Thanking old teachers

For many of us, our lives in school represent some of the most important years of life, and we also have excellent memories of our teachers. Considering that one finished Class X thirty three years ago, where was I going to find information on my old school teachers? A google search on the names of favourites teachers took me here. My comments on the blog got me in touch with Gopal Gurram, the owner of the blog. I wonder why many of us in India are so thankful to our teachers? Maybe because we cannot really take good teachers for granted? Maybe at that age, we will did not yet have a sense to entitlement. [The latter has been commented upon in a different context here.] Comments welcome

Rahul Basu -- In Memoriam

It is with the most profound sorrow that I must write to you about the loss of our friend, collaborator, teacher and esteemed member of the High Energy Physics community.

The end came quite suddenly after a series of health problems, first in the form of lung infections and eventually cardiac arrest. I met him recently in December in Chennai at which time he was planning a holiday to Bali and Singapore. Apparently he had been recovering from a lung infection, but on his return there was a recurrence and he spent many weeks in the ICU. I spoke to him last month and he sounded a little tired, but apparently otherwise he was getting better. It seems that these infections had weakened him to such an extent that he had a set back.

Rahul was known to many of us for his organizational skill and enthusiasm in organizing schools, conferences, workshop, etc.. Some of our own students have recently heard his lectures in Chandigarh, and he was to lecture in April at the SINP school. For others he was a collaborator and friend to many of us. Recently many of us have known him for his blogging on As I Please, where his powerful language and logic and wit speak for themselves.

At this stage I have very few words left to say. I would like to request you all to join me in my thoughts and pay our respects to his memory.

Update: You can leave a message on the official memorial page here.

Hyderabad as the accidental tourist destination

How can one's place of birth and childhood and growth possibly be a tourist destination? Easy: if you have moved away and your kid comes back every vacation to visit grandparents, granduncles and cousins. So that is what happened to us.

Of course Charminar is a must and we visited it last week. Impressive as ever. What is more, the weather was the best I could remember in years. Then we asked our driver to take us to `Paigah Palace' which I thought was nearby. He confidently took us to a nearby palace which was not Paigah but was the Chowmohalla Palace. This is terrific. We did not have much time and could only a small part of it. The Nizam's descendants in 2005 have allowed the public to come and walk through. It is a must.

Earlier we had done the usual Public Gardens and the Birla Mandir and a short walk along the Hussain Sagar where there are now two gardens on either side of the Necklace road.

We also visited the Mahavir Harina Vanasthali National Park, which is now a deer park in about 16 sq. km. of what was once the Nizam's hunting grounds. There is a safari ride for 15 min. and costs 5 rupees. There is no safari between noon and 3:00 pm. We also went back to the Public Gardens to the State Museum which has one of 6 Egyptians mummies in the country's museums, which had been bought from London and they say it is that of a 16 or 18 year old female and daughter of a Pharoah. The Buddhist and Bronze collections and Ajanta reproductions are excellent. There are also murals in several scripts and apparently there is a miniature which we did not see. This is not be confused with the Salar Jung Museum which we did not visit.

There is also a small tribal museum in Sankshema Bhavan at Masab tank which we visited.

For the tourist, there is also the crafts festival in December at the Shilparamam near the Hi-Tech city.

This is what we did this year. Last year, we had done the Qutb Shahi tombs, the Golconda fort and on an earlier occasion the famous Nehru Zoological Park near the Mir-Alam tank. So what more can one ask from one single city. And, don't forget that you can get by with Hindi if you are someone who does not know Telugu.

So if this information has been useful to you, happy holidays now or for later...

Phalax 6 is now out

The editor of Phalanx wrote to me saying that Phalax 6 is out. You can read the editorial on the quagmire of higher education here.

`A Place in the Sun' by Charles Correa

Recently I saw a book review of `A Place in the Sun' which is a collection of essays, lectures and the like by Charles Correa, brought out by Penguin India. I found a copy in our friendly neighbourhood lending library and borrowed it. It is a must read. I am amazed at his knowledge of history, geography and politics and his forthrightness which all shine brightly at the reader. There are so many things that I read here that I never knew about. He talks about the temple at Modhera near Ahmedabad which I had scarcely heard of. Also impressive is his compassion for the poor and the needy, for the homeless and the destitute, his breathtaking sweep of architecture across cultures, what goes into designing a building. Also of interest are his views on Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Corbusier and other personalities. Fabulous reading!

Let me regale you with some quotations:

1) The dedication `To the Eklavya in each of us'. (What a marvellous dedication!)

2) On page 91, from `Zero'

Postscript

I am in a plane flying to the US for this lecture. Everything seems so American -- the way people look, the way they talk, their gestures, their dress, even the colour of their hair: blond, red, brown blue...It's all so different from India. It's clear to me that I'm at the opposite end of the world. And I wonder: How can these people ever begin to understand a country like India? Or vice versa?

And then suddenly a baby cries. And astonishingly, all the differences fall away -- it sounds just like an Indian child! Perhaps within each of us, there's a Volume Zero struggling to get out?

3) From `Great City, terrible place'


CODA: If you drop a frog into a saucepan of very hot water, it will desperately try to hop out. But if you place a frog in tepid water and then gradually, very very gradually, raise the temperature, the frog will swim around happily, adjusting to the increasingly dangerous conditions. In fact, just before the end, just before the frog cooks to death, when the water is exceedingly hot, the frog relaxes, and a state of euphoria sets in (like those hot-tub baths in California). Maybe that’s what is happening to us in Bombay, as everyday we find it getting to be more and more of a great city…and a terrible place.

(This could easily be a metaphor for our entire country and not just Bombay! In any case, you will find a long excerpt from LiveMint here.)

19th Kumari L. A. Meera Memorial Lecture

The 19th Kumari L. A. Meera Memorial Lecture will be given on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 at 6 pm at the Indian Institute of World Culture, Basavanagudi, Bangalore, by Prof. Rajaram Nityananda of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Pune entitled "The Graver Side of Light". The trust web-site is here.

Abstract: Light has illuminated our understanding of space, time, and gravitation via Einstein’s special and general relativity. . The focus of this lecture is the interplay between gravity and light - redshifts, gravitational lenses, and black holes are already a standard part of how astronomers observe and model the universe, and more is to come. . .

Joseph Fox on Richard Heck's Nobel Prize

Heck's seminal studies were conducted in the late 1960's, but he did not receive a major award for his work until 2004. Yet, his day has come, and to see Heck recognized on this grandest of stages is absolutely remarkable. Something is right in the world when the Nobel prize goes to such a modest individual, based so purely on merit. It reminds me of why I went into science in the first place.

That is from Joseph Fox's article on the Nobel Prize to Richard Heck.