Pruebas de validación experimental para derivaciones matemáticas

BACK IN SIDDHARTHA ENGINEERING College in Vijayawada, I used to be involved in a lot of gang fights, which were quite common in colleges during those days. I think college gang fights primarily emanate out of boredom and a lack of interest in studies. They provide excitement and adventure, and they are of course also about seeking power. The gang I headed wanted to beat up a very hot-headed guy called VT.

Those days there was a tough superintendent of police called Vyas posted in Vijayawada, who was a terror. His reputation was that he would beat the crap out of any law-breaker first and ask questions later.

So I came up with a plan that on the last day of the final exams, once VT came out of class after finishing the paper, we would beat him up and head to our respective hometowns, and the two-month holiday period would allow things to cool off. That was my plan. The hitch was that one of our gang members, Narsing, had an exam that was deferred to the next day. I was afraid that he would be picked up by the police after we beat up VT and left. And we could not postpone beating VT up to the next day as he was leaving for his hometown the same day. So I cancelled the operation.

Then I thought of a more elaborate plan. I carefully leaked out information in a very subtle and strategic way that we were going to beat up VT on the day of his final exam. The news reached VT, which police came and arrested us along with VT, and put us in two separate lock-ups at Patamata police station. I lied to the cops and implicated all of VT’s supporters who had refused to cross over to my side in the attack. The fact that my friend Ravinder had been stabbed and VT caught red-handed with the bloody knife, turned the case totally in our favour. The police believed my story. They slapped a case of attempt to murder on VT and arrested all the guys whose names I had given on charges of assault. So in one master stroke, I managed to finish the opposition gang. We were released from lock-up after our

statements were recorded. VT’s parents came and pleaded with me to get Ravinder to take back his complaint and get VT off the hook. I complied and VT was released on bail.

But the point I want to make relates to a conversation I overheard while I was in lock-up, which taught me one of the most important lessons of my life.

A sub-inspector of police was talking casually on phone to some friend of his and mentioned in passing that some kids had been quarrelling at Siddhartha College so the police had brought them in. The incredibly bored tone in which he said it suddenly brought into focus for me how small everything really is in the larger scheme of things. Beating up VT which we had felt to be of such importance, the months of planning that had gone into it, Ravinder being in hospital with a stab wound, VT charged with attempt to murder—everything seemed so trivial when seen from the point of view of the sub-inspector who probably saw much more serious cases, day in and day out. We had created a world centred on just VT and us, and for all practical purposes the fight with VT was a world war for us.

As I thought about it, I slowly started realizing that there is no fundamental difference between two kids at school fighting over a pencil, and India and Pakistan fighting over Kashmir. It’s just the arms and scales that differ. What happened to VT and me at college seemed small to the sub-inspector at Patamata police station. What happened at Patamata police station would seem trivial to SP Vyas, who headed Vijayawada police; what happened at Vijayawada would seem small from the perspective of Andhra as a whole, India as a whole, and so on. As we keep cutting to the perspectives of people with different agendas and priorities, nothing is truly important any more. So, as it happened to the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, wisdom dawned upon me in the Patamata police lock-up.

The second time I was in lock-up was at Panjagutta police station in Hyderabad, when a raid was conducted on all video libraries, including mine, based on a complaint filed by A. Purnachandra Rao, the producer of Amitabh Bachchan’s Aakhree Raasta. The raid was to find out if we had pirated versions of Aakhree Raasta, and 800 video cassettes were seized from my shop. In those days, pirated versions of new films usually had fictional labels on them. So, the only way for the cops to find out was to check all the cassettes physically. While they were doing so, I was in lock-up. The difference this time compared to Vijayawada was that my folks at home had come to know, and the tension and humiliation for them was unbearable. As my cousins used some influence to get me out as fast as possible, I spent just the night in lock-up. It was not so much being inside that bothered me as the tension of the folks. Sometime around midnight, a pickpocket was brought to the police station and literally thrown into the same lock-up. He just calmly stretched himself, nodded at me, took off his shirt and, using it as a pillow, went to sleep comfortably in a corner. I just sat up the whole night and, at one point of time after the inspector had gone home, I saw all the constables gather in one room. It took me a while to realize that they were watching a blue film which they had seized in the raid.

I dozed off and woke up to find to my surprise, the pickpocket and a constable sitting on the floor on either side of the bars, sipping tea and chatting about their families. If you took out the bars separating them, they could just have been two friends. Later the inspector, talking to me, said, ‘These rich bastards, close to the inspector. He shared both his on-the-job experiences and his perspectives on crime at a

human level with me, often allowing me to hang out at the police station just to study and observe the happenings there.

These experiences allowed me to understand the psychology of criminals and cops, which was later reflected in my films. So the two times I was in the lock-up I would say have majorly contributed to my understanding of human psychology and behaviour, and as I already had a cinematic bent of mind it was inevitable that I dramatically drive that understanding far deeper through the use of the film medium. More than the lessons in civil engineering, I would say those lessons in the lock-up were truly an education.

Chapter 18

My World

YOU SEE WITH YOUR sense of sight, hear with your sense of hearing, feel with your sense of touch. And all these senses are nothing but functions of your mind, and the mind is nothing but a thought which is an idea.

So when you close your eyes and go to sleep, the world ceases to exist and it comes back to you when you wake up in the morning, and it is experienced in different shapes and forms by every living being on the planet. It follows that each and every one of us has our own world which cannot really be seen or experienced by anybody else no matter how close they are to us.

This world of each of us is made up of a combination of our own individual experiences, sensibilities, knowledge and intelligence, however small, big or different they might be. belong to everybody in the team but the failures belong to me and me alone. This is because each and every artist and technician has contributed to the best of their ability as required by that portion of my world that I wanted to create in that particular film, and only I know which contribution of theirs has enhanced which part of the film. But if any visitor ventures into my world and does not like it, that is completely my failure alone.

Anyway, coming back to my worldly gyan, as long as you are sure of what your own world is, understand it and how you want to shape it and live in it, life more or less becomes a fantasy and you can have one hell of a time, the way I do.

My world consists of powerful people, intense music, sexy women, vodka, gangsters, ghosts and philosophies which I can twist and turn to my convenience.

As for the other realities of life like social responsibilities, family values and various such lofty ideals, I just close my eyes and go to sleep…

Chapter 19