Publisher's Synopsis
The BookJarasandha, a tyrannical ruler in the Mahabharata, was born as two symmetric halves - one from each of a king's two wives. The half-infants joined to make a whole when a demoness juxtaposed them while preparing to devour the lumps of flesh. Thus, Jarasandha could be split apart, but would come together if the halves were laid side by side in the correct way. Until Bhima, the strongest of the Pandavas, split him asunder, and ensured he stayed dead by throwing the left half to the right and vice versa.In a similar vein, there is a symmetrical lock, each side of which is only half the whole. To open or close it, you need to work both the halves.About The Author An academic for much of his professional life, V. Raghunathan (Raghu to his friends) taught finance at IIM, Ahmadabad, for nearly two decades before turning a banker as the president of ING Vysya Bank in Bengaluru. He is currently the CEO of GMR Varalakshmi Foundation and continues to be an adjunct professor at the University of Bocconi, Milan, Italy, where he has been teaching every year for the last twenty-two years.Raghu has probably the largest collection of antique locks in the county, has played chess at all-India level, and was briefly a cartoonist for a national daily. He has been writing extensively for leading newspapers and magazines; his books include Ganesha on the Dashboard, Don t Sprint the Marathon and Games Indian Play.Preface What could possibly be the common thread running through locks, the Mahabharata and mathematics? Truth be told, a very thin one! One could conjecture that there would be parallels between locks and certain aspects of coding and.
