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One day you're browsing in a bookstore, and sitting on a shelf, adjacent to one another, are three books. Two are clearly labeled. The first, Murakami's "What I talk about when I talk about running", trade paperback. The third, Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart, a book-club hardback with a slightly torn dust-jacket. The middle book, squeezed between two others of your favorite author, is unidentifiable. The book is hardback, no dust-jacket, brown cover, grey binding. You open it up to see that it's missing its publication pages. Copy-write info? Gone. Title page? Absent. TOC? Completely lacking. The only preliminary page before the first chapter is the epigraph; it says the following:"Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting" -MurakamiAs you inspect the book further, you see that chapters are only identified by numbers, and none of the pages have the book title in the header. You notice several of the pages are dog-eared, and there seem to be dark tan stains on some pages. In between the ridges of the rough-cut paper, you find black and white cat dander.Flipping through some of the pages you notice the story is about a Japanese boy who likes to cook noodles in his small apartment and hang out with his cat. There is talk of rain, and erections, and the indomitable ability of trains to make him feel lonely. As you flip to the back of the book, you notice the last page has only two lines. They read:One day you're browsing in a bookstore, and sitting on a shelf, adjacent to one another, are three books. Two are clearly labeled.

Thank Jawahar Lal Nehru, who is being described as a major problem, a looter, and a cheater by the BJP. He figured it out - though he could not complete the job.Give Sardar Patel the credit for bringing the Princely States into India. OK, give Nehru a demerit for leaving Kashmir a political mess that has lasted and lasted.By the way, what was the RSS doing at that time? Solidly into nation-building, I take it. Except, no one found out about it. But, who knows, when they rewrite history, it will turn out that they were the major force in making India united.Anyhow, back to Nehru. His Cabinet was representative of India - all regions represented. All religions represented. And, the Cabinet ministers had power - not people who were toothless technocrats. Think of Kamaraj. And, he listened to them. And, he listened to Parliament.One critical issue was the organization of the States. The Government found the right formula - which was criticized at that time. Linguistic States - except there were several Hindi speaking states. People felt that this would divide India, and India would fall apart. It did not.Keeping people from so many religions in one country. It was unique in the world. No country has so many religions. The solution was to be keep religion out of government, and let people follow their religion. It has worked well so far. No one scores 100/100. There were and there are problems. But, Nehru scored high.The Constitution called for Hindi to be made a national language. Southern States fought it. Nehru ‘caved’ in. (Pakistan imposed Urdu on East Pakistan. They broke off and formed Bangladesh.) Right decision. India was not ready for Hindi as a national language. Over time, Hindi, Hinglish, Bombay Hindi have spread. Perhaps a new national language is emerging. We’ll see.India was a world leader. The Non-aligned Movement was led by Nehru, Tito, Nkrumah, Nasser, and Sukarno. Hundreds - not a typo - countries said they were non-aligned. For sure, India was seen as a poor country - but also seen as a world leader. Educated Indians were proud of India. India was a powerhouse in the UN.Then, he formed so many All-India institutions. IIT, IIM, AIIMS. People from all over India were their faculty and students.Makes for integration. Practices Unity in Diversity.Under him, the Indian Armed Forces remained dedicated to the country - not to any particular group or region. When they used Hindi, they wrote it in the Roman script - not Devanagiri. People from all over India could read them. That continues to today.The President was from the North. The VP was from the South. And then made the first VP the President, with a Muslim VP (right, not in Pakistan, but in India.) All highly qualified people.Get the picture? Nehru laid the foundations for a united, powerful India.No one scores 100/100 in real life. He left behind some problems, some of which persist today. Let today’s leaders solve them. And build the skyscraper on the foundations that he laid.Off-topic: Memories of Pre-Independence IndiaI have created an edited ebook related to personal memories of the pre-1947 era.The ebook is 275 pages. The stories are from the indiaofthepast website. There are 31 contributing authors – Indians from different parts of India, Britishers, and one Pakistani - who have written their their memories of the area that was India before and on the day of independence.Some of the memories are about events, some are personal remembrances and some are mini biographies of people. Older readers will find the book nostalgic while younger ones will enjoy the personalized narrative of history.Please see this link for the cover pages and the Table of Contentshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/subodh-mathur-90a99282/detail/recent-activity/shares/

I am a current mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge. I’ll try to give an idea of what it’s like here.Getting InFirstly, to even be admitted to Cambridge, excellent school grades are not sufficient. This is the very minimum required to even be invited to interview. Once at interview, you’ll be presented with unseen problems and have to try and work out solutions on-the-spot.If you are successful, you then have an even bigger challenge. You need to sit - and perform well in - Cambridge’s own mathematics exams. There are three of them - STEP 1, STEP 2, and STEP 3 - each being 3 hour exams. Students sit them in the summer that they sit their A-level exams, so are expected to be familiar with the entire syllabi of A-level Mathematics, Further Mathematics, etc.The level of problem-solving ability demanded by STEP papers are far beyond school/A-level mathematics. Moreover, the breadth of mathematics knowledge that any one question can draw upon is far greater. Each question is designed to take 30–45 minutes to complete - and that’s for the top performers: if you solve, say, 5 problems to a good degree, you will very likely be in the top 10% of candidates.To give an idea of the difficulty of STEP, when I first began attempting past papers I could not solve a single problem in less than two hours. Yet I consistently achieved 95%+ in maths tests at school.So, even getting in is extremely difficult.Cambridge MathematicsCambridge terms are very short: a mere 8 weeks.Combine this with the fact that we learn a tonne of content in those 8 weeks, and, well, it becomes very difficult and time-intensive to stay on top of everything.You are expected to pick things up quickly and to begin solving difficult problems from the get-go. Problem sheets will generally contain very few ‘easy’ problems that ‘only’ require you to understand the material and apply that knowledge straightforwardly. Most problems - particularly in the pure mathematics courses - will require you to be creative in some way, shape or form, as well as knowing the material in-depth.I spent my summer before coming to Cambridge learning a subject called real analysis, using a book called Calculus. In my second term at Cambridge, we had an ‘introductory’ course on real analysis. In the first two problem sheets given out (which we were expected to attempt after about 10 lectures) were problems I had seen in Calculus - except that in the book, they appeared after two-hundred and fifty pages of slowly developing the theory. Compare that to the 10 hours of preparation we were given to solve them!Another good example is a course by the name of Metric and Topological Spaces, which covers near enough everything in Introduction to Metric and Topological Spaces by W. Sutherland. This book is 216 pages long. Our course? Twelve one-hour lectures. Bear in mind that this is an introductory course - we have no previous familiarity with any of the mathematics at the time of taking it - and the subject matter is highly abstract. To really put things into perspective, I’ve seen pretty much the same course being taught in thirty lectures at other top universities.This is a recurring theme across all of the courses I have taken here. Every time I look at the recommended textbooks, I find that we’ve covered pages and pages worth of material in the space of a lecture or two.Cambridge really pushes you. It can be very stressful, particularly during the exam period (which is right now…).But, on the upside, I am consistently surprised at how much I’ve learned in such a short space of time.