Category: Personal

  • Changing Mumbai in places where I walk

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on March 14, 2011 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    I have made it a practice of going on early morning walks (if my father wakes me up). It used to painful in the early days which surprised me given the amount of walking I already did. Dad set a new understanding of what it means to walk quickly. I took my time getting accustomed to faster walking. Friends have always complained that I walk fast. In the mornings, I walk faster. Those early days of pain made me not want to walk again in the evening. Habit set in and I slowly lost my evening walking fun.

    In the last two days, I have started the evening walk routine again. This slower walking is for me to notice the changes around my suburb of Chembur. Hit by projects like the Monorail and the Chembur-Santacruz Link Road projects, the places that I walk in is transforming at a very fast pace. Now, I feel that I have lost something of the memories by not photographing it.

    The construction work in these lanes has transformed the once sleepy lanes into a very different experience. Walking down these roads is less fun now. I don’t know how it would be after the roads and monorail are built. Some one has to chronicle this history of a metamorphosing metropolis. Once sleepy lanes that I used to haunt could in the near future become crowded monorail stations or metro stops. Nostalgia is slowly walking in and I am looking for other sleepy lanes to haunt.

  • Trek to Korlai Fort

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on March 14, 2011 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs. The original post had a gallery of pics, I have replaced that with one representative picture.

    In January, I finally got my membership for the Youth Hostels Association of India for two years. I was looking out for a way to utilise the membership but no opportunity presented itself till March 6, 2011 when the Mumbai unit went on a trek to Korlai Fort. It has been a long time since I went trekking and I did not want to do a trek labelled “hard” by the trekkers themselves. I therefore chose a “medium” trek.

    I learnt from Ganesh that they were travelling by ST bus and that I could come along. I immediately flagged it to Pranav’s attention. After a few rounds of conversation, I decided to head down to Parel ST Bus Depot while Pranav decided to catch up with us at Korlai on the next day. I packed a bag that was just heavy and was filled with stuff I never would have used. I packed a 1.5 liter water bottle and managed to alternately over-hydrate and under-hydrate myself. Well, I am happy that it was a simple enough trek so I didn’t have to think about too many things at the same time. There also seemed to be a malfunction in my camera’s battery indicator which showed that the battery was full when it was really drained. I read up about Korlai Fort on Wikipedia and found out that the article on Korlai itself was speedily deleted by someone.

    Dad insisted on dropping me at Parel ST Stand which is very oddly situated. It was because I informed the YHAI guys only on the previous day that I had to travel there. Else, I could think about joining them at Chembur. The ST depots in Maharashtra are not as good as the ones in Kerala or Tamil Nadu but are much better than my last experience of them. The buses were more of a surprise for me. The travel was particularily smooth and the journey was particularly pleasant. We had wada pav at Alibaug and then proceeded to Revdanda and then crossed the river to Korlai reaching the bus stop at 10:30 in the morning. We then walked through the small village of Korlai as we headed towards the hill on which the fort was built.

    We per-ordered lunch at a small hotel before the climb and then walked through open pans were fish were left to dry and walked up a tar path to the base of the hill. We then rested a bit at the bottom and then walked up the road that went along a side of the fort. The road had a small beach to one side and the hill slope on the other. Ahead we saw the Korlai Fort Lighthouse. A manager at the gate offered a paid tour of the interior of the lighthouse. We had to pay extra to take pictures. I thought it wise to conserve battery (and by now I got the hang of Pranav’s insatiable desire for getting himself photographed). I like the scenery a bit more. Hence, I passed by the offer and went to take a look inside the light house.

    The manager explained that the lighthouse was automated and it pretty much took care of itself. The workers on site were mostly there to do maintenance work and to check the instrumentation once or twice a day. We passed through two narrow holes in the ceiling to reach the top of the light house. The manager explained how the lighthouse worked, how it was now mostly used by fishermen more than anyone else and the presence of modern technology stuff like transmitters and satellite dishes that one really did not see in a lighthouse. The structure did not need to be big because of the kind of boats it helped. It helped fishermen go deeper into the sea and get better and a variety of catch. There were even solar panels that charged the battery during the day for when there would be power cuts.

    We left the manager and climbed a steep set of steps to the fort. I took quite a few number of breaks in between. Learnt that pacing yourself isn’t as easy as saying, “You have to pace yourself.” After walking around the fort, we left out through the other gate. I also felt the afternoon high sun taking a toll on me and then had a hard time getting to the base of the hill. We steadily went down one of the wings of the fortress that touched the sea and then had a round of introductions and took group photos. We then went to the side in through a nice tunnel with a pleasant breeze and sat for a while. We began the slow ascent, a walk through the main corridor and reached the main fort area.

    We’d heard of a water source that was fresh inside of the fortress and we were interested in tasting some. We also had group members discuss the history of the fort and we had a nice time chatting about the forts of the Siddis known to have resided in the area of Alibaug during the reign of Shivaji and Sambhaji. We saw a temple and a broken down church and signs of the restoration work that was being carried out by Archaeological Survey of India. There were many cement packs in the fort and we joked that these were uncovered along with the rest of the fort. The water in that natural tank was quite good and very refreshing after that long ascent.

    We had lunch at the hotel where we had pre-ordered the food and took a big auto all the way back to Alibaug. I hung around on the beach as the rest of the group went to visit Alibaug Fort. On the beach, the others got to leave their bags and I got to have a gola which I’ve not had in a very long time. I had a fun time just resting without the hiking shoes and even though the early evening sun was hot, the sitting down helped a lot.

    After the others returned, we walked back to the Alibaug ST bus stand and from there, we headed back home in a ST bus. The driver was happy enough to let us sleep and switch off the lights. At night I was not able to see the roads and didn’t understand much of the route until we reached Panvel at night. A bit of a heavy dinner at night meant that I got sound sleep.

  • Kala Ghoda Arts Festival – Feb 7

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com/. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 9, 2011 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Kirk arrived in Mumbai again for the Kala Ghoda Festival at quarter to midnight on February 6, 2011. He was to reach at half an hour past two in the afternoon. So, he missed the Festival on Feb 6. I wanted to go there but was tired and a bit lazy to go there in the evening after attending the Chai and Why session at Prithvi in the afternoon.

    We headed to Kala Ghoda in the evening of Feb 7, 2011. We had planned on attending the literary session on literary spaces available in Mumbai. We walked in a few minutes into the discussion where Marathi poet Hemant Divate was speaking. He spoke of his work of editing the literary journal Abhidhanantar. He said that Marathi had a vibrant poet community but there is as was a sense of danger that there might not be Marathi poetry or places to publish Marathi poetry very soon. The themes was shared by Divya Nadkarni of Nether.

    In reply, Ranjit Hoskote of PEN, a writers association said that since the 1870s the world of literature has been living in this apocalyptic phase of it being the end of the written word or books or good literature. He said that we had done well till date and will continue to do well in the future.

    The talk went on about how there needs to be more spaces for literary publication and discussion. The talk was joined in by Sharmishta Mohanty of Almost Island and Indira Chandrasekhar  of Out of Print. The session was moderated by Sampurna Chatterji of PEN.

    Divya was the youngest of the lot and seemed the most pessimistic. I went on Feb 8 and had a look through the books and did buy the first and second issue of Nether. I hope to read about it whence I complete my massive backlog.

    Personally, I think there was no place that a new reader can “learn” about reading such work. There is no known place where one can learn to discern things about the world of Mumbai literature without following it for a pretty long time. The magazines seem to be publishing works of poetry and prose without really helping a reader understand what is happening in the literary scene. The question did come up about the literary scene – and the difference in all the answers showed it had not been thought about or written about. There are now operations like PEN and Caferati in South Mumbai but not yet the widespread Book Clubs culture which could help in strengthening the literary scene in Mumbai.

  • Astrology is not a Science petition

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 6, 2011 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    The Times of India had a report today morning that a public interest litigation (PIL) had been dismissed in the Bombay High Court on the grounds that Astrology is considered a science in India. This is based on a 2004 Supreme Court order which declared Astrology to be a science and allowed it to be taught in Indian universities.

    Raghu Kalra of the Amateur Astronomers Association of Delhi has started an online petition requesting the Supreme Court to reconsider its order.

    I wanted to say this: “Science is an enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world. Astrology’s predictions are not verifiable, reproducible or testable and hence not Science.”

    To teach, Astrology in a University, I do not think it is necessary to establish that it is a science. It can be taught as is.

  • Western India Science Fair 2010

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on December 16, 2010 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    The better part of today morning and early afternoon was spent at the Nehru Science Centre, Worli attending the Western India Science Fair. Now, in its 23rd edition, the fair has been conducted every year in Mumbai. This is one of the few opportunities that students do get to show off their talent in hands-on projects. As for the student projects, I saw that students have picked up on themes relevant to today – anti-terrorism, renewable energy, waste management and agriculture.

    The guests did walk into the hall a full 40 minutes late. The inauguration began with an opening by Anil Manekar. He spoke about the Fair being a great platform for students to showcase their creativity and also learn the important task of science communication, by communicating their theoretical and practical understanding of science to the visiting members of the public. This, he stressed was vital and was the need of the hour.

    We then learnt that the 2009 edition of the fair saw 120 thousand visitors to the Fair.

    The Chief Guest of the evening [thanks to Srinivas for correcting me] was Dr. H C Pradhan of the Homi Bhaba Centre for Science Education. I have made his acquaintance as a higher secondary student when I wrote the Physics Olympiad. I visited his offices (he was Assistant Director then) on the recommendation of my late Professor Prasad Iyer (in Mathematics) of Atomic Energy Junior College. He was really helpful at that time and he is still as humble and soft spoken today. He shared with students who he said were “really good with their hands” avenues such as the Olympiads and the Intel Fair. For the teachers in the audience, he also went into some detail on teaching and its modern forms. He said that project based learning was now believed to be better than Teacher based learning. He said that learning and hence the student had become more important than teaching and hence the teacher’s job was now to provide more opportunities to the student for learning. He told them that the next step is likely to be peer-to-peer learning. He urged the participants to go home and share their experiences with fellow students in their schools and in their neighborhoods.

    Of all the student projects that I witnessed, I enjoyed one on rain water harvesting, one on testing water for fecal contamination using a Rs. 24 Hydrogen Sulphide strip, one on aqua robotic reconnaissance system (based partly on 26/11 terrorist strikes), one on Maglev trains (the fascinating thing about this was that they used their Nokia mobile phone battery to power the model 🙂 ), one on robotic excavation system (based on recent news of the Chile miners), an elaborate satellite-assisted coastal monitoring system (based on 26/11 terrorist strike), a system for converting plastic waste to useful substances like wax, fuel etc.

    There was even a section for educators on some of the interesting ways they taught to science to students. Didn’t spend much time here as I was hungry :).

  • Back from a Break…

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as http://parallelspirals.blogspot.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on December 02, 2010 as per the time stamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    I finished writing my only exam that I had to write today. This exam has been the source of many pains and also led me to miss many things including Dr. Maqbool’s talk which I had written about in these pages. This is just a heads-up saying I’m back and sharing a few random links to space articles that I missed in the past few days.

    1. Dr. Syed Maqbool Ahmed’s talk – press report + Srinivas’ take on Dr. Ahmed’s day in Mumbai and his talk.

    2. An ongoing Astronomy festival in Bengaluru with participation from ISRO. The festival runs till December 5, 2010. I have sadly not seen many post event blog reports yet.

    3. Abhilash M from the ISRO Inertials Systems Unit writes on The Voyage Blog  on the World Space Week celebrations done by ISRO in Kerala.

    4. Anantha Krishnan writes about India’s success in developing indigenously electro-hydraulic servo valves (ESHVs) which have aerospace applications. It was developed by a team at Centre for Aerospace Products, Hyderabad.

    5. Srinivas also shared an aspect of Chandrayaan-I hitherto not well known. He shared information on how the Parkes Observatory was used to help Chandrayaan-I get data down to Earth 24×7.

    6. This last week, ISRO-built satellite Hylas-1 for Astrium and Avanti, launched from Kourou. The ISRO Press releases on the launch and its subsequent placement in geostationary orbit. Also, Srinivas’ account is here.

    With that, we now return to the normal scheduled programme. Coming over to the blog, you will find that it has been simplified even more.

  • The newspapers of today

    I do not know where the newspapers get their paper from. I do not know
    if restriction is set by the Government on the number of pages or
    supplements that a newspaper may have.

    With such restriction of my knowledge, I would like to submit that The
    Times of India, one of the most voluminous papers today – it has other
    than The Times of India, Bombay Times and Mumbai Mirror. the other
    supplements change on a daily basis. A lay subscriber to the Times,
    therefore has to run through nearly 100 pages of content and ads
    everyday. Newspapers have long forgotten the art of summarization and
    selection. Why waste manpower on summaries and news selection when
    everything can be printed?

    This also helps them serve more ads as they have more pages to serve them on.

    In return of money thus generated, the reader just gets more content
    and never better content, with extremely few exceptions. The money has
    also not led to mainstreaming of the more controversial topics. So, in
    the end, the only thing that has grown rich materially or
    knowledge-wise is the management of the newspaper.

    I have a certain degree of respect for The Indian Express. This is a
    newspaper I would like to subscribe to when the decision falls on me.

    Also, the very long analytical pieces are the domain of magazines.
    Newspapers have invaded this domain and have destroyed both magazines
    and analytical pieces. Newspapers do not and must not have space to
    publish or stifle these. Newspapers must lead the people to these and
    must play this role.

  • Water

    My fascination for water started with the lines in my science text
    book urging me to drink 8 to 13 glasses of water everyday. I follow
    this naturally because I do get thirsty alot.

    Fast forward to my under graduate years and it amazes me that we still
    use the same 100 odd year old system to bring water from catchment
    areas to meet requirements of the city. Innovation has worked only in
    bringing water more efficiently in the old system.

    Today, we face a water shortage. Would not people staying closer to
    the water source claim ownership and sell water to her neighbours than
    allow its citizens to die?

    An analogy is supplying water to a colony on the Moon.

  • Hello World!

    I find that I blog little and little and so this sounded something worth looking at. This is my first test post. You can follow the updates on http://pradx.posterous.com. Thanks.

  • What next after SEDS?

    As I said in an earlier blog, my journey with SEDS has been great. As a student organisation, it does face some limits because of exams, the 3 to 4 year renewal cycle and several other things, but with enthusiastic students, everything’s easy to overcome. 

    This question has been plaguing my mind – what next? It’s easy to say that I’ll have to set it aside till I graduate but this only makes it more difficult for me to concentrate on my studies. So, its best to get it out of the way once and for all by doing.

    So, that’s what I’ll be doing over the next few days while copying my submission work 🙂