Despite callousness of society and political apathy, you continue your work with dedication, sincerity and determination. You endure hardships and make sacrifices for the sake of your work, simply because you are convinced that the only way to social betterment and nation building is through scientific knowledge and spirit. Heartfelt regards and salutations to all my friends who are striving hard to build a scientific India. Best compliments to all of you on the occasion of Vikram Jayanti!
photo credit: COD Newsroom College of DuPage, Hundreds of Students Celebrate Science at 34th Annual Illinois Science Olympiad 2019 41 via photopin (license)
In the run-up to general elections 2014, one leading newspaper carried an op-ed article where the writer wondered how each and every party was harping promises of overall progress, prosperity and development, but none of them said even a single word on how it is going to achieve it. To clarify his point, he elaborated that no party has spoken about science and technology. How can any country progress if not by science and technology, he asked.
Photo source: Amazon.in
In a country obsessed with politics and religion, it is quite rare to see any movie paying attention to science and scientists — that too fine attention. 15 Park Avenue (2005) by Aparna Sen is one such movie, which had received the National Film Award for best feature film in English.
I liked this movie for several reasons besides its screenplay and artistic merit. The foremost reason is that it brings nearly all my favourite actors and actresses under one roof — Shabana Azmi, Konkona Sen Sharma, Waheeda Rehman, Soumitra Chatterjee, Kanwaljit Singh, Rahul Bose, Dhritiman Chatterjee to mention only a few. And all of them performing under the expert direction of Aparna Sen who has shown her calibre more than once with movies such as 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), Yugant (1995), Paromitar Ek Din (2000) and Mr and Mrs Iyer (2002). What more could one ask for? Continue reading
Some time back I had posted an article on the Aravrit script, a hybrid script created by joining Arabic and Hebrew scripts. While exploring the work further, I had some doubts, which I communicated to Liron Lavi Turkenich, the creator of the script. If you have a Facebook account, you may like to see the response to my query on this link.
Keith Broni, photo source: Today Translations.
I had been in regular correspondence with her for quite some time without any communication gap. Her English was flawless without any grammatical or punctuation errors, a virtue which I always admire. However, one day there was an unusual error — she ended the sentence with a colon and closed it with a parenthesis. As I could not locate the opening bracket, I concluded that she had deleted a part of the sentence by mistake. Continue reading
Liron Lavi Turkenich and her script Aravrit. Photo source: typotalks.com.
Which is the biggest problem that you face when traveling to a different city? A problem that you mostly take for granted, but are confronted with as soon as you set your foot on that land? It is language. You don’t have to go that far as China or Russia to appreciate the enormity of this problem. In fact, even within our own country, we face this problem on a routine basis.
Strangely, we give more importance to food and wonder ‘what would we eat there?’ And we pack sattu, khakhara, Maggi, even hot plate for emergency survival purpose. On the other hand, not for a moment do we pay any attention to the language barrier that is eagerly waiting for us. We brush aside all concerns with a ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’d manage’. Continue reading
Surname is a very involved subject, which encompasses caste, profession, language and native place. For example, you need not be told where your colleague Bandyopadhyay hails from or why your neighbour Agarkar is not a Bihari. As long as surnames are unique — Rao, Gowda, Chaturvedi, Mukherjee or Kulkarni — everything is fine. However, whenever there is an overlap — obvious or apparent — new questions arise. An example could be Trivedi. Today we would discuss few such cases. Note that here our aim is not about the classification and nomenclature per se, nor do we attempt at understanding the logic behind surname and its distinction from Jati, Varna, or Gotra. Here we are only concerned with the migration or movement of people as reflected in their surnames. Continue reading
I have always wondered whether the English word ‘nano’ has its origin in the Gujarati word nanu (નાનું = small) — the similarity is indeed remarkable. To explore the idea further, I opened the Merriam Webster dictionary and found that it is not so. The English word ‘nano’ has its origin in the Greek word nanos, meaning ‘small’ or ‘dwarf’. Continue reading
My laboratory is situated in an isolated corner of the institute campus. Whenever I have to stay there in night time for some work, one or the other of the security guards turns up to check if everything is fine. That routine visit starts a scientific discussion and I find myself talking to him about lidar, sunphotometer, aerosols, dust, smoke and so on. Continue reading
A short article by Nimesh Ved appeared in The Hindu. With focus on environment protection, conservation, and waste management, it makes a note of the various practices followed by conservation agencies and individuals, at conferences and outside of them, that are contrary to any type of conservation effort.
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Pradyot 