From the pavillion end

Sweet n Sour egg delight

2011-10-31T01:45:00.002+05:30

Ingredients:

1. Egg-3 nos

2. Onion-1 no

3. Ginger-chopped

4. Garlic- chopped

5. Bell pepper-1 no.

6. Oil- 1 1/2 tbsp

Sauce:

1. Tomato ketchup

2. Fruit juice (sweet, eg. pineapple, mixed fruit)

3. Sugar- 2 tbsp

4. Salt- to taste

5. pepper- 1/2 tbsp

6. chilli sauce - 1tbsp

7. Vinegar- 1 tbsp

8. Cornflour- 2 tbsp

Method:

1.Add chopped ginger and salt to the egg, beat the mixture. Add 1/2 tbsp of oil in a frying pan, and fry the egg, make square pieces.

2. Add 1 tbsp of oil on a pan, add chopped ginger and chopped garlic and fry for 2 min, cut the onion into square shape and fry

3. Add tomato ketchup in a separate vessel and add the fruit juice to it mix them and pour in to the pan when the onions are slightly fried. increase the flame.

4. Add warm water, chilli sauce, pepper, salt and sugar and let it cook for few mins

5. Add bell pepper and cook for 8-10 mins in low flame.

6. Add the egg pieces into the sauce

7. add Cornflour into water and mix, add the mix to the sauce to make it thick

8. add vinegar and stir for a min.

check the sweet and sour taste before taking it out of the pan.

Your sweet n sour Egg delight is now ready to be served

Mushroom Peas curry

2011-10-30T21:45:00.000+05:30

Ingredients:
Onion- 1 no. medium size
Ginger garlic paste- 1.5 tbsp
Tomato- 2 nos. medium size or Tomato Puree
Green Chilli: 2 nos.
Mushroom:250 gms.
Peas- 1 teacup
Curd/Cream: 2 tbsp
Jeera (whole):2 tsp
Garam masala(Whole)[optional]
Garam Masala powder
Dhone powder
Chilli powder
Turmeric
Oil: 1 tbsp

Method:
1.Wash the mushrooms in warm water and cut it into large pieces.
2. Heat oil, add the gram masala and jeera and fry, until the jeera turns brown.
3. Add onion, fry in high flame for 2 mins.
4. Add the ginger garlic paste.
5. Fry the whole thing till it turns golden brown
6. Add salt, tomatoes, green chillies.
7. Stir them in reduced flame till the tomato becomes pulpy.
8. Add tomato puree according to taste.
9. Add dhone, jeera, chilli, turmeric and garam masala powder.
10. Add the curd/cream and mix properly.
11. Add the mushrooms, mix them well, cover the vessel with lid.
12. Let it cook in the low flame for 5-10 mins.
13. Add the peas and mix.
14. Cook in a covered vessel till water dries up sparingly and the mushrooms become dark brown.
15. Put off the flame after the consistency as desired by you is achieved.

Tip: Don't add extra water; the mushroom will get cooked in its own water.

Indian Green Chicken

2011-10-30T21:28:00.003+05:30

Time to change the taste! I am writing my first post on recipe. Adding another label to the blog post (as if it was less).
Indian Green Chicken is actually a Indian curry dish made using spinach
Ingredients:
Chicken (boneless) 400 gmsPalak/Spinach 250 gmsOnion 2nos. medium sizeGinger garlic paste 2tbspTomato 2nos. medium sizeGreen Chilli 1 no.Oil 1 tbsp
For marination:
Lime juice 1/2 tbspCurd 2 tbspPepper & Salt to tasteRed chilli powder- 1pinch
Spices:
Whole garam masalaBay leaf 1 no.Coriander powder 1/2 tbspCumin powder 1/2 tbsp Turmeric powder 1/2 tbspGaram masala powder 1 pinch

Method
Boil palak in 4 cups of water, till it turns soft & green.2.Drain the water and blend the palak to form a thick paste.3. Marinate the chicken for 10-15 mins.4. Put the marinated chicken into the microwave for 3 mins (High power)5. Stir it and again heat it in the microwave for 5 mins.6. Heat oil in a vessel, add whole garam masala and bayleaf.7. Add the chopped onion, fry it for 2 mins.8. Add ginger garlic paste.9. Fry it till the onion turns brown.10. Add chopped tomatoes and the green chillies.11. Stir it for 3 mins.12. Add salt and other spices.13. Stir it till the tomato becomes pulpy.14. Add the chicken stalk and boil it for 1 min.15. Add the palak paste and boil it for 5-7 mins.16. Add the chicken and cook till the desired gravy consistency is achieved.

Tip: Instead of curd, vinegar can be used for marination

Denude

2010-09-27T06:36:00.005+05:30

Surreal thoughts knocked the door that night,
realizations had struck like a lightning in a stormy night,
earth shivered
and the last…
lasted longer
and that night too.

The dew drops touched the bare skin that morning,
only if it could respond…
quivering lips parted to speak,
silence told the untold story
words dried, long back…
the last …
lasted longer

dancing flowers painted the horizon…
hope…
it did exist
bright sun soaked the torso,
bathing was warm..
warmth no longer came through the fingers…
they were folded…..and never opened again…long back
last, did last, quite long….

“Godhuli belar sese”
Solitary reaper sang the melancholy song
on her way back home…
home…lost in the lush meadows…
blank vision, blurred with tears
dried…. before the time kissed him bye.
Last,
was long

Scotch!!

2010-09-18T23:25:00.015+05:30

"It isn't for the faint hearted".....the scottish man added " 3000 ft this side 3000 ft otherside, you need to be a expert trekker" However we never went to the Aonach Eagach, but tried couple of famous walks in the Scotish highlands, the best place on earth for landscape. I knew it was going to be very different trek than what we have experienced in India. We were all set to enjoy the highlands of Scotland

Early autumn, might get you the best or can deliver the worst, but me and Santanu had to take the chance. Hence, we decided to travel during early september. I must say we were half lucky.

Great Glen

The Great Glen fault was created 400 million years ago. It runs from Inverness to Fort william with a distance around 100 km. It cuts the Scotish higlands into two parts and gave birth to UK's deepest fresh water lake, Loch ness. However, the fault doesn't stop there and it extends towards the sea beyond fort william. This fault actually gave rise to beautiful landsacpe which attracts many tourists all through the year, with a larger traffic during summers. Although the the altitude of the peaks in this range is not very high but its a steep climb up to the peaks. Not all the walks are difficult, but certainly few are ! Through the great Glen the most famous walk is called great Glen way. Its a 73 miles walk stretching from Fort willim to Inverness. It takes 4-5 days to cover the complete Glen path, we didn't have that many days so we decided to go to few places along the Great Glen way and far south. The most famous hiking place on the Glenway is Ben nevis, the higest Peak in UK. So we decided upon our plan this way: Travel from London-Inverness from Inverness to Fortwilliam. Next day Ben Nevis and back to fortwillam to Glencoe. Next day Trek to pap of Glencoe, Glencoe to Fortwilliam and from Fort william to Inverness. Next day Inverness and Urqhart Castle, back to Inverness and to London. No doubts quite a bit of travel, but we thought its worth....

Fort william

I had few speechless moments when it was dusk at fort Fort william. Tired bodies got its energy back in the middle of a postcard lands scape. Journey to Fortwilliam was a long one. From London Inverness is around 740 km by Coach, and Fort william is 100 km from there. Me and Jacks (Santanu) started our journey from London victoria. We took Megabus! Double decker travelled quite well but there were annoying passengers, the bus stopped at Birmingham, Then Gallsgow. Were were dropped at Perth from where the otherbus took us to Inverness. To keep my reputation on having troubled journey was intact as the bus we were suposed to catch broke down. Once it was dawn, the landscapes were quite captivating. I was not aware the bus route from Inverness to Fort william was along the bank of Loch Ness. Life goes full cirle....I read about Loch ness at a pretty young age, there was an article in "pujabarsiki" "anandamela". Not to mention mystery and apprehension with darkness was the only thing in mind...but the beauty of loch ness caught me speechless. Although tired, we didn't miss the opprtunity to catch the beauty of Loch Ness. There are couple of popular tourist spot on the way to Fortwilliam. Urqhart castle and Fort Augustus. We had booked our tickets in the City link bus service operated by stage coaches 919 service. the ticket was 7 pounds. we reached beautiful town of Fortwilliam around 5 pm. There was a Morrisons stores at the bus and train station, we bought our food from there and walked to our night stay place at Fort william backpackers. Rain welcomed us there, but the hostel, however was bit cramped but i must say the best place to see the landscape...a leasure walk before the diner along the bank of Loch Linhe was truly amazing. The town unfolded its beauty as the coluds paved away roads for piercing sunrays. Rainbows and evening soft light provided really nice warmth. The town centre isn't far away from the station, if you reach before the market closes, expensive gift shops and stores are really good place to pay a visit. We had nice indian diner that night and crashed at the scotish battle fields (thats how they identified the bunks at the hostel!) , next day we were up to Ben Nevis.

Ben Nevis
There are few walks which will take you to the main Ben Nevis walk way. There are tonns of maps available on the web about the trail, but it isn't is a problem of loosing way on the hills once you strike the Ben nevis path rest was quite defined trail. We walked trough the Belford road towards the youth hostel in Fort william. donot take the north road, walk straight for about 2 miles, when you will see the Glen Nevis centre. The Parking place, a nice centre and walk begins here. You will see the directions marked here. There is a small wodden bridge over the Nevis river and thn the trail follow. The next landmark is the Achintee farm and once we crossed that we could see the Ben nevis Inn. Once we crossed the medow. The Climb began. It well paved trails was nice to walk on, but the weather was not so welcoming. The climb was alright except the rain made the way bit slippery. The Roller coaster life made me realize, i was going for a trek after 3 years. So i was slow, and the weather added to the woes. As we ascended the hill the breathtaking landscape started to appear. You can look at the Landscape and thank yourself that you have decided to trek in that weather. That motivated us to catch out breath and appreciate the landscape. The weather started getting worse and visibility was falling short with every meter we we climbing. We had our first food break on the bank of the lake Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe and we didn't realize it till we climbed up slightly and the cloud allowed us a view. We took pleanty of food as our journey wasn't going to get over at Ben Nevis. We had very nice highland walk guidance from here. We were follwing every direction but my cramps was slowing us down. There was a straight climb from there. There was nothing mentionable on the walk, just follow the trail among the stones. We almost reached the peak, but the weather became extremely worse, visibility was poor, rain cloud, heavy load on the back. Led us to descend.

Glen Coe

There are several city link and stage couch options to reach Glencoe. We took the citylink bus to reach Glencoe village. I have heard that place is good, but i was speechless. It took us 1 hr to reach Glencoe. The landscape was breath taking. Lake leven was one size of the road and the
straight up hills on the other. We had booked our accommodation in the Glencoe independent hostel. which was aroud 3 miles from the bus stop. There was NISA shop at the start of the road towards Glecoe independent hostel only gocery store in the village. We picked up food stuff and started our walk along the banks of free flowing Coe river. I was bone tired, but the beauty of the was took all my tiredness away. walking 3 miles took us 1 hr and we reached the independent hostel. I must say in this whole journey this was the best hostel we stayed. We shared our room with a french couple. Neat rooms and kitchen. The loaction of the hostel was also quite nice. We had our food and then went into slumber. The cramps from the hiking was damaging as i caught fever, but i couldn't afford to have some, i was in the middle of a awesome trip.

It was raining in the morning! My legs were heavier than before, still we decided to follow our plan. We had planned to trek up to pap of glencoe. It wasn't a long trek. we wanted to climb up and then climb down before evening. The trail begins in between Glencoe village and the independent hostel. It was raining, still we decided to go ahead with the trek. While climbing up we realized why its a popular place. The landscape was one of the best i have ever witnessed. Our backpacks drenched in water became heavy and the legs started giving up after a while. So we decided to stop. There was no hope that we could make it to the top. The trail was quite clear and the map said the we were follwowing the trail which will take us to the toughest trek in the highlands. After spendin some time up there we started decending. We few hours to be back to Fortwilliam. So we spent time near the rive. Black water in the middle of the village will remind you the picture one holds for scotland. When we waited for our bus near Loch leven, Glencoe is some place i want to visit again.

When we came back to Fortwilliam we decide to visit the town centre. It was worth a visit. The souvenir shops were expensive but you can buy things certainly, also from the beginning what i wanted to see: the bagpipers. The usual parade was quite a show of perfection and tradition.

Inverness/Lochness

We didn't plan to stay for long in inverness. This scottish city is very small in size however it such a place where you can spent hours together. when we reached inverness via stagecoach bus, it was quite late. Most of the journey through the banks of Lochness. I must admit all the childhood stories and discovery show "mysteries and miths" came in a flash and the darkness started shadowing the lake. Its really massive to search any creature. We reached the hostel quitelate. Thankfull the youth hostel was very near to the bus stop. It was a crowded place, we came back to crowed actually. The cooperative shop was open so we picked up food and drinks and planned our next days travel.

Urquhart castle has a history but its not the history but the ruins attracted us because we knew thats the best place from where we can njoy Loch ness. To our happiness, the weather was awesome! so we packed our stuff and took the citylink bus (19) to the castle. we had done bit of research on the castle, but there were lot of other information available on the castle reception. It was quite scenic as you can see in the photograph. We had spend quite a bit of time there and decided to go back to Inverness. The bus frequency wasn't that good there on sunday however we had ample time to spend. We had decided to to spend that in Inverness.

I can write a whole new blog about inverness, but wont do that now. Will leave it for later. We went around to buy something which is a mark of the scotland. There were several things we watched, and then travelled back to the bus stand to catch the evening megabus that took us to London. We bought something: 30 yrs old Scotch!

Dual beam FIB

2010-06-13T03:31:00.010+05:30

Microscopy is a monopoly business of the biologists, but we materials scientists live under the impression that microscopy is our business; at last we found one of them which is not meant for biologists. Its a Focused Ion Beam (FIB) with dual beam,I am talking about. I am not going into details of what all these beams mean but briefly i will touch upon the issue. In the optical microscope we use light as a medium which illuminates the surface, so thats optical beam and we use glass lenses for magnification. Then we generate electrons and we use it for different electron microscopes so we use electron beam there, here magnetic lenses are used instead of glass lenses. Ion beam was introduced around 20 years back, where usually liquid metals (primarily gallium Ga) are ionized and can be used to form a beam. The magnetic lenses doesn't work for ion beam so electrostatic lenses are used. Advantages? no its not the correct word; it is the new characterization possibility that this microscope has generated. Ion beam has momentum 400 times larger than an electron beam, so it can knock out materials from very precise location of a sample whether its metal or ceramics. The question arrives why one need to remove materials from the surface? there various reasons, but the primary beneficiaries are the semi conductor techies for whom the interfaces are really important. There are very advanced applications such as study of electrical properties of single carbon nanotube or y junction nanotube. FIB has been extensively used in pattering different contacts which can be used for measuring electrical properties in the micron scale even in the nanometer scale. The dual beam FIB has another advantage, it has an electron beam as well and thats the reason the instrument is called dual beam FIB. It had opened a spectrum of other characterization which can be carried out. The maximum use is the preparation of specimen for transmission electron microscope (TEM). Those who has prepared specimens using traditional ion milling, know how difficult it is to prepare specimen for TEM, when you have ceramics god help you! also carrying out TEM of interfaces was a big challenge. In the dual beam FIB as one thins the specimen using ion beam it is possible to monitor the thinning process using the electron beam simultaneously. The tougher part is to take out the slice out from the specimen. There is a needle called micromanupulator which enters and attaches to the specimen. Its very tricky as things move at a step of hundreds of nanometer, but the FIB has a stage which is piezo controlled hence it is possible to do things carefully. Although it requires quite good level of skills, the outcome it amazing! The other two very important characterization which is possible using dual beam is to prepare 3D crystal orientation map through Electron Backscattered Diffraction, its a reconstruction of 2D slices as the ion beam can form slices as thin as 100 nm. Again similar analysis is possible using the chemical composition (EDX analysis)
All these techniques are wonderful when you start studying grain boundaries and interfaces, but when you have ceramics, which are highly insulating, life really becomes nightmare. The ion beam bombards ion at 30Kv energy, which is huge. Damage of the surface, loss of stability, there are significant no of issues which pops up. well there are ways to avoid them and i must admit at the days end what this tool one can produce amazing results!

Wiki has a nice article on FIB, much more informative than this.

Oil wont run out

2010-06-06T01:38:00.001+05:30

Saw this nice video in TED talks, there is always hope...

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_sears_planning_for_the_end_of_oil.html

Loughborugh street fair

2009-11-15T19:28:00.006+05:30

The town center in Loughborough appeared very different during last three days. Its the annual street fair which was taking place at the center. This street fair is quite unique in its nature and probably one of the largest in UK. It was quite amazing to find that the small town center can accommodate so many people and such huge rides.

I was amazed to read that Loughborough Royal Charter street fair was established in 1221, nearly 800 years back! also it was very surprising to me that a small town such as loughborough holds such a big event. nevertheless the crowed turnout will certainly help in realizing why it was so. I this early winter day you will feel warm, once you are inside those exciting and heart stoppable rides and hungry with all delicacies on the stove. Honestly speaking the

fair has something to offer from 8-80s. There are lots of rides, games and toys for the Kids, i saw many old couples holding each others hand enjoying the event.

Loughborough street fair has a rich histo y. This carnival marks the end of the travelling season in UK. The fair went through many ups and downs during world wars. There were efforts to move the fair out of the Loughbrough but it did not go out of the place.
The fair covers three streets at the town center including the town center. There are around 20 big rides. Colourful shops and wonderful food stalls. It was too late when i came to know about it, but i am certainly looking forward to more exploration next year.

....Its over, finally

2009-08-30T12:29:00.009+05:30

"...it took me long long time" i love hearing Lobo and this song. So good to be back and scribble here again. Sooo... its over, i dearly wish i could say, its all over for me! alas! i can not. delivering this book took me five times more than what a pregnant woman takes for delivering her baby and pain also 5 times more! The thesis came with an extremely heavy price tag, much of it i couldn't bear finally. Quality? you certainly have to ask my examiners including my thesis supervisor, at the days end it does not matter what i feel about it, i wonder whether it mattered any time?

Here comes the desertion submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy titled

"Grain boundary processes in high temperature densification and deformation of nanocrystalline zirconia"

This thesis concentrated on few important structural behaviour which is strongly influenced by the grain boundaries. Grain growth, grain boundary diffusion, densification and creep are to name a few. Important findings? there were few with significant impact, well i have talked about it to so many people and so many times... i will do it in a separate post...important thing is its more or less over...
How did it feel? does that 186 page dissertation changed anything? Yes it did, certainly it did, but frankly speaking i did not feel anything, whether sadness or happiness. I shed couple of drops of tears i dont know for what. This realization, although cliche, that this book willfully will be read only by me and except me on earth it really did not matter to anyone, hits hard at time. not to mention i longed that it would have some impact...alas!no...so practically no point in discussing it... but hey, you know, its over.....thanks...

Country Roads

2008-12-11T09:39:00.001+05:30

".......All my memories gathered round her
Miners lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine
Teardrops in my eye

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads......"

____John Denver

2008-05-18T16:27:00.007+05:30

May rain

First rain of this summer,
Soaked earth and leaves and the green smiles
Dark clouds,
fading light and hope

It rained
before the last drop evaporated
before the last hope disappeared
last ray of life went into darkness

It rained
settling the dust
caressing the lonely soul

Rain drops came
touching and flowing through the naked skin
nobody ever could touch

It rained
quintessential May rain

Cherish best of Western Ghats: Ballalrayana Durg to Bandaje Arbi

2008-05-04T10:46:00.037+05:30

It was a steady 200 meter cliff, the roaring sound of the Bandaje fall was interoducing me to the wildness lay in front of me, it was really a mesmerizing and breathe taking view. I was blank and was feeling much lighter, certainly it was more than what i promised myself.
Ballalrayana Durg to Bandaje waterfall trek is considered to be one of the toughest treks in Karnataka. With more and more people getting interest in trekking, many of the tough trekking spots have become picnic spot, so me and Santanu decided to go to some place where still there is serenity and challenging trails. We worked out a plan to go to Bandaje, after Ashok’s unsuccessful attempt to complete the trek because of a novice group, what we needed a group comprising of fit and supportive people. Kiran as we expected was ready to join, Ashok knew the route and wanted to finish the unaccomplished job. Rm, Pradipta too sounded pretty willing, it was 6 but then our unexpected group member Satyavir joind us. So we were seven. This trek needed lots of web searching to find the trek route. Bandaje Arbi is challenging trek because of its wildness and chances of getting lost inside the rain forest. There were many people who couldn’t complete the trek. After a long chat we decided to climb up from Sunkasale to Ballalrayana durg and from there Bandaje Arbi falls. Not many venture into that as I guess the trek to Ujjire to Bandaje is more adventurous. This trek had to be adventurous as we decided against a guided trek and trek routes were all mis-leading. We bought the essential stuff, a compass. We just knew the direction of the places So we decided to leave from here on 25^th of April. KSRTC Rajhamsa does not travel via Sunkasale, but other express buses do travel by that road. We decided to take the Rajhamsa to Horonadu, and we had to stop at a place called Kottigahar, its about 300 km from Bangalore. We reached Kempegouda bus station on time but the bus was late, eventually we found both bus and us were looking for each other for almost 30 min. the Bus was schedule to start at 22:25 hrs but started an hour late. We reached Kottigahara early morning 5. There are two ways to travel to Sunkasale, either by bus or by any small vehicle. Its around 19 km from Kottgahara. We hired a Maruti van. The road headed towards Kalasa, we had to take the right hand turn from Kottigahara. After about 7 km there is a v turn on that road which travels towards Sunkasale. The trek actually doesn’t start from Sunkasale, there is an estate called Kari khan estate from where actual walk starts. From Sunkasale there is a jeep trail which takes you to the estate, it comes just after the telecom office, we stopped at the place where the tar road ends, and started our two day adventure. The BR Durg appears on the left side of the road, the hill looks beautiful with thick early morning mist covering the hill top. The walls of the fort were visible from far our first destination. We reached the Ori khan estate to find few estate staffs from Rajasthan. We refreshed ourselves there and learnt from them that there are couple of trails can take us up there, one which takes less time but it was through that dense dangerous forest and the other one which starts just before the estate takes a longer but defined route, we preferred to take the first one as it would have saved our time. The forest was extremely thick and rain made the leach concentration irritably high, this trail went by the side of a wall appeared to me the same fort wall, the trail is defined here. By the time we reached the small stream, after an hour walk, all of us were panicked by the leaches, and badly attacked too; we stood still. The defined trail ends there!!! We didn’t know where to move. The forest was so thick it was literally impossible to move ahead, but our group had all daredevils. Me and Satyaveer moved way up and tried to make our way through the dense forest, but it was difficult. Fortunately we could see the grassland and Satyaveer wanted to check it out, I was following him but realized soon after it would be tough when I saw myself not able to reach the ground and a snake making its way below the rotten trunks. I wanted to call Satayaveer back but he found his way up and reached the grass land. All of us followed. It was quite a scary stretch, but all of us could reach there safely thanks to Satya. Once in the grass land we walked up to the walls of the fort and we could find the trail. All of us were exhausted but the picturesque landscape acted as an energizer. Weather was excellent. The place we reached wasn’t the main fort, so we started walking towards the west to reach the top most location. We walked towards the west and kept an eye on the main fort, it was 11:30 by then. After crossing some distance you can see that there is a man made ridge which travels along the trail. This can be seen from very far and from Bandaje this is the landmark one can follow to reach BR Durg. We stopped at a place to have our breakfast cum lunch. Ashok and Satyaveer went to look for the trail which will take us to the waterfall. We had our lunch with sandwiches and oranges and fruit juices. Once we are done few of us went to see the fort. The remnant of the fort is quite beautiful although almost non existent, but you can get a splendid panoramic landscape view from the top. After a long photo session we decided to move towards our next destination. The green hill tops with patches of forests were really captivating; the serenity of the landscape just isolated us from the outer world.
Ballalrayana Durg to Bandaje fall has a clear trail except the last one and half kilometer, but the tough job is to find the trail. We just knew we have to walk towards south from the BR Durg. Thanks to Ashok and Satyaveer we found the trail and we started our trekking towards the south. The weather was cloudy, and I had a feeling that probably beauty of Scotland will get heavy competition from this place. Many places I just stopped to absorb myself with this awesome environment. There was no doubt in my mind that this was the most picturesque landscape I have a chance to see. Nothing can match Western ghats. Its too powerful and seductive. Although there were few bifurcated trails entering inside the forests we avoided all of them. There was a rocky place and the clear trail disappeared. So we rested on that top after almost one hour of walk. We were just recollecting what we experienced. Ashok and Satyaveer mentioned this was the specific reason for their second attempt. After a brief stint on the top we had complete climb down towards the south. There were no signs of trails. It was rocky grassland and a steep descend. We headed towards the valley as Ashok and Satyavir recognize the places. We were nearing the Bandaje arbi. We could hear the noise from the waterfall, and our pace increased. We reached the Bandaje river, threw our rucksacks and ran towards the cliff. I was dumb stuck by the beauty; water was running down the hill for almost 150 meters just a perpendicular cliff and the whole region was surrounded by big hill covered with thick rain forest. The clouds were moving slowly and all of us for a moment were silent to hear the noise and quench the thirst. I just couldn’t move back, it was almost 3 and we decided to put up the tents before the sun sets. After the camping was done we took bath in the ice chilled water as the tiredness gripped us. It was a wild place, although Santanu carried a kerosene stove we decided to put on the wood fire for cooking. It was a constant effort from Rm Ashok which set the natural furnace burning. Our exotic diner started with noodles and taste was added through the lemon bought by Satyavir. Kiran as usual put things in places before we proceed through the diner process. It was an awesome evening. Not too cold, we could hear only the sounds from Cricket and the water fall. With this music on we finished our diner and resigned for the day. It was a very hard day. I didn’t expect such resilience from all of us. We were all fortunate that none of us became the slowest moving species controlling the trek. The constant noise from the waterfall kept me awake through the whole night. Truly it was a memorable night. Morning broke with thick mist stopping the sunrays penetrating the green valley. The river was really inviting and we plunged inside the water to have a second bath within 12 hrs. After a leisurely breakfast we started our second day’s trek. Ashok and Stayaveer were the guides as the way down was not easy if you don’t know the direction. We crossed the river and had a very steep climb which took us to the ridge of the side hill of the Bandage river we climbed down as we wanted to capture the falls, again I ran out of adjective to describe the beauty. The fall was thin, but still it was a real beauty. We were fortunate enough to come to this place. After a short stay we started walking down. There was a small water body which we crossed and came in front of the forest. We needed to find the entry point as we already had a bad experience while climbing up. The entry point was on the extreme right, there was a small rock marking the entry. One could see the water fall from here. We entered inside the wild ghat forest and the next 3 hr horror movie began. Once we were through some distance, the leaches in millions started attacking, it was horrible, salt and deodorant were so frequently used that our initial plan to stay together inside the jungle disappeared. We were literally on the run, we just could see the trail and walked fast, and it was a tough trail with many twists and turns and covered with the thick forest. It was one of thickest I have encountered. We knew all of us were in bad shape because of the leaches. The only advantage was the train was defined so we didn’t need to stop, Rm has a bad time as she slipped once. After more than an hour walk we reached the Bandaje river and got a chance to catch our breathe. Exhaustion was seen on our face, but not so much, with badly attacked m, Satyavir and Pradipta, we stayed at the river bed for almost an hour. It was almost 2 in the afternoon when we started descending again. This train was enjoyable as leaches were much less and forest was not so scary. We reached the bottom of the hill as Ashok said there will be 3 houses on the way, She was overjoyed to see the first one, her ecstasy became agony as she twisted her ankle. It was evident that it’s a bad bruise, and we were almos a good 2 km away from Bandaje, se showed extreme determination and traveled the distance without further trouble we reached Bandaje. We talked with Mr. Narayan Gowda who owns a quite a huge farming land, he was kind enough to arrange a jeep for us which would take us to Dhramsthala, via ujjire. We started traveling back to at 4 pm. Dharmasthala is around 30 km from Bandaje. We went to the main bus stand and caught an express bus at 6 pm which took us back to Bnnagalore at 3 in the morning. The journey back was extremely thrilling in the chadmadi ghats, but that’s a story itself. While coming back all in our group were having a tired face but there was a glee which said mission well accomplished! This was undoubtedly on of the best treks I ever made to. Extremely supportive and athletic group surely added to the flavour.

Approximate expense: Rs. 800/- per head

Not so rusty

2008-04-23T11:46:00.006+05:30

I knocked the heavy steel stage with full impact on head and blood was all over my face, i was rushed to the health center and the nurse in duty was desperate to give me an anti-tetanus injection. I usually hate taking any kind of medication and i was surprised why for this cut i need to take the injection? but she said it might be rusty, and that may cause tetanus!!! Well not the scare, but the hospital procedures overpowered me, i then wondered whats this correlation between tetanus and rust. From the childhood being an injury prone kid i took the injection whenever i had a cut from some rusty metal. Question struck me then and now too whats the reason is the iron oxide help some organism to grow?
Lets have some facts and figures. India among all other countries extremely prone to tetanus. The reason lies in the fact that the agricultural countries provides damp manure treated soils which is perfect place for these bacterias to reside. Hence they spread easily from there.
Clostridia Tetani is the bacteria which causes Tetanus, is an anaerobic bacteria and until and unless they get a oxygen free environment. Rust nails is not the cause for the disease, its the rough surface which provides perfect home for the C.Tetani bacteria spores. These microbes can reside in animal face or any agricultural tools such places. The nails are found dangerous because they cause deep wound, and once this spore gets inside the skin and finds its perfect breeding ground. Once they start their metabolism process, there is no stopping, they start producing toxins that attacks the central nervious system. This cause spasms and muscle rigidity, the prime attacked place is the face.
wiki has a good article on tetanus. The photo curtesey: humanillness.com

Ye jo desh hai tera....

2008-02-16T20:17:00.008+05:30

"aap kitne saal se ho B'lore mein? Kannada mein baat karo phir" I understood there is a problem, its a genuine question and I should answer this. Then i chatted with the Auto driver at leangth explaining him that why its a problem for me to speak his language although i follow it. I am a extremely tiny creature to talk about India, i just thought to share some of my views about the recent "outsider" problem.

In the centre for contemporary studies at IISc, Dr. Ramchandra Guha gave a fascinating lecture on how there is a country called India. Initially i was bit skeptic about the topic. It never struck to me that "unity of diversity" is maintained through some institutional processes such as constitution, Judicial system, Indian railways and not through an emotion called patritiotism. I proudly say to everyone that except Delhi i have roamed all the bigcities in India and got an opportunity to mix with common people more than others. I sensed in everyplace that "outsiders" are nowhere welcomed easily, and the other part which was kept silence is that "outsiders" too dont mix with the people where they reside. This problem exists in every city, north indians aren't welcomed warmly in south and vis a vis. Someplaces both are not welcomed. Again i am mentioning Dr. Guha's comment, he said, Hindi wasn't accepted at all in the non-hindi speaking states when it was pushed in as a national language, but hindi movies became popular all over the country and people from those places speaks hindi because of hindi movies, the main reason is that language wasn't pushed here. Couple of years back i was travelling to Lucknow for a conference, in lucknow me and one of my friend from Mangalore went together in a shop to buy some stuffs, my friend tried to communicate in english, there was a barge of comments came on him and they wern't soothing at all, similarthing i experienced in Chennai, a city where outsiders aren't welcomed well. If one thinks that east india is free from it then read this one , Kolkata is also not free, last month i was in Kolkata and i witnessed how non-bengali speaking people hates bengalis. Does this migration creates problem? I did bit of research on this and found 8% of Maharashtra population consists of people migrated from other states Gujarat has 5%, Delhi has the max, more than 30% (there are reasons for that) where as WB and Kerala has 3% . India as a whole has 4% of the population which was migrated, I collected this data from census site. It is understable that before IT boom, western states were the employment hub hence the people migrated there because they had a certain skills, now comes the big question, don't they have no rights to migrate? answer is probably hidden somewhere here, Many people compared Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi with Newyork, saying that Newyork has more migrants than any of them and they stay peacefully. Its very much true but then they all speak English! here we speak 256 different language and eventually peace takes the back seat. A migrant speaking alien language becomes an alien and some goons thought that they have every right to kick the other. India is different from any other democracy all over the world and the best way to handle is that as one of my IAS freind put it after his country tour got over said, you can criticise or discuss other's culture but please dont hate them. Communication is really the key here, my friends from Kerala likes Saurav Ganguly more than me as the mode of communication is different, previous case its cricket morecommunicable for them than language. The solution is not lying with bashing and forcing people out from some place but its in making people to learn the language and culture, not with stick and guns but with proper socializing. In india all of us have different skills depending pearts we hail from and i think each one of us is indispansible someway or the other for everyone. So its sensible to show patroitism by helping the migrant to adapt to the new system and not to repel them. Mumbai will have more space then....

2008-02-16T00:12:00.004+05:30

...its one of my favourite song. Its a Bangla song by Anjan Datta, in my hostel corridor one chap was singing it today with a beautiful guitar

Ami Brishti Dekhechhi

Get this widget

Track details

eSnips Social DNA

Ekdin Brishtite Bikele

A moment from school

2007-12-26T10:24:00.001+05:30

Yeah, this is a bit nostalgic post. When were leaving the school we took a group photo. I studied in a govt. school (Purulia Zilla School) where the focus was always only on studies, extracurricular activities were not encouraged much, it was mostly upon individual to pull out a good show. So there was no culture of photo session for the school leaving batch, but my batch was a trend setter one, hence we started this. Suryashankar was instrumental in taking this picture and all of us knew were going to treasure this pic forever. After we left the school, carrier came as priority and most of us had forgot about the photograph, its a long gone story when I remembered about the photo, my family had shifted from Purulia and I had lost all contacts with Surya. The photo remained permanently in my memory, suddenly after a gap of 11 yrs almost, I got a chance to find Surya and all thanks to orkut. The whole memory refreshed and I desperately wanted the pic, thankfully Surya too kept the pic intact, so he scanned and sent the pics to me. It was a treasure for me, so good to see all my friends. I was happy that I could recollect most of them. We had a pretty infamous batch in school but most of my friends, though were bit casual, still were very talented. When I tried to locate all of them I could find they are spread across all continents and every corner of our country, well done mates, we will meet again at the same stairs someday and feel proud about our batch of 1997, cheers….

Apologies for the poor quality of pic :)

from right bottom: Ritwik, Arijit,Subhajit, Debdutta, Apurba,Amartya, Shantanu,Ujjawal, -,Rupesh,Me,

2nd row: Indrashis, Tuhin, -,-,-,Ghochu(Indrajit), Arup, Atin,Panna, Subhajit2,-, Subhasis 3rd row: Subhra, Sushil, -,-,Amit,-,-,Debjyoti, Pushpendu, Anjan,-, Rudra, Surya, Rajib

Standing: Mukul and Sunil

Our teachers: From left: Gorapada Dey, Ashok Mishra, Debbrata Goswami

From right: Late Kamalesh Dutta, BaridBaran Mishra, Maniklala Das

The unidentified characters are mostly because of the poor image quality :)

Time changes here!

2007-11-08T03:30:00.001+05:30

Last two months have been eventful, but before i stepped into this country of opportunity(!!) I had a much more eventful time, unfortunately i cant pen them down as that may cause some trouble for me. So i was so overwhelmed by those events, when i lost my expensive camera in Detroit, i considered it as extension of those events, but now since i am about to leave from lets write about few interesting events, lets write about the most recent one.

Its fall here, the colour of the leaves turn yellow, red and blue, one can notice them changing. Wind starts blowing from the north, the attire of the people changes (from almost nothing to fully clad!) and the time changes!!yes the standard time. The day light saving time starts from the first sunday of Nov and stays through the winter to April first sunday. So on last sunday, early moring i came out from my friends house in Broomfield to catch the Zipfree shuttle! it was 8:30 a.m in my watch, and as i calculated i shoud be at Boulder by 9:30 a.m. It was a cold windy morning, but there was no bus, since there was a chance that i could miss the bus to Boulder i started walking after 30 min and was cursing the people for the service delay, again after a 3-4 km walk i reached the stop on time and again there was no Bus, i was irritated, annoyed and frustrated too. The chill was penetrating the skin, after a while the Bus came from Denver and I angrily asked the pilot for the cause of delay, he simply apologized and gave a look to me, but i didn't care, my sunday was already spoilt, so i manage to reach home at 11 am, just i was about to tell my misfortune to Woki, my roomie, he blurted out in broken english "Do you know the time is 1 hr. late today?", i looked at him for a while and everything was explained, indeed i remembered the clock was running 1 hr. late. I just gave a smile to him and told "No! i just now experienced it..."

UFO over Kolkata!!!???

2007-10-30T20:49:00.002+05:30

When I read the news, i was immediately reminded of the song by Anjan Dutta, "Haripada ekjon sadamata chhotokhato lok"! Well although i laughed after reading the news on Times of India, but for someone it was a serious business. Against the popular idea that these extraterrestial objects are visible for a very short period, this stayed on the sky for 3 hrs, in the late night sky over kolkata !!! Some person named Farhan Akhtar had caught a 2.30 hrs. video of this object and it seems he is not the only person who saw it, there were lot of people gathered at the EM Bypass that time to see that object. According to Mr. Akhtar it was visible even after dawn and after that it disappeared. Sounds strange right? well with time it may add to another mysterious story but for Kolkatans its the first occasion. Well I hope the ETs didn't take Haripada kerani along with them!!

here is a video put on the youtube, taken by a cell ph camera, see the changing colour of the objects, looks beautiful....

youtube clip

Royal tigers: a response

2007-10-25T22:56:00.001+05:30

Sometimes back i had a post on tiger sensus, and i expected someone will enrich my knowledge about it, i felt very happy to find this response to my post from the Author of the book Guidelines for Estimating Wild Tiger Population Using the Pugmark Technique Dr. L.A.K Singh, it carried some important information and i thought i should post it....thanks Dr. Sing for the information

I am glad to see your interest in tiger numbers. I have studied tigers and refined the pugmark technique during my 16+years tenure in Similipal Tiger Reserve, Orissa. The sincerity with which the staff conduct pugmark tracking and the type of data produced from pugmark tracking is unmatchable. No other method can surpass pugmark tracking. It is quick, it allows us to know the movement area of each tiger and leopard, their population structure- male, female, cub with pugmark sizes (hence, idea about age class too), links among cub-mothr, female-male; their spatial distribution map; it is economic, it employs local tribals who skill in animal tracking. A Guard, at the end of census is able to know, which exact tigers are in his territory and in his neighbouring territory. There is no statistical extrapolation, hence no mathematical tigers. Do you need a copy of the WWF guideline? send your e-mail address. ........
Book title:Singh, L. A. K. (2000):
Tracking Tigers : Guidelines for Estimating Wild Tiger Population Using the Pugmark Technique. (Revised Edition). WWF Tiger Conservation Programme, New Delhi.

So Here I am

2007-10-16T05:01:00.002+05:30

It was night, quite late, Chicago O Hare Airport was deserted. It was Sunday so it was understandable. I was trying to make a cal, to let my family know that I have reached here safely. Whenever someone comes to US people back home gets worried for obvious reasons. So I wanted to let them know. I was trying hard to call home but didn’t know how to reach there using the AT&T coin telephone, already I had spent few quarters and was desperately looking for help, I saw an American gentleman in a big hurry went past me, seeing him in a hurry I didn’t stop him, but he stopped, he realized I need help so he came and asked me whether he can be of any help, so this man tried his best to make the call, unfortunately he too couldn’t make, so he picked up and called AT&T and asked why there is no instructions, and finally he made another call to get me the detail instructions, I was touched by this gesture, he apologitic and told me since he cant make the international calls from his cell so he couldn’t help me, I was really amazed didn’t expect the help, so I could finally make the calls. Before leaving he told me he knew about India and since he had to catch a flight in 15 min he couldn’t stay with me till I finished the cal….Welcome to America 1.

A fine balance: short review

2007-10-05T04:55:00.000+05:30

I bought this book as lots of recommendations poured in, and finally yesterday I end up reading it, I has been a really depressing novel, I didn’t read such novel for quite sometime. Rohinton Mistry, as many says is an outstanding author and truly speaking “ A fine balance” has been written with similar craftsmanship, it was an extremely great one to read.
The novel is written with the emergency period at the backdrop (1975), so during the whole book, Rohinton did a great job in keeping the tension alive. There are many characters in this novel but the majority part is based on couple of Parsi families, although Rohinton didn’t get deep inside the Parsi culture but still he mentions a lot about them. There are many small stories which were finally streamlined to form the main one, but manly the novel was built around a woman called Mrs. Dina Dalal, very strong character by itself, will draw your attention all the time. Rohinton nicely described the misery, exploitation during the time of emergency, without being explicit. Social oppression on the “lower” caste has been depicted extremely vividly in the novel. Before I get distracted, let me summarize the story, Dina Schroff is a Parsi lady who after a painful stay with her brother gets a short lived freedom when she married a Parsi guy called Rustom Dalal, but Rustom passed away in an accident, Dina went alone to survive on her own, and during her professional search for tailors she came across couple of tailors: Ishvar and Omprakash, who were cobbler by their family profession and turned int tailors, had gone trough immense torture in the hands of Jamindars in the village and their misfortune pushed them to the City. Dina gets a paying guest who is a son of his friend, Maneck Kolah, from hills and again had a different set of façade. The best part of the novel is the time when these 4 characters stays together and presents different philosophies towards life. Rohinton, although didn't mention much about the city, but it will surely remind you about Bombay, instead of Delhi. Altogether a gripping novel, with lots of painful truth inscribed.

The novel has a theme, and it was mentioned at least couple of times, “everything ends badly..”. Its an extremely depressing line which made this novel unbearable. None of the characters, who struggled all thorough the novel was spared. The identity of the characters were never lost, though the suffering remained, except the crooks everyone in the end was at a loss. It was on the struggle people did to survive, but the end was pretty dramatic and saddening. Another point that struck me was the backdrop of emergency was not removed even after the ordeal was over, Rohinton mentioned about the same hopeless situation which prevailed. Altogether the book is extremely good to read only if you can bear the depression.
There is a movie also coming on this book, I hope the movie will be good, but I don’t dare to watch it

Few links:

Movie

Readers group

2007-06-29T02:49:00.000+05:30

So shankara is married now......

Wanna go for a treak :(

2007-06-17T00:03:00.000+05:30

Today i dug out couple of pics from the PC. Feeling xtremely nostalgic wanna go for a trek before the last few left in our group disappear from Bangalore, these ones from our trek to Narsimhaparvata quite sometimes back, it was awesome place .....

here is another

Royal Tigers: Can counting techniques save them?

2007-05-26T00:16:00.002+05:30

This is a scientific technique I am gonna pen down, I have no expertise in this and don’t know the nuances of the issue also. It’s a simple effort to scribble the info available in the literature and books and online.

Its not only the media, concerns are all over India and world about steep decline in the tiger population in India. In general tigers are a species which is demographically distributed among 13 Asian countries. It is one of the rare royal species which is about to be extinct. In India there are 28 reserve forests for tigers and tiger census are carried out frequently. Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, came with a shocking revelation recently. they published a census report for tigers in 16 of these forests (rest they are going to publish in December 2007). It was shocking because they had reported a decline in tiger population by 60% in Madhya Pradesh, 57% in Maharashtra and 40% in Rajasthan. This decline took place within few years and the concern is, it happened in spite of govt. action to safe guard India’s national animal. Steady decrease in the no. is attributed to poaching and decrease in the habitat area. These big cats are extinct because of their big size and carnivorous diet which force them to reside in low population area. They are easy and prize targets for the poachers and reduction in the food availability is forcing them to be extinct, but there is other side of the story too: Some people believe that previously published census data was erroneous. In Palamou reserve forest the number of big cats may vary from 7 to 37! This takes us back to the process of counting the tigers. There is couple of techniques I am concentrating on here

Pug mark counting technique

This is quite old technique for tiger census; it was first used by W. J. Nicholson of Imperial Forest Service in Palamau district, Bihar in 1934. Then on this technique has gone through many versions of reforms and is still it is a topic for research. In this technique pugmarks separated by long distances are considered as individual tigers; among these the hugely varied marks are discarded. Using a multiple group discrimination technique it is possible to identify the track of individual tigers. It was found that seven such carefully identified pug marks can give a more or less accurate no. By the way pug marks are the footprints, shape of which gives the info of the gender too, usually individual cats follow different tracks , hence once the track is identified its is easy to count the no of tigers in a forest. It’s a time taking but an inexpensive method

Photo trapping technique

It’s a brain child of Dr. Ullas K. karanth, who is now in Bangalore. Pugmark technique although is being followed for quite sometime, it’s not a visual counting technique and secretiveness can not be taken care of easily. In this photo trapping technique, cameras are fixed near the track, as it is said that the stripes on the tigers body is similar to human face, hence it is possible to distinguish the tigers from the pictures and identify them next occasion. Tiger densities are calculated using statistical methods. Line transect sampling is used to find the tiger density. It is quite an efficient technique although several issues are still debated.

Except these there is a waterhole technique which is used in counting the number of tigers, but the important issue here is: is this counting technique varies the census results? Interestingly WII has used the photo trapping technique during the current census whereas the previous censuses followed the pug marks. In addition, forest official not always try to publish the factual info, just to avoid the exhibition of the decline in the no. of the tigers. Hence it’s quite a difficult blame game, but truth is tigers are in declining no. whether it is Suderbans or Ranthambore, they are endangered. Someone says correctly: it’s a losing battle!

Photo courtsey: Dr. Ravi S. Kottada (in Bannerghata nationa park)

Few intersting links:

WWF

Jayarajan, O. (1983a). Pugmark census. Cheetal 25(3): 44–51.

Iutam Symposium on Recent Developments in Non-Linear Oscillations of Mechanical Systems By Edwin Kreuzer, Nguyen Van Dao

Karanth, K. U. & Nichols, J. D. (1998). Estimation of tiger densities in India using photographic captures and recaptures. Ecology 79: 2852–2862.

Book release: "Vikram Sarbhai-a life"

2007-04-21T10:58:00.001+05:30

It’s a long time since I became a irregular to Centre for Contemporary Studies (CCS), mostly because the talks are more technical in their respective fields, but last week when I saw this notice, i was immediately interested in attending it. It was a book release function. Not an usual event to occur there. This book was on Vikram Sarabhai a name know to many of us. It is a rare event in India that people write biographies of someone whose name is not Gandhi, but Amrita Shah did a formidable job in writing her book called "Vikram Sarbhai- a life", this book is published by Penguin and costs around Rs. 425 ($10). Book release function was very much unlike an iisc event, media thronged the premises with flash bulb and high profile guests like Dr. Kasturirangan and Prof. Balram, it appeared a bigger event than the once i expected. after the release Prof. Kasturirangan talked a bit about his association with Prof. Sarabhai, the early flights of their dream to reach the space in RPL, in Ahmadabad. The Amrita Shah read out couple of chapter from her book. First one is about his association with IISc. How he fared in the institute and how his dreams were unfurled and how he became the pioneer for Indian Space dream. There was a question answer session which followed her book reading event as usual it was very amusing as someone Asked "How indigenous is our space program" well Prof. Kasturirangan came as a savior. There was some light hearted humours, Prof. Sarabhai came from a wealthy background, So someday when somebody raised the question "Why are you wasting 4 crores of taxpayers money behind the space program,?" Sarabhai answered politely "Please don't worry i was not wasting tax payers money, its me paying more tax that 4 crore".
There has been reviews on this book already, and its a talked bout book inside media too,but somebody rightly pointed out the book is slightly costly for us: the PhD students :)

Photo courtsey: CCS webpage

Just Kiddin :)

2007-03-24T12:18:00.001+05:30

….She is back, as silent as dew drop she came in, with all her glory and beauty personified. I am happy! My fingers are overjoyed; they are dancing in the tune by Pit Sigar. I can see her everywhere I look. Its just enough to wake me up from hibernation…Thanks dear :D

Maximum City: from a readers desk

2007-01-02T22:07:00.000+05:30

Maximum city;I encountered this name from one of Amitav Ghosh’s comment on the book. He was very liberal in praising it, I was curious about Bombay always, many of my close ones live there and they always talk about the city, hence i wanted to read this book by Suketu Mehta and finally read the best book I read last year, and the list includes book like “Hungry tide” too. What this book is about? The title said Bombay lost and found and the end it was for Suketu not for the city, the whole book brings out really breathtaking truths about the city, I would say its Bombay discovered. Salman Rushdies’ in praise for this book said the best description of the ruined metropolis. I was wondering why it is ruined? I was disappointed when I started reading the book, It appeared to me that only criticism is left for the city and after I read the first chapter my fear was confirmed. One may shelve the book if the read only the first chapter. To me Suketus’ home coming after 21 yrs. of stay in Newyork was more of emotion driven that need. Hence he sounded pretty frustrated over the situation in Bombay (he used the city name all through the book). At the end of first chapter I concluded this book is going to be a frustration of an US returned NRI who stayed here for only two and half years. I was so wrong!

“What does a man look like when he is on fire”? Well this was the way the second chapter started and after few lines I realized he is into serious business, I could not leave the book till I finished 584 pages. So what Suketu did? He took the decision to write this amazing book and started working on it with an eye of an anthropologist.

The first chapter he describes his drive towards Bombay, the drive many Mumbaikar can not avoid so easily, he comes back and the new Bombay called Mumbai and that was a revelation for him, he couldn’t identify the place he once belonged to. He was a foreigner in his own city, crisis for roof, water, bad weather, lack of a proper system to run the city and of course the crowd inflow in the city in this book. The high population density and steady inflow of people from outside the state was mentioned many a times in this thesis. He identified the people, who run the city, so he started with the Shiv Sena,

The second chapter is he talks about Hindu extremists. Suketu, though identified himself from hindu religious strata, strongly believed that the hindu extremist group Shiv Sena and their premier Bal Thakrey is pretty much responsible for the present state of the city. This chapter has a shocking description of a man when he was killed in fire and when it was from the killer himself it scares you. It’s a very moving chapter, the life of the people involved in the riot move around places like Jogeswari. The interesting part was his interview with Bal Thakrey himself, it is worth following.

Third long chapter is about cops in Mumbai, Suketu had really put down the vivid inside story goes around Mumbai cops, he gets in touch with a cop who was the key brain behind catching the 1993 Bombay blast accused. The whole chapter goes around the commissioner. His portray of the police department is really excellent, its almost not opinionated. He describes how the encounter specialist were born and the hypocrisies and underworld threat looms over Bombay police: “the second after Scotland yard”.

Without gangstars the city is incomplete hence Suketu gets himself inside the underworld, could bring out the stories about gang war and the lives of the shooters. Probably the most nonchalant way of describing the lives of these murderers, at times you may feel chill passing through you spine! His work never showed any dishonesty to the subject, to know how the big bosses think about themselves Suketu interviewed Chhota Sakeel, one of the most wanted gangster in India now lives in a neighboring country, the leader of the infamous D-Company. As I mentioned you feel chill when he describes about a murder in Bombay which shook the police department thoroughly as they didn’t knew the killers whom Suketu knew!

So his journey to find the lost Bombay doesn’t stop here, he wanted to go deep inside the gutter and discover how Bombay was lost. He met Monalisa a fictitious Bar girl, in a dance bar. It is through her eyes he brought out the painful story about these untouchables it the society. The best part of this section was that Suketu lived inside a story here and became one character, this part of the book I felt most touchy. The life of Honey the man who dances in the bar as a girl will surely leave an impact.

Then comes the Bombay where the new city lives, yes! The bollywood, inside the book, it came out many a time, that the city lives in a movie, starting from Bal Thakrey who according to Suketu gets philosophy from movies, even the ganstars think themselves a character in the movie, so how Suketu did there, well he wrote a script for a ‘hit’ movie called “Mishon Kashmir”! its imaginable how much inside he was in the industry. If you sometimes laugh during going through this book it is this section, its hilarious many times but really tragic. Whether its great Bachhans or Sharukh or Hritwik he came close to every one, he describes Sanjay Dutt’s life inside jail from his own version which media also did not have access to. He became a close friend of the renowned director Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Mahesh Bhatt. It was really interesting to know how people struggle inside the industry how the D-company clouds looms over them, and the extortionists and the sensor board the extremely sensitive crowd, it is an amazing description.

Does the story end here? No, so Suketu scripts a middle class family with aspirations inside, they move out from the slums to a small flat outskirt of Mumbai, as usual middle class stories don’t have excitements but you will feel the difference about Bombaities for sure. Their ambitions and needs are different from the others. How about the foothpath? Stats says 50% of the foot path in Mumbai is occupied by people, Suketu finds a poet in the street! The problems with Biharis in the city comes alive here. The young Bihari poet has been a representative of the dreamers inside the city.

The last chapter is the most violent without any decscription of bloodshed; he was talking about a Jain family who are becoming a monk. It is really beyond my imagination that how it will feel when the whole family stay together but without interacting and follow some rituals.

This book is a great example of the best kind of journalism. I would have tempted to say crime journalism, but he went beyond that. The lucid language of Suketu will really impress you. Many places his statement will surely leave more impact that the whole description. His writing was not opinionated at all. He praised the city dwellers at times, Mumbai is a safe city, much safer than the other cities in India, no mugging, people help out if you are in trouble. Girls can freely roam around 12 in the night, which is not imaginable in cities like Delhi. Maximum city really deserves credit, though there are criticisms about this book, but i should say hats off to Suketu!

links

Suketu Mehta

Advices

2006-12-24T22:00:00.001+05:30

I never did this earlier, but i just couldn't stop myself writing this in my post. I have a motivated friend who always wanted to serve the country and resisted all kind of temptation to go abroad for higher education or any kind of visit. He always believed if once we had the best scientific minds in our country then they must be here now too, and it is our responsibility to preserve it. We praised him a lot, infact he was a motivation for many of us to stay back. So he joined a famous national lab here in India, i had very little contact for last 4 yrs., yesterday i got a mail, he said he has quit the job! and decided to go abroad, he added he'll try his best not to come back! . he read pretty sentimental, he had some advice for me too, i want to keep this piece of advice here in my space:

.....I am requesting you too do something similar, i hope you will agree, dont join any R&D lab in India immediately after PhD, go for a Post Doc abroad and then come back to India, because we are great we dont have any faith on our abilities. if you go abroad and come back then at least people listens to you, this marks that you are worth paying attention, otherwise you are worthless. I HAVE EXPERIENCED THIS, I am not cooking up anything. I felt it and faced it also.
You know well that for us the big national labs are a dream place to work but really it is not like that. I term it as SCIENTIFIC MAFIA DEN, Believe me i have experienced it.
Inspite of all these I have proved what we can do. They did realize the point i wanted to make, but it was late and i ran out of patient. I have decided to quit and wanted to a take a revenge, not in a usual way, i made them to depend on me and gave them this shock in once nice morning, i just had put my resignation, i guess they understood. This was certainly a shock, they started to depend, exploit me and was becoming greedier. I also helped them. I wanted that. I wanted to make them realize what youngsters can do. You cant imagine in our lab the young people are so enthusiastic and motivated, i am sure that they can shape our country better than USA in science and technology. But the authority and superiors are demoralizing them.
Anyway I am telling some worthless thing, there is no point in raising such issues once i am quiting the battle, thats why i am writing to you, ponder over it, I couldn't change their attitude and if a new person goes there, he/she would face similar pain. I am not sentimental it is the real world of research i am talking about....

Disclaimer: If you are angry over me for writing such thing about research here, then my answer is: this quote is fictitious and no such guy exist in this world, sorry i just wrote a fiction.

Cool Coorg:Trek to Tadiandamol

2006-12-19T22:11:00.001+05:30

Blame it on Thursday! Yes, because that was the night we decided to disappear from the IISc campus and travel to Tadyandamol. If you give a google search you will surely land up on hundreds of pages delivering a tons of details about Tadiandamol. Hence, it is quite evident that the place must be infested with trekkers. It was not a good news because most of the times we become busy in collecting the plastics or other junks ‘sensible’ trekkers throws on the way, but we had a different plan, we wanted to travel to Coorg by bike. It wasn’t easy job since it was 300 km away from Bengalooru and major part of it was a travel on the hills. Santanu is a able rider and was too confident about making it happen. Hence we caught a couple of hours of sleep and started out journey towards Kodagu district in Coorg.

There are different routes to reach Tadiandamol. For the first route one can take a right diversion just after Srirangpattanam on the Bangalore-Mysore highway and travel towards Virrajpet, this route goes via Gonikoppal and Honsur. Once you are in Virrajpet you have to take a left to reach Kakkabe. It is near 25 km from Virrajpet. Kakkabe is well connected to Virrajpet, though Bangalore is not so well connected to Virrajpet. The second route is to go to Madikere and from there you can come to Kakkabe through Betaagiri and Nopoklu. This distance is 37 km. Madikere is well connected by bus from Bangalore. Once you reach Kakkabe you have to look for the Palace! It’s not a very big one but this was sort of a mile stone from where you start your trek towards Tadiandamol.

We took the Virajpet route and reached near Kakkabe around 12:30 p.m. We did not stop anywhere except for asking for the route, Jackies’s steady hands made the travel a comfortable one. We had couple of plans, either to stay at the hills or reach Madikere and stay there. Near Kakkabe there are many Coffee estates which provide ‘home stay’ accommodation. We had planed for one such place called Honey valley next to Kabinikad post office, but it was not possible to take bike up there hence we started looking for some other place, there is another place called Palace Estate near the Palace, it’s a beautiful place but very costly on our standards. Then we found a place slightly cheaper than the other cottages. Most of the cottages there bear a sign board but not this one! You can identify it as the cottage just next to a motel called Coffee County and named as Twins Cottage. Mr. Ashok and his wife allow people the stay there and provide nice food too. We paid for both of us around Rs. 800/- for two days. It was a nice place and we found a shelter, now we had to arrange for our next days’ provisions for the trek. We decided to travel to Madikeri. The road which took us to Madikeri wasn’t the kind through which we traveled till then, it was quite worse, lots of hairpin curves, so it took us more than an hour to reach Madikeri. We had nice lunch there, it was good and cheap, and since we had time we had decided to travel to Abbi falls. Its not far from Madkeri, the road was good and picturesque for the forest and hills. We both had visited Abbi falls earlier so not much charm was left for us, still it was nice to come back to find the same place. I came here with our TMS gang, and had a major game session in the open field near the Abbi falls, unfortunately that open area is no longer existing, there are plantation, its hard to find that beautiful grass meadow. Then we started back to Kakkabe, it took us 1 hr. from Madikere to kakkabe and it was already dark when we came back to the warm shelter.

Kodagu district welcomed us after we crossed the Mysore industrial area; the forest check post announced the area to be under Rajiv Gandhi National Park. The Road was beautiful; wide 4 track black tar road was tearing apart the green forest which soon ended up in the coffee plantation area. The area appeared to be quite rich; we were in Coorg after all. The beautiful coffee estates were really a treat to watch, from Virrajpet the road turns up to the hill and nice valleys started appearing on the screen. Kakkabe is a very small village, typical Coorgy in nature. The Mahindra jeeps and different attires of females will surely catch your attention. The hospitality from Mr. Ashok and his wife was really praiseworthy.

Thick mist covered the whole valley in the morning with chill piercing through the flesh that led us to start bit late for the trek. The breakfast at the house was quite heavy and we, at once, realized that it would take time to digest, but again I liked the coffee more. From this twins cottage we had to travel to the Palace. My imagination ran t wild but this palace was a small one and enough to disappoint me. So we practically started walking from there. There was a tar road where it was possible to travel by Jeep, but we walked; calm steady and experienced legs were moving at a speed we are so used to. The tar road is through a rain forest covered hill and goes by the side of a small stream; we were thoroughly enjoying the silence. The trek rout is very clear; in fact it is possible to travel by jeep for one third of the trek route. The tar rod stretches for 3 km and then the mud road starts, there are diversions on the way but the trekking rout was quite clear. After crossing couple more streams we could see a glimpse of Tadiandamol peak. We were right in guessing that it will be almost 6 km away from the end of the tar road. So we continued our journey on this bright winter morning though the endless grass land, cool breeze and nice sun kept our tempo up. After one hour of walk we stood near a big stone and decided upon further journey details! Once we started climbing up the wind started gaining speed. The chill wind became unbearable after half way climb, till we entered the jungle. This trail for trek never enters the forest except a small part and I can assure you these are the dense most forest in Western Ghats, once you are lost inside, it requires GPS or a mobile phone to track you down. 10 min walk inside the forest was enough to give us this feeling. It was very similar to the one we experienced during our trek to Agumbe. The time we reached near the peak it was too windy. We reached the peak around 10:30 a.m., it was breath taking, if there is a place called heaven, I sure it wont be better than this. We chatted for a while there; gossiping at 1748 meters was a rare opportunity. Airtel welcomed us to Kerala with a full network signal in the cell phone at the peak; it was a worse feeling to be in touch with the world even there. There were many smaller peaks near Tadiandamol and the wind was not allowing us to sit there, we started climbing down and planned to climb up the other peaks near Tadiandamol. It was too early for lunch. We had our lunch on a rocky hill. It was standard lunch, cucumber! We couldn’t eat the bread or tomatoes we took with us. So it was time to climb down, we had a plan to travel to Madikere again have some time spent there. It was December 16th, Saturday, we expected a crowed there but fortunately not many trekkers around. We walked back to the foot of the hill and cleaned ourselves in a small stream inside the forest. We reached the palace around 2:30 p.m. since Jackie was insisting we went to see the palace, it was disappointed and I was happy that now visitors are not allowed inside. There is a school near to the palace and I saw some kids playing some game, I took the picture, can you guess what was the game? Hockey!!! and among that gang a small girl was playing better than her boy mates. Surely IHF will have a moral boosting. Night was calm at Kakkabe, Mr. Ashok’s and his hospitality again touched us. It was a beautiful experience staying with them. Jacike’s steady hands on the bike made the 300 km journey like a 20 km one; the tough roads didn’t affect him and his driving much. The bike did not give much trouble either. We came back to Bangalore by 3:00 p.m to witness India’s fight back in South Africa and my usual place where everyone was worried and complaining for disappearing without any information and there was somebody oblivious to all the happennings.

Some more pics

Book festival 2006

2006-11-11T23:03:00.001+05:30

The fourth Bangalore book festival has begun in Palace grounds from today and it will go on till 19th November. This festival has been organized by Bnagalore book sellers and publishers association, Festival hours: 11 a.m to 8 p.m. everyday. The ten days book carnival draws people from all corners of Bengaluru. This is a ticketed book fair and the ticket price is Rs. 20/-. Today I went to the book fair along with Deep and Santanu. It was Saturday and the crowd was thin inside the fair. We had plan a to identify stalls which we will target for thorough browsing first and then move to the others. It wasn’t a big fair so within half an hour our targets were identified and then we started our close look sessions. There were few publishers who brought the technical books: Oxford, Cambridge, Orient Longman, CBS are the places where we found some technical stuffs. There is a good collection of old and new books. Though the collection of classics is probably not much as Santanu appeared disappointed, but this was just the first day and I know we can explore more. There are few books which you can find in lots of stalls; Kiran Desai’s “Inheritence of loss”, Orhan Pamuks’ collections, Chetan Bhagat hovered the book fair. John Grisham or Jeffry Archers’ presence you can feel from the time you step inside the fair. Absence of stall from strand book shop was noteworthy! All three of us bought few books. Deep took wide spectrum of collection! Fron Sheila Dhar to Amitav Ghosh, I bought couple of books: “Maximum city” by Suketu Mehta and a small biography of SN Bose. There are 8 PCs with net, available in the book fair premises which are providing a soft copy of the book catalogue and also some details about the festival, few food stalls are also present outside the bookstall premises, to fill the stomach of the book worms and a stage where cultural programs will be held.
The experience of this festival is quite different from the “Kolkata Boi Mela”, well there can not be any comparison here, and still it’s a good effort in a city where people are becoming comfortable reading e-books. I am looking forward to visit the fair few more times and explore some more stuff, old habits doesn’t disappear soon!

Word of caution: avoid visiting the place when crowded. The stalls are small and become quite stuffy when crowded in the daytime.

Little bit of SIMS

2006-11-10T20:33:00.001+05:30

Spectroscopic techniques have pushed the materials research a notch ahed, whether its grain boundary segregation or higher phosphorus content in steel, spectroscopy have proved to be determining tool in these field of research. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy is another such technique used primarily for determining diffusion of elements inside a material through various processes. Whether its lattice or grain boundary diffusion, whether it’s a two phase material or a single phase, SIMS has provided very accurate diffusivity measurement.

How it works? Well the mechanism sounds quite simple but the instrumentation is not so simple. An ion beam is used for scan over the surface of the specimen. This powerful beam of O+, Cs+, or O- takes out material from the surface of specimen. O2 or Cs gases are ionized in duplasmtron and using few electrostatic lenses they are focused on the specimen. This beam ionizes the materials from the surface and takes out materials from the specimens. After the ions flies from the surface, they travel under a potential different. Lenses and filters take out the high energy ions from the ion flow. These ions are mass separated in a magnetic separator where the ions are separated depending on their mass to charge ratio. Another technique used for mass separating the ions is through quadrapole where crtical voltages are applied to separate specific ions. In case of magnetic separator the trajectories of the flying ions are exploited, the ions with different mass to charge ratio have different trajectories.

Schematic of the column in which the ion moves. courtesy Cameca

The crater which forms due to the rastering of the ion beam covers a region of 250  250 µm. The depth resolution of this instrument sometimes will be as high as 1-2 nm. New generation SIMS now-a-days provides secondary electron imaging facility, so it is possible to identify phases or elemental changes in the material. This technique is also useful for studying interfaces in the semiconductor devices or measure lattice and grain boundary diffusivity independently. A major use of SIMS is in locating impurities in the materials, xray spectroscopy or other spectroscopic technique many a time fail to present the information that can be achievable through SIMS.

Presence of C and O impurities in a bonded Si wafer. Courtsey Ansto

Many companies in the world make SIMS, as I took picture from the web pages of companies I am providing the link below.

Cameca

Ansto

Festive mood

2006-10-26T23:45:00.001+05:30

This is how i was guarding my festive mood....

from this..............

My lab went through a major renovation after a gap of few years and i was really amazed to find the amount of junk we accumulated.

..Its really touchy

2006-09-18T23:21:00.001+05:30

....today Abi's post on first women scientist in IISc was really a touchy one. I hope things have changed quite a bit now but still it is very upsetting to know about plights of women scholars, especially in places like indian institute of science in 30s. I am sure there are more real life stories and i feel quite depressed everytime i hear them... Guru's comments to this post also contains some interesting links.

Not so Magical

2006-09-12T15:26:00.002+05:30

I got this idea in the morning, probably couple of hours of sleep made me so imaginative. Its kind of wierd, still felt like putting it down.
Have you seen magicians in the schools, I have watched them, watched them too closely, when I was in Kindergarten I saw this magician with very gorgeous looks, had thick paint on his face and a blue colored long jacket on. He never looked like a normal human being, he was a ‘magician’. I marveled at his skills and magic, at the end on his show we all agreed that there is something beyond our understanding, yes! I met with some “axioms”. During high school time it was even worse, the guy was fooling the whole school and he was not even looking like a ‘magician’, that was very surprising and challenging too, challenge was to crack the code! By the end of the show we all knew it was some trick and how to do that, but many couldn’t support the reason and thus it became a axiom such as only magicians can take rabbits out of their hats, we never knew how it happened. They weren’t the ones who float the semi nude girls in air but still they had larger impact. See for example, myself, keeping a vivid memory of the events, why? because I didn’t have an answer or my dad or the teachers.
How good is the idea to take kids to a magic show? Its fun but not so much, it’s a death of an inquisitive mind. This is probably one stage where we are taught to believe axioms. Recently on of my colleague, after a bucket of beer argued to me that, you can not progress a single inch in science if you don’t believe axioms! He is an astro-physicist! I did not like the idea of this magic shows in the school. I know many magicians say its pure science or pure trick, but as long as the reason is elusive, it’s hard to believe. Its easier for me now to understand why such things happen, but 20 yrs. back I needed a man to tell me what is not so magical about this. I still don’t know many of the tricks how they show on stage, but now I know I am fool at that point, but a kid surely requires a better treatment. Another unfortunate observation is; when you mention about magic shows, people spontaneously tell oh! I will take my child with me…(of course to make them a big fool!). I have all sympathy and regards for the magicians but I have a problem with the audience….

This novel..

2006-09-09T12:18:00.001+05:30

I read this 'goddamn' novel called "The catcher in the rye" by J. D Salinger. I liked it 'and all' but many a times Holden 'killed me'. I liked many parts of it but this speech by Mr. Antolini was really good.

"....This fall I think you’re riding- it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keep falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives , were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with . Or they thought their environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started...."

Life around "soft techies"

2006-09-01T02:48:00.001+05:30

Bangalore, the IT hub, accommodates a large portion of the people working in the software industries. Last few years there has been a lot of noise about it around the world. Usually social studies on this kind of places must be interesting and that is precisely what anthropologist Carol Upadhaya is doing in NIAS. Today CCS, IISc screened couple of documentary films at physics lecture theatre. They were directed by Gautam Sonti with collaboration with Carol. The first movie they screened name “Fun @ Sun” and second one was “July boys”. There is no doubt that the director had hard time in getting into the training session of Suns Microsystems or the conference room of July systems but they could bring out the message they wanted to. In Sun they focused on the training the newcomers undergo as well as the socializing, like the Friday bash! As Carol mentioned at the beginning that communication skills in this MNC world means adapting oneself to a different culture. Socializing or approaching a problem in these global companies are very different than it is taught to the young engineers, hence a moulding is essential. That’s what came out from the film fun @ sun. There was an interview with the VP, Vijay Anand, and that too brought out the fact that a change in the culture of doing things is something they concentrate upon. July boys is quite different, it had mainly aimed at the corporate life of a company which is Indian but very global in nature. Surely the company sustained in the market because of their adaptability to the culture. This start up venture July systems in Bangalore, makes games, and other mobile ph. based software for Europe and USA. Its very important for them to find the right pulse and that needs a better communication rather better understanding of the culture. Couple of things were very similar in these to companies, the free space in quite huge in them, your attire or your way of communicating doesn’t become obstacle also the freedom to ask any one almost anything is very important and I felt these are probably very few nice points touched upon. Overall I would say it was a new experience presented by Gautam and Carol to us, hope Carols research will bring us few more such unknown realities about IT industries.

nano2006:Day III

2006-08-26T11:04:00.001+05:30

Crowd on Wednesday morning was less compared to last couple of days, and I knew that those who didn’t turned up missed something. Prof. Subra Suresh delivered a fascinating lecture today. He is an engineer who is too much inside microbiology and his talk primarily focused at making things better microbiologists through nanomechanics. He talked about basically couple of cells, first one is red blood cell and the second one is cancerous pancreatic cell. Malaria parasite, plasmodium falsiperum which attacks the red blood cell, increases the stiffness and makes the cells sticky hence causes blockages in the vein. He showed the change in stiffness in tensile tests conducted using optical tweezers. The interesting point was to remove an antigen called RESA from the parasite and exhibiting reduction in stiffness, which is desired for these cells. For cancerous cell he observed just the opposite trend and its his ongoing project. By far his talk was most exciting for an engineer. The second talk was delivered by Prof. AK Sood, his name rippled the campus when he got his paper in science. Although focus of his talk was electron conduction through CNTs, he discussed a part of his old work. They passed pure water through a nanotube with an inner diameter of 1.4 nm and observed a suppression of freezing point of water upto -50 oC. Later he proposed that it’s a single chain of water molecule which becomes supercooled, great work. The second phase of his talk was mostly on measuring the electron transport through the tube and also attaching particles like Pd to the tubes for better electrical property, also he talked a bit about the application on nano rods for optical tweezers. So I got to see 3 different optical tweezers in last 2 days. I missed the rest of the sessions as I need to consult the doc in the morning, my poor knee! During second half I had plans for attending few talks; I started with Dr. G. K Deys’ lecture, his grp. in BARC does quite a bit of TEM and here also he presented the work on Zr based BMGs. Good microscopy and followed by the age old question whether there is crystallinity in the shear bands, answer from him was no. I wanted to attend Rachman Chaim’s lecture but he did not turn up. Dr. Wang’s talk on insitu TEM was exciting as much as other in situ experiments that excite me. I had to Rush because today I had my poster presentation. My work was on low temperature creep in YTZ, I had some new stuffs there, couldn’t get good crowd to explain them . I had couple of productive discussion with Prof. R. Andrievski and Prof. Hahn. There few issues related to electron microscopy and grain boundary segregation came up during discussion. Altogether it was a nice couple of hours. I couldn’t get much opportunity to go through other poster though, Prasads’ work on nano Ni drew quite a bit of attention and curiosity. This brought us to the end of the poster sessions in nano2006. In the evening there was a dance program and since I am quite culturally challenged successfully skipped it! The dinner was excellent, people boozed more than yesterday, fortunately there was to trouble today trouble makers were identified and surely some nice surprises were there for them.

Prof. Nabarro no more

2006-08-23T01:18:00.000+05:30

...Its quite sometime since the incident happened, Prof. Frank Regiland Nunes Nabarro the undisputed authority of dislocation theory passed away in a hospital on 20th July at the age of 90. Almost everyday we talk about Nabarro-herring creep and duing this nano 2006 many times the name came. Titas, who was collaborating with him gave me the news recently. Prof. Nabarro came to IISc this year and spent few days in the campus, he appeared a strong willed person even at the age of 90. He worked in University of Witwatersand, Johanesberg for 53 long years.....

nano2006: Day II

2006-08-23T00:56:00.000+05:30

Second day started with a usual busy note, the main hall was filled before nine and just over nine there was a decent crowd inside. The morning sessions began with couple of plenary lectures. Two stalwart from Japan, Prof. Inoue and Prof. Aono set the day for the participants, physical metallurgy and functional materials became more interesting from morning! Prof. Inoue the pioneer in bulk metallic glasses talked about lanthanide based system and also the true bulk glass with diameter of 100 nm. Prof. Aono discussed nanowires and primarily the CNTs. I had to attend the talks under theme B, the first invited talk was by Enrique Lavernia from UCD on the cryo milled nanostructured materials, a novel technique to form nano grained Al, Cu. He talked also about the high ductility of the material with bimodal microstructure, nano metals is moving towards this direction, yesterday Prof. Mukherjee and Prof. Valiev had talked about it and today Enrique. Ruth Swaiger from FZK had something different to talk. It was the grain growth in the edges of the nanoindented Ni, there were many questions about the process but she threw the idea of athermal, stress induced grain growth in these materials. Prof Rodriguez talked about the Hall Petch and inverse Hall Petch relation. I wanted to attend a talk on the nanoporous alumina protein bio markers, unfortunately the speaker did not turn up! Today the conference got true colours, the colorful pics from the mixture party and poster session yesterday came today. Today was also the day for making new contacts, well I got to know few people and there were more going on, of course it is a rare opportunity of discussions. The second a session started with a talk by Uwe Erb, he talked about the thermal stability of nan Ni, in my lab Prasad and Ravi had already worked with this material, they were quite thick plates, the concern is with sulpher content. The second talk I attended was by Rajesh Kumar a grad student from Punjub Engineering College. It was on optical tweezers. I did not know about the technology and was curious to know. They were using mysine and was passing a laser through the molecule in the fluid. From the image analysis they were figuring out the parameters, it was quite good piece of work. The could measure load as low as 0.3 pN and a displacement of 677 nm. Prita Pant in the structural materials section talked about modeling of dislocations dynamics. Kartik almost had a discussion with her during question answer sessions. Poster sessions was quite enriched though I did not have much to get from them still had quite good discussions with Rejin on his work on hydroxyapatite, on carrying out indentation on non basal planes. Arindam also had a nice poster as well as Dibyendu. Kotts got quite a bit of crowd for his poster. There were much on functional materials but I couldn’t pick much from them. Tomorrow I have my turn to present my poster.
Evening was the banquet time, good food nice drinks and nice ambience had great time with friends from the dept. and Abi! The torch for nano2008 was handed over to Rio De Janeiro also today evening and now time to talk about some unfortunate events, some “Indian scientists (!!??)” who were being put up in NIAS guest house behaved so badly with me and my few juniors that it almost took me to my undergrad days, it was surprising how mean people can become, anyway I felt very bad because these people are testing the patients of my colleagues everyday day and night. Do we really need everyone to run a conference? Hats of to the guys carrying out transportation job, looks like more pains are still there.

Tomorrow morning session and afternoon sessions

nano2006: Day I

2006-08-22T02:19:00.001+05:30

Yesterday there was an indication and today it was a reality. The 8th international conference on nanostructured material started today with a bang! We anticipated the no. of people going to turn up will be quite large and it was evident from last night attendance in the mixture party, more than 450 delegates! The conference was inaugurated at 9 in the moring and J. N. Tata Auditorium was just packed. Many of the big guys talked about nano science and technology and theme of the in augural session was of course anticipation for a productive 5 days ahead. Prof Balram, Director of IISc emphasized more on interdisciplinary research and agreed that he really have tough time in bringing science and engineering department together. Although his last statement, which did not make me elated’ was that chemistry in the key for nanomaterials. Mr. Director its material science and physics, maths and bio is now equally important brothers. The first plenary lecture was delivered by the pioneer in nano research Prof. CNR Rao, Prof. Ranganathan introduced the only Dan David fellow in India. Prof Rao started his lecture by describing an oxide which behaves as a metal (ReO3) at nano stage. His talk was concentrated more on the nanotubes than any other properties, the innovative work was to form thin films at the liquid-liquid interface. This lecture set the tune of the conference, but still it was started with the chemical note. There is little doubt that Atul and Kamanio really had tough time making this big event a reality, the way our faculties slogged for last few months was really impressive. The sessions I followed and will be following is taking place in the J. N. Tata audi, and few talks I will attend in bio materials and few in the functional material sessions. I am not going to Satish Dhawan audi where the theme D talks are going on. CNR’s talk was followed by the talk by Ruslan Valiev in structural materials session. He talked about the SPD process, the interesting part of his talk was to describe the amorphous phase that formed in Ni during parallel channel ECAP, Vikram rightly added issue of grain size dependence on the amorphization. Prof. Amiya Mukherjee’s replaced Helena and gave a very stimulating talk. Highlight was the strength of Cu and the Si3N4 with toughness nearly 15??!! Rightly the work reached Nature. The talk on Biomaterials in the hall c in the afternoon session was also quite informative for people who are new to this field. Prof Yang stressed on the nano ceramics required for biomedical application. I missed the last talk by Ramu, he is in a new field and quite happening one: it was the SWNT doped nano composite for high mechanical strength application. Prof. Mukherjee’s talk gave us the information that the CNT fibers have strength of 1 TeraGPa!!! It appeared to me that this nano will be dominated by CNTs; last nano2004 surely paved the way for CNT technology for this one. There were tons of posters there; I was looking for few guys who did not turn up. like Takeli, anyway it had few very good works to go through. Whether it is Krisanu’s HREM or the scientist's work from TIFR, had shown that nano materials are in the heart of technology today. Let’s see what day 2 unfurls, by the way, Abi’s hall management gang or the guys in the registration were quite sharp today, but extra credit goes to the people taking care of transportation they are having a tough time, i hope situation changes tomorrow.

An anniversary and " The countdown"

2006-07-24T21:53:00.001+05:30

I started this blogging journey just a year back. It was really a different experiment. though it was not the first time I was writing something, it’s a childhood habbit. One striking similarity between that writing and this writing is that both were an open source essays! Yes my childhood diary which i still carry with me was corrected by one of my teacher! Although he had only academic interests but still is was accessible by any one around me. This one is no way different; I tried to write different things in different moods. The 40 posts I have are different, so lets start repeating it. My first post was a few lines on one of my favourite book "we the living" and today i want to write few lines about a book from my another favourite author Amitav Ghosh.

...........This is one of Amitav Ghosh's books which I think was not' read by many readers, like they read "Shadow lines", "Dancing in Cambodia...” or "Hungry tide...” The book I am talking about here is "Countdown". Amitav Ghosh wrote about many countries and civilizations and I found the anthropologists view is evident everywhere. I was curious how he would have described the relationship between India and Pakistan where emotions flow like river both for hatred and friendship, but there is surely a neutral view and Ghosh represents this in an outstanding fashion. This article is written just after India and Pakistan have carried out their respective nuclear tests. This book was an outcome of Authors travel in both the countries after the explosion. He interviewed many people both in India as well as in Pakistan. He begins the essay by describing the political scenario in India as well as in Pakistan. In India BJP was in power and this was for the first time when a not so secular govt. was in power, whereas in Pakistan, Nawaj sharif was planning to get away with the conventional law and implementing religious laws, in this changing environment these test carried lot of significance in the subcontinent. Although Ghosh never hid his views against the nuclear tests still he never showed any bias towards his views. There were couple of interviews around which the article grew, were excellent. One is with Mr. George Fernandez, then defense minister of India and Asma Zahangir the noted human right activist from Pakistan. The political and social background of these two persons actually was very helpful in understanding the views they expresses Amitav Ghosh is really good at that. Both of these celebrities expressed a common concern about the deterioration of the values and death of the ideas followed by these two countries. It came to me with a little surprise that the view towards nuclear weapon is very different in India and Pakistan. In India people see nuclear weapon as a symbol of strength which will never be used whereas in Pakistan there is a real anticipation of a nuclear war. This is how Ghosh had envisaged attitude towards nuclear weapon, but when I read the news today that Pakistan is piling up 20 times more nuclear war heads per yr., its sounded like Amitav Ghosh was quite right in understanding the pulse of both the views. The last part of the book is something I never thought author will address: the devastation that will follow a nuclear attack on Mumbai or Delhi, a chill passes through your spine when you imagine the devastation foreseen by the scholars . It has been beautifully explained with all scientific support. This book is as good as the other creation by Amitav Gosh. Salute to him.

Nostalgia

2006-06-08T15:46:00.001+05:30

Our T-board gang is almost non-existent now. Guru was the last man standing and he left today. We had a big gang comprising of 12-13 people, with our fixed 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. T at the T board. I may not recall all the names but lets try, It was Shankara, Phanikumar, Sudhir, Phaniraj, Sarvavanan, Krishanu, Guru, Kottada, me, Basa, Ln(rao), Manas, I am sure I forgot few. Extreme weather or tremendous workload could not alter the schedule for a single day. Even during student’s symposium days we used to find 5 min for the T. I remember Shankara used to sleep for 2 min if the time at the clock wasn’t showing 2 p.m. sounds crazy right, that’s how grad students act. The discussion at the T-board used to be pretty much informal, and at times there used to be a technical discussion. Boy, I am sure that must be one rare opportunity to see the beautiful minds at their best. Honestly speaking there were much technical stuff which I picked up from these sessions, but interesting was gossips, they were really hilarious! I won’t divulge who used to crack what kind of joke but they were really some enjoyable moments. Change is the name of life and there is always something better happens all the time. I am sure this will give away opportunity for different people among us to come together and form a new fresh group. Renowned singer Manna Dey has a famous Bengali song on "coffee house"; I am trying to translate the last few lines:

“… Those seven chairs and the table are still there, even the cups are also not empty; new buds have come in the same garden only the old gardeners have disappeared…”

Best of luck mates we will share a cup of T again :-)

All smiles!!!

From left: Ln(rao) in Mcgill Univ Canada, Sahoo in Japan, Basa in Leuven, Belgium, Kotts in Karlshrue Germany, Saswata and Me right here, Guru will be in Northwestern USA, Sudhir is in Boulder USA.

The tree in the background has also disappeared from the T-Board

Ek doctor ki maut.......

2006-05-31T01:26:00.004+05:30

People say when grad students talk you can summarize the whole conversion as a collage of complains! Well sometimes i do similar things but i didn't want my blog become a complain book, coz I am sure after a year or two they will sound extremely silly. So i will scribble something different than what I was doing. Reading a person like a book is something I do regularly, and I feel it’s harmless as long as I am not disturbing anyone. Before I deviate more I should say that I am feeling like writing about some one.
Recently, Anandabazar Patrika wrote an article in editorial page, it was on a marriage! I was surprised that a news paper like that is covering marriages!!! and later cursed myself for my ignorance, I came to know that it was the marriage of Kanupriya Agarwal,“durga”, the first test tube baby of India. Her birth was a scientific experiment with a huge scientific importance and the persons who carried it out was Dr. Subhas Mukhopadhyay and his group. His group consisted of doctors with a potential, but I will write only about Dr. Mukhopadhyay, who passed away just 25 years back. He was a pioneer researcher with great achievements committed suicide on 19th June, 1981. Who is a test tube baby? In short a baby who was born through a technique called in vitro fertilization in medical terms. In this technique eggs are fertilized outside woman’s body, at the beginning it was really a tricky experiment . The first “test tube baby” was Marie Louise Brown. Dr. Patrick Steptoe and Dr. Edwards’s successful experiment gave birth to Marie on 25th July, 1978, but was that really first? Scientific world is a cruel place, Dr. Subhas Mukhopadhyay and his group brought the first test tube baby to the world on 3rd October in the same year, just 67 days later! Those who have worked in Kolkata knows why it was an achievement, the follow up incidents proved this more evidently. Both scientists faced stern criticism, for Dr. Mukhopadhyay it was not the world, because this news never reached the world. Outside India it was Dr. Indira Hinduja who was the first Indian to perform IVF in 1986, which have birth to Harsha in Bombay. This was a documented fact till the beginning of the 21st Century. Why he was not given the credit? I don’t know how many people really know why this happened or what really happened? Unlike Dr. Subhas Mukhpadhyay, in spite of criticism the British scientists could carry out more successful experiment and published their work. West Bengal government took few very surprising steps and banned his research. He was due to attend a seminar in Kyoto University in 1979 which also he was not allowed. The only published document of this work was a report, submitted by Dr. Subhas Mukhpadhyay to the government of West Bengal, as he was instructed to do so. This document carried very little data as it was not a scientific report. He wanted to carry out further experiments to establish the technique but the government prohibited him from doing any kind of research in that field. They were not satisfied with this, they transferred him to an eye hospital that did not have any facility to carry out such research. This was a huge loss since the technique Dr. Mukhopadhyay used was different from the one from the British group. This must have been a testing time for his family and him, the medical research community in Bengal was also not very friendly to him that time and these lead him to commit suicide in 1981. This would have been the end of the story, but it was not. His friends and colleague such as Dr. T. Anand Kumar, fought for his right then on. This whole event reached the ear of masses through Dr. Tapan Sinha’s outstanding movie "Ek doctor ki maut" in 1991. This movie was based on Dr. Mukhopadhyay’s life and received applause from all corners of the country and the world. In the year 2003, British medical council celebrated the silver jubilee of this event in a grand fashion, and this fortunately during the same period Dr. Subhas Mukhpadhyay got due recognition. In October Indian Council for Medical Research and National Academy of Medical Sciences accepted Mukherjee as the ‘first’. In the Indian Academy of Science premises in Bangalore they felicitated his group members along with Kanupriya. It was recognition which took a long time to come. This was really a sad incident for Indian science since this was a discovery with immense scientific importance, till now a million people have born through IVF technique!

Links:
Current science

Dr. Robert Edwards won the Nobel for medicine in the year 2010

I know a photographer!

2006-04-01T10:43:00.001+05:30

So I know a press photographer now! This picture is from a front page of a popular Bengali daily called “pratidin”. After the Election Commission ruling that political parties can not campaign by wall painting for the up coming assembly election on 17th April in west Bengal, the parties are getting innovative ideas this is one of them. One guy has shaved is head etching out the symbol for some party. The sign is sickle hammer and the star

Photo courtesy “pratidin” 30.03.06

Okay, I am putting it as my brother took it. He wasn’t a pro but I think he has become one since his work is appearing at the front pages of the news papers; well done bro, keep it up…

a new look! finally

2006-03-28T20:09:00.001+05:30

Finally our institute paid attention towards our web page. A new IISc web page is up. I dont know whether i am late to notice it but just now i noticed it. The facade is good! Lots of infos which were hidden inside the old page are now one click away. I liked the limk for ejournals appearing in the front page. More or less its good. I will dig up some more stuffs soon, but did you notice something; in the top corner of the page some games pic appearing. In the cricket pic some lefty batsman is hitting the ball to somewhere, guess who can it be.......... :-D

Problems in Data Acquisition

2006-03-26T23:59:00.001+05:30

Digital data acquisition systems have changed the world a bit! Simulated flight training, cars controlled by automatic systems are reality now. Present day research also exercises a great deal of importance on data acquisition systems. When I look around the characterization tools we use, I found most of the machines are computer controlled and I witnessed analogue to digital transition for quite a few equipment. We have our old Scanning Electron Microscope which has all the controls as buttons or knobs. Whereas, the new SEM we got has all these controls but it’s a mouse click away. One of our distinguished faculties had one mentioned that a trained Chimpanzee can operate these machines with its little finger. Surely data acquisition systems has became integral part of characterization, we no longer sit in front of DTA machine and note down the data for hours, it’s a software which does this, but here is the hitch: Data acquisition system (DAS) can easily put you in trouble if you aren’t careful. For sensitive systems which deal with high pressure or high temperature DAS needs to extremely good otherwise it may lead to catastrophe. Let’s first know where we go wrong most of the time. DAS includes four components: transducer, signal conditioner, data acquisition cards and of course the beautiful softwares. Many of us think that transducers are not a part of it and our control will be better if we have a better DAS, but in practice, the whole DAS is as good or as bad as the transducer is hence the first thing that comes into picture

1. Transducers and actuator are integral part of the DAS and a better control is possible only when a good transducer controls the machine.

2. After transducer it is the turn for the signal conditioning unit. One important feature is where to put the signal conditioner? It needs to be near the transducer as the noise is low at this point. In this regard second important point is the cable. The DA board uses similar connector as the some other ports/boards, but the design will be completely different. We have a tendency to use same connector for all application which may at times become very risky. A system should have a shielded cable in order to reduce the noise level. Wiring is important, its better to check the connection twice before starting the acquisition.

3. I will discuss ignorance here. We do data acquisition from both grounded and ungrounded sources. In case grounded source we assume our ground is at zero potential, which may not the case. Moreover, if you use transducers grounded using different ground with different potential, the data which we are acquiring will be highly erroneous. In case of low voltage measurement its quite a problem, your machine may stop working for such small problem. The punch line is use same ground for all the transducers and make sure it’s a zero potential.

4. Aliasing was one of the problems with DAS. According to Nyqist theory if signal has no frequency component above ½ the sampling rate then the signal can be completely reconstructed, and if there are frequencies above that the data will be corrupted. In practice the complete set of frequencies aren’t free from higher frequencies but there are ways to handle it, but if it goes beyond a limit it’s a problem. Suppose you are using a sampling rate of 300, and reconstructing a signal with frequency of 10 Hz, the system is absolutely fine but is its 280 Hz, well it can not show anything, that’s good but you will get a wrong result when its shows a value of 20 Hz. You have a completely wrong info. The soulution is not difficult and most of good DAS systems have this protection, a low pass filter before digitization is enough to reduce the Nyquist frequency effect, and present day most of the companies take care of it

5. Softwares! They are beautiful with all kind of flexibility to analyze the data acquired and present them in beautiful plots. The problems are in disguise, be very careful in using them and don’t belive the information you are getting without verifying it. These programs are good, but many a times they won’t consider the complexity that is hidden in your system, hence analyze the data in a wrong fashion. Its sound very general and more like software haters speak, but it is really important. Now-a-days DAS companies come up with very good softwares, still there are always ifs and buts.

I could remember few of the issues related to DAS, but there may be more and comments regarding this are really welcomed, as far i am concerned, I felt like putdown this issues.

Some interesting old articles are here:

Mistakes in DA

Article by Strether Smith

A day out to Muthati

2006-03-14T16:42:00.001+05:30

Last october when Kotts was leaving for Germany, we had decided to go for a trek while he is here in March, the plan was almost spoiled but somehow we pulled out a trek to Mutthatti. We found this place through Karanataka forest dept. trekking web page. This is one of the trek places which are being explored after the death of Sandel wood smuggler Veerappan. Though it was a two day trek, we wanted to cut it short by one day. In order to save the time we went by bike. Four musketeers: Kiran, Me, Kotts and Jackie (santanu) were there for the trek, Galavalli was the only one missing (he is enjoying in US) from the group went to Narasimha Parvata last April. We sorted out our plans the previous day; reaching Muthatti was not much of a concern, only concern was biking back to Bangalore and hence we had decided to come back before Dusk that left us a trekking time of 6 hr.

We started our journey from Metallurgy dept. at IISc at around 5:30 a.m. Me and Jackie in one bike while Kiran was Kotts behind him. We went via Jayanagar and left the city via the Kanakpura road. The roads became better once we left the city! Bangalore to Kanakpura is 55 km by road and that was our first destination. We reached Kanakpura at 7: 00 a.m. and had our breakfast in a small restaurant. Kanakpura is quite big place. Our second destination was Sathnur, which is around 16 km. away from Kanakpura, and the satisfying fact was that road was really good in this stretch too. We reached there at around 8:15 a.m. Sathnur has three diversions at a circle, if you take the straight one you will reach Muthati, Left will take you to Bhimeswari and the right will take you to Cauvery fishing camp. We took the straight road. Muthati is 18 km away from Sathnur. The road was newly polished and you start experiencing bits of hills from here. It is onset of the summer and the traces of leaves on the foreground of clear blue sky appeared really beautiful. Our bikes gave a good service including one skid on the road side, except that our journey to Muthati was quite smooth. Muthati is a picnic spot like, Bhimeswari on the banks of cauvery, and like other picnic spot it was noisy, dirty with bottles and papers and chips packets. We avoided going to the river in Muthati. Instead we went to the forest office and fixed our trek route. The entry fees per head to the hills was Rs. 100/- and guide fee was Rs. 50/- per head. Mystery trails has all these details. Our guide was Mutthuraj, a young chap with cool nature. He trekked all along with us in bare feet. We started our trek at 9:30 a.m. The trails began with a thorny uphill climb. Our first trek destination was Devanamundi hills. The day was quite hot, though not unbearable. It wasn’t a very steep climbing up too. This place has quite a few specimens of wild animals we saw some signs of bear and Elephant while climbing up, but alas we couldn’t see them physically! We had to put few breaks before we reached the top of the hills. It is a typical ghats hill top: rocky and bare, no signs of shade. We took almost 2 hr to reach there. The Cauvary river valley was visible from the hill top. The river flowing by tearing apart the hills was a spectacular landscape to cherish. The complete valley was visible from there. If you have a strong eye you can identify the Chnichi water falls at extremely far away, the falls is like a white streak on the green background. I am sure sunset from that point will be a treat to watch. The peak was almost 4 km from Muthati. Our next destination was Bhimeswary, which is a place on the banks of Cauvary, hence we started descending. Almost complete trail was covered by leaf less trees! We stopped in the middle near a pond which appeared to be the main source of water for the animals; we saw a wild hare too. It was the first water body we had seen in the whole stretch. We traveled almost 3 km and there came a watch tower. We could see the basin and Bhimeswari from there. It was another 3 km before we reached the river. We found a bunch of spotted deer on the way. Mutthuraj took us to a place which was really beautiful, on the riverside. It was already 1:30 p.m. and we had to take our lunch. Kotts and Kiran prepared nice Cucumber, Pickle, Jam Sandwiches, with fruit juice, lunch became quite heavy, and so we decided to trek back to Muthati through the banks of Cauvery. I liked this stretch the most. We traveled almost 2.5 km through this trail. Both sides of the river had hills or forest and the landscape was very nice. We reached the picnic spots soon and our fun also disappeared, it was again a noisy, boozing people who were spoiling the environment. The last 3-4 km. we had to walk on asphalt road which was quite painstaking and took all our energy out by the time we reached Muthati forest office. We bade good bye to Mutthuraj and started our journey back to Bangalore. It was almost 3:30 p.m. Thanks to Kiran and Jackie we had a trouble free journey back to Bangalore. It was a nice one day trek, and a desirable break from droning campus life.

Trek route: Muthati –Devanamundi-Bhimeswary-Muthati
Distance: 15 km, approximate time: 6hr.
From Bangalore –Kanakpura (55 km)-Sathnur (16 km)-Muthati(18 km)
Approximate expenditure: per head Rs.500-600/-
Orgnized by: Kanakpura forest office ( Ph No.080-7522537)

The small and the large colony

2006-03-04T01:43:00.001+05:30

Sometimes back i wrote about them. I wrote about the tiny one and told the story about a big one. I did not have evidences for the big ones that is seen in my balcony. I was expecting them to come back and they certainly did! couple of days back the bees came back to my balcony for the third consecutive year. Like the migratory birds these bees somehow find my balcony! I wish there was a chance for me to build a tourist spot, i could have earned some money. It is really interesting how they come back to the same place and during same time of the year. Although the traces of their hives are wiped out each time, they build it at the same place. Mr. Ponnana from echological studies comes to remove them, he is an amazing guy, fearlessly he removes them. He has developed a technique which is an unique one, it kills less than 5% of the bees while breaking the hives. He showed me how the bees make their next destination. Once the house is under attack the few of the bees, always on their toes, run to find the next place , others find a temporary place to stay which may be a nearby tree or something that sort, once the search bees find the place the all fly to the new place. There are people who does serius resarch on this and can put much more interesting vews than this. For me, they (the bees!) are little bit of nuisance but no complains, i will peacefully share my balcony with millions of bees for next few days.

"Rail India"

2006-02-27T00:29:00.001+05:30

Last couple of weeks I had roamed around a large part of India. I enjoyed Guru’s marriage in Trichy, presented a poster at MRSI-AGM in Lucknow. It was nice to go around few places within such short span of time. I was tempted to write about many things but thought about writing the strong impression I was carrying in mind for quite some time: Indian railways. Ram Guha in one of his famous talk series at CCS in IISc talked about how India as a country is in surviving, her binding and disintegrating forces working inside. One such binding force he mentioned is Indian Rail. The 150 yrs. old transport system has tremendous impact on the Indian society as a whole. One of the longest rail networks in the world is having maximum no. of stations too on her way. I would rather discuss about rail as a mode of conveyance than its commercial impacts. I frequently wonder, in practice what is similar in a life of a guy from Mangalore and one from Manipur. If he is not so cricket lover, which is not uncommon, he or she must identify themselves with railways systems. It is quite amazing how railways maintain similar system working in all corners of the country. The same bell rings with same frequency both in Guntur in AP and Tamna in West Bengal.
Indian rail began its journey in the year 1853 from Mumbai to Thane and within 10 yr. north, South east and West zone had rail tracks in different lengths. Today the total length of the railway track reaches upto 1.1 lakh km. Amazing isn’t it. We have broad gauge, meter gauge and narrow gauge tracks cumulatively making this length. Our rail runs from 20 meter under ground level to nearly 2500 m above mean sea level, which is the highest track after Quinghai- Tibet rail. Locomotives from electric to Disel and Steam can be seen running through track, though the steam locomotives are seen mostly out side the rail station now. Indian rail carries around 13 million people a day. Literally it is an unimaginable task; in order to ensure smooth functioning of this rail road system, Indian railways has become one of the largest recruiter in India. The employment is generated on national basis and people from all over the India travel from one corner to another.
Railway cities all over India have a very different culture as well as people. They are cosmopolitan in nature and the extent of cultural mix is quite significant. Whichever language you speak or whatever you eat, railway station is the safest place in the city (not always in terms of security). My trip from Chennai to Lucknow was quite an experience. Here I met one young couple who went for Honeymoon in Kanyakumar! That too from Lucknow, I asked him why Kanyakumari?, he said “..Because there is a direct train which takes us from Lucknow to Kanyakumari” Now here is a guy who probably would not have seen the tip of our country if there wasn’t this train. Like westerners we also develop some wrong notion about people of some places in our own country, just because we don’t know them haven’t seen them and didn’t know their culture, railways brought these cultures together more often than anybody. I came from Lucknow to Bhopal and from Bhopal I took Smapark kranti express to reach Bangalore. Here my fellow travelers were businessmen from Bangalore. One guy was from AP and another from Mangalore, they have business running from Delhi and both were mentioning how business prospects were different in north India compared to south India and they were pretty happy because of the prospects that were unfolded because of improvement in railway communication.
I was tempted to write more about it and one may find the write up pretty uninteresting since it doesn’t contain information. Well that because I found this group called Indian Railways Fan Club Association (IRFCA) who has already done a splendid job and their home page is really very informative, you can go and look at it, it is much interesting than this blog.
Cricket is almost a religion in India which brings all Indians on same platform, and we call our Indian cricket team as “team India”, probably for similar reason we can call Indian railways as “rail India”.

Few links

IRFCA

Indian Railways

light of life

2006-02-26T21:11:00.001+05:30

This photo, was hiding in some corner in my PC. When i took it, didn't have much impact but now i could see the life inside the light :-)

Pass it through nanotube, it'll be quick

2006-02-03T20:00:00.001+05:30

When I started working on ceramic membrane I was fascinated by the science. Especially working with the unsupported alumina membrane where you control the pore size at the nanometer level. Its quite tricky playing with these membranes. The problem is associated with filtering. It can filter out very small molecules easily but as the channels becomes smaller the wall friction affects the flow (Hagen-Poisullie equation), thus quite high pressure is required to pass the fluid through filter. Duration of the filtering process due to low fluid velocity also becomes extremely long; certainly from application point of view this is disadvantageous. There is a brighter side of the story! Recently my undergrad seniour, Mainak has published a paper in Nature couple of months back on carbon nanotube membranes, this paper addressed very similar problems. This group from University of Kentucky has made multi walled carbon nanotubes with graphite as the inner core; the average channel diameter is around 7 nm. When water is filtered through these membranes, the fluid velocity was observed to be few orders of magnitude higher compared to the theoretical prediction. The experiment was carried out on few other fluids and the results were very similar, they also observed that the flow rate does not decrease with velocity of the fluid, that’s really an interesting observation. The reason cited for this enhanced flow is the hydrophobic nature of graphite which makes the wall almost friction less to flow. There is also a possibility of forming ordered hydrogen bonds inside the tube. This behaviour is analogous to the biological cells where water passes through the protein wall at considerable pace. Following this claim carbon nanotube will have a huge application coming in, mostly as sensors and filters against corrosive gases. The important part of the question which I felt quite interesting is: if the conventional concept fluid flow in a tube breaks in case of MWCNT, will it hold for other systems? Does nano has any effect here? I f you remember I wrote something about nanomechanics by John Pethica, where he mentioned an increase in viscosity of water molecule when put between very thinly spaced walls. Although these distances are smaller compared to nanochannels, the flow rate must get affected when the pore size is reduced more. That technology is yet to come; we will probably witness subnano effects influencing flow.

Its not a "Bat", its Materials Engineering

2006-01-19T17:45:00.001+05:30

They say cricket is ruled by batsmen. Unfortunately people get more entertainment for watching boundaries and overboundaries not by waiting for a wicket to fall. All these fun comes from couple of pieces rather few pieces of wood, called bat. International Cicket Council has a poor definition of this piece. A bat looks like this
can not be longer than 96.5 cm including the handle and maximum width shouldn’t exceed 10.8 cm. must be made of wood. There is no restrictions on the weight of the bat (typically 3 lb), the shape: well its understood, there is no definition by ICC. The blade of the bat can be covered with some material for protection and repair, should not strengthen the bat and the thickness of this cover should not exceed 1.56 mm. Recently a committee headed by Sunil Gavaskar, recommended some more criteria, the important one for this case is that you can not infiltrate anything in the blade moreover it should be made of one solid piece of wood.
Where is the scope for improvement? Material scientists and engineers step in here, before addressing this issue let us know where we need improvement. Of course ball should travel faster than what they do now. When a ball hits the bat at a very high speed, there are lots of vibrations and minimizing this has been challenge for sometimes. Striking the ball hard is easy when its hits at the “sweet spot”. This region is almost 12 cm above the bottom of the bat, the thickest part, we define this place as the place where minimum vibration is felt and the ball travels much faster. The sound we say heavenly when it hit this sweet spot. So extending the sweet spot region is also an important issue.
How to go about it? There are few research institute and Universities in Australia and in England are really doing quite a bit of research in these field. The departments associated with this are Material Science and Design, so its science and engineering combination. Lets see a bat, it has go 2 parts, one is solid part the one piece wood one and the other is the handle. The handle is a composite material its made up of canes put together with rubber and adhesive in between. This actually dampens the vibration which comes after the ball hits the bat. In RMIT university in Australia researchers are trying to make the handle with a composite material containing carbon fiber and polymer, this dampens the vibration more compared to conventional handle. This is the bat which probably Rickey Ponting wanted to use last year, under ICC supervision. In case of base ball bat the vibration control system is a piezoelectric device, which generates voltage to nullify the effect of vibration, it’s a software controlled process and these software were developed after a rigorous study on vibration, soon in cricket too we will see such modification setting in. Due to the rules we can not progress much with the blade part from the material science point of view, this is a pure problem for designers, design aspect only can extend the sweet spot. Tennis and Golf has progressed a lot in these regards. They are using the best possible materials for such application, reinforced graphite of bulk metallic glass are few should be named. Lets hope ICC will overcome its conservative resistance and make cricket more exciting.

Some links:

ICC home page

Bat size specification

This one is really tiny

2006-01-15T15:38:00.001+05:30

Phani noticed this hive yesterday; intially we did not know whether that is a bee hive or not, we thought it may be a flower but later i could see a bee flying. now it is almost clear that it is a bee hive. In our campus we are habituated in seeing the big hives with a diameter sometimes more than 2 feet. and the bee sizes are of few cm. For example the bee hives that is forming in my balcony for last two years in Feb, will be huge enough to scare any giant! first time i didnot open my balcony for 15 days, but when mr. ponnana came from CES to remove them, i got the courage and next year i did not feel troubled at all, it was my neighbours turn to get scared :), but this one is really tiny. Life cycle of bees has been roughed throughly in the literature, even text books in school contain detail about them. There are faculties in the Institute who are working on them, i hope to get some info about these bees and write and update.

"Stardust" is coming back

2006-01-08T15:44:00.001+05:30

Just couple of years back the image came in front page of thousands of magazines and news papers around the world. An aircraft colliding with a comet! Analogies were drawn with the movies like “deep impact” and “Armageddon” and details of the impact was getting significant attention of media when compared to politics and sports. The process was really accurate; the way it has been executed was amazing.
The reason I am discussing all these is: on Jan. 15, 2006. Stardust is coming back to earth after seven years of its launch and two years after it had hit the comet, gathered information and dust particles. This was one of NASA’s first endeavour towards the research on origin of life. The 25 kg spacecraft has already shifted its penultimate step towards journey to the earth and NASA says it was perfect. This comet is suppose to carry dust particles which is as old as life on earth and may contain some real evidence for it, but that is future, now the scientist are holding their nerves so that every thing goes smooth. There are reasons for concern, stardust is going to be the fastest return aircraft from space and it will hit the earth with a speed similar to a bullet. Although scientist have predicted that it will be visible from some places in USA in naked eye, but real challenge is tracking the spacecraft, and its place for impact. Wish everything goes well
My interest is in the materials part. Normally these spacecrafts have a shielding of carbon based refractory material, which can withstand temperature more than 5000 K, but here it will be tested. Due to very high friction the material will evaporate and the chemistry of the surface will change. It will be also interesting to see how it reacts to the impact. Heat shielding will really be a very important material for research. Stardust is coming back as an experimental result, which can not be carried out anywhere near earth.
Best of luck guys!

“Startdsust”

A place named Purulya

2006-01-07T01:33:00.001+05:30

I grew up in Purulia. One of the most peaceful places I have ever seen. Irony is that whenever I mentioned to someone that I hail from Purulia, they immediately recognize the place, “oh! Where the arms dropping took place?” I am sure soon people will identify the place again, for wrong reaons: “Oh! Where there is lot of unrest because of Naxalites?” No. This is not Purulia, and the people who did or doing all these are also not from Purulia. I was born in a place where, nobody was aware of peace because they had never seen violence, but it was quite an isolated district in Bengal more because its late inclusion in the state. Although the district was lagging behind in terms of economy, education, food crop production, yet culturally is much ahead of the other districts in the state, and fortunately, partition couldn’t touch it. “Chhau” the dance is considered as one of the cultural symbol of not only of west Bengal but also in some cases India, but then like “kathakali” we did not have money to protect it, and it is difficult to practice culture when you earn a meager meal once a day! then there was “Tusu and Bhadu”. “Sankrnati” is celebrated as the harvesting festival in major part of India, Purulia is also not an exception, but there is “Tusu and Bhadu”. Crop harvest is very small in the district and that’s being one of the major causes for economic fall in this part. “Bhadu” is a festival of woman and they make nice structures like temples with colourfull papers. You will see a procession of woman singing songs, they are not written anywhere! People memorize it. I heard recently that there is an effort to have them in written form. So this is Purulia. In our childhood we knew more about “Pataliputra” than Calcutta.
Purulia is extremely politically impassive and religiously indifferent district. It has more than one third of villages staying below poverty line. Industries were opened and shutdown came sooner than expected, thanks to the unions which were very active in these cases. A perfect situation for exploited by the Maoist groups. The recent killings in Bundwan can not really justify any cause. Its good if someone comes ahead and fight for the people’s right, but violence can take it anywhere. I remember a place called Duarsini, near Bundwan we went for picnic when I was in school, now that place even armed men wont venture to go. Its valid for Kuilapal another beautiful landscape was developing as a tourist spot no longer a destination for tourists. A little more attention would have changed lot of things, still I believe people don’t like violence but at the same time their affinity towards government probably is not mention worthy.

Changes that took place certainly were late; development is taking place from the middle of nineties. Town wise Purulia has advanced quite a bit, you can get mobile phones servies from atleast four to five service providers. The huge pump storage power project in collaboration with Japan in Ayodhya hills has really changed the roads, economy of this region. Even 15 years back it was a nightmare to go to the hills in rainy season, it has improved now. Government although not new is trying to boost up the economy. Its almost 8 years since I last visited Purulia, wish when I go there next time it will be the same cool and hot "Purulya".

Candle lit vigil

2005-12-30T21:35:00.001+05:30

Today the students in the campus have decided to have a candle lit vigil in front of the main building. It is a geture we carry out to pay homage to the souls who are no longer around us and for spreading the message of peace. It was a very peaceful gathering of 150 students. The director, prof. Balram was as usual very inspiring but appeared really weary, of course because of the unusual circumstances he faced. We condoled the sudden demise of Prof. Puri, and hoped for a faster recovery of those who are recovering in the hospital. After the vigil we had put the candles at the steps wher J. N. Tata is standing tall. The glowing light carried a promise to walk ahead and and remeber the Prof. Puri. At the end the gathering was asked to speak a few words but the silence was talking; We all despised this heinous act.

Attack inside IISc !!!?

2005-12-29T15:47:00.001+05:30

This is the same J. N. Tata Auditorium where the peace ambassador Desmond Tutu talked about peace in this part of the world. This is the place where we saw “Keepers of the flame”, the life documentary on Tatas and we were shown future path of our country, and yesterday we encountered the path which we are traveling through. Few cowards with automatic Kalashnikov has fired indiscriminately on delegates of an international conference in front of J. N. Tata auditorium. When I heard the shooting sound from the lab it was like firecrackers which lasted for 30 sec. In my worst nightmare i haven’t seen such act. Though jolted by the news, frantic calls and ambulances really perturbed the campus, life became normal in the night It was really shocking, we all mourned at the demise of prof. M. C. Puri, and we wish a fast recovery of the others injured in the shootout. Prof. Vijay chandru is a quite known figure in the campus and we hope he’ll be back on his feet very soon.
Inside the campus we always get bugged when a byke’s accelerator crosses some limit, no doubt this incident perturbed the campus but within one and half hours only TV channels were busy discussing it, most of the student had gone back to work. It’s a busy life in the campus; the spirit always carries through day and night in silence. It a shame on the guys who attacked un-armed delegates and researchers. I don’t know their purpose, whatever it is we believe there is no novel cause which can justify such acts. If they have strong will they should come forward and fight not with arms, it is cowardly and if they had thought they will hit a weak zone, certainly they have chosen the wrong place. They should come to the campus and see that nothing has changed except some physical marks they left here yesterday evening. I don’t know whether this/these guy(s) will be caught or not, but it is sure, in India we have learnt to live with it. So if someone wants to create an impact, they better find some new tricks!

The big controversy in cricket

2005-12-24T01:38:00.002+05:30

Probably the biggest controversy in the recent times in cricket has hit the media. Nup! not Saurav or Greig, its with the greatest spinner Murlitharan and Shane Warne. After the controversial stament by Shane where he indiacted to a famous bowler (presumably Murli) in the world cricket captured lot of wicktes playing against minnows like bangladesh an Zimbabwe. Well Arjuna Ranatunga the fighter fought back saying that Shane's most of the wicketes came from the teams like South Africa and England and Westindies, who doesn't play spin well, not against India the masters against spin (thank god they didn;t forget it). Most of his wickets came as tail enderes and he is an overrated bowler. i am sure there going to be huge discussions about it statistics has been already popping up, but seeing the statistics i was wondering both the partys should keep quite if their performence is kept agains Kapils performence, who never played against Zimbabwe or bangladesh, and he was a Fast bowler from India! if we take out 150 wickets from both of these bowlers, Statistics from Kapils career would look certainly brighter. May be they should stop at this because both of these spinners are really greats and their bowling it is always a treat to watch, perhaps its a time they along with their friends keep quite because we can put Kapil ahead of them :D

nanomechanics and Prof. John Pethica

2005-12-23T01:39:00.001+05:30

Mechanics although sounds mechanical but its starts from the chemistry of atoms and you have mechanics when two atoms comes close to each other. This is how Prof. John Pethica looked at mechanics. Prof. Pethica is a big name in the field of contact mechanics and became quite popular in the campus. His cv is all over the web and I don’t want to write it here.
When two bodies come close to each other there are attractions and repulsion which act on them, and probably this is the first time I saw somebody really, experimentally showing the typical energy plot that we find in all basic material science book Prof Pethica and his group has done it using AFM. He explained the mechanism which drives an atomic force microscope to read the atoms. The striking technology is in the resolution. A laser goes through the tip and reflects back and by detecting the multiple reflections that is coming back, through which it was possible to achieve atomic level resolution in AFM. The probe for AFM can be used as a tool for striking the antom and calculating bond strength between the atoms. So you can literally feel the chemistry of the atoms. It’s really fascinating. So Prof. Pethica’s group in Dublin is working with some technique, developed most probably by them, which is called modulated amplitude AFM technique, this is very effective in measuring the single tip surface bond, the mechanism is bit complicated but it has responses coming in femto seconds and there are advantages over the other tips used for this purpose. After mesmerizing the audience with his measurements in the atomic scale he shifted to some interesting studies on molecules. No, it’s not the big organic molecule, it is water molecule. When the water molecules are kept in between two plates with sufficiently closer (less than nanometer) you start seeing some changes such as viscosity and those change are because of the contacts between the water molecule and the surface. It’s an interesting study from the point of view of biologist as inside a cell the length scale in which water molecules sits is almost similar in order. Prof. Pethica, at the end of his lecture showed few slides of the nano science building at the heart of the town in Dublin. He really wanted to convey the importance of the nano science and technology, but I had a feeling that he has reached beyond that!

Space Research

2005-12-17T16:42:00.001+05:30

Discovery of vacuum was a revolution, its helping someway or other the poor souls like ours, but life moves on. Once we have vacuum we can do lots of model experiments, that will gives us a clue of what can happen in the space above us, but, hold on, you can not get rid of the gravity so easily until you cross the field and go in to space. The amount of effort that goes in behind the space research is huge but now research in space invoked a great deal of interests among the researchers. Presently NASA and ESA has carried out quite a few experiments in space and believe me they are really fascinating.
Experiments in space were started probably through sputnik-3 in 1969, which sent mostly some geophysical information. Until very recently, experiments were concentrated mostly on the atmospheric or geophysical studies but the scenario has changed quite rapidly. Experimental research had leap when Mir was placed in space in the year 1986, and from year 1989 till it was abandoned in 1999, there was always a human being in space. The Venture, International Space Station, took the lead there after. Scientists from all over the world including Russia are participating in this program.
The idea of carrying out experiments in a space station appears bizarre to many people, mostly because of the cost and the futuristic nature as we can not see the application. The fact is someway different; these experiments are mostly carried out for advanced technology. I found one nice example; an experiment on flame. The flames coming out of some nozzle appears like a fluid drop due to the gravitational force resulting in an air flow. Now if these experiments are carried out in space under microgravity atmosphere the flame breaks in to balls, the experiment is known as Lwis SOFTBALL experiments. For this combustion the fuel required is extremely low, which is a process all automotive engine companies will look for, as the hydrogen or hydrocarbon based combustion engines requires these informations. This was an example for a direct application to technology. However, the fundamentals for the basic science are getting major benefits from the zero gravity experiments. Imagine a human brain, which has been modeled to function under gravity, when it is exposed to the microgravity condition, the systems response to this change. It is therefore an interesting area for study. Again we know the plants grows in the direction of light, its roots also grows in the direction of gravitational force, hence it is interesting to know how the plants grow in such conditions.
Materials research did achieve much scope to carry out experiment although levitation experiments for solidification of metals have drawn interest. The constraints are mostly forming the experimental module and control over the experiments, the results is unknown till the specimens come back to earth. Among the other materials research semiconductor crystal growth has been quite a revelation. Near perfect crystals can be grown under microgravity, under surface tension driven flow in the melt. A control in the defect concentration in the crystal is also possible, but its is not so straight forward as the density driven flow and surface tension driven flow complicates the process. The container free melt will have hardly a site for defect nucleation hence these processes are really useful.
Every scientific advance comes with a price tag and we had to pay it through the lives of astronauts who were killed the Columbia explosions. These were the part of NASA’s STS -107 program, more than 70 experiments were carried out in space. We have lost Kalpana Chawla, the only Indian female astronaut.
Efforts are on as many other countries are coming up with ideas and launch vehicles for carrying out experiments. Indian space research also as an individual progressed a lot and one day we will also be able to carry out our own experiments in space.

I found infornation from the following places

Future Materials Science Research on the International Space Station (1997), National Academy publishers

NASA

European Space Agency

Russian spaceweb

News about ISRO

spread your wings and fly eagle.. Desmond Tutu

2005-12-13T01:03:00.001+05:30

The notice on a pink colour A4 paper remained un-noticed in the campus, and it gave some of us an opportunity to listen to Desmond Tutu the Nobel Peace prize winner for the year 1984. I miss most of the Nobel laureate lecture in the Institute because I reach late and the halls will be completely filled, this time it was in J. N. Tata auditorium and because of mentioned reason I could hear this piece of lecture. The presence of sniffer dog/bitches from the police near the stage gave really a wrong introduction to right event.
The speaker of the 7th and the last J.R.D Tata memorial lecture, organized by NIAS was Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa. He was really humble at the beginning of the talk. He spent almost 10 min. in thanking us, the Indians. I rarely hear someone talking about Mahatma Gandhi with such emotions. If I am hurting someone, then let me confess I heard very few of them. He sounded more like a Global Spokesman of peace than an arch bishop from Capetown, who fought apartheid and the man behind the reconciliation mission. Of course, South Africa has moved ahead from the apartheid era, but still I wonder how this reconciliation is done; atrocity must be at a level where punishment is the solution. His talk was a reminder of the last century’s blood bath all over the world, and the born of so called super powers who carried that legacy to the next century in the name of west vs. Islamic terrorism. He criticized the America and Britain for their unwanted and unnecessary invasion in Iraq where thousands of people were still getting killed. If the description of the talk is becoming serious then let me put down that he also had a humorous touch in his talk and he mixed them really well. He described the incidents, one about the women who came to the reconciliation court and was requested for forgiveness, and the other of the hotel manager in Washington who mistook him as a chauffer, with equal intensity! There were parts of the lecture where he talked about the oppression, quite depressing but when I read his Nobel lecture, I found he actually didn’t talk about oppression much. Surely, he followed his talk titled “is there hope for humanity?”. Arch Bishop Tutu, is in a UN committee called alliance of civilization and he is carrying out the job for getting together the civilizations around the world, according to him, we can prosper only when we are together. Human being lives in the world of Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luthar King (junior), and they are like eagles that fly towards the rising sun and disappears. It was a quite unusual lecture for us but hats off to the man from Capetown!

Few links!

His Nobel lecture

His peace centre

memory under freeze

2005-12-09T21:16:00.001+05:30

...Saswata has kept a hard disk inside a freeze to retrive data from it :D, First time i had laughed like this. Although he is famous for humourus activities but this time i was fooled as i found people have found it as a good technique for retriveing data from the "failed" hard disk. So just take the HD and keep it inside a freeze for couple of hr. and fix it back, if you are lucky then you'll get your data back. Sounds like a cool trick. May be Semiconductor guys can put some light on it, and from materials scienctist point of view its really interesting.

You want to succeed ?

2005-12-09T21:11:00.002+05:30

You want to succeed? You need to be a good leader; you have to learn how to “manage” people. We hear these line so many times from our childhood that at some point it really becomes a fact. There is nothing which is absolute, from my childhood this is the one thing I have learnt. If you say when, well there is always plus and minus. If you say this is the end, then there is nothing call end, an end marks a beginning. I used to wonder and now always feel something that eludes me is an understanding of these facts. I always knew if I buy a chocolate I have to give the price the shopkeeper asked, but never realized why there was a bargain when I wanted to buy a T-shirt. I can not remember how many times I was directly and indirectly told that there is no fixed price for something, we can always “adjust”, this is an understanding and a balance. Then comes the big institutes, if you see the instructions booklet, you as a student will find the class room as the safest place on earth and if your actions are put under microscope you will break numerous rules each day, if you think they are strict rules then you always live under guilt, but there are guys, who know there is no rule, you can break them to any extent and get away with it, of course if you are a good “manager”. There is a third way become indifferent about the happenings around you. Once my friend Pratap in an argument pointed out that if one always go straight without any diversions, then all lives will be parallel, no interaction and hence no society, its the society who kept you alive not the individual. He has a point and any discussion in this matter boils down to one fact, small adjustments which don’t make much difference are ok, after all you are in a society. So take help from individuals don’t even bother to thank him, because you are going to return it to the society, the return need not be in the same magnitude as nobody can compare potato and apple. Everyone adjusts, compromises; human beings are small creatures even the earth has compromised her shape, its not completely spherical, sphere has been slightly tapered at the poles: a small adjustment but enough to keep us alive, but I am rigid M who will never understand this simple logic.
It’s a pleasure of not being argued in the middle of cribbing so that I could put down quite a few lines of my own here. Disclaimer: this post is not pointing towards any individual or organization :)

Cricketing memories

2005-12-04T21:48:00.001+05:30

.....Its a quite old event, i mean its 3 months old event, before i broke my finger and before we faced all kind of problems. This was our first match in league and we won it as we had won the last one. These are the big stars of IISc cricket team, and the small stars are at the bottom. partha got 6 wickets and I scored 75 in that match. Most of the team performed in similar fashion in other matches but unfortunately Sandeep's camera couldn't catch them. Kapil the caps is not here. ViveK, Mahesh are also missing.

Srini, Sachin, Partha, Atul, Kumar, Venu (star faculty), Jackie (Santanu)
Sandeep, Uncle (Surinder), OP, Saru(Sarendra) and me

Me and Partha

in CHENNAI for NMD

2005-12-02T19:53:00.001+05:30

I feel sometimes myself like the Shepard in Alchemist. Though I don’t dream about pyramids, but I always grab opportunities to visit places whenever possible. This time it was Chennai, and NMD-ATM, annual technical meeting of metallurgist from all over India. Along with the meeting I actually wanted to visit IIT-Chennai. So now I have seen two IITs. ATM followed FDM, the international conference on future of materials where Atul presented a paper, and I was fortunate enough that he had put my name in it! Thanks Atul! Before ATM I have to mention NMD because on that day Dr. Phanikumar got the young metallurgist award and I want to congratulate him.
I heard before the conference that ATM is a low profile conference, but was elated to find that a portion of the talks were really good. The participation was really huge, posters as well as speeches. A whole gamut from materials and metallurgical research came here. Truly speaking conference was very general and I had to find talks of my own interest. There were three parallel sessions. I was especially interested in the mechanical behaviour of materials, some functional stuffs and then Ceramics of course. I had attended few sessions on mechanical behaviour of materials. First day, 15th Nov. I found some interesting stuffs about Spark Plasma Sintering processes. ARCI is currently doing lots of work on that, with Dibyendu around I would also try something! Guru’s rafting was as usual good and I guess serendipity is knocking his door. There was a talk by Vendervort, the king of metallography and also days end Vikram mesmiriesed audience with a 10 min talk on wear. Second day it was bit hectic, as I wanted to attend the talk on metallic glasses, it was interesting session, Krishanu presented his paper on non-equilibrium solidifation which was good, better was his answers ( Dr. Dey, from BARC showed some beautiful HREM micrograph of the metallic glasses, again the controversy begun whether there is crystallization at the shear bands, Prof Ramchandra Rao, pioneer in the field was also present there. Rejin, hurried through his beautiful talk! Just for attending Vikram’s lecture, but his experiments for exhibiting Ductile Brittle transition was really good. Vikram was fascinating in his talk on the amorphous ceramics. Its really a magic material only requires good magicians like prof. Jayaram.It was more like our class room, but I wasn’t happy with the explanation he tried to give in support to the densification at high temperatures. The nano grains grow so fast, it is really difficult to differentiate between densification, creep and grain growth processes. I would be unfair If I miss the last talk which a girl from IGCAR delivered. They were using Infrared camera for strain measurement during tensile experiment. Not only the local strain it was possible to measure the stress distribution in the specimen, for large component which may be a good tool to use, but what I understood is that there are limitations in the shape of the resolution of the camera.

Its like writing a summary of Ramyana, I would have loved to describe each of the talks I participated but that’s some other time. What I really want is to thank all the faculty staffs and students, from IIT Chennai, life were really tough for them in that last week.

home "together"

2005-12-02T18:37:00.001+05:30

I was standing at the door of the compartment, while the train was slowly crossing the bridge over Krishna. Sky was full of clouds rain drops were piercing through my skin; I was really enjoying it as I was going home. It was dusk and Krishna looked beautiful, with water reaching from one corner to the other and the river met the horizon. I was standing at the door because my seat was occupied by some students from Ramaiya College; I tried to raise my voice but gave in to the teens. I didn’t sleep well in the night, not only because of the extravagant students but also for the unusual bed, but I didn’t complain, as I was going home. Early morning I woke up and the first thing that I heard was that the train is running late by 6 hr. Bad times were still sticking with me! The whole day my walkman was really helpful, the girls and the guys were enjoying a lot and making plans for diwali I found myself an odd man out, realized that I have crossed some stage of my life, but I was happy like others: we were all going home. That whole day I finished a book which “kotts” gave me mentioning that as a mediocre book, “interpreter of maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri, it’s a collection of short stories and except the name story, I found most of the others quite good. Then came the last night in train, by the time it was running 8 hr. late. I remember one girl was traveling to Patna and she was going to miss her train from Howrah, it was such a helpless situation for her and her family that, her father started travlelling from Patna to Howrah to take he daughter along with him, it didn’t bother me much you know; I was reaching home! Finally the train reached Kharagpur, after a delay of 11 hr. It was a bright sunny day, finally a bright day, I don’t after how many days I was enjoying a bright day. Last four months it really poured heavily in Bangalore. My big bro rented a car and came to pick me, it was a nice time. My house is at a beautiful place called Jhargram, of course to me. This place is just 7 Km. away from my home.

photo courtsey: My bro Debraj

I was really feeling great; Not only “dada”, Chiku also came along with him, we had a ball of a time in the car, and then after 47 hr. after leaving the lab finally I was at this place…

From bro's cell:appears bluish in reality not so much

No prize for guessing, yes! So I was at home !

After the break

2005-12-02T17:05:00.000+05:30

I had compre and then I went home, and then I had to start working, where is the time for blogging :D. Along with this fact there is truth and the truth is I was lethargic, but came back powerful.

thanks Stuts!

2005-10-11T00:32:00.000+05:30

...i know u'll no c this! but this the only way probably i can thank you :). I finished my compre today.

grain size refinement in the nano range

2005-10-04T02:47:00.001+05:30

The title sounds too technical, but it will go this way as my compre is nearing and I am reading up few things which I thought would put down.
In the end of 20th century people could easily achieve grain sizes in the sub-micron range (<1 micron) in zirconia ceramics, but it wasn't sufficient; there was a strong driving force to refine the grain size to nano range (< 100 nm) of course for obtaining certain advantages, mostly enhanced structural and physical properties. Beginning of this century observed a difference in mechanical behaviour in nano-grained tetragonal zirconia from the sub µm grained one. This drove scientist to study this mechanical behaviour of nano zirconia whether it is tetragonal or monoclinic. Now the problem associated with density. It was not so difficult to achieve a grain size which is in nm range but with a density as high as 99% of the theoretical density, it was difficult. Currently there are few techniques which satisfies both requirements. Spark plasma sintering (SPS), Microwave sintering, Sinter-forging, HIPing, also the brand new one is crystallization from glass!In the first two processes control grain size is very limited and the sintering mechanism is still not completely understood. In SPS there is a huge current of the order of 1 kA and more is passed through a powder compact and it claimed to form plasma which sinters the material to full density very fast with a very small grain size, but with very little control. In the microwave process, both electric and magnetic field interact with the material, and the absorbed energy actually leads to very fast sintering, again microwave, though, is in industries now, and still is feeding significant no. of researchers around the world. This leaves us with Sinter-forging, an excellent processing technique which was first opted by couple of groups, Rehemans’ and Raj’s, in mid 80s. At high temperatures without any wall constraint if a compact under load is sintered, the sintering rate is enhanced by couple of factors; one is the stress induced diffusion becoming faster and disappearance of big pores by plastic deformation. In zirconia it was observed that instead of the applied stress actually the plastic strain controls the densification. Now here the advantage is that, one can independently play around with two parameters; stress and temperature and you can achieve grain size really in the nano range in a fully dense material. The pictures below are from sinter-forging experiments. One needs to monitor the transverse strain also along with the axial strain and in these experiments, for this specific experiment I used a digital camera in my I.I.Sc lab. These images were taken at 1423 K. Extreme right one is from the final stage of sinter-forging. You may notice that there is very little strain in the transverse direction compared to the axial direction, which indicates densification. I did not put the scale which is a “crime” but take it from me; the height of the specimen is 3.5 mm.

So now we have a nano-grained material, but what is the size? It is difficult to push the grain size of the bulk dense body below 50 nm, this is one shortcoming of sinter-forging. So here comes glass. The idea is like this: you take these oxides to very high temperature and cool it with a cooling rate of the order of 103 to 104 K/min and they may form glass or some amorphous phase, and now if this glass is taken above the transition temperature, the crystallite starts nucleating and the body becomes a dense nanocrsystalline body with a crystallite size may be as low as 15 nm. This processing technique is difficult and there are critical issues involved with density, still it gives you the grain size you want. What else, if I have such material (from 15 -100 nm) in hand, a through mechanical property study is possible. Then I know serendipity will knock my door any day and I will jump and shout…………:D

Watch out, its coming.....

2005-09-24T19:58:00.001+05:30

Costal areas all over the world are prone to attack. Most of the time the attack comes from the sea and in the form of storms. Whether it is India or America, they natural destruction stories remain the same. These monster attackers are named differently all over the world in America it is called Hurricane, in Japan and China it is called Typhoon, In south and south east Asia it is called cyclone. However, all of them form following a similar mechanism. Warm air flowing over the sea suck water as vapour, because the temperature of the air would be as high as 80 oC, these water vapour cools down at higher altitude and releases heat which results in more heated air which is light, this air gains a speed of 200 miles per hour and due to earth rotation the air starts whirling around an eye, this is how it looks.

Red part of the hurricane contains water. These tropical cyclones travels 300-500 km a day,

they loses strength but very slowly and before it tames it hits the costal life. This monster has three weapons. First is of course storm, which hits at a speed of 200 km/hr. it is followed by heavy downpour, much more than that of any low pressure cloud pouring. It has got a disguise also. Once the eye crosses the land the rain and storm stops, it is an warning which people often misses, the storm comes from the opposite direction. It is huge and deadly. The devastation has just started. Almost 90% of the casualties come from the surge of water, the third weapon of hurricane. The sea levels go up by 10 to 30 ft. and in extreme cases it reaches 40 ft.! The surge of water we saw in New Orleans is actually due to this. The storm carries through the coast and may travel till 1000 miles! Slowly loses its pace and die down. The devastation is always quite tragic. It affects the flora and fauna immensely. Moreover, geophysical changes are also come along with them. Discovery.com has posted some before and after Katrina photograph in their web page.
Typhoons and Hurricanes are normally named, although “Katrina” rocked USA, it is not the deadliest ones world has witnessed till now. In India in the year 1999 there was a cyclone hit. Actually there was couple of cyclones that hit costal Orissa. First one hit Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal and the second one without warning hit Orissa and India saw the one of the worst cyclone hit. The Cyclone lasted for 2 days and whole state was out of the world. It was said the wind speed reached 310 km/hr with an water surge of 20-30 ft. It completely destroyed the state; there was no account of the death toll as well as the homeless. A huge part of the coast beacame a barren land, with all the trees uprooted. The economy and life was affected such a way that still people are recovering from it.
Science has progressed so much that following the Hurricane is possible from its birth hence it is possible to do the necessary evacuation. Computer simulations following the satellite imaging have done a real miracle, but researches are on in this topic. One big topic is the effect of pollution like global warming in the frequency of the storm. Recently there was an article on hurricane on a work by a group from university of Tennessee in Knoxville. They are studying the Pine trees in coastal US and it was claimed that these trees bear signs of Hurricane, so the frequency of it can be identified at least for last 100 years! We don’t know whether these are signals of destructions that are coming or passing by!

Hurricane
Orissa Cyclone
Hurricane mark in Pine trees.

Segregation

2005-09-22T01:08:00.001+05:30

If you search segregation in google, first few hits will be about racial segregation; strictly speaking I am not going to talk about it. It’s the segregation in materials world is my cup of tea. While working with oxide ceramics defects are something that never left me and now I say I love defects! There are classic effects you get to see due to presence of point and line defects in the materials, whether its semiconductor or any structural applications. Segregation is a results caused by point defects. It has been exploited in many ways. Optoelectronic, Transistor, structural ceramics, there are numerous occasions when segregation is the key. In the ionic solids, the Schottky defects causes ions to go to the interfaces, primarily they require a lattice discontinuity, so this place may be a surface, a grain boundary or any interface. Thus there is a local charge builds up there and a potential difference between the bulk and the surface is generated. The magnitude depends on the defect concentration, temperature. Like colloids there exists an isoelectric point where surface charge becomes zero and then with an increase in temperature or defect concentration it reverses. Segregation is a subject of interest of the structural community as this process retards grain growth. The space charge which forms at the boundary actually pins the grain boundary mobility. Sounds interesting? It has more effects; when you reduce the grain size that is in the nanometer range lot of material properties in oxide ceramics is controlled by segregation, hope you didn’t believe it! Segregation captures a huge part in grain boundary engineering. Si3N4 brittle in nature but it is toughened by adding some dopants, but how it helps was not known till very recently. Last year a paper in nature showed experimentally evidences of La segregation in La doped Si3N4, La actually segregates to the boundary and helps in forming elongated grains which in turn toughens the material. Following figure is actually taken from the paper.

N. Shibata et al. Nature Vol. 428, pp730-33, 2004.

This is an STEM micrograph of a grain boundary in La doped Si3N4, bright fringe in the middle correspond to the amorphous film and the brighter spots in that are actually La. Segregation in YTZ is in discussion for a while and now it is said that nanocrystalline YTZ are more creep resistant that the submicron grain one because of Y+3 segregation. It is known that Y+3 play a role there but it is not understood which role it plays, so lots of questions. Sometimes segregation is detrimental, YTZ although has potential use as bone replacement, can not have an immediate use as Y segregation causes brittleness of the material. There are lots of interesting stuffs in this field and I am happy as I will have jobs in hand till the questions are answered. I really like defects.

A Night Club with difference!

2005-09-16T18:37:00.001+05:30

Students from the Department of Metallurgy in IISc are extremely active, and those who work talk really little! It is reflected well for years through TMS night club talk series. Last Wednesday it was the 325th night club talk. In the campus, academic community knows about looking around, Sci forum and newly born CCS, which are perhaps much younger talk series compared to TMS night club talk series, its run by a TMS students’ chapter and apart from the invited talks, all night club talks are delivered by the students and believe me it is one of the longest running TMS Students Chapter in the whole world. We have our own world, we have our own prestigious talks, and we have our own discussions. In a faculty & staff driven institute it is really amazing that without any force (driving I meant) students volunteer to talk. The figure 325 is really huge; and it is an honour to speak in these occasions as they are the milestones for the series. Though I did no have the chance to speak in these occasions, but I have attended more that 150 talks! It covered all spectrums. From bacteria to self assembly, from ALE to casting, from NMR to DSC, from iron making to spintronix, from mobile phones to chips; we heard almost every field of material science. Technology changed, from OHP we shifted to digital projector and from the seminar hall we had shifted to Brahm Prakash Committee Room, but the character remained the same. A legacy we are carrying for a decade and it is like Prof. Ranganathan says(on some other context) “…it is in the memory of the department” . So join us at 9:30 p.m. in BPCR on Wednesday, we will share thoughts and “a cup of tea in the tea board”.

Materials, Mimicry and MEMS by Dr. Julia King

2005-09-06T01:48:00.001+05:30

It’s all about fans! Prof. Julia King, from rolls royce today delivered really a fascinating talk on aero-engine in our prestigious faculty hall. When I first saw those real huge jet engines, I wondered how much science and technology must have been gone into it. She today talked about the physics, engineering and design of the fans and the engine as a whole!
Her talk started with the general concern on global warming and the contribution of aerospace industries to it. She showed a B-52 bombers emitting considerable amount of un-burnt hydrocarbon. According to her noise pollution due to high engine noise levels is also a cause of concern primarily in cities. So she addressed all the problems in sequence. Her presentation began with an animations on how an engine works. It was evident that materials design is the key for the turbines blades inside the engine! The material they use for the fans are Ni bases super alloys and there is a problem with the randomly oriented polycrystals. The grain boundaries parallel to the air flow is a bad news: they are the site where the fatigue crack initiates under cyclic loading so the blades were processed with oriented grains with boundaries perpendicular to the air flow. Final step towards this grain boundary engineering was to remove the grain boundaries, i.e. use of single crystals! No boundaries so no flaws. It is important to reduce the weight of the blades which is a new field of research and shape memory alloys and metallic foam appeared to be potential material for that. There was a job also for the combustion engineers but from the material scientist point of view it was necessary to talk about the chamber material. Composite materials were shown to have better run for that. When the discussion boiled down to noise she mentioned how the noise is generated from the engine, the solution for that was to have a turbulent mix of two kinds of air coming out of the jet, for that it was observed serrated outer wall of the jet instead of smooth wall is quite effective. The criteria was it should remain close while it is flying at low altitudes (high temp. region) and at high altitude they should open up . In a nice experiment she showed actually how shape memory alloys acts as an actuater under changing temperature; it was really a nice piece of experiment. There was an ineresting info: eagles can fly at a speed of 200 Mph and consume an energy equivalent to only 10% of its own weight. At the end of her talk she showed some video clippings of some testing on the fans. They were amazing! First one was under tremendous water flow, 2nd one was fans performance under cold condition (T= 233 K), 3rd one was what if a single blade breaks? And final one was what happens when birds hit the jet, I am not going to tell you what happens then, you have to listen to Dr. King. I could not put any of her slides which I would loved to post, may be some other day......

Game over!

2005-09-06T01:43:00.001+05:30

Time to write some good things! It was really beautiful 4 seasons Yes! I am talking about cricket seasons. It was an opportunity I never thought I will get, but with my luck was shining at its best, I got the chance to play serious cricket after a gap of 4 years. People fall in love, so did I, with this great game called Cricket. I always felt happy when I stayed long in the crease. It won’t be wrong to say that destiny was grinning when I was batting last weekend. That was probably my last serious cricket match where I spend the longest time in the crease!
I met with cricket quite early age of my life. I had a friend called Santanu who had a proper kit; we used to play with cork balls which were extremely hard. We used to play wearing one pad, most of the players were Rightie so they used to tell me to tie the pad in the left leg, I was a natural leftie so it was the wrong leg for me so one ball one day came and straight away hit my front right leg’s sean bone, I was hurt on the my first cricket match and what a consequence, my last day was very similar, i had an injured hand; One day I had started playing it on the other day I left it. I had many friends into my life; some left me some I had left! But this is more than any pain I came accross. By this time if you are reading it you might have gave up on me but believe me its my soul speaking not me :D You had enough fun, leave me now the game is over!

The little angel

2005-08-23T18:18:00.002+05:30

It happened……

Tear was about to fall, flow through her beautiful cheeks and drop on the ground. The big eyes were looking at the man on the bike. Her eyes were blank, there were no signs of grief, or happiness, it had only indifference; but still the tears were about to fall. Soft sun was falling on the asphalt road in front of the house, the road was empty and there were only two living creature on the street. Her lip was trembling, but she didn’t utter a single word, told lot of things. The guy on the bike was frozen and speechless, his mind was freaking, wanted to escape from the place as the damage was already done, but her eyes glued him to the place. He wished he could rebuild the car she was playing with, which is now laying smashed front of his bike. He was not able to understand why he should wait in the place; he tried to touch the girl with a nice tunic, but her body was stiff as if she is living in some other world. The guy was help less, she was not crying, so that he can console her. To his relief a lady came out of the house but was shocked to see the little girl on road. She rushed to her and was happy to see her untouched. The guy profusely apologized for what had happened was expecting an answer, the lady answered, “she can’t hear you, can’t reply to you; this car was her birthday gift, she received it yesterday,” The guy left the place; he had to reach his office before it’s too late.
It was becoming dark; the little girl was sitting in the small garden eagerly waiting for her mother to come. She was her only friend around and whole day she did not eat only to tell her how bad her birthday was. The car was still with her and she was trying to repair it. The road in front of their house remains deserted in these hours of the day also in the morning when she dared to go to the road. Light were slow coming up as the stars in the sky. She was quite involved with her car. She could not hear the bike coming towards her house. The same bike and the same guy approached the house. She was aware of him when she felt a cold hand on her shoulder, she turned and saw him. The whole memory came to life and this time she couldn’t hold herself, she was crying. The man was prepared, he took out a nice wrapped packet. She stopped crying and looked at it with apprehension, the packet was unwrapped and bright shinning car came out of it. The man handed it over to her. Her tear filled eyes became bright and in the whole day she smiled for the first time. The guy got his life back! Whole day he was under terrible guilt and now he felt relived and the little kid looked like an angel to him. He turned back and stared for home.

Jumpstart 2005: an evening with winners

2005-08-17T01:03:00.001+05:30

It all started in a rain soaked evening in Gymkhana managing committee room, we were planning for a sports fest and at the end we decided it will be called “Jumpstart2005”. There was a whole spectrum of events held during this literary and sports festival of I.I.Sc Gymkhana. It was Santanu who was the initiator, motivator and supervisor of the show. The events included Chess, Carom, Athletics (the biggest), Swimming, and the literary events (Dumb charades and Quiz), Table tennis. We had clubbed the marathon event along with the freedom run around the campus.
The evening started with a Sharod recital, it was as usual a mesmerizing music! This was followed by a good show put up by “Rythmica” a part Gymkhana Music Club. They were also winners but on different field and different game. Our prize distribution ceremony started in the middle of the music programme. The Satish Dhawan auditorium was completely filled with people. Arjun Deviah an international athelit came as a chief guest for the occasion. The prize distribution started with ladies events. Although the female participation in field events was noticeably less the picture was different in literary events. In the male section in Athletics it was a keen contest, few performed exceptionally well, Hasta in the jumps in short distance races, Arun in short distance Run and Prakash again in jumps and short distance run. Prakash’s long jump of 5.7 m was really watch worthy. In the long distance run Claudy really dominated along with Rejin, Santosh and Sundar around, Kottada and his group came strong in relay. In throwing events Sachin was ahead of all; in discus, javelin, shot put he threw the max. In Swimming again it was “the big boy” Rejin who dominated, won 5 out of 6 swimming events, Anath also gave was a strong contender for him. In Carrom Debabrat won the singles also one doubles event, Atul, Tejaswini also performed well in doubles and in mixed doubles. Rahul played well enough to beat others in classic chess, Sachin kept his mark as a chess player along with a good athelit. Thomas outplayed others in rapid chess section. In TT Debraj showed his class and won the singles tournament, the doubles went to Kartikeyan and Ganesh. MRC lifted the departmental event by beating Physics in the finals. The last in the list were the marathoners; in the first Bangalore marathon held this year, almost 21 guys participated and we had decided to felicitate them on behalf of gymkhana, it was really a good achievement. The concluding part of the prize distribution ceremony was an inspiring speech by the chief guest. Rythmica took over the programme and it got over in an excellent note, as our ‘host’ Srini said all good things come to an end.
We had three category of prizes, first was the track suit upper, second one was t Shirt with Jumpstart logo and third one which I liked the most was the white coffee mug with gymkhana logo as well as jumpstart logo. I hope every recipient liked it!
A huge effort from Viswanath and Vivke for athletics and literary, respectively with Sushil in swimming made this big event a success, but the little man behind the screen has actually done something bigger, yes I am talking about Jackie (Santanu). I hope Jumpstart will not stop and will get some more face lifting next year. So JUMPSTART………

Freedom run

2005-08-15T11:07:00.001+05:30

They ran, they ran in huge numbers. Cloudy morning in I. I. Sc. becomes slightly different this morning. This is Independence Day morning. I don’t know since when the freedom run has started in campus, but it is an annual event which is stored in the memory of the institute. “Freedom run” takes place on the occasion of Independence Day on 15th August. The whole spectrum of the strong 3000 community participates in this run, of course not all of them but significantly high in the no. This year the participation was nearly 250, believe me this is one of the highest participation in any athletic events in the campus. The run takes place in marathon format though the total stretch doesn’t match with marathon; the distance is just above 5 km. Starting from kids to senior faculties everyone participates in this run. The route will take you all through the tree covered campus. There was a stretch which literally passes through the jungle in the campus. The best timing was ~20 min and within 40 min. a bulk of the participant had finished their run. Today the weather was beautiful which helped a number of people to complete. The footsteps and the sweats of the great and greats in making made the streets a memorabilia.

The damned Mobile phones

2005-08-08T11:16:00.000+05:30

I am an Engineer and I always marvel at the great technological creations of human civilizations, but not this one! I don’t know who got this idea of developing Mobile phone. This is an discovery, I put it in similar to an effect of Rutherford‘s experiments on atoms. The great soul never thought the research will lead to a killing of millions and will give the world a permanent threat. The highly misused mobile phones are of the same order, people who doesn’t need it carry it everywhere, some are real fools! Once in Rex we were watching a movie and one guy was on his phone continuously, so Guru politely requested the guy to go out of the theatre and talk. The first reply he got, “As because u don’t have cell, I cant stop using it!” and that followed with some moron (ish) acts. Even in the work places sometimes it’s a pain. God knows when human will make some more advancement and put a chip in their brains so that they’ll connect the satellite straight away and the majestical, irritating tones will ring inside their brains!

Eden gardens

2005-08-05T18:06:00.001+05:30

Lash green out field with a 22 yard land lying bare. from the edge of the field the huge galleries have gone up to the sky. If you are in the middle you will feel like a gladiator and i can' t imagine how it will be when 1oo thousand people chant your name! It is one of my most cherished loacation on earth, I am talking about the world's one of the best cricket grounds: EDEN GARDENS.
The name Eden does not go to any mytholgy, its come from histroy. Legend is calcutta cricket club (CCC) which came to existence in the year 1792 has shifted to this place called parkland in the year 1864. This place was under the supervison of Governor Lord Auckland, and two of her family members called Eden sisters used to take care of this park and probaly from there the name "Eedn gardens" desended. The ambience of the ground was once mesmirising and heaven for the swing bowlers. The breeze from the higcourt end was nightmare for the batsmen.
Edengardens was not only a cricket ground but was a bit of football was played here also.
The first test cricket was played in 1926 at Eden gardens, between MCC vs. India and then on the ball stared rolling, from the Sobers outsanding catches to Salim Maliks devastation, Azhars golden batting and Lakshman 's epical batting, Eden is the dream ground of cricketers accross the world. The attraction is partly because of the crowd. Although breeze doesnot enter the ground still people come to watch then people.
If you happen to appear in front of the CAB office in Eden you may mistake it as the MCC office in London may be better. With the centinary museum coming up, Eden has starting from Indoor practice ground to ultra mordern Gym. Huges stands and Lights in the night. If you come to Kolkata dont miss Eden gardens, my cherished dream ground.

We the living

2005-07-24T17:54:00.001+05:30

I read this novel by Ayn Rand recently, i thought the title of the book will be nice title to start with and i wrote something on the book..........

This novel by Ayn Rand like her previous novels conveys a unique philosophy towards life and her way of describing it is also unique. The novel gets its life in Leningrad (or Pterograd) in Russia and it flows into different corners of Leningrad. The story is around a girl called Kira Argounova, a very strong character with a vision in life. She spends the cream period of her life in a time of political and social turmoil in Russia during the year 1917-1930. After the Bolshevik revolution and demolition of imperialism, it was the time of reconstruction. It was the time when Kira arrives in Leningrad with a new social tag; she was a “burgoa”. With the proletariat government in power, Russia was under going a social change a fresh idealism which carried out by a true proletariat Andrei Taganov. and by Leo Kovalensky(s) a young man rebelling against the totalitarian system. Kira, a character with values, could see the death of values and lack of vision in the new born society; she eventually falls in love with Leo. Kira’s father who was a industrialist now found it difficult to get bread for living. Kira and Leo both were rebellion in their own way, Kira wanted to be in the system and then revolt when she had enough strength; on the other hand Leo was mocking the system by destrying himself. The best part of the novel is the interaction between Andrei Taganov and Kira. Two completely different ideologies meet each other with some common principles and then move on parallel. The consequences of this relation are far fetched. The characters evolved with time with changing social backdrops. Corruption was taking over the regime which was based on idealism. Proletarian were replaced by corrupt escapists. The pace of the novel is fantastic, though the change in the communist reign in Russia took a long time but this book actually describes why the change was necessary. Kira who aspired to become an engineer and built a bridge made of Aluminum continued her struggle but fails. Andrei who dreamt of a society where everyone will have equal rights to live finds himself giving berth to one which lacked everything he had once thought of. Leo who wanted to live life in his own way destroys all the values he lived for. The novel is about a philosophy and it leaves a strong impression about life on you.