language that, at distances sufficiently far from the actual area of application of load, the "type" of load is immaterial, only its "value" matters.

In our lives too, we can see the principle at work. When ever we are faced with a situation, where we feel cornered, we can get solace, by just remembering, that as time passes, all that is happening will have no significance at all. If we get the perspective right, every thing seems insignificant, and we realise, how puny, we and our actions are.

Bridges not Walls

From Miraj, a small town in South Maharashtra, till recently, ran a narrow gauge line to Pandharpur, a famous Vaishnav pilgrim place, visited by millions of devotees from all over India. The Railway line was commissioned way back in 1927, and was called "Barshi Light", the train was popularly nicknamed "God's Vehicle" (Devachi Gadi") . For over three fourths of a century, it carried the "Vithal" devotees, who would bear all hardships for just a sight of the smiling idol. The train took all day to travel a distance of 135 KM. Yet people went.

Times change and, the old has to make way for the new. With the Indian Railways deciding on a single Broad Gauge for all tracks, through out India, it was inevitable that this Narrow Gauge line would have to be up graded.

This line went over several bridges, most of them were beautiful masonry arch bridges, built from dressed quartzite stone using lime mortar.

It must have been fascinating indeed, for our ancestors to cross a rapidly flowing stream, using a log, which had luckily fallen across the stream, and at the same time was long enough to have "bridged" it.

Bridges have fascinated us ever since. From the simplest ones to those that are no less than monuments, great testimonials, indeed, to our ingenuity and sheer grit.

Today a Bridge is not just a structure, which helps us cross physical barriers, but has entered our daily lexicon, as a facilitator which helps us cross all barriers, including emotional ones. The famous line from a song sung by Simon and Garfunkel, "Like a Bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down". comes to my mind.

One such bridge, near Miraj, though not a great monument, but certainly having it's own identity, and charm, never failed to gladden my heart, for it's sheer beauty. I felt proud, that I belonged, to a profession, which could create some thing so nice, out of mundane materials like stone and lime.

Alas this bridge too will have to go. It simply cannot take on, the heaver and faster trains, that will soon start running on the new line. I know for sure, the bridge, that will replace this beautiful one, will be an ugly concrete structure, sans any individuality. It will certainly be functional, but will not warrant a second glance. Forget creating aspirations, in the minds of the viewers.

I have always wondered, at the "vanishing", of the Cheshire cat in Lewis Carrol's "Alice's Adventures in Wonder Land". The cat disappears, but the grin on it's face lingers on, prompting Alice to reflect that, "I have seen a cat without a grin, but not a grin, without a cat".

I hope, when the Bridge is gone, the aspirations it created still linger on.
And one day when better times return, we learn to build, beautiful structures again, the sight of which, will make our heart leap with happiness.

As Yousuf Raza Gillani, Prime Minister of Pakistan, recently said, in a different context, India and Pakistan should build "Bridges" and not "Walls".

The Tide of Fortune

I have always prided myself of being a rationalist to the core, and any mention of providence or fate or luck has always been anathema.

During our college days we played a game of cards, popularly called "Flush", it is a pure game of chance, with no claims to even an iota of skill, except an ability on the part of the player, to keep cool and reveal nothing by way of body language. A game very well suited, indeed, for hard core gambling. Off course our meagre resources, in those parsimonious times, did not permit us fancy stakes, so we played with small change.

I being a non-smoker had passed a diktat, that my room-mate shall not smoke in the room. He got back at me, by insisting that no gambling take place in our room. Off course there was no dearth of rooms in the hostel, where our game was always welcome. Some times the host would not play at all, but the sheer thrill of fortunes (if at all those meagre sums could be addressed thus!) being made and lost, was a treat, not to be missed.

My grounding in Mathematics had taught me, what the probabilities would be, of drawing various combinations for a hand of Three cards, so playing "blind", or asking for "show" or "quiting" were decisions not too difficult to make. My demeanour too, being of a somber type, my opponents, by watching me, could never glean the true strength of my hand. In short I was a fairly adept gambler.

Thankfully, as my grades dropped that semester, I quit "Flush" altogether. We shifted to the more brainy "Rubber Bridge".

One aspect of "Flush", though, has always haunted me. Probability had taught me that over a period of time, all players have the same chance of getting "good" or "bad" cards. Strangely my observations were contrary! If it is your day, you would go on getting good cards, and if it wasn't your day you would go on getting bad cards, game after game.And to beat it, on such bad days, even if you happened to get good cards, either your opponents would just quit, making the pile of winnings meagre, or someone would come up with a highly improbable set of better cards, not only taking away the winnings, but adding hurt to injury, as higher stakes were put on the table commensurate with the good hand.

I know a rationalist would dispute this by saying that the game has to go on for a sufficiently long time to get the "equalising" effect of probability. But the moot point is for how long?

In life too, I have observed, that more than any thing else, it is a fortuitous quirk of fate, which is the doing or undoing of one's destiny.

Shakespeare has called it a "tide". ("There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures".)

We all know how quirky tides are, this one too, is no exception, and to beat it, it never comes announced, any way how are we to know, that when it comes, it is the right one indeed.

Here comes destiny!

Fear of God

Intellectuals have disputed quite vehemently, the existence of God as we know Him (Prophets have made the world believe that it is a Him, and not a Her or a It, most of us Indians being pan-theists believe in Him, Her & also It). Although we would like to believe, that we believe in God out of Love, the plain truth is that this belief comes from Fear.

Every day as I drive to work, I cross an abandoned Industrial Unit, and cannot but feel dismayed at the way it has been rampaged. I have seen it systematically been stripped of all its machines, then its furniture, then its doors and windows and even the tiles. Today the structure stands desolate, waiting to be pilfered further and one day there will be nothing remaining.

In the same compound there stands a small temple,( this was built by the owners of the industry, in better times). Strangely not a rafter of this temple has been touched by the pilferers of the adjoining building!

Fear & Fear alone is at work here.