A Better Look at चेन्नई

Dear Diary,

Avid DAI readers recall that I had a little project going with Amri, one of the faculty at the IMSc Chennai, a mathematical research institute there.  From another point of view, I was horning in on a research project that Amri's former student Pooja had begun.  (Similarity of matrices mod p^2.)  Amri invited us both to Chennai in late April to put our heads together and try to squeeze out a joint paper.  So I flew back the 22nd for the third time.  This time I brought my camera, and was determined to take lots of videos for this very post.  Here is the first video:  a tour of the campus, taken on my final day.

You can see that the campus is remarkably integrated into its surroundings.  Visiting IMSc is like taking a mathematical safari, where lizards and monkeys and other wildlife abound.  Every so often the power goes off, and one waits a minute or two for the institute's generator to kick in.  One morning, as I was enjoying my breakfast, I looked down to find a lizard on my lap.  One might contrast the relaxed rusticity of IMSc with the sterile but sophisticated atmosphere of TIFR.  (Remember, TIFR is in a navy area that I'm forbidden from videotaping and posting on a public site.)

We did our math and it was fun.  Later we did some touring, the three of us and Amri's son Kailash (affectionately called Keshu) went to the Chennai Snake Park and later to the Chennai Children's Park.  Here is a video of us doting on Keshu at the Park; I hope you like that sort of thing.

Afterwards we met up with Amri's wife Anita and went to Dakshina Chitra.  This was something like a medieval fair, in the sense that it was a historical preservation of ancient houses and ways of life.  (But without so much suspension of disbelief, as in med fairs...)  Pooja kindly let me film her explaining some of the exhibits, and later we watched a Ramayana shadow puppet show.  Enjoy!

By the way, "Pooja" means "worship".  We also met Orissan artisan painting bamboo scrolls.  I bought a scroll depicting Ganesha's origin story (and later presented it to DAI's biggest fan).

In the end we figured out the 4 dimensional case of our math problem, and soon we will submit it for publication.

What fun!

Next: End of DAI season one.