Rabindranath Tagore 7th May 1861

We  missed celebrating Rabindranath Tagore's birthday by several days. Well, better late than never, so here goes. Here are three of  Tagore's celebrated works, two short stories and a novel.

A  clip from Charulata, the well known  movie based on Tagore's short story, Nashta Need.  The first is the well known song, O bideshini. Tagore, Ray,   Saumitro Chatterjee and Ray's muse, Madhabi Mukherjee. The singer is Kishore Kumar. He wrote  a very sweet letter to Satyajit Ray (Manek Mama) which essentially left the choice of fees  to him!

 Video link

The first scene from this movie is equally famous.  Charu moving from room to room in her house, following the hawker's cries. It is clear she is bored out of her skull.  The rest of the movie follows from her family's attempts to keep her amused and occupied.

The second is a celebrated novel, Sesher Kobita, sometimes translated as `The last letter' and sometimes as `Farewell my Friend', the eternal love story of Amit and Labanya, who went and married someone else, so that they could remain eternal lovers. The logic of this was always lost to conventional minds (a.k.a yours truly), but certainly makes for a sweet story.  A recent take on this one starred Rahul Bose and Konkona Sen Sharma.  See here  the official trailer.

The last is a short story `The Castaway', the tale of Nilkanta, a castaway who finds refuge with Kiran and her husband Sharat, and who is made a great pet of by Kiran. Unfortunately, Kiran's brother in law  Satish, arrives on the scene, and occupies all her time, leading to great jealousy on the part of Nilkanta, and also to stealing Satish's prized possession, a swan shaped inkstand, out of spite. Nilkanta leaves, Kiran finds out, and covers up for him.

Tagore's portrayals of women have always been sensitive and nuanced. He also portrays a society where they occupied privileged positions.  It is surprising to think these stories were written a hundred years ago. Contemporary comments make it clear this was a small segment of society (perhaps people like the Tagore family)  and was far from being the norm. Nevertheless the charm of the stories lies in  their emotional veracity, which is sometimes lost in translation. This is where the power of the movies lies, they  speak  to audiences which cannot access the originals.  Charulata's largest audience is in France, and Konkona's movie reaches out to a panIndia audience.  While some of Tagore's work has been filmed by Ray and other great directors, a huge body remains unfilmed. We wish some guild of  film makers would take up this challenge.

This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao. 

Tamil Nouvelle

 

After years and years, a food post. And what could be more appropriate than a new take on Tamil cuisine, viz. Tamil Nouvelle.   Last week saw a trip to the aptly named Swaha restaurant in Besant Nagar. Right on the beach, next to Chandralekha's famous bungalow, this typical Besant  Nagar bungalow has nice outdoor space as well as indoor space, and in this sweltering weather, air conditioning which works. Astonishingly, this is Chennai's first take on Tamil Nouvelle, and perhaps the first anywhere.

 Meals start with an amuse bouche, a pastry shell with  tiny onions, yes precisely, vengai onions, and a dash of tamarind, with a sliver of rava dosa on top. Works well.  Drum stick soup is anyway a tried and trusted  staple.   Since this is a vegetarian restaurant, mock meat prevails. Hence kola urundai ends up being jackfruit urundai.   Now who would know that stuffed katrikai, koshambari and sambar rice and appalam could look so fancy and fashionable! Deserts depart from the Tamil theme, and hence do not live up to  the hype, despite generous sprinklings of jaggery. Maybe they should try ada pradhanam with vanilla ice cream. Italian and Pan Asian food is on the menu, for them as want it. Svasa is the outdoor area for  those spirited types who like innovative bar plates. In short, very well worth a try. Upcoming guests, interested? Come soon.

This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao.

P.S.  Yes, Sumathi, I know you didn't go. Will take you. Ashoke can stick to the spirits supplemented by a steel dabba from home!

Rahul Basu (04/03/1956-05/03/2011)

There are a hundred places where I fear 

To go, -so with his memory they brim 

And entering with relief some quiet place 

Where never fell his foot or shone his face

 I say `There is no memory of him here!'

 And so stand stricken, so remembering him. 

 Edna St. Vincent Millay. 

 

This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao.

Gharwapasi 2 (and also Civil Society and its Concerns 4)

 This week saw yet another ghar wapasi, this time of another kind. The return of Aryan Khan to his home, after 23 days of incarceration, with no bail granted. There was a media circus about his return home, there was a media circus about his incarceration, there was a media circus about his arrest, to say nothing of 1million whats app forwards baying for his blood. What there has not been much in the press about, is what was the case against him. The case against Khan junior who wasn't under the influence of drugs, who wasn't in the possession of drugs, is that some one he knew had some  drugs on him. Even under the present narcotics act, which suspends several human rights principles, (a  fact which doesn't seem to worry anyone), this doesn't look like an offence which requires 23 days to get bail. However, thanks to a rich and famous father (who, paradoxically, might have been the reason why he was arrested), Aryan had a legal team fighting for him, which has ensured his gharwapasi for the time being at least.

On the other hand, there was not even a media squeak about a ghar nonwapasi, the human rights lawyer and activist, Sudha Bharadwaj, languishing in gaol without bail, or a trial, since August 2018, together with four others, equally well known. Ms Bharadwaj, like the others, was arrested in connection with the Koregaon Bhima case for `her involvement in inciting violence' at the Elgar Parishad. She was neither mentioned  in the FIR, nor present during the Elgar parishad in 2017, when the violence occured. A visiting professor of the National Law University, she has been continuously denied bail requested on health grounds and other grounds, for three years, for a case which has not come to trial, probably because, as various people have said, that there is not a shred of evidence against her which can actually stand up in court.

In both cases, the basic principle of law, viz. habeas corpus has been suspended, in one case by raising the bogey man of narcotics, in the other by raising the bogey man of `Maoist Violence'. Neither case has come to court or been proven. Meanwhile, civil society watches on, content with trial by media, and feeds on vicious what's app forwards. Perhaps the case can be resolved, if Aryan's lawyers take up Sudha's case. Could you look into this Mr. Khan? If you could ensure gharwapasi for her, on this festival of Diwali, that would be an act of charity indeed!


This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao.

Tailpiece: This might also be of interest  Civil Society (Take 3)

Update: Ms Bharadwaj and others were finally granted bail yesterday. They were granted bail on a technicality, rather than on any case of Satyamev Jayate. However, given everything, let us just be thankful they are home. Or are they?  Watch this space.

2/12/2021

 

Ghar Wapasi

 The whole world is writing about this, so why not us? The Maharaja has returned home. The fastidious may complain about how he went from riches to rags in his years of sarkari exile, but he was never a plutocrat in the first place. Additionally, he was taken care of well in his early years, took care of others in the middle, and never really stopped earning his keep, despite ill treatment from babus and ministers. The interesting thing about the Maharaja is how he commands loyalty, from his CEO-s to his staff, to say nothing of his passengers, like us, who may complain about the shabbiness of the seat covers, but like their elbow room and their meals (quite often from the Tata and Taj  flight kitchens). Those who have survived European airlines and trips to Europe, on two half bottles of water, and two croissants and a couple of pats of butter and marmalade, have longed for the English breakfast, and idly vadas that Air India reliably dishes out despite all the austerity. Never mind those who crib about dhoklas (see link)!

 

 

 

AI is expected to keep its staff for a year. After that, a substantial fraction may accept VRS. Those who look forward to spiffy young ladies (and designer young men) should remember that this is the loyal staff which took cuts, suggested austerity measures (mostly idiotic), and even tried to buy the airline. They have the all women crew and backup all the way down to technical staff, which can do polar flights,  and also handle cribbing babies. They have landing slots in all the major airports in the world,  they are a member of the Star Alliance (see, we haven't forgotten the laddoos they distributed on Frankfurt airport the day they became members), to say nothing of a fleet of modern aircraft they own, including the Dreamliners. In short, the Tata's may shed a few sentimental tears, but they haven't forgotten hard headed business principles in posting the winning bid for the airline. Good  luck to them, and maybe they should offer a life time worth of free flying to Prafulla Patel. If not for his valiant efforts, AI might still have remained a going concern  for the Government of India, and the Maharaja might have never come home!

This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao.   

Post Script: Incidentally, Mr Tata, can you please throw out those bamboo spoons?  Thank you.

Many happy returns of the day, Chennai.

Yesterday was Madras's 382nd birthday. We have to admit that the 381st birthday passed in a collective Covid daze. There was not as much as a celebratory cheep, since the inhabitants were too busy counting the spikes in Covid cases. (Naive mathematical question: How can you possibly have a spike every day? If it goes up every day it's an uptrend! Well, this digression closes here, together with this bracket). 

 

This year the city is recovering, or at least is somewhat vaccinated, and normalcy is rearing it's head beneath it's face mask. So the annual celebrations have resurfaced, albeit in a socially distanced way. As always, the leading light in the festivities is the MahaVishnu of Mount Road, the redoubtable newspaper, the Hindu. The Hindu is taking the online route to celebrations, with an article every day to remember past pandemics and disasters. These include articles as varied as the yeoman service done by the King's institute in Guindy, and the Communicable Diseases Hospital in Tondiarpet for the eradication of small pox, and the fight against influenza, to boxing and music, to the long lived restaurant, the Waldorf. They have even waxed forth on the history of Section 144! Meanwhile the U.S. consulate has also got into the act, and of course the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC). They have started several beautification projects. We wish they would give a park to South Chennai and illuminate all the beautiful Indo-Saracenic buildings in the city, starting with Central Station. Here is a suitably sepia tinted photo.

This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao.

The IPA Rahul Basu Memorial Award 2020.

 The IPA  Rahul Basu Memorial Awards for the best theses in High Energy Physics 2020, were presented on  18th December 2020 in a virtual ceremony hosted at the DAE symposium at NISER Bhubaneshwar. While the virtual nature of the ceremony was inevitable due to the current pandemic, it is interesting to note that virtual presentations have been a feature of the award ceremony right since its first edition in 2012, as befits an award for a community which invented the internet.

The winners of the award, as announced earlier, were Dr. Resmi P K, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, for her thesis on the ` Measurement of the CKM angle 𝜑_3 from 𝐵± →
𝐷(K_s0 pi+pi-pi0)𝐾± decays and future prospects, and Dr. Manibrata Sen, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai for his thesis on ` New aspects of supernova neutrino flavour conversions: In the standard model and beyond'.

The awardees presented their work in very clear talks which conveyed the flavour of their work to the large, if  virtual, audience. Dr. P.K. Resmi had carried out a very careful analysis of the quantum correlated DDbar data collected at CLEO-c to measure the charge-parity content of the decay D decaying to K_s0, pi+, Pi- and pi0, and measure the strong phase difference of the decay. This was a difficult problem, and required very skilful analysis of experimental data and the understanding of detector effects. Her thesis also contained a proof of principle of the determination of gamma using data from the Belle experiment using her earlier results. This analysis was the first of its kind, and was one of the determing factors which fetched her the award.

The other awardee, Dr Manibrata Sen, had explored the nonlinear collective neutrino oscillations of supernova neutrinos. His focus was on the newly discovered phenomenon of “fast flavor conversions” that start taking place as deep as at a radius of about 10 km from the centre of the exploding star, when certain symmetries are broken. Neutrino-neutrino interactions inside a supernova core yield nonlinear equations for neutrino flavour evolution. These collective oscillations and their effects on emitted neutrino spectra,
were studied via a  mathematical model of neutrinos and antineutrinos, and the oscillations of a particle in a quartic potential. This provided an analytical understanding of the neutrino flavor dynamics in the fully non-linear regime for the first time, and was supplemented by a numerical study.

Due to the large number of excellent nominations received, in addition to the winners, the award committee chose three recipients for honorable mentions. These were,  Dr. Chandrodoy Chattopadhyay, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai for the thesis `Entropy production and thermal fluctuations in higher- order dissipative hydrodynamics,' Dr. Rafiqul Rahaman, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, for his thesis on the  `Study of anomalous gauge boson self-couplings and the role of spin-1 polarizations', and  Dr. Suman Chatterjee, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, for his thesis entitled `Jets as probes for precision measurements and candles for physics beyond the standard model'.

The  thesis of Dr. Chandroday Chattopadhyay contained contributed interesting new directions  in the use of relativistic dissipative hydrodynamics for probing the properties of the strongly interacting Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) formed at RHIC and LHC energies. His thesis demonstrated a set of initial conditions which when used with transport and hydrodynamic models provided good agreement with experimental data. His work also explored the properties of hydrodyanamic attractors for systems far from equilibrium.

Dr. Suman Chatterjee  had studied  the differential measurements of different-radii jets in QCD multijet events at the LHC. He developed  data-driven techniques to cope with the overwhelming standard model backgrounds, namely the QCD-multijet production, and the top quark-antiquark pair production.

Dr. Rafiqul Rahaman had worked on the usage of polarisations of  W/Z bosons to probe possible new physics in the processes involving these particles  at the ILC and LHC. His analysis identified  the complete set of polarizations required for this analysis in terms  of spin/polarization density matrices. This was used to analyse anomalous triple gauge boson couplings in the neutral sector at ILC through the ZZ and Z-gamma production processes. He also studied  W+W- production at ILC and the  ZZ and WZ processes at the LHC in the context of anomalous triple gauge couplings.

The award ceremony  held at the DAE symposium at NISER, Bhubaneshwar, was very well attended in the online mode. Prof. Rohini Godbole chaired the session,  and Prof. Bedanga Mohanty conducted the talks. The winners were given a cash prize of Rs.25,000/- each and a citation and  the runners up received citations. 

Our grateful thanks to the Indian Physics Association for the administration of this award. The award committee consisted of Profs. Bedangadas Mohanty, Sunanda Bannerjee, Debashis Ghoshal, Sourendu Gupta, Rohini Godbole, Jim Libby, Sunil Mukhi and Seema Sharma. They put in herculaean efforts in sifting through the huge number of really excellent nominations to identify the winners in the short span of time available. This was  fifth edition of the award. We are really happy to see the enthusiasm and competition it has generated in this span in young high energy physicists. We look forward to even more intense competition in future editions.

This blog post is by Neelima Gupte and Sumathi Rao.