Depth, Variety

Time, Satisfaction

I happened to visit the almost 110-year old State Central Library (aka Sir Seshadri Iyer Memorial Library) at Cubbon Park earlier today with one of my best friends, SD. It reminded me of why Bengaluru did justice to the moniker Garden City back when I was a kid.

I was on the lookout for Braille books to test my newly acquired Braille reading skills. Happily enough, it turns out that the library has a section just for Braille books and I promptly picked the one that said ‘Music’ on it (in the regular Latin script).

Even though I had very low expectations from myself, given that it had been less than a day since I had learnt the English Braille alphabet, I still managed to underwhelm myself.

Though I remembered the entire alphabet that I had learnt yesterday, the book was in contracted Braille, which I have no idea how to read at present, and all I could manage to read was ‘Music’ (with a capital M), ‘music’ and ‘multitude’ before I had to leave to get some breakfast.

Adding to that, the font size was a lot smaller than I was accustomed to with the Braille training cube I’ve used. Plus, the dots in the book were raised a lot less than on the cube. I’ll need to develop a lot more awareness of my fingertips to be able to read Braille efficiently.

Not unexpectedly, I have a lot more to learn in English Braille if I want to read Braille books comfortably. I need to find some resources for that, and soon.

At least I have material to practice with now, assuming I have the time to travel to the library and back. I also found out that the Blind Persons’ Association delivers a selection of Braille books all over India — something for future reference.

After breakfast, we headed to Blossoms. On my insistence and to SD’s dismay, we went to all 3 of their stores on Church Street and I got 4 books at very low rates:

1. M.R. Kale’s A Higher Sanskrit Grammar
2. Dr. Chandradhar Sharma’s A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy
3. How Things Work 1 & 2 (translated from the German Wie funktioniert das?)

After leaving the third store, I started thinking about why it is that I keep getting books that are from such widely varying disciplines. Should I be developing depth in one or a few fields before moving on to others? Or is this generalist method the way to go, giving me slow progress in each field while allowing me to make connections between what seem like completely disparate phenomena?

So far, I’ve liked the connections route and don’t mind being a relative novice in most fields, since my chief area of study where I try to develop expertise is music (with learning and poetry being close seconds I suppose) and the purpose of developing connections is mainly intended to deepen my understanding of music by giving me different perspectives.

That said, I like the variety for its own sake and would do it even if there were no goal in mind. It gives me pleasure — as simple as that.

I am yet to find the sweet spot where there is a balance between depth and variety. Will I ever find it? Does it even exist?

Please don’t cringe, future self, but…well…

f(cumulative depth) * g(variety) / h(time)= k * i(satisfaction)

Enough with the flights of fancy. There’s work to be done. Strive on!

Specifically:

1. Find resources for learning contracted Braille
2. Track my progress in every new book/resource/field that I pick up and see if it’s distracting me from my higher-priority goals or serving them
3. Apply the learning and memory techniques that I’m practicing to the books I have so that time spent on them is maximally enriching.

Changelog:

originally written on 22 October 2023