Here I’ll share a bit about my life outside of teaching, writing, mathematics, and software.
My mother is from Bengal, and my father is from Tamil Nadu, both regions of modern-day India. While we made periodic trips to India during my childhood, I grew up firmly planted in the US, so I’ve been disconnected from those cultures, languages, and extended family. I decided in my early 30s that it was important to reconnect to my roots, so I’ve been spending a few months each year in India starting in 2024. Most of that time has been spent in West Bengal, especially in the rural part where my mother’s ancestral village is.
The photos above are a small peek into my time there. It’s been a deeply meaningful (and still ongoing!) journey of connecting with my cultural roots, my parents, and their families in a way which was difficult to do during the years growing up and living in the US.
There’s now ongoing solar energy development work there, as part of a collaboration among Suncraft Technologies, Scholarlab Foundation, and the Tutul Roy Foundation. We’re currently making a website about the project, planned to be up soon.
While I love sharing mathematics and believe that a scientific education is important for sharpening the mind, I believe that political education and action are extremely important for making the change I want to see.1 For this reason, I’m involved in local initiatives and activism.
One such group is OLIVE Collective, which is a Vancouver-specific group who organize outreach and other events highlighting the root connections between causes such as e.g. the injustice faced by factory farmed animals, and the fight of Indigenous communities against displacement and land destruction.
Another one is Food Not Bombs, a decentralized worldwide movement which is anti-imperialist, anti-war, and believes in making nutritious, plant-based food accessible to all, especially those who are structurally barred from it due to economics or location. There is no barrier to setting up a local chapter and operating autonomously, and one exists in Vancouver, holding meal services twice per week in Oppenheimer Park. Come out and join us (or, your local chapter if you’re located elsewhere)!
In my spare time, I love to play music and explore nature through backpacking, road and long-distance cycling, trail running, and rock climbing. For some writing, see my old travelogues from my time backpacking in South America in 2017, or cycling down the Pacific Coast in 2021.
1To take a concrete example: I believe climate change can’t be solved by green technology alone. The same problem will re-create itself as long as we rely on a (capitalist and colonial) food production system which degrades land, exploits animals, racialized people and immigrants for the sake of profit. The same applies to any “resource” our lives rely on, such as fuel or minerals, so long as the real cost is externalized to some other party — whether that’s the poor, or another country, or future generations. One important step towards fixing that issue is to mobilize collective political action against the worst offenders and industries. Another is to directly build relationships with community to create greater awareness and overcome the harmful patterns of thought in ourselves which perpetuate this system (apathy, selfishness, disempowerment, comfort in certain ways of living, inability to relate across class divide).
Krishanu Sankar 