"Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe" this statement by Galileo Galilee has inspired me to forage equations and expressions in the field of Mathematics. His tale of the search for information is filled with a quest to achieve what he dreamt of, stimulated every day, and motivated me to read and learn more about him during the early days of my childhood. I did fillip my students with his stories and success whenever necessary during the classes, and I realized students had fun learning about him, his invention, and his struggle. Many students even had tears at the corner of their eyes when we were left with only one question at the end of how passionate he was to go against the world to defend science to the antiquated society resulting in his own ruin was? I wished every day and prayed to God to fill me with that amount of passion for dance. Jathi is a predominant part of Bharata Natyam dance items like Varnam, Padam, etc. Jathi is a combination ...

Ever wondered why the dancer jumps at many instances during the dance recital? Leaps and jumps are the essential steps of Bharta Natyam dance items. The jumps or leaps remain choreographed, not just for visual beauty. Its existence is mainly for space management. Traditionally, most jumping steps, are always followed by Theermanam adavu with/without pauses. The physics in the jump is an exciting area to explore and the forces acting on the human body under the jumping action. Few jumps are longer in time, and few hops are short sometimes. The leaps of the shorter duration are quick. Hence the effort of the dancer and the physics involved in it might go unnoticed. A forward jump emerges at the end of Alarippu, the first dance in Bharata Natyam Margam. The timing of the jump is choreographed approximately to one second. Hence the dancer will raise their body above the ground level and land back on the floor within the specified time. A new world of physics can be seen here with precise o...

One must leave the night behind to embrace a glorious morning, but not its memories. Perhaps the same administers to all the dance students. Unlike our school and college lessons, one need not remember all the chapters studied in the previous grades to move on to the next level. In dance, to learn a new item, one has to imperatively remember and master the formerly known dance lessons. As soon as I finished learning all the fundamental and essential adavu, I was excited to start my first dance of life. I prayed to Lord Natarajan that day, hoping for better memory and strength to learn the dance.  The dance was Ganesha shloka dedicated to the Lord Ganapathi, the song, and the dance was composed and choreographed by My Guru Smt. Gayathri Keshavan by extracting the lines from Ganapathi Puranam In Raga Malika and set to Mishra chapu Thalam. My Guru described to me that Mishra chapu is one of the classifications of Nadai ( Rhythmic patterns) with seven counts. The song I was about to le...

 Few parts of society have this misconception about the teaching methodology; I have often heard it from many people "Teachers do not update themselves with the new information as they are busy teaching the same chapters again and again for many years." It's not right, and blaming teachers for this doesn't make any sense in my perspective. In a small span of my teaching career, I had to teach the same chapter repeatedly in many classes. Many a time, I had students running to me and asking me to explain the same section again till they understood it.  One such chapter I was requested to teach repeatedly was Permutation and combination. Somehow this topic is a nightmare to many students even today. Schooling the same section in a loop gives a new idea to explain a specific problem differently. Every time, I had to explain the same concept with a recent example and explanation so that students did not forget it and understand it better. It was July 2017. The topics for t...

  According to Hindu mythology, Mount Meru is the sacred and the centre of the  metaphysical universe. The word Meru roughly translates to the great or highest. The texts of Hindu mythology provide the description of mount Meru. It’s conical in nature at the outer appearance similar to the triangle. It's tapered in nature. Among many mathematicians, Acharya Pingala and Bhaskar Acharya were the first in the world to explain the concept of numbers in triangles. It is woeful to see how the discovery is created by the French mathematician Blaise pascal and the term is coined as pascal’s triangle. Combinatorics is a substantial branch of mathematics that deals with the counting of numbers and finite structures. Computational molecular biology, computer architecture and pattern analysis are the few areas of applications of combinatorics. Analysis of patterns present in images or signals helps scientists understand the structure and behaviour of elements. Dance is not far from all of...