Learning blossoms creativity

I am delighted to address and interact with the students of St Ann?s Junior College for Girls at Hyderabad. My greetings to Principal, Teachers, Staff, Students, and distinguished guests assembled here. I am happy that St Ann?s College has a vision to create a just society which special emphasis on ensuring dignity, rights and freedom to the women and children. It is impressive that this college caters to the educational needs of economically weaker sections of the society in Hyderabad and empowering the women with modern education backed with ancient philosophy, tradition and culture. When I am with you young friends, I would like to share few thoughts on the topic I am born with greatness.

Dear Friends, when I see you all, first I would like to share with you something interesting. Positive thoughts are a biological mandate for a happy healthy life. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi:

Your beliefs become your thoughts
Your thoughts becomes your words
Yours words become your actions
Yours actions become your habits
Yours habits become your values
Yours values becomes your destiny.

How does achievement come? There are four proven steps; having a great aim in life before 20 years of age, acquiring knowledge continuously, hard work towards the aim and perseverance to defeat the problem and succeed. In this connection let me recall the famous verses of 13th century Persian Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi:

Wings to Fly
"You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust.
You were born with ideas and dreams.
You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling,
so don?t, you have wings.
Learn to use them to fly."

- Jalaluddin Rumi
- 13th Century Persian Sufi Poet

My message to you, young friends, is that education gives you wings to fly. Achievement comes out of fire in our sub-conscious mind that "I will win". So, each one of you assembled here and elsewhere, will have "Wings of Fire". The Wing of Fire will indeed lead to knowledge which will make you to fly as a Doctor, or an Engineer, or a scientist, or a teacher, or a political leader, or a bureaucrat or a diplomat or anything you want to be. You all can do it.

Dear friends, let me share with you four examples drawn from unique personalities, the first is compassionate mind ?Sister Antonio; second Prof Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who took up planting of trees as planting an idea; third is Madam Madeleine de Blic who came from Belgium to India to pursue her mission of service to humanity, and fourth, Madam Curie who was the first one to be honoured with Nobel Prize twice in different fields.

Sometime back, I was reading a book called "Everyday Greatness". I would like to share one event which is essential component of our development today. Today, what we need is a leadership with compassion. Let me narrate one experience which happened in Mexico.

A riot was raging in La Mesa Prison in Mexico. Twenty five hundred prisoners were packed into a compound, which had been built for only six hundred. They angrily hurled broken bottles at the police who fired back with machine guns. Then came a startling sight. A tiny five feet two inches, sixty three year old woman, calmly got into the crowd, with outstretched hands, in a simple gesture of peace. Ignoring the shower of bullets, she stood quietly and asked every one to stop. Incredibly every one did. No one else in the world, but sister Antonia could have done this. Why did the people listen to her? All because of her decades of service to the prisoners by her choice. She sacrificed all her life for the sake of prisoners lived in the midst of murderers, thieves and drug lords all of whom she called her sons. She attended their needs round the clock, procured antibiotics, distributed eyeglasses, washed bodies for the burial and counseled the suicidal. This selfless act of love and compassion generated the respect among the prisoners to control themselves and urged them to do what she wanted them to do. What a great message for humanity? We have seen a leader with compassion is there for even prisoners, but we need leaders with compassion for the voiceless people of millions in the world.

Prof Maathai gave a new meaning to the important act of planting a tree by extending it to the whole life, when she said, "the planting of trees is the planting of idea." She highlights the qualities of patience, persistence and commitment in planning and realizing a future, which is what we learn when we plant trees and wait for them to yield fruits for the next generation. She believed that no matter how dark the cloud, there is always a thin, silver lining, and that is what we must look for. The silver lining will come, if not to us then to the next generation or the generation after that. And may be with that generation, the lining will no longer be thin. India values Prof Maathai?s involvement and contribution in furthering the relationship between India and Kenya and had the privilege of honouring her with the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding for the year 2005. She concludes her Nobel Lecture on December 10, 2004 like this: quote, "As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream? I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents". Prof. Mathaai would like all of us to preserve this inheritance.

Friends, few weeks back, I visited Puducherry to participate in the Golden Jubilee Celebration of Volontariat. This mission of Volontariat was started by Madam Madeleine de Blic who came from Belgium to India in 1962, to pursue her mission of service to humanity. Over the last five decades, this mission have empowered large number of children with education, facilitated re-habilitation of women and senior citizens and promoted organic farming in the local fields. When I looked at the service rendered by Volontariat, I am reminded of the advice given by the mother of Mahatma Gandhiji to Gandhiji when he was nine year old.

"Son, in your entire life time if you can save or better someone's life, your birth as a human being and your life is a success. You have the blessing of the Almighty God".

Madam Madeleine has saved thousands of lives in the last five decades and we are all grateful to her for this unique service. When I met her, I saw in her the service spirit of Florence Nightingale. The people lovingly call her "Amma! Madaleine Amma!" and these words of kindness radiate everywhere.

Madam Curie's life has been full of challenges. She was not afraid of the problems, she defeated the problems and succeeded. This experience of Madam Curie will definitely be an inspiration for all the women of the present and future generations.

Working together, it took Marie and her husband Pierre four years to isolate the radioactive source in a mixture of pitch-blend. Madam Curie used to carry a large quantity of pitch-blend on her head for extracting few grams of material in the laboratory which needed tons of ?pitch-blend?. That few grams of the material were her discovery. Marie named it as radium. For the discovery of radium, Marie and Pierre won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903, which they shared with their friend A. Henri Becquerel. Shortly, Marie found that what she had discovered was not pure radium, but she was able to isolate the element itself after quite a struggle. For this work, she was given the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911.

During her work, Marie discovered radiation could kill human cells. She reasoned that if it could kill healthy human cells, it could kill diseased human cells also and went about isolating radium for use in killing tumors. During the First World War, Marie Curie went to work for the French designing and building X-ray machines. Knowing that moving soldiers to a hospital before they needed surgery was not always possible, she designed the first mobile X-ray machine and traveled with it along the front lines during the war. On July 4, 1934, Marie Curie died in Paris, killed by her own experiments. She died of radiation poisoning and may have been the first person to do so. Through the knowledge she gained, thousands of lives have been saved. The courage and perseverance shown by Madame Curie in her pursuit of scientific mission and achieving successes are indeed remarkable and stimulating.

From the four great minds, what do we learn? Sister Antonio gave a message of compassion; Wangari Maathai taught how to succeed in an environmental mission by sheer invincible hard work; Madaleine Amma exhibited creation of an indomitable spirit through continuous selfless service; and Madam Curie demonstrated that working tirelessly on any mission will lead to accomplishment. I am sure, the members of this College would like to emulate the traits possessed by these great personalities.

As you all are aware 2012 has been declared as the National Mathematical Year as a tribute to mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. I would like to share my thoughts on Ramanujan with all of you, so that all of you can emulate his example of promoting excellence in mathematics and making the nation proud.

A genius well ahead of time: Ramanujan, born and raised in Erode, Tamil Nadu, first encountered formal mathematics at the age of ten. He demonstrated a natural ability at mathematics, and was given books on advanced trigonometry by S. L. Loney. He mastered this book by age thirteen, and even discovered theorems of his own. He demonstrated unusual mathematical skills at school, winning many awards. By the age of seventeen, Ramanujan was conducting his own mathematical research on Bernoulli numbers and the Euler?Mascheroni constant. He received a scholarship to study at Government College in Kumbakonam. He failed his non-mathematical coursework, and lost his scholarship. Srinivasa Ramanujan lived only for 33 years and did not have formal higher education or means of living. Yet, his inexhaustible spirit and love for his subject made him contribute to the treasure houses of mathematical research - some of which are still under serious study and engaging all-available world mathematicians' efforts to establish formal proofs. Ramanujan was a unique Indian genius who could melt the heart of the most hardened and outstanding Cambridge mathematician Prof G H Hardy. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that it was Prof. Hardy who discovered Ramanujan for the world. Professor Hardy rated various geniuses on a scale of 100. While most of the mathematicians got a rating of around 30 with rare exceptions reaching to 60, Ramanujan got a rating of 100. There cannot be any better tribute to either Ramanujan or to Indian heritage.

Ramanujan used to say "An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God". For him the understanding of numbers was a process of spiritual revelation and connection. In his investigations into pure mathematics, he drew extraordinary conclusions that mystified his colleagues, but were usually proven, eventually, to be right. He opened a universe of theory that still today is reaping applications. The landscape of the infinite was to Ramanujan a reality of both mathematics and spirit. His love for numbers led Ramanujan to number theory.

This beautiful poem brings out the profile of emerging women.

Emerging Women
She walks with raised head,
With her eyes looking straight,
She has her principles,
Unafraid of anybody!
She has a lofty
And knowledge based pride,
Such cultured women,
Don't falter from the chosen path.
She drives ignorance away.
She welcomes the bliss of life.
With learned mind,
This is the Dharma
Of emerging woman.

Oath for the Students