Month: July 2012

Anugunj :: अनुगूँज

Prof. K K Mishra of our Department of Anthropology is presently away from the University, serving as the Director of the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya in Bhopal (and also as the Director General of the Anthropological Survey of India, in Kolkata).

This week, he has brought an exhibition to the Salar Jung Museum,  Anugunj, that explores the various creation myths that occur in our diverse indigenous cultures. Hyderabad is in good company- the exhibition that is permanently housed in Bhopal has earlier traveled to Mumbai and to Delhi. I had the privilege of seeing it today, and it was, in a word, stunning.

The Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya was founded with the aim of preserving and documenting the disappearing traditions and life-skills as well as with a view to revive as many of them as possible. It aimed at presenting a chronicle of human evolution but with an awareness of the pitfall that threatened a past oriented approach. The museum is spread over 200 acres with an undulating terrain has many open-air exhibitions. The travelling exhibition Anugunj is a component of [their] permanent exhibition and consists mainly of photographs of the exhibits from there. However, it also has fibre replicas of some huge terracotta works as well as smaller versions of the original objects in iron, bronze and terracotta created by the same artists.

Mythology, besides being the ancient cousin of culture is also a chronicle of its highs and low. Hence a basic understanding of the myths is necessary for knowing a culture. This brings out the importance of this exhibition as well as the reason for its popularity.  

In addition to being visually very attractive, this exhibit that occupies a large new room on the third floor of the Salar Jung museum and which has been curated by Shampa Shah (of the IGRMS) explores the creation of the world, various trades and various tribes in a variety of media- painting, terracotta, and metalwork. Being a traveling show, many of the exhibits are photographs or reproductions, but still. It was great to see a large painting by Durgabai Vyam who had come to the UoH last year. Also a terracotta sculpture by the phenomenal- and tragic- tribal artist,   Jangarh Singh Shyam.

The exhibition is on for the next three weeks, and given the range of arts on display- from Ao Naga to Saora to Bhil- this is well worth a visit to the Salar Jung Museum. And if things work out, we should be able to catch a glimpse of it on our own campus too…

Suddenly, this summer…

Ashwin Kumar, student of our IMSc programme has been spending two months at the University of Alberta. He is, however, one of a growing number of undergraduates who use the summer months to get a taste of research. And, incidentally to see the world…

Prof. K P N Murthy has been one of the biggest champions of the cause. He has nurtured the Junior Science Club of the UoH, and has also personally mentored a large number of students each summer (OK, so the suddenly in the post title is misleading). Later this year, when the semester begins, he plans to have a two-day meeting of all the students who did summer internships when they will present the work they through talks and/or posters. The event will be at the CIS where he is also the present Director. He writes that a large number of of students in IMSc and MSc have gone to various places on summer internship. Also many of our own students have done their summer internship in our university itself. For example I had some four students from IMSc and one student from M Sc as summer fellows.

He is not alone. We had a very large number of students from other institutions come here under the Inter-Academy Summer Fellowships- the largest number after those who chose to go to the IISc, as a matter of fact. Many many thanks to the many faculty members who mentored them!

Meanwhile, the news from the University of Alberta where a classroom was set abuzz with inquisitive conversation and questions this week at the first-ever University of Alberta Research Internship Poster Symposium.

“It’s an awesome experience,” said Ashwin Kumar, an undergraduate chemistry student from India’s University of Hyderabad who is working in a UAlberta research lab analyzing protein interactions with BRCA1—the Breast Cancer Type 1 susceptibility gene—to better understand the make-up of breast and ovarian cancer cells. “This is the first time I’ve been abroad and it’s my first research experience ever. It’s really exciting.”

Harshavardhan Reddy Pinninty, a student in the IMSc Physics programme was at Lindau, Germany at the annual meeting of Nobel laureates, where he has been having a great time. His FB status says it all: A lifetime opportunity :).

There are many others- some that I heard of (via Kedar Kulkarni) are  Raghu Pradeep Narayanan who was at Purdue, Abhay Jith at MIT. And its not just the Science students- a number of our students in the social sciences have also spent their summer usefully.  Achyut Kulkarni was at IIT, Milan George Jacob at CDS Trivandrum, Syed Mohib Ali at the Centre for Civil Society, Aabha Sharma at IIT-Madras, Sai Madhurika at RBI Chennai and Kedar Kulkarni was also at the University of Alberta. I am sure this list is way incomplete!

In any case it will be good to hear what all these students have been up to this summer. The experience promises to be- if anything- humbling.

Deconstructing Mass

A day after the announcement at CERN of the experiment confirming the (probable) existence of the Higgs boson, the Indian Express carried an article by Payal Ganguly that was provocatively titled UoH Professor looks beyond the God particle. A discursive interview with Professor Bindu Bambah of the School of Physics, the article tried to explain to the lay public what the excitement was all about.

This post is not to recap all that, but merely to point to those sources and some others wherein one can hopefully understand why the discovery is such a big deal. Its not just that there is mass at the end of the tunnel, its also a staggering scientific and engineering feat, and as Prof. Bambah says, a “vindication of scientific method and thinking.”

Her own research is, of course, connected with experiments at CERN. As she describes in the IE article, In 1988-1990, I worked on the electron positron collider, which was a low-energy version of the present LHC. That was when India was taking baby steps in the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Today we have a huge presence there, with participation in major experiments, contribution of significant money, and much opportunity for additional work, looking beyond this particular set of experiments.

Given the fact that several colleagues in the School of Physics work on particle physics, we should have a public lecture at the University on the discovery as soon as term begins later this month to learn more of what images on the left mean. Really. Meanwhile, my son sent me this link (one of many such, I am sure) that is accessible to a wider audience, from the PhD Comics site, The Higgs Boson explained. And recognising the general interest, there was even an episode of The Big Fight on “Will Science be able to define God?” on NDTV…

But speaking of comics, there is a raging discussion on the font used by CERN in their power-point presentation. Strong opinions are being voiced on what font to use, or more to the point, to not use… Comic sans MS being deemed stylistically inappropriate for such gravitas. Even if much of this discussion is on Twitter… Anyhow, I am also certain that there is some space for levity here, in spite of the gravity of it all, so let me take this opportunity to announce a clerihew competition on this theme. Send your entries by email, or comment on this post. To start things off, here is mine:

Said Peter Higgs

While munching figs,

I think it odd

To call my particle God.

Professor Bambah (the title of this post is a nod to her joint position in the Centre for Womens Studes at UoH) will judge the competition and decide the winner, unless she sends an entry in too…

IMBY


The Urban Dictionary will tell you that NIMBY is an acronym for Not In My BackYard, to describe the attitude of those who will want to benefit from the advantages of a particular action, but who find that the disadvantages are suddenly unacceptable. The usual situation where nimbyism is typically decried is in an urban setting- opposing a road or a shopping mall coming up too close to ones home, for instance. Of course things are not always a clear case of either/or, so there can be both good and bad connotations to being nimbyistic.

By extension, IMBY describes the opposite attitude. Which would, of course, be acceptable in many situations, especially when there is a clear idea of the greater public good. Regrettably though, and this is the subject of the present post, when it comes to the matter of waste disposal on our campus, imbyism is simply unacceptable. The photographs here are of various sites in and around the central part, behind the Science complex, and near the School of Humanities. More could have been taken, and some of them would illustrate that even less desirable stance: IMNBY or In My Neighbour’s BackYard!

Many of you will have noticed that there is a concerted effort being undertaken to “clean-up” the campus. The quotes are there to underscore the fact that it is not an effort to prettify  the campus in some very artificial way- as superficially attractive as a manicured campus might be, it is not the way our UoH campus is. However, with the dense undergrowth that has been uncared for for many years, the foliage has covered a multitude of sins, mostly that of the way in which we dispose of our waste. Everywhere one can see discarded bottles- both plastic and glass, styrofoam packaging, all manner of trash and garbage. A catalogue of what we throw away would reveal a little too much of ourselves… and I will not go into that. But it can all be seen and sometimes the close proximity of a garbage can makes it all the more tragic.

One spot that worried me a great deal is the pool that has formed behind Gopes, one that is dangerously close to a water source. Waste management on the campus is a joint responsibility – if the system is to work in any manner at all, it needs constant supervision. Drains need to be kept flowing, so trash needs to be segregated and disposed of properly… while making sure that blockages are removed periodically. There is no other solution- we need to work together on this, and on a continual basis.

In the end, it is our campus. Emphasis on our. And keeping it clean and safe is something that all of us should want. So while it is nice to have slogans- Clean Campus, Green Campus or Mana Campus, Mana Hridayam and all that- its essential to go beyond them and see that public spaces on the campus stay unpolluted. That would be the best way we can make the campus habitable for all its denizens, the flora and the fauna, in addition to us…