Ramanujan, A biopic: A bounden responsibility to view, celebrate and introspect

Seldom does Indian cinema venture to make a biopic on a Mathematician or a Scientist. For the sheer audacity to conceive and execute this project,  Mr. Gnanasekaran deserves our respect and admiration.

The movie itself may be flawed, but it still becomes our bounden responsibility to view the film, celebrate and introspect.

Why should the life of Ramanujan be celebrated?

For me the Ramanujan as the autodidact holds greater fascinantion than Ramaujan as a mathematician.  In a sense, autodidacticism is "learning on your own" or "by yourself", and an autodidact is a self-teacher. Autodidacticism is a contemplative, absorptive procession(Courtesy: Wikipedia)

Ramanujan seems to have acquired a Book  in his teens, “ A synopsis of Elementary results in Pure and Applied Mathematics” by George Shoobridge Carr, The book was simply a compilation of thousands(6165?) of mathematical results, mostly set down with little or no indication of proof. It was in no sense a mathematical classic; rather, it was written as an aid to coaching English mathematics students facing the notoriously difficult Tripos examination, which involved a great deal of wholesale memorization. But in Ramanujan it inspired a burst of feverish mathematical activity, as he worked through the book's results and beyond. This in itself should be inspiration.

How did a brain without any formal education, split open the labyrinth of numbers, go berserk, to intuitively(for want of a better word) arrive at functions and solutions, for which scientists had to spend close to a hundred years to find a solution(like Mock Theta Function)?

Thanks to Mr. Gnana Rajasekaran, for sowing seeds of introspection.

In a country of a billion people, Is it possible that we have lost several Srinivasa Ramanujan’s over the years?

Do we have a system which nurtures scientific temper in this country?

Have we not spent a lot of tax payers money in developing institutes of engineering, technology and science, with nothing to really show for?

How many Nobel laureates or Fields Medals have these institutes produced?

Forget about the Nobel prizes, is there a culture of Research and Development in this country?

Are we still not feudal in our mindsets, Will we always remain insecure or will we usher in a culture of meritocracy?

Don’t you think it is our bounden duty to celebrate heroes who had the audacity to pursue their passion, despite constraints of penury and deep physical distress and brought advancement to the human kind and pride to this country.

If have an ask for Mr. Ganana Rajasekaran, while you are trying to create a honest reproduction of the biopic Sir, I would certainly have seen you exercise your poetic license, to show Ramanujam, more heroic in his conquests and less burdened by his constraints.

I would not be bothered about the length of the movie or the melancholy or sentimentality or the any of the flaws, it is enough for me to get to transported to an important chapter of world history.

Highly recommended for Parents to see the movie along with the children.

I really hope the schools in Chennai make sure all their students see the movie, discuss, and celebrate mathematics and create a fervor that it deserves.

P.S:  Ramesh Vinayagam’s music and the brilliant use of Thirumazhisai Alwar or is it Thiru mangai Alwar?, “Vinn Kadantha Jothiye” , another great reason why you want to see the film and , Suhasini’s effortless acting, probably her best performance till date as Ramanujam’s mother. My nominee for the best support actress for this year.