About SwanLotus

The swan and the lotus are ancient symbols in the tradition of Sanātana Dharma. The swan is purported to be able to extract milk from a mixture of milk and water, and thus signifies discrimination. The lotus is rooted in mud, but produces an unsullied blossom, emblematic of purity and beauty.

Sarasvatī, the Goddess of Learning, is depicted as seated on a white lotus, and having a swan for her vehicle. So, this website—concerned as it is with learning, knowledge, and hopefully wisdom—has been named SwanLotus in CamelCase.

The abbreviated website logo for SwanLotus is shown below:

Logo of SwanLotus: a black S and a white L on a blue background.

The symbol “S” for the swan is in black, because for some periods of my life, I lived in Perth, Australia, where the blue Swan River flows, and where black swans abound.

Black Swan (Cygnus atratus): CC0 Public Domain.

The symbol “L” for the lotus is in white, signifying the white lotus:

White Lotus (Nelumbo nucifera): CC0 Public Domain.

The author

My name is R (Chandra) Chandrasekhar. I am a retired biomedical engineer and university academic. I am also a lifelong learner. My purpose in setting up this website is twofold:

  1. It is the Web-home for my book-in-preparation entitled Secrets of Academic Success. In it, I have tried to impart some of the knowledge about studying and learning that my various teachers have inculcated in me. The book is in electronic form, and is protected by copyright, with all rights reserved. It may be downloaded from here at no charge.

  2. I also blog on this site, writing about whatever takes my fancy. Many of my blogs are long reads, which I have christened slogs. If you display the intellectual and intestinal fortitude to read them to the end, I salute and thank you. 😉

    Many of the blogs are from the early days of the Web and have found a durable home here. I have taken the opportunity to update them where necessary. They are arranged by the original date, rather than when last modified.

If you are interested in knowing my credentials, here is a link to my curriculum vitae.

For the curious among you, who wonder what I look like, I have appended two photographs below, taken with eminent personages, some decades ago.

Professor Yianni Attikiouzel, my PhD supervisor, with me holding the PhD gold medal awarded by the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Western Australia, in September 1997.
Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, President of India from 25 July 2002 to 25 July 2007, autographing my copy of his autobiography, Wings of Fire, at the BioVision 2001 conference in Bangalore, India, in December 2001, at which he delivered the keynote address.

  1. This image is copyright by the University of Western Australia with citation: UWA Archives 29071P. First published in the “The Leader” dated 22 September 1997, Vol. 16, No. 15, pp 1–2. Used with permision.↩︎

Copyright © 2006 – , R (Chandra) Chandrasekhar. All rights reserved.