Preface

The following is a compilation of a series of cartoon-sketches, most of which assume a philosophical theme with a touch of humour. While some of them are serious thematic drawings, the simpler ones are directed towards the avid researcher who keeps crawling down a dark tunnel searching for light and an opening. The latter set is dedicated to all enthusiastic students and faculty who continue to embark on such perilous missions armed with just a scratch pad hoping that all those scribbles and nibbles will one day assume a solid mathematical form, while at the same time juggling to find an application for the raw equations that lay scattered across the white floor. 

It is indeed paradoxical that we fear both the obvious and the not-so-obvious. For that very reason, we enjoy living on the edge of certainty as it gives us the motive to dream without boundaries and stretch our imagination. Unfortunately this joy is only short lived to a point, from where, we begin to build a mathematical ladder only to convert all the uncertainty that lies ahead to a certainty. Once we enter the world of abstractions our research progress is punctuated by assumptions, hypotheses, propositions and oversimplified mathematical models. It is indeed ironic how a simple idea gets finally wrapped and packaged into a whole bunch of complex equations driven to mystify even the most sincere and knowledgeable paper reviewers. Unfortunately this trend is widespread and what we value today is not the genuineness and simplicity of the idea but the complex framework that engulfs it.

Ideas don't fall from the sky, which is precisely why we must value them.  They germinate in a mind which is free and devoid of conditioning only to surface when the waters are calm and there is a momentary silence.

This is the main theme of the cartoons below.

- Kannan Karthik (Nov 2011)

Cartoon Gallery [last updated Sept 17, 2012]

Creativity

• Dreams are not ideas

• Creativity under constraints

• Channelizing innovation

• Creativity versus Knowledge

Inquisitiveness: Search for knowledge and light

• Developing the urge to sharpen one's analytical tools

• Fertility of learning

• Chasing strands

• Staying young

• Projections of Projections

• Vibration for internal compensation

Spiritual growth

• Constraints intrinsic to the cocoon accelerate spiritual evolution

• The empty pot

• Three states

Beyond conditioning

• The Observer and the Traveler will finally become ONE.

• The illusion of freedom

• Maya

• Meditation versus Concentration

• Two sides of the same coin

Humorous moments in the life of a researcher [lighter side of life]

• Petrified researcher

• Muscling into a research problem

• The only person who can save you is yourself

• Siamese Twins

Ideas for more cartoons

Suggestions for more themes and variations can be sent to the following email:

kannan.karthik [at] gmail.com