ABSTRACT
I can’t begin to thank all the contributors for the efforts they have put into this volume. Not only because I am grateful for a Festschrift in honour of my father, whom I consider the most lovable grump imaginable, but also because a lot of pieces about him fell into place for me while going through the various chapters when helping out with the editing process. My father is, as anyone who has met him will know, a mosaic of superlatives, and as with all mosaics, there is nothing linear about the pattern of his intellectual development. Of course growing up, I had a very vague notion indeed of what he was doing all these years. As far as I was concerned, he spent his time reading excruci atingly boring books instead of devoting himself to sensible literature, such as Winnie the Pooh. But there you go, was my philosophy, that’s Daddies for you. I myself grew up to stay in academia, the world of my father, but as I ended up in Linguistics, I can tell you very little about my father’s achievements in his field. I can, however, give you some of the origins of them, a few of the trampo lines of his various leaps and bounds that then ended up paving the way for his intellectual odyssey. Let me start out by showing how it was inevitable that my father would end up in macroeconomics in the first place. As a boy in the Sri Lanka of the 1950s my father was doing well in school but tended to be a bit on the wild side on the playground. On one occasion, when he was embroiled in a fist fight against a boy who had been bullying another boy, some American Peace Corps soldiers intervened and suggested a proper boxing match instead, where the winner would get an entire crate of Coca Cola. As the other boy was much bigger than my father, the odds were that my father would lose. He didn’t. With this the yellow brick road for the fascination of probabilities (winning against a much bigger boy) in, as well as in relation to, the world market (as manifested by the crate of Coca Cola) against the backdrop of dynamic optimization (the soldiers setting up the game) was paved. In fact, I would propose that
Pr(qr|H)Pr(p|qrH) –1
where H is that the other boy was much bigger and q1 is losing the match (and thus the Coke), q2 is winning it (and the Coke), q3 is a tie (nobody gets the Coke), q4 the prize is something else than Coke . . . qn, while p is my father ending up in macroeconomics. I will have you notice, by the way, that my father ended up in that fight in the first place by defending another boy. And here is another piece of the mosaic of superlatives: my father’s generosity. Although I think few would argue with me if I claim that my father is one of the most stubborn mules that you ever came across, he is, at the same time, a most caring and considerate mule. Being his daughter meant (and still means) that you got nothing by half measure, be it story telling, messing about or the never ending gifts and surprises. Having imbued the essence of kindness from his own father, my Paata (‘grandfather’ in Tamil), his anchor in this turbulent world, he has done his outmost to impart that unfettered and unconditional caring to us, his children. And, as far as I’m con cerned, he has, in turn, succeeded in providing us with a supportive anchor. I learnt so much beauty from my father. I grew up surrounded by music, deli cious food, splendid surroundings. Like I said, my father does nothing by half measure, which goes for his cooking too. Seeing my father cook – if you’re allowed to remain in the kitchen – is a symphony of meditational delight. His concentration as he delves into the selection, peeling, cutting, stirring and gen eral pottering about with the ingredients is so intense it is almost tangible. And here we have, I am convinced, the origins of his Computable Economics (Velu pillai 2000). As with Bela Bartók’s unparalleled compositions, my father’s cook ing is an equation of delicacy. And I don’t mean simply for the palate. When he cooks, my father cooks in “recursively enumerable but not recursive sets” (ibid.: 29) of ingredients, in the same manner as Bela Bartók plays around with his notes. With the rational choice of a register k of ingredients and their adaptive behaviour, depending on the state s of the stove, the dish i will be modified, depending on what piece of music my father will be listening to (αs, βt, γs, δt respectively), into a new state t which can be shaped by setting
fs(x) = gs x – s____n (x – s)γs + δt + 1 – gs x – s____n [(x – s)αs + βt]
where
hs(x) fs(x).
