Caprarius Aquacorn

Thought of Food 6: October Fest with Kumro (pumpkin) and Kulmi (water spinach) Shaak

2011-10-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

October in Pune is usually one of the warmer months. This year, because of the global warming, or Anna Hazare Movement,or whatever,and in the midst of the Occupy-Wall-Street Movement, and the hunting down and execution of another "dreaded" Arab terrorist that only the kick-sand-in-your-face bullies can justify doing, the southwest monsoon rains had delayed its departure until it was pushed out

Just Pontification 5: Occupy an Occupation, not Wall Street

2011-10-16T19:41:00.000-07:00

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) campaign is a curious campaign which has grown spontaneously in a way that one should have anticipated but did not. Just as one should have anticipated the real-estate bust and did not. There is an inevitability in the way the disparities have grown. If one is not old enough one has to be reminded that Karl Marx predicted that disparities between the wealth of

Spotted Munia's nest-building: Dont save only the Tiger

2011-09-20T23:12:00.000-07:00

An article in Nature (Krebs et al vol 400 August 1888) on The Second Silent Spring begins with this sentence:-The drive to squeeze ever more food from the land has sent Europe’s farmland wildlife into a precipitous decline.The birds in the picture above must have felt like Colerdige's Ancient MarinerFood, food everywhere, not a grain to eatThe authors then ask the question How can agricultural

Thought of Food 5: Multi-Grain Bread for Desis

2011-09-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

Very often one is influenced by favourable images that could make one long to be on the scene. One of these is the image of a bakery and the scent of fresh bread wafting in the environment. The early morning scene when the bakery opens in the movie "As Good as it Gets" is one such scene simply because there is always something romantic in catching your favourite bakery when it opens. In India it

Bedsa Caves : Speculations on Bedsa symbols and pillars

2011-08-26T19:05:00.000-07:00

I have reached this stage of life where I have to think about harmless things to do for whiling away the time, preferably for a common "good", especially when I am stuck in my science. I recently visited the Bedsa caves (see the previous blog). I found some aspects that were puzzling to me (no surprise). I researched the internet and came up with some conclusions, that could be a little

Bedsa Caves in the Monsoon

2011-08-13T07:43:00.001-07:00

Monsoon time is the time when all seems really well. This is about the last few years when Pune and its environs especially would seem so naturally electric green in the rains. The hills around Pune are dying to the sounds of the JCB machines makig paths up the hills for cars and hii-top houses that now signifies the new synthetic-plastic quality of life. The "all is well" feeling has become the

Science of Small Things: Part I. Humus, Carbon Chemistry and The Soul of the Soil.

2011-07-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

Of all things in life, the one that one most instantly relates to must be one’s mother and one’s seed, even if you are gay and terminator-gened.. The mother of all seeds must be mother earth herself. Not the earth as a planet of geography, but the mud of our creation and of our creativity and the earth of our sustenance.This blog will be dealing mainly with humus, the dark top-soil of natural

The turn of the very common men Anna and Baba. Not Mahtamas

2011-06-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

This I promise is going to be a very short blog. I have said what I wanted to say about Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev in earlier blogs (Lokpal I: Corruption in the Fast track; and Lokpal II: Fastin patterns).The country is now facing the pestilence of a disease of being honester than thou spread by the cronies and followers of two men of very deservingly simple intelligence. These men have

Dangers of being 6'5" Tall: Osama's Burden

2011-05-02T06:43:00.000-07:00

This blog is written after seeing scenes of jubilation of american youth (some dressed as superman or someother superhero) on TV following the courageous attack of American (I don't know why we say American when we mean US) commandos into the mansion of Osama Bin Laden near Pakistan's military academy. Bin Laden was guarded by his loyal followers whom, miraculously, nobody had noticed all these

Kalmadi: Danger of not Belonging

2011-04-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

I must confess that the doings of the self-proclaimed moral majority in the context of the very well orchestrated morality campaign has been very discomforting. The most recent casualty of this campaign, run with the help of select multi-media-influenced, west-imitating, candle-light campaign is the CBI arrest of Suresh Kalmadi. My discomfort is not because of whether or not I approve of Kalmadi,

Should America be afraid of G. K. Chesterton?

2011-04-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog is derived from Edward Albee's play "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf" Virginia Woolf is an author who writes to remove illusions about the upper class. She does not actually appear in the play. It is her spirit that is reflected in the play.What the title could mean is whether America should be afraid of G. K. Chesterton's revelations on America.When as a teen-age child,

Lokpal II: Fasting Pastimes

2011-04-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

On Fasting in General.Most of us are not corrupt. We take comfort in sayings such as “What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul.” Some of the times it is perhaps because we are too lazy to "gain the whole world".Some of the times we don't have an opportunity to be corrupt. Fasting against corruption is a matter we think we understand because no gain is

Lokpal I: Corruption in the Fast track

2011-04-09T18:41:00.000-07:00

One of the truisms that always brings out a chuckle even if you have heard it zillion times is “Giving up smoking is very easy, I have given it up several times”. It reminds me of (I don’t know why; perhaps it could eventually find a place in this blog) what Lord Henry said in Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray” :”Each time one loves is the only time one has ever loved, each time with

The (T)Ides of March, Falguni Poornima, and Conclave of India Today: The Bold, the Beautiful and the Ugly.

2011-03-17T23:23:00.000-07:00

This March has been a tediously sad and overly long drawn month that has changed my world of the last seventy years very much. I have little hope to regain my confidence in the future or my faith in my past, not because I like to do so, but because the events of March ordain that I do so, because of the inevitability of it. It does not affect at all my joy of being alive and kicking in the

Just Pontification 4: Science of Small Things

2011-02-11T23:03:00.001-08:00

I may acknowledge the obvious borrowing of the title of this Blog from Arundhati Roy's best seller titled "God of Small Things". I have not read the book though I held it in my hand several times, including an indonesian version in Roman script from Google Books. I can only guess therefore how that book is related to what I have to write on the Science of Small Things. According to one review,

Pune Street Scene VII: Pashan’s (Very) Old Hanuman Idol and (Very) Old Bakul Tree

2011-02-02T05:20:00.000-08:00

When I first landed in Pune more than twenty years ago, I was recommended to do my fresh vegetable shopping at Pashan Gaon’s vegetable market that was held on the streets of the Pashan Gaon. Pashan was still considered a village (Gaon) at that time. For that matter, the centre of Pune city is still considered to be Pune gaon to the older residents. This blog will be about some of the wonders of

Pantocrator: the snake, the lion and the dragon ... and Belur

2011-01-22T17:06:00.000-08:00

Some days ago a very good friend and mutually adopted brother of mine hailing proudly from Sienna and Bologna sent me a picture (below) of a mosaic. Along with that he wrote a cryptic note: ... A short visit last day to Pisa showed to me a little detail of the Pantocrator mosaic who is ....Super aspides et basiliscum ambulabis...that I would like to share with you. I do not know why. But this is

Pune Street Scenes VI : Camp Area at Christmas Time

2010-12-23T19:20:00.000-08:00

After a long spell of rain we had an unusual spell of cold which was 3-5 C below normal. Although I refused to bring out my "winter wear" it was nice to loaf around in the sun. Christmas time is Camp time. Camp used to mean military camp. The British military camp... where Indian traders lent money to the perennially broke and perennially high-living British types and made their killings very

India as a Global Leader in Science: Part III Encouraging and Protecting Innovations.

2010-11-19T08:16:00.000-08:00

This blog has been written after much deliberation on whether it will serve some purpose as far as an “innovation Ecosystem” will be concerned. In any Innovation Ecosystem true innovation has to be first recognized, then encouraged and most importantly protected.Innovation cannot be scavenged. The blog is aimed at preventing future pitfalls and loopholes in an already fragile innoivative

“India as a Global Leader in Science” Part II … Honge Kaaamyaab

2010-11-18T20:03:00.000-08:00

II. 1. Prelude A seemingly silly Hindi movie Jaane Bhi do Yaaro left a wonderful impression on me in the early eighties when I had crossed my over-the-forty hill and had nothing to show for it. This movie had the likes of Naseeruddin Shah, Ravi Baswani, Om Puri, Pankaj Kapoor, Satish Shah, late Bhakti Barve, Neena Gupta and Vidhu Vinod Chopra (he had the last line in the credits for actors).

“India as a Global Leader in Science” Part I … and there was Silence in the House of Judgement.

2010-11-15T06:03:00.000-08:00

A somewhat neatly brought up document was delivered by Post from a Science Academy of India. Its title was “India as a Global Leader in Science” and was purportedly written by the Science Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India.What immediately came to my mind was Oscar Wilde’s fifth poem in prose “The House of Judgement”. I guess it has now dropped out of the English syllables of our

Bruno’s Eyes: Little poison, little ignorance --- and not at all little SARD

2010-10-21T23:20:00.000-07:00

Our family pet, Bruno, lost his eye sight suddenly. When one does not know what the sudden blindness is due to one calls it Sudden Aquired Retinal Degeneration (SARD). So Bruno has a name for the illness but he has no cure. That is not good enough. We are hoping it will be temporary. The prognosis is not too good. The treatment is uncertain. The diagnosis is undecided. The end is not

Some Issues in the Bt brinjal

2010-09-30T07:11:00.000-07:00

I must stress that I have not made and cannot make coherently brief comments on the very important Bt brinjal problem that will give a terse pertinent insight. This is not expected. It is required nevertheless at least from an academic point of view from an interested academic. The new point I will try to stress on is the necessity for tasting the brinjal using knowledge from the gene-science of

The CWG Syndrome in the Bt Brinjal: Part II. The Indian Trans-Academy Game

2010-09-30T00:41:00.000-07:00

In Part I, I had semi-seriously discussed the criticism of the way the Common Wealth Games was being run. I called it the CWG syndrome which has implications of the functioning in a hierarchical society that could lead to self-defeating decisions that betrays society’s (country’s) interests. In a hierarchical society like that of the monkeys (from which we, as humans, are not far away from

The CWG Syndrome in the Bt Brinjal: Part I. Commonwealth Games

2010-09-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

There seems to be two important issues right now that could change the way we think the world thinks of us. One of these, of course, is the Common Wealth Games. India’s role in these games is that of a stakeholder. They are allowed by the Common Wealth Games (CWG) company to run the Games commercially. It is like holding a Beauty Competition. The other is the Bt brinjal problem that I will

Ganapati as Vinayak; Ganapati as Maurya

2010-09-20T22:18:00.000-07:00

A PreambleThere are disadvantages in getting a formal education that is now fashioned in India mainly by the efforts of missionaries and evangelists (usually Christian/western, when they are fashionable). One loses contacts with one’s roots. These roots, if you are lucky enough, continue to influence your lifestyles. It comes in the shape of the various festivals associated with the worship of

Gnostic Embrace of Warkaris in the Monsoon Season around Pune: Part III Kanifnath, Kanoba, and Syncretism

2010-08-21T18:15:00.001-07:00

This is the third part of this blog trilogy on the intrinsic Gnosticism of the warkaris in the palkhi procession during the monsoon season. These blogs have little on actual warkari aspects. They instead dwell on a possible evolution of the (Gnostic, a difficult word to define) mindset of these warkaris from the religiosity of their environment. The more intriguing aspect of this shrine is the

Gnostic Embrace of Warkaris in the Monsoon Season around Pune: II Khandoba Mandir (Warwadi) and the mystery of a Stone Pillar

2010-08-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

Gnostic Embrace of Warkaris in the Monsoon Season around Pune: II Khandoba Mandir (Warwadi) and the mystery of a Stone PillarIn the first part of this series we were exploring the country side around Pune during the monsoon season when the palkhi procession of warkaris take place. We had wondered off from Khed Shivapur into the hinterlands of Pune going towards Saswad from the NH4 highway. In the

Gnostic Embrace of Warkaris in the Monsoon Season around Pune: I Early Worship

2010-08-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

In the early parts of July the main arterial roads in Pune would have been blocked for vehicular traffic because of the Sant Dnyaneshwar palkhi procession from Alandi to Pandharpur the number of worshippers being huge and counted in hundreds of thousands . It’s a wonderful sight (see, http://fiveprime.org/hivemind/Tags/palkhi, for instance) even when you are caught in the traffic because of the

Santo Pablo and Swarm Intelligence.

2010-07-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

The remarkable thing about Paul the octopus predicting the results of the World Cup Football matches is that Paul does not --- I should say ‘may not’ perhaps --- find it remarkable (borrowing from Bertrand Russell’s view of the amoeba: A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not

Divinity and Divining: The Fluid in our Veins.

2010-05-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

This blog is due to a string of unusual occurrences of what could have been unlikely events. It is centred on the experience of water divining and the way it became connected with a supra-emotional unity of blood ties. The fluid in the water veins deep in the earth and those in the blood of our veins are a result of many thousand years of assimilation and change. We can expect the two veins to be

Just Pontification 3: Indian Power League

2010-05-03T21:00:00.000-07:00

It should seem that any blogger or twitterer would have already expressed all that is expected to be said about the Indian Premier League of Cricket. It does not seem to have affected the way IPL is to run except for some cosmetic changes. Nor should we expect it to change. This blog is not at all much about the IPL, although a few comments would seem to be mandatory. It is more about a

The Golden Bough, Sciencophansy and the * on a Chemist

2009-12-28T05:49:00.000-08:00

In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer: … A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying

Intrinsic Intentionality: J. C. Bose and his Science

2009-12-16T07:39:00.000-08:00

What we will be “worried” about in this blog is the “intentionality” of science, especially in the context of Indian genius (or whatever). I was introduced to the importance of “intentionality”, in the context of physics, by George Ellis in a 2005 paper in Nature on complexity. He did not use this term in his later works on complexity. “… science remains the field par excellence in which

Peace is War: Intention, Intentionality and Ardhanareshwar.

2009-12-10T22:50:00.000-08:00

The speeches made on the Nobel Peace Prize night are, by all accounts on the web, of the typein which every body tried to identify the main significance of the award to Obama. It did not help if Obama’s peace prize justified war efforts in Afghanistan as "Peace is war". Obama’s speech showed good intentions. Ask the Dalai Lama! The Dalai Lama seems to have said “... some of his (Obama’s) policies

Asteroid Impact: Destruction and Creation - Shiva as Ashutosh.

2009-12-05T18:05:00.000-08:00

Long time ago, on one of my first flights from some southern city (probably Bangalore), the plane took me over a range of hills while nearing Poona (now known as Pune). What struck me quite forcibly was that there were features on the hills which seemed as if they were a string of craters stretching over several miles, with each crater --- judging roughly from the height of the plane --- to be a

A Tale of Two Nobel Promises. Part I: Peace at Speeds faster than Light

2009-10-19T17:51:00.000-07:00

For some reason the Nobel Prizes for Peace as well as Chemistry struck similar if different chords in my social awareness syndrome. Both instilled the feelings that arise when one is not prepared for the occasion simply because there was not a kind of déjà vu feeling that comes from experiencing an event that has been anticipated or a sort of “previous experience” satisfyingly fulfilled. The

Pune Street Scenes V: Ganapathi Bestoweth Happiness

2009-10-06T01:14:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to associate the street scenes of Pune during ganapathi puja season as anything approaching one in which one is immersing one’s self in Ganesha solemnly; rather it is one in which one is hoping to be among those on whom Ganesha bestows happiness. The nature of the happiness depends on the individual’s needs at that time and so it is sufficient to be happy to realize that one has

Just Pontification 2: Where have all the Children gone!

2009-08-09T22:34:00.000-07:00

After many days, I participated in a full Bengali Family Wedding celebration. As you know weddings are eventually meant for raising families with children and not as a reason for living together. I will come to that later. Weddings are also a happy occasion for families to get together. Almost the entire of the surviving joint Ganguly family was there. Before going anywhere on any discussion it

Thought of Food 4: Steamed Wild Rice and Watermelon

2009-05-29T22:49:00.000-07:00

This recipe (click on images to expand) inspired by Lalha’s more kuzhambu (buttermilk stew, if one insists on a probably incorrect English transliteration) is mainly to sing praises for the cereal which is known locally (in Maharashtra, India) as varai. Having lived in Maharashtra for nearly nineteen years now, I should have known about this cereal much earlier. Lalitha and I came across this

Bhuleshwar on a Hill: Interior

2009-04-22T05:43:00.001-07:00

Writing notes on historical events many millennia after they have occurred is like writing scientific papers on subjects like weather change. Boundary conditions play a very important role in the computational evolution of the weather (“butterfly effect”). You get one step wrong and you lose your path forever. Just as people have learnt not to trust weather forecasts there is, it seems, little to

Bhuleshwar on a Hill: Exterior

2009-03-31T07:25:00.000-07:00

There is a chapel on a hill in a place called Bhuleshwar near (~50 kms) Pune. This is thought to be a Shiva temple from the time of the Pandavas in local parlance which in modern historical times could be anywhere between the 11th and 13th century (AD or CE as they would like to have it nowadays). It has no connection with Bhuleshwar and its Mumba devi temple in Mumbai. I also do not know what

Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Justpontification.

2009-03-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

There is a song I used to hear very often a few years back and it still comes up in my audio awareness every now and then. The song is Californication. It has a very lilting tune which you can always catch on You Tube. I liked the audacity of the title of the song for the style of “sin” that is suggested besides its association with images of California. The song was popularized by a group with

Thought of Food 3: A "Mahrashtrian" Bread

2009-03-02T08:15:00.000-08:00

When I was in Bordeaux, France in the early 1980s, I loved to take the early morning walk to the Boulangerie, bakery shop that specializes in breads and rolls, to buy the stick of the freshly baked, nearly a yard-long, French bread baguette, which fits so nicely into the palm of your hand. The baguette has all the simple and basic elements of food (water, flour, yeast and salt) in it. It is baked

Pune Street Scenes IV: Pune Trishundiya Ganapathi Temple Interior

2009-02-28T20:36:00.000-08:00

This is the second part that follows the earlier blog. It is an attempt to understand the story of this strange temple in terms of the gods within. I might as well forewarn at this stage that I found out nothing about why and when it became known as the triple-trunked trishundiya Ganapathi temple. It was sufficient for me just to see and speculate. What I do not know about temple architecture and

Pune Street Scenes III: Pune Trishundiya Ganapathi Temple Exterior

2009-02-17T22:53:00.000-08:00

I thought this will be a brief blog about a curious trishundiya (three-trunked) ganapathi. It turned out right from the beginning that the ganapathi could be said to be the least curious feature of the temple. It required considerable unbiased erudition to understand the structure. This erudition is a rare commodity in centres of learning mainly because they depend on non-controversial “soft

Pune Street Scenes, Part II: Tulsibag, Saswad, Lakkundi

2009-01-29T04:48:00.000-08:00

It is difficult for any true Puneite not to visit Tulsibag (written differently as Tulsi baug or Tulshi-bagh) and having gone there not to have spent a few minutes relaxing in the ambience of the Ram Mandir. I somehow managed to spend nearly nineteen years in Pune without visiting the Ram Mandir although I have been to Tulsibag and its environs shopping for various indigeneous produces in its

Twentieth January 2009: Mubarak Ho Obama

2009-01-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

Twentieth January of any year happens to be my official birthday. It’s just another birthday. I will be 67 years older. The numerals 6 and 7 add up to 13 and would be an unlucky number in some systems. 13 is not specifically listed as an unlucky number in Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, or Marathi systems. So I guess it’s alright. Some may also ask unlucky in what? Good question. In any case we should

Thought of Food 2: Desi Tabbouleh for Nerds (and +65s)

2009-01-07T09:08:00.000-08:00

The demography of the recently upwardly mobile section of highly trained younger generation, aspiring once upon a time to be computer nerds, and now pursuing a mostly clerical software profession far outside their line of training, shows a certain unnecessary bulge in inappropriate parts of their bodies. One of their problems is that, after they return home after a long and tiring day of activity

Pune Street Scenes in December. Part I: Time for Mithra-giri

2008-12-24T05:08:00.000-08:00

The month of December in Pune is usually an exceptionally beautiful month when the skies are clearly blue and cloudless. This year there is a haze which does not clear up till late in the day with a strong visual evidence for the “brown cloud” which we continue to ignore. I think we are preoccupied with what Antulay meant when he said the thing that is obvious regarding Hemant Karkare’s death

Pulling Strings for Joy: The "Baul" of Madhugiri

2008-12-14T23:23:00.000-08:00

Madhugiri baul and his instrument One of the joys of blundering one’s way through life is that one learns not only the mistakes that can be corrected but also that one could makes unexpected discoveries, especially if one is in unknown territories. We visited Bangalore (from Pune) for Lalitha’s niece’s wedding. Lalitha drove us down because we wanted Bruno, our world’s biggest smooth-haired

The Terror Within - A Game of Chess

2008-12-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

As older people we can only recollect from our Brahmachari days when, as aliens in our own country, we conversed and read in a foreign language without being alienated … strangely! In the context of the images of recent terror, Eliot’s “Game of Chess” comes to mind where bottles of perfumes (read flames from grenades) … drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the airThat freshened from the window

Thought of Food I. Seven Cereal Chikki

2008-11-19T04:21:00.000-08:00