When Abhimanyu met Heisenberg

Advanced software helps unearth a deadly secret that lay trapped inside the chakravyuh for centuries...

The truth’s finally out as to why Abhimanyu couldn’t make his way out of the chakravyuh. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t because his mother, Subhadra had fallen asleep when he was in her womb, listening to his father, Arjuna demystify the unassailable military formation. Abhimanyu was good enough to have gotten out of there in his sleep. The problem was more complex – traffic diversions.

Research scientists have made use of ChakraView, a Stellarium-based Astronomy Simulation Software that helps predict planetary movements and configurations, and have figured out how and why Abhimanyu lost the plot and his way when he was trying to exit the deadly formation.

One of their key findings reveals that technology was pretty radical back then. Sanjaya’s ‘vision’ of the battle happening several miles away was a classic demonstration of Augmented Reality. However, for snooping into a family feud between two sets of brothers, he was cursed. “Will I never have an idol built in my honour?” he asked. “Worse, your namesake will be on American Idol. And if you really are as clairvoyant as they make you out to be, you’ll know the rest,” the voice from yonder resonated, amidst guffaws.

From the pushpaka vimana to invisible cloaks, time travel and out-of-body experiences, men had also perfected several futuristic ways of travel that negated the need for flyovers or a metro rail network. This explains why neither history nor mythology has thrown any light on traffic diversions in the past. But the influx of armies warned the local authorities at Kurukshetra of an imminent traffic jam. And that was how it all began.

Traffic proceeding straight towards Hastinapura was diverted at Kurukshetra Junction to take the route via Anga and a detour south of Bhadrika. The stretch from Indraprastha to the battlefield was made one-way, with entry only for chariots and infantry from Dwaraka, and a no entry from the Magadha-Kekaya Junction.

On the Assapura stretch, heavy vehicles like eight-wheeled chariots and elephants were not allowed. Instead, they had to go via Vanga, traverse the stretch between Pandya up to Kasi, and enter from Chedi, with a no entry in the general direction of the Vidharba junction.

At a time when heat-seeker missile arrows, implosion-type nuclear weapons and other hi-tech artillery were commonplace in war, finding his way in and out of these traffic diversions was child’s play for the 16-year old Abhimanyu. After all, he had GPS installed, which accounted for lane closures, VIP convoys and of course, traffic modifications.

The Kauravas knew this and rushed to their commander Dronacharya, who decided to juxtapose Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle with the principles of warfare. While there’s uncertainty about everything in life (except death and taxes, according to Benjamin Franklin), Heisenberg made certain that he made a name out of his theory on uncertainty. He had famously suggested that just as you figure out the route when travelling from point A to point B, traffic will be redirected in a way that will leave you uncertain about how to get there.

Applying this principle, Dronacharya brilliantly reversed and revised the traffic schedule several times. The chaos that ensued altered the celestial alignments of the stars and planets. This affected the satellites, causing Abhimanyu’s GPS to fail. And the Pandavas, caught in the various traffic diversions, failed to reach the spot on time.

Moral of the story: Even with the best of technology, don’t attempt to fight your way out of a traffic diversion. 

No IIT, only IT

The story of how technology offers a shorter, less painful passage to the US than the IITs…

Long, long ago, there was a time when technology didn’t mean computers and JEE didn’t stand for Java Enterprise Edition. Those were the heady days when everyone wanted to get into IIT. (“Man, if four days of Mood Indigo, Rendezvous or Mardi Gras can be such a blast, imagine how four years will be.”)

It was about pushing themselves, crossing the cut-off and scaling the pinnacle of excellence – in other words, a laborious exercise that few could succeed in. But times changed. Mardi Gras became Saarang. And the word ‘elitist’ was no longer popular. In fact, the most popular word in the dictionary was ‘popular’. So, to offer more opportunities to more students (as opposed to the elitist system that offers more opportunities to the same set of students), it was decided that an IIT would be opened in every state.

The next step would be to move from ‘popular’ and make it a rage, even if it would outrage a few puritans.  For this to happen, there would have to be an IIT in every city, and if needed, in every suburb. There were a few murmurs that the nomenclature, despite its common nature, could lead to a lot of confusion. For instance, someone hopeful of making it to IIT M or IIT K would be referring to IIT Mylapore and IIT Kilpauk, though the trained mind would tend to misinterpret it as IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur.

However, since the situation was yet to arise, these objections were dismissed and those needlessly trying to look for problems were asked to look elsewhere, like in the JEE question papers for instance.

So, year after year, India’s best tech minds passed out to begin an illustrious journey. They left their campus, they left the country, but what came as a surprise was that many of them left technology too. The result? A preference for KPMG, FMCG and RPG, but not technology.

Now, all those not getting into IIT had a problem – their decent scores got them into decent colleges, but the obscene fees they paid were not translating into obscene salaries. More importantly, they weren’t able to follow the famous Pet Shop Boys diktat – ‘Go West’.

While the better brains were westward bound, there was something else coming up in our backyard, like a mammoth beehive, with honey on tap and a non-stop buzz – information technology. The IT industry had arrived and soon, IT engineers were attracted to it in swarms. Unfortunately, there were more H1Bs than worker bees and this led to several projects being hived off to other countries.

The wise men had to do something about the vacancies and opened their doors wider to ‘non-IT engineers’, with back-up options for non-engineering graduates, non-graduate students and non-student passers-by – hopefully, they would never be needed.

So, year after year, the cream of India’s engineers passed out to begin an illustrious journey. From marine to mining engineering, from organic farming to organic chemistry, everyone took to IT like cricketers to IPL. And IT took them to the US.

Where complex algorithms, Euclidean geometry and linear programming failed in finding the shortest path to the US, another form of technology had succeeded.  Students finally figured that they didn’t have to get into IIT to go west - they just had to get into IT.

Ultimately, it took the best technology to disprove the theory that two I’s were better than one.