Devangshu Datta

How to be good in math -- 10 book recommendations newtraderu.com/2026/03/29/how…

We are having an old age home at 482 ,Vill: Asola Mehrauli. It is being run for the last 26 years. No donations, gift or any kind of private and govt is accepted. Around 42 persons, above the age 85 years live here. Everything is free from breakfast to lunch to dinner. Free medical and clothing. We booked two LPG cylinders on 3rd March with Bharat Gas Ltd, Shyam ji enterprises consumer no 69263233 in the name of Rakesh jain trustee. Another in the one resident of old age home ( GHARONDA). Till date we have not received it. There was no gas available so we gave them bread and fruits. Agent doing black marketing are asking 3200 rupees. I have asked my manager at old age home to wait till tomorrow or else buy from open market. Though this will be the last thing I will like to do in my life. @DILIPtheCHERIAN @iamnarendranath @bainjal @rohini_sgh @JournoAshutosh @NidhiKNDTV @maryashakil @sakshijoshii @BPCLimited @BPCLLPG @PMOIndia @HardeepSPuri

Narendra Modi Airport Scam 6 out of the 7 airports inaugurated in Uttar Pradesh by BJP govt have turned into Ghost Airports with no passengers or flights, thousands of crores of tax payers money gone into the ditch! Who benefitted from these ? x.com/i/status/20259…

4PM YT channel: withheld Molitics FB page: withheld National Dastak FB page: withheld Mukesh Mohan: defamation case Nehr_who, Nimo Yadav, & many other X accounts: withheld Imagine the entire mainstream media doing your chatukarita 24x7, having a huge IT Cell to defend you, and still feeling insecure because of a few social media accounts??

Syed vegetable vendor deposited ₹44,63,900 in his bank account. But when the tax officer asked him to explain the transactions through notices, he ignored them. Here’s what happened when the case reached ITAT Bengaluru.🧵👇

Form 6 in Thousands are being submitted by the BJP in West Bengal by enlisting voters from Bihar/UP prior to Assembly elections. Will the @CEOWestBengal @ECISVEEP enquire before enlisting any such voter. @IamSumanDe @Sharmis22999235 @MoupiaNandy

It's the birthday of Stefan Banach—a man whose brilliance was so natural that he had to be gently tricked into earning his own PhD. Banach was not the kind of person who chased degrees or academic titles. He loved mathematics deeply, but he had little interest in writing formal papers or preparing a doctoral thesis. To him, discussing ideas and solving problems mattered far more than collecting credentials. But his colleagues saw something extraordinary in him. They knew his ideas deserved recognition, and they were determined to help him achieve it—whether he cared for it or not. So they came up with a clever plan. They arranged for an assistant to regularly meet with Banach under the pretense of casual mathematical discussions. During these meetings, the assistant quietly took detailed notes of Banach’s thoughts, proofs, and insights. Over time, these notes grew into a complete doctoral thesis—without Banach ever formally “writing” one himself. When it was ready, Banach simply reviewed and approved it. There was still one final step: the oral examination. Once again, his colleagues used a bit of creativity. They invited Banach to discuss a mathematical problem they claimed to be struggling with. Banach, always eager to talk mathematics, showed up without hesitation. What he didn’t realize was that this “discussion” was actually his official oral exam. He passed, of course—effortlessly. And that’s how one of the greatest mathematicians in history earned his PhD: not through formal ambition, but through pure love of ideas and a little friendly trickery.

Dr. Manmohan Singh was vilified for the rupee's performance when he was PM. Dr. Manmohan Singh (May 22, 2004 → May 26, 2014): INR/USD from ₹45.19 to ₹58.66 Depreciation: 29.8% over ~10 years Average depreciation: ~2.6%/year Narendra Modi (May 26, 2014 → March 27, 2026): INR/USD from ₹58.66 to ₹94.85 Depreciation: 61.7% over ~12 years Average depreciation: ~4.1%/year

Banks County Woman Arrested After Turning Numbered Pigs Loose in Walmart COMMERCE, GA — Shoppers at the Commerce Walmart were thrown into confusion Saturday afternoon after a local woman allegedly released four pigs—each spray-painted with the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5—into the store, triggering what authorities later described as “a logistical nightmare disguised as a math problem.” The Incident According to witnesses, 47-year-old Charlene Mixon entered the store pushing a buggy that appeared to be shaking and occasionally grunting. Employees assumed it was either a wobbly wheel or a normal Saturday. Moments later, Mixon allegedly opened the buggy, shouted “Run free!”, and four pigs scattered across the store—one toward Housewares, one toward Grocery, one toward Electronics, and one directly into the Vision Center. The Numbering Scheme The pigs were labeled 1, 2, 3, and 5, which immediately caused confusion among staff. “We spent an hour looking for pig number 4,” said assistant manager Trevor Haskins. “Then we realized there wasn’t one. I’m still mad about it.” Several customers joined the search, believing it was some kind of promotional event. Police Response Banks County Sheriff deputies arrived quickly, though officers admitted they were “not trained for livestock deployed with psychological warfare.” One officer slipped near the bacon section, which he later described as “deeply ironic.” All four pigs were eventually captured using two laundry baskets, a pallet of marshmallows, and one determined elderly greeter who said she had “handled worse at the Piggly Wiggly years ago.” Mixon was arrested without incident, though she did request that officers “let the pigs finish what they started.” Charges Authorities say she faces disorderly conduct, livestock at large, interference with commerce, and “creating unnecessary suspense via missing number 4.” The pigs were unharmed and transported to a local county animal control facility, where staff described them as “friendly and surprisingly fast.” Community Reaction Locals have already dubbed the event “The Great Walmart Pig Caper.” A Facebook group titled “Where Is Pig #4?” has gained hundreds of members.

58,000 Americans died in Vietnam. Over 3,000,000 Vietnamese died. And for fifty years, American culture has centered the grief of the 58,000 while treating the 3,000,000 as a backdrop. As scenery. As context. As "the Vietnam War experience." They built a wall in Washington with American names on it. A beautiful wall. A solemn wall. Good. Mourn your dead. But understand what that wall does not say. It does not say why they died. It does not say what they were doing there. It does not say what was done in their name to the people whose country it actually was. It does not mention My Lai, where American soldiers massacred an entire village, old men, women, children, babies, and the officer who ordered it served three years of house arrest before being pardoned. Three years. House arrest. Pardoned. For five hundred people murdered in a ditch. It does not mention the 2.7 million acres of Vietnamese forest doused in Agent Orange, a chemical weapon disguised as herbicide, that is still deforming Vietnamese children today. Not in 1970. Not in 1985. Today. Children born in 2020 with bodies twisted by a war their grandparents fought. And the chemical companies that made it are still in business. Still profitable. Still un-prosecuted. And yet they send us human rights reports. They grade our democracy. They warn us about our behavior. The audacity is so enormous it becomes almost impressive. Almost.

Rehan Ahmed Qureshi, a Nagpur resident who managed operations on the ground for Rembal, a beef company associated with the Gadkari family, told The Caravan’s former staff writer, Kaushal Shroff, that he entered the business because he believed Gadkari’s ownership would offer a measure of safety. He spotlighted the several run-ins that cattle traders have with the police and cow vigilantes. “People have made this business a political issue,” he told me. “On the ground level, it is the Muslims who control the business, and at the upper levels, it is the ghairs”—outsiders—“who control the business. Look at the owners of the big companies. People who don’t allow ginger–garlic masala in their houses are also in this business.” Rehan and those around him lived in daily fear. Drivers like Sharma and Paswan were arrested. Meanwhile, Nitin and Nikhil Gadkari posed alongside Mithr’s booths in food industry events abroad, with photographers carefully framing it such that the leaders would not have beef advertisements behind them as they smiled to Hindu nationalist audiences. Read the entire essay here: caravanmagazine.in/business/nikhi…

This could spell the end of independent journalism in India

Fresh Govt Takedown Orders on Facebook, X Target Mohammed Zubair, News Outlets Molitics and National Dastak This comes a few weeks after X, following a ‘legal demand’ due to govt orders, withheld accounts of several parody handles and activists in India. thewire.in/media/fresh-go…

A 79 year old professor is my current poster girl. In 2023, Claudia Goldin was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her work in women's labor market outcomes, the first woman to win the award solo. After her win, she was deluged with hundreds of requests of which she accepted just three. I am not sure of the first, but the second was to appear on the NPR quiz show in the US. And the third was advising the WNBA players union as the women prepared to negotiate a new labor deal with the league. The players union was ecstatic when Goldin replied, assenting to help them with just one requirement, she refused to be paid. Clearly Goldin is just not a theorist as, thanks to her, the Players Union and the WNBA reached a collective bargaining agreement that gave Women’s National Basketball Association players a nearly 400% raise. Starting this season, players’ average salary will top $580,000. Goldin has also always had Golden Retrievers and apparently would often read her papers aloud to them while working out models in her head. Is there anyway she can be more perfect.

@joybhattacharj Managed a 10, rare for me.

This week's quiz in the TOI

The Dictator has now targeted my organisation @moliticsindia . Our Facebook page is restricted in india. Coward!

Does this man look Chinese to you? This is an authenticated contemporary painting of Emperor Akbar At a Lit Festival yesterday, @authoramish said that it was absurd that we think Akbar looked like Prithviraj Kapoor. As per him, to our eyes, he would've appeared Mongolian or Chinese Also that his language wasn't Urdu but Turkish/Persian Nobody had asked him about this! He said it on his own as an example of the historical absurdities we believe... and repeated it about three times. According to him Akbar was Central Asian, looked nothing like an Indian Now I see this as a real problem when we've left history in the hands of so called history narrators instead of history scholars, because make no mistake, it is a scholarly discipline If Mr Tripathi had done even a bit of research on either history or geography he would have come to know that while Akbar's court language was Persian, by his generation, the spoken language in the royal household was close to what is now Brij Bhasha & Haryanvi - what later evolved into Hindustani. Akbar incidentally also was very interested in Sanskrit and Sanskrit texts. Of course, he was famously illiterate so could not read/write in any language Back to geography and Prithviraj Kapoor. Mr Kapoor was born in Peshawar probably in the same mohalla my grandmother (my parents are both Peshawar born) If only Tripathi had picked up a map of Asia, he would have found that even Babar's birthplace is only about 700 km from Peshawar - about 30% less than the distance between say, Delhi and Patna. The world is, surprise surprise, a continuum where faces don't magically transform at borders of modern nation states. That is why many in Mumbai persistently mistake me for a Parsi or Irani. Or why Prithviraj's son had blue eyes 😊 The burden of Mr Tripathi's song was that all history is biased with an unstated corollary that therefore any made up version of history is as good or valid as an academic's This is a dangerous slope in any field History ultimately has to be based on original (preferably contemporary) accounts if available, as well as other sources like archaeology, architecture, sculpture etc A close friend of mine, a world renowned business strategy professor, once said to me, "I've more in common with a Ph D in History or Physics than I have with a management practitioner. My mindset is that of an academic". He has the discipline of researching everything from original research papers so much so that during Covid all of us in the batch gave up trying to keep up with the fast changing medical research & delegated it entirely to him to read the papers properly and advise us on the latest research, along with the caveats That is the discipline of #academics! This whole thinking that no rigor is required to start spouting your version of history or anything else at all makes me wince Even assuming earlier #history writings are biased they've to be refuted by proper #research, not made up stories!

This person fact-checked Dhurandhar-2 and explained how the perpetrators of 26/11 were actually killed during UPA-2, not under BJP. Modi govt blocked his reel.... so he posted it again. That's twice as many people watching it now.😂

15 years ago, there was a Rugby World Cup in NZ. Shane Bond had gone back after a season with KKR, and I remember his happiness while following his social media feed when he got allotted some tickets in a ticket lottery. Shane Bond, legitimate Kiwi sporting legend, applying in a lottery for tickets for a game in his own country. That's a culture I would so love to see for India. Our politicians and bureaucrats are just so entitled about their rights to free tickets. Ask any IPL franchise dealing with police and local administration!

BJP supporters are busy digging up old tweets. Allow me to return the favour. RAM JETHMALANI. Not a Congress man. Not an anti-national. Not an opposition plant. BJP’s own founding member. Vajpayee’s Law Minister. India’s most feared criminal lawyer. He looked straight into a camera before he died and said: “I have to make a confession; I helped BJP cheat the people of India. I seek their forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn’t bring liberation, but it lightens the heart.” What was the lie that broke this 95-year-old man? ₹15 LAKH. The black money promise. The one Modi screamed at every single rally in 2014. Then Amit Shah; BJP’s own National President; admitted in 2015 that it was a “chunavi JUMLA.” His words. Not mine. A Ranchi court filed charges under Section 420; cheating and dishonesty; against Modi and Shah for this exact promise. That’s literally the law for con artists. Your own Law Minister called them CHEATERS; on record. Your own President confessed to the lie; on record. A court acknowledged the fraud; on record. And you’re out here digging up old Congress tweets. The audacity is honestly impressive. 💀