Of Crowds and Calculations.

50 days of vacations over! What have I been upto? Well, I played a little, learnt a little, traveled, ate, thought, slept and oba wasted time (In some of the aforementioned activities and others!).
One thing that hasn't happened to the extent to which I thought it would is meeting up with friends :( !

Anyway about what _has _ happened, I am just back from a fortnight long tour -- or rather pilgrimage to Maharashtra(something like a suravali suttruppayanam of the state)! Had darshan at 5 jyothirlingams, Satara, Shirdi, Pandaripur, Nashik, Pune, Ellora, Tuljapur,Uttara Chimdambaram etc! Was a great trip! I felt important all thru because I was one of the 2 ppl out of 10 in our group who knew hindi and man it was useful! I guess it was useful developing my skills in this field by talking to the northie gang in my wing! I pray to God that the purpose of such a tour be achieved and we get spiritually lifted and our "standard of living" improves in the real sense!

Anyway the origin of this post is from the thoughts that arose in me when standing in the loooooooooooonnng Queue s of some of the temples like Tuljapur Mahalakshmi, Shirdi etc (Though the seeds were planted in Thirupati where u can find the "Queues ka baap"). Well, this is also from the times that i have wasted - without thinking of good thoughts while standing inside a temple.

I was standing there wondering if the process of people moving in the long Qs(fr shrt frm nw) could be hastened with people getting the darshan without having to wait for so long -- just as those around me were complaining and cribbing.(in case the 2 words dont mean the same).
So the first idea that came to me was that it would be better if they have a Q in which people have to walk one behind the other, like this :



rather than allow them to move as a group, with many doors along the path that will be closed and opened based on many factors. Like this --



I thought so because as soon as you manage to squeeze your way through a door in the latter, you feel a shortlived sense of freedom. The place will suddenly be little extra free. This is because the door restricts number of people who can get in per unit time and many people are competing to get in through it. (with a lot of pushing and pulling)!


The theory is that we can actually be sure of which is the better method for the devotees by conducting some experiments! The funda is to use water( or some suitable liquid) to represent the people ... ( Ppl are incompressible, they fill up whatever place becomes available to them in the queue path, theres some inertia involved in the movement of both... etc)
One problem though is that water will get on top of itself and more and more layers piling up, whereas people generaly -- atleast the average person will not climb on top of the others to reach the end quickly. This problem can be sorted by fixing the height of the simulated Q complex -- thereby preventing the water from forming huge mounds.

Next we need to model the Q complex and make it resemble the temple's as much as possible, with the same number of doors etc (which should be water proof and water tight :P). At the same time we need to give the water some motivation to move in the forward direction towards the garbagriham and not away -( human equivalent of bhakti) . This can be achieved by giving a gradient to the floor of the simulated complex in the correct direction! Then other factors can be included like including some drops of denser fluid for the ppl who like to push and get ahead more. The inclination of the floor can be adjusted in different places. And so on! Near the exit ( close to deity inclination can be made very small, for example, as you'll be moving not because you want to move fast but because of the number of people behind you!

Finally our model is now ready to go. All we have to do is fill the entrance with the liquid, open the gates, and let it flow. We could use some small light object as a marjker to find out how long it takes for this to reach the exit under the given conditions of the path to be traversed. Or we can also collect the volume of water at the end and relate it to the number of people who have reached there. To achieve the actual purpose of the experiment, we can now change the width of the path to model a Q where people *have* to go one behind the other and see how much time this takes!

Now, this method can either be tried out in a physical model or on the comp. Once this is done I can advice the temples on how to model their Q complexes. By the way do remember that all the ideas expressed in this post are copyrighted, and to-be-patented. :-D