Wondering about Whales

 

Recent research shows that communication in the oceanic world of whales is lot more complex and nuanced than we assumed it to be. Just as tonal languages like Mandarin use Tonal languages use variations in pitch — not just consonants and vowels — to distinguish the meaning of a word, whales have their own tonal dialects.

Using new AI-ML tools, scientists at CETI have been trying to decipher the phonetic alphabets of whalese language :) - 156 distinct codas were discovered. They have now come to the conclusion that these codas are far more complex than we imagined. Within specific groups and families whales communicate with a level of nuance that is close to human languages! 

Just like in Mandarin-Chinese, meaning of the word "ma" changes according to the tone to mean 'mother', 'hemp', 'horse' or a scolding, whales too can use the same sound in different tones. This new tidbit lingered in my mind, and reminded me Ed Young's wonderful book "An Immense World". In this book, Yong describes some amazing aspects of whale migration:

• Whales have some of the most insane migrations of any animal on the planet. Some of them go from the equator to the poles, and with astonishing precision, traveling to the exact same area, year after year..
• Biophysicist, Jesse Granger, collected 33 years' worth of records of healthy, uninjured gray whales inexplicably stranding themselves, and compared these incidents with data on solar activity...a striking pattern emerged: whales got stranded the most on days with the most intense solar storms

Penetrating Perception

• In Hawaii, false killer whales often pick tuna oof fishing lines because they know where  the hook is inside that fish!
• 'Internal antlers' - Beaked whales are odontocetes that look dolphin-esque on the outside - but on the inside, their skulls bear a strange assortment of crests, ridges and bumps, many of which are found only in whales....these might be the equivalent of deer antlers - showy ornaments that are used to attract mates

Infrasonic Rumbles

• Whales evolved from small, hoofed, deer like animals that took to the water around 50 million years ago. As they adapted, one group of filter-feeding MYSTICETES, which includes blues, fin, and humpback - shifted their hearing to low infrasonic frequencies.
• Underwater, sound waves take just under a minute to cover 50 miles. If a whale hears the song of another whale from a distance of 1500 miles, it is really listening back in time by about half an hour, like an astronomer gazing upon the ancient light of a distant star..
• A 20Hz note has a wavelength of 75 meters, which means the distance between two peaks of pressure is two to three times as long as the longest blue or fin whale. 20Hz is an octave below the lowest key on a standard piano
• Fin whale calls (20Hz) can travel 13,000 miles - no ocean is that wide! - you could listen to whales singing in Ireland with a microphone off Bermuda!

Boom Boxes

• The sperm whale does something even stranger. Its titanic barrel of a nose can make up a third of its 52-foot body, and the phonic lips lie at the very front. When they viberate, most of their sound goes backwards through the whale's head. It passes through a fat-filled organ called the SPERMACETI (once prized by whalers), bounces off an airsac at the back of the head, and then moves forward through another fatty organ called the JUNK (deemed worthless by whalers). The sound emerges from this absurd detour is the loudest in the animal world. At 236 decibels, it's basically an explosion - it is around 44 times the loudness of a thunderclap!
• Adjusting for the difference in fluid density, a 236 dB underwater sound translates to approximately 170 dB in the air.
• For comparison, a standard rocket launch registers at about 140-160 dB, and sustained exposure to 150 dB is widely considered the threshold of ruptured eardrums and severe physical trauma for humans.

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 References & Links

The discovery of the sperm whale phonetic alphabet (Anton Petrov) @whatdamath

Natural History Museum - why are sperm whales so loud ? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=hThIOKlZ_3I 

Photography as Darshan

Raghu Rai, a famous Indian photographer, passed away this week (26/04/2026).

Having grown up seeing his amazing photographs in newspapers and magazines it felt a bit strange to see those same images turning up on the small but all pervasive screens of the new social media. Over the past few days, while we collectively mourn his passing, friends have posted PDF copies of his book "Picturing Time" (2015) on Whatsapp; YouTube algorithms brought up some of his earlier interviews where, with his usual charm and wit, describes his own world view, the difference between "drishti", the act of seeing, and "darshan" which is much more difficult to describe: 

Kehte hain ke kann kann mein bhagvan hai. They say that God exists in every grain. This is not to say that you lift a stone and you will find God. The ability to connect. With anything and everything. Significant or mundane. Precious or ordinary. When you start caring for everything, everything around you starts caring for you in some way or the other, so you stand connected. You connect with every inch of space and respond. It’s having a complete awareness of things, and by that I mean not only the physical but also the emotional and spiritual aspect. Even a breeze blowing — what does it do to you and the entire space around you? This is what is so magical about human life and the human spirit — that some people appear from somewhere, some situations arise from somewhere to bless you with the unexpected — and that is darshan. This is the way I look at it.

It is quite amazing to think how Raghu Rai managed to turn up with his camera - almost Forrest Gump like - at almost every historical event over the past 60 years. He was there at Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri's funeral (1966); the ascent, descent and assasination of Indira Gandhi; Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama; The Bangladesh Liberation War (1971); Pokhran N-tests (1974); Operation Bluestar and Bhopal Gas Tragedy (1984), Kargil War (1999), not to mention his photo chronicles of some of India's greatest artists - Statyajit Ray, Bismillah Khan, Hariprasad Chaurasia, MS Subbalakshmi, S Balachander.

In the last set, these are my favourites :)

Uppal in the 70s

 

Last week on X, I came across a site that took me down the memory lane.

The link to Felt Map Archive site came from @tejamalladi and the site had a collection of declassified satellite pics of Hyderabad starting from the 1960s. Almost immediately, I found myself searching for Uppal, the place where I spent my wonder years, and seeing with varying degrees of awe, amazement and nostalgia, the landscape of my childhood. 

We were in Hyderabad from 1970-1980. Our family stayed briefly at Tilak Nagar and Seetaphalmandi before moving to the Survey Colony at Uppal. It was a small corner of Hyderabad but seen from a child's eyes it was filled with boundless spaces, a place where children could explore and discover new things everyday, where the seasons were marked by passing obsessions - flying kites, cricket, football, gilli-danda, kancha (marbles), comics, rock-climbing, over and above the anticipation and preparations leading up to annual fete's, exhibitions, and the grand festivals of Holi, Diwali and Makar Sankranti.

The earliest map on this site dates back to 1967, and it is interesting to see how this part of the city evolved over the past 60 years:

1967: A stark, barren area marked by two distinct features - a distinct triangular area marked for the Survey of India (SoI) campus, and the dark, worm-like Musi river winding to the south. Maybe this was the time when the government had acquired agricultural land for the Industrial Development Area and residential colonies.

1974: In less than 10 years a lot of developments can be seen - the SoI campus now has its distinct buildings (STI, PMP). The buildings that temporarily housed Kendriya Vidyalaya Uppal (KVU) and the vast grounds have appeared. You can even spot the ber trees and the kutcha road that led to the SoI back-gate, and the huge tamarind tree near the junction. The Survey Colony has also come up - once again vast, barren open spaces crisscrossed by footpaths. This was the time when we used to sleep on the terrace in the summers, and SoI staff were handed out long bamboo sticks to guard against dacoits. The dusty footpaths also took us for our shopping and haircut visits to Uppal village. So many memories pop out from this map - the smell of fresh cowdung and dust, the taste of 'Gandhi' coin mints (5-10p each) from the tiny shops at the junction, the taste of soda from a classmates home bottling unit at Beerappagadda, the collection of prosopis thorns under Hawaii chappals; girgits (chameleons), itchy caterpillars and the stinging bite of black ants; early morning calls from friends in the summers that led to day long tramping around all over the place...

1979: This is how the place looked just before we moved to Trivandrum. A new KVUppal school building came up closer to the SoI Colony. For whatever reason all the children were asked to carry one chair each and walk in a line from the old school to the new one (the benches came by truck). There was a major tree-planting drive with pits dug all over the colony, new fences and boundary walls came up. Within these new boundaries we learnt to ride bicycles in the Kainchi (scissors) method because shorter children's bicycles were were unheard of. Outside the new fences were assorted factories making everything from Waterbury's Compound and medicines to biscuits, so we always knew which way the wind was blowing! A shop came up next to the dispensary, and a permanent Ayappa-temple platform now came up across the road in the open grounds behind Type-III quarters. Our universe expanded to regular trips to Habshiguda and Tarnaka to visit friends, and to NGRI campus for weekend movies at their open-theatre (Paakeezah, Aradhana, Mera Naam Joker,  Junglee!)

As I look at the map and distant memories come trickling in, I wonder who came up with the brilliant idea of marking a huge triangle (equilateral, each side 0.5km), as the campus of the Survey of India. For the second oldest government organisation in India (after the army), what a wonderful, permanent tribute to the Great Trigonometric Survey of India'!

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REFERENCES and LINKS

ESRI Imagery - https://www.esri.com/en-us/home

Running, Pain and Latin

Distance running is a fun way to learn Anatomy, and Latin :)

A part of the fun is of course taken away by the fact that these lessons come packaged in pain. A few years ago, after what seemed like a regular run, my right heel started hurting. I thought I had stepped on a sharp stone, or that I had twisted my heel. After many unsuccessful sessions of massages, rubbing in balms and oils (esp. Murivenna), I looked up the symptoms on the web and discovered "Plantar Fasciitis". It has nothing to do with plantations of fascists. This is simply latin for inflamed feet - plantar (sole of the foot) and fascia (band/sheath of tissue) with -itis (inflammation). For some reason this painful condition is also called "policeman's heel".

Another term you hear among the latinised running communities is "IT Band Injury". Anybody can get this injury - not just software engineers or musicians - because IT here stands for Ilio-Tibial. And the band here refers to a tendon that stretches along the length of the longest bones in your body - the tibia. An injury of this connective tissue gives you IT Band Syndrome (ITBS) - an aching or sharp pain on the outside of your knee or hip. Once again massages are not of much help and what worked in my case was simple, consistent exercises - toe-curls, rolls, stretches.

Last Sunday, 22 Feb., 2026, we had the New Delhi Marathon (NDM). This year's event was sponsored by Cognizant and attracted over 30,000 participants in four events: Full Marathon (42 km), Half Marathon (21 km), 10km and 5km races. I participated in my usual Half Marathon. It was a well organised event with plenty of water-stations, good signages, clean toilets, decent food (hot chole-kulche!), band-baaja, and nicely spaced out dispersals (no clash with the 5km folks walking abreast). I even managed to meet an old college friend from Trivandrum after 36 years, and in getting back to the sub-2-hour timing (1:58:22)!

A day after the run I am now back to my Latin vocabulary. The new words are - Quadriceps and Iliopsoas - the two sets of muscles that seem to have developed Delayed Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS). It is peculiar pain that makes the simple act of descending staircases particularly painful.

Quadriceps femoris is Latin for 'four-headed muscle of the femur'.  The four heads are - Rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius and vastus medialis. Vastus is a Latin word meaning "vast," "immense," "huge," "enormous," or "monstrous", while rectus simply means "straight", "upright", or "direct". Straight and huge - the quadriceps are the largest muscle sets in the human body.

Is there a way to avoid this pain? If past experience is anything to go by, it is unprepared muscles that develop DOMS after a distance run. So would isolation exercise like leg extensions help? Let's see...

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REFERENCES & LINKS

• https://www.samsonphysicaltherapy.com/blog/why-the-front-of-your-thighs-hurt-after-running
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iliopsoas
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadricep
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantar_fasciitishttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantar_fasciitis
• https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21967-iliotibial-band-syndrome
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thonakal_Gopi
• https://www.uniindia.com/news/sports/sports-delhi-marathon-leads-spd18/3750206.html
• Timing - https://mysamay.in/event/info/4fbe9261-c999-4868-9a1e-acd64b0b79f8

 

 

How Did They Know?

 

Each civilisation had a different way of looking at the stars. They found different patterns and linked them to a wide range of traditions, legends and stories. 

What is amazing is not the patterns but the level of detail they were able to observe in the night sky. A few years ago the jolly, ebullient Khurshed Batliwala gave a talk listing out a few things ancient Indian scientists observed and recorded - 

The Great Bear and Arundhati-Vashishta

The core pattern of this constellation is hard to miss. It looks like a giant kite with a long tail. The Greeks called it Ursa Major, the Great Bear, and saw a far more elaborate pattern - the quadrangle of the kite became the torso of the bear, the tail became its neck and head while the surrounding stars took the shape of a fat tail and spindly legs. 

Ancient Indians, on the other hand, focused on the core form and called it the "Sapta Rishi" - the seven sages - Bhrigu, Vashista, Angiras, Atri, Pulastya, Pulaha and Kratu. Of these Vashista is of special interest because the ancients noticed that this bright spot in the sky was not one but two different stars in close proximity - a double-star. They named the second star after the sage's wife, Arundhati. Each of these stars correspond to the following Arab-Greek equivalents:

• Bhrigu - Benetnash
• Vashista ("most excellent) - Mizar ("girdle")
• Angiras - Alioth 
• Atri - Megrez
• Pulastya - Phecda
• Pulaha - Phecda
• Kratu - Dubhe 

Brightness of celestial objects is measured in Apparent Magnitude. This is on a reverse logarithmic scale, which means that the brighter an object is, the lower its magnitude number. In the Great Bear constellation, the brightest star is Alioth (mag 1.76 - 33rd brightest in the sky), followed by Dubhe (m 1.79), Alkaid, Mizar / Vashishta (m 2.23), Merak, Phecda, and Megrez. 

Note that Mizar / Vashishta is not the brightest, yet it is a well-known naked eye double star with the fainter star Alcor (Vashistha's wife, Arundhati - 'washed by the rays of sun'). This is the double-star, as Batliwala points out, that newlyweds in South India view formally because they rotate in perfect synchrony, and symbolise a balanced, harmonious, and lifelong marriage of mutual respect. References to this symbolic traditions are found in early Vedic literature, including the Rig Veda and especially the Brahmanas (like Taittiriya Brahmana). Out of the thousands of stars in the night sky how did the ancients decide to select this double star?

Batliwala goes on to describe other instances in ancient records and traditions that make us wonder about their perceptiveness:

• The depiction of Varaha avatara in iconography carrying a round earth, long before the Egyptians of Greeks discovered that the earth was round;
• Antares ("like-Mars"), the 16th brightest star in the sky was named "Jeshta" (biggest, eldest, oldest). How did they figure that this star is 40,000 bigger than the sun, ad one of the biggest stars known to man?
• Rust-proof pillars - the one displayed in Delhi and another the Kollur pillar, said to have been built by tribals to welcome Adi Shankaracharya (8th century CE)
• Metallurgy - Zinc extraction from ore was known for 4000 years . A difficult metal to extract because it liquifies at 997C and turns into gas at 1000C. So it had to be extracted within a 3 degree window. The ancients metallurgists did this by turning the furnace up-side down. This technology was copied by the Chinese and in turn, patented by William Champion (1709-89) in Britain
• The value of Pi up to 30 decimals encoded in a Krishna sloka in the KatapayaSankhya format where numbers associated with alphabets: (eg., 1 = ka, ta, pa, ya)

Recently a few more examples turned up in a post titled, "How Much did the Ancients Know ? It’s fascinating". It records the work of one Dharampal (1922–2006), an Indian Gandhian thinker and independent historian who became known for re-examining India’s pre-colonial society using British archival records. 

Dharmpal notes that Hindu astronomers, many years BCE, represented the planets in ways that encoded precise astronomical knowledge. Jupiter was depicted with four dancing girls circling around it. Saturn was represented as a figure with seven arms, one of which grasped a ring. 

• The Dancing Girls of Jupiter: Four moons of Jupiter were not known in Europe before 1609, when Galileo first observed them through his telescope. Even then, only the third and fourth satellites were occasionally visible to the naked eye, and only in the clearest atmospheric conditions. The fact that Hindu astronomical tradition represented Jupiter with exactly four attendant figures suggested a knowledge of these satellites that predated European discovery.
• The Seven Arms of Saturn: Until 1783, European astronomy recognised only five satellites of Saturn. The sixth satellite was not discovered until 28 August 1789, when William Herschel identified it. The seventh satellite was observed by Herschel only after he had completed his grand telescope of forty feet focal length, and was first seen on 17 September 1789.

There is no mention of lenses or telescopes in the scriptures and records, so how did ancient Indians see and record details of celestial bodies with such amazing accuracy? 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

Katapayadi Sutra - https://www.eviolinguru.com/kadapayadi-sutra.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_magnitude

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcor_(star)

How much did the ancients know? - https://substack.com/home/post/p-188261182 

Kyauktada Katha

George Orwell's book, "Burmese Days" is centred on a fictional town called Kyauktada 'in Upper Burma'. It is the story of an English timber merchant named John Flory set in the 1920s. Kyauktada is actually a district in Yangon so it seems Orwell drew his inspiration for this story from his stay at a small town called Katha ('story' in many Indian languages), on the banks of the Irrawaddy.

The book brings to life the life and times of the British colonial enterprise in the 1920s, seen through the eyes of a merchant named John Flory. He lives in a small, insular community of Britishers who are already nostalgic about the violence used to bring the natives to heel. In the words of the local administrator, "In my young days, when a butler was disrespectful, one sent him along to the jail with a chit saying 'Please give the bearer fifteen lashes'. Ah well, Eheu fugaces!"

Flory is a misfit at the  British-only club, an oddball in the sense that he is not as disdainful of the locals. An Indian doctor, Veeraswami  - 'very slimly' according to his compatriots - is a good friend with whom him enjoys long conversations. It is in these conversations that Orwell frames his views on  the Empire. Here the roles are reversed, it is Veeraswami is a a loyal subject of the empire, an admirer of all things British, while Flory is the skeptic who thinks he is living a lie -

"But my friend, what lie are you living?' 

"Why, of course, the lie that we're here to uplift or poor black brothers instead of to rob them.. Look at our schools - factories for cheap clerks. We've never taught a single useful manual trade to the Indians..."

This anti-Empire line of thought is expanded through the Veeraswami-Flory conversations:

"What was at the centre of his thoughts now, and what poisoned everything, was the ever bitterer hatred of the atmosphere of imperialism in which he lived. For his brain to develop - you cannot stop your brain developing, and it is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are absolutely committed to the wrong way of life - he has grasped the truth about the English and the Empire. The Empire is a despotism - benevolent no doubt, but still a despotism with theft as its final object..."

"The real backbone of the despotism is not the officials but the army. Given the Army, the officials and business men can rub along safely enough even if they are fools. And most of them are fools. A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets."

"With Indians there must be no loyalty, no real friendship. Affection, even love - yes, English men do often love Indians - native officers, forest rangers, hinters, clerks, servants. Sepoys will weep like children when their colonel retires. Even intimacy is allowable, at the right moments. but alliance, partisanship, never! Even to know the rights and wrongs of a 'native' quarrel is a loss of prestige."

No wonder Orwell was wary of a backlash if the book were to be published first in Britain. He wisely decided to publish this book in USA instead.

I loved the flowing prose in "Burmese Days", and the way he brings out his characters - especially the Burmese ones. One particularly obnoxious one is Ko Po Kyin, "the crocodile" and his wife, Ma Kin Kin...dressed in a guangbaung of pale pink silk, an ingyi of starched muslin and, and a paso of Mandalay silk. Another interesting character is is Ma Hla May, Flory's mistress who aspired to be a bo-kadaw - a white man's wife - but is discarded as soon as Elizabeth, a young lady turns up at Kyauktada. The crocodile uses her to undermine Flory and destroy his rival, Veeraswami. 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned', especially if she turn up at the most unexpected places screaming Pike-san pay-like! Pike-san pay-like ('Give me the money') !

This is only my second Orwell book after Animal Farm many years ago. It is William Dalrymple's podcast on that led me to Burmese Days, so if you don't have the time read books do listen to this particular series on the remarkable life and times of George Orwell.

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LINKS and FURTHER READING

* Orwell and Dalrymple on English Class (2022) - https://quillette.com/2022/05/02/orwell-dalrymple-on-english-class/

* Empire Podcast - Episode 302 - https://youtu.be/s_vrCr3XW8o?si=92s71EOZ5hjpqvh6

Bhopal-Sanchi: 20 Years Later

 

The last time I visited Bhopal was during my JICA days, in the early 2000s. My projects were far fron the city, in Sagar, Damoh and Tikamgarh districts. This meant my usual hotel  - Jehan Numa Palace - was only a stopover for rest and recuperation from the long road journeys. 

During those days I remember visiting the usual touristy places in the city - the newly built Bharat Bhavan, the lovely Van Vihar zoo along the banks of the Upper Lake, and, of course, a drive across the Tropic of Cancer to Sanchi and Vidisha, on my way to the northern districts. It was a nice but sleepy city - not a place one would like to visit often.

This time, two decades later - I saw a city that had been transformed.  More lakes, better infrastructure, and a more happening place. The area around the lakes have been beautifully developed with gardens, boating-clubs, lovely roads snaking along the banks. The old city is of course crowded and dirty as it used to be, but the rest of the city looks cleaner and nicer with its new roads, gardens, flyovers, malls, a new airport, and many lovely museums!

Reaching there was a breeze. Thanks to the uncertainties of air-travel in winters (and the recent Indigo cancellation-fiasco), we took an overnight train  (Dakshin Express) from Nizamuddin to Bhopal. The highlight of this trip was the seemingly miraculous recovery of an iPad which we had forgotten under one of the pillows. We realised the loss about an hour later after we had tucked in lots of poha-jalebi and chana-batura from the famous Manohar Dairy & Restaurant. Through the cries of despair and loss (the tab had four years of BTech notes), we connected with the Indian Railway helpline (139) and the new RailSewa app.

Amazingly there was a follow-up call from the Railway Police within a few minutes and the iPad was found and handed over to officers at the next station, Itarsi, which was about a 100km from Bhopal. By evening the tab and its teary, grateful owner were happily united! :)

Now that a potential kill-joy had been averted, we were able to immerse ourselves in the sights, sounds and wonders of Bhopal and the ancient lands along the Betwa river.

Museums

The new Tribal Museum is no doubt the best thematic museum  have seen in India. The main building itself is beautifully designed around a central amphitheatre, with every wall, hallway, nook and corner lovingly decorated with various  tribal art forms. One of these hallways leads you to a cluster of "tribal houses" that tell you how each of the major tribes in MP designed their living spaces using mostly mud but also in locally available sandstones. As our luck would have it we were visiting on a Sunday when the whole building was live with rhythms and songs of different tribal groups performing in the central amphitheatre.

On weekends the museum canteen (again the prettiest i have seen) serves thali's from each region. I treated myself to a wholesome missi-roti thali which came with a jackfruit (katthal) curry, a kadi, saag and pickles followed by a plate of mahua-jalebis - Delicious!

Sanchi Stupa

Sanchi is on the banks of the Betwa river. As you go downstream and north-eastwards, it meets the Halali river at Vidisha. On the narrow strip of land between these two rivers is the white sandstone hillock of Udaigiri.

Further north-east the Betwa marks the border between Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, and feeds two large reservoirs created by two dams - the Rajghat Dam Reservoir, and the Matiala Dam. From here the river broadens out and flows past the historic cities of Orchha (near Jhansi) for about 300km before it joins the Yamuna river at Merapur Dariya (UP)

Two decades ago, Sanchi was a lonely hill next to a small village with the railway line running in the the distance. There were hardly any hotels to stay and the famous stupa hd just a few disinterested staff at the ticket-counter. There were hardly any signboards and you could walk around wherever you wanted. I remember sitting next to the beautifully carved pillars of Stupa-2 (200m downhill from the main stupa) and watching the trains snake around the hills on the plains below.

Now the whole place was super-crowded. Busloads of schoolchildren, tourists from all over India, and a few foreigners. What a contrast from my visit about two decades ago when this holy site had only a few Indian tourists, some pilgrims from Southeast Asia and lots of visitors from Europe and USA. 

UDAIGIRI CAVE TEMPLES

This first thing I noticed here was a beautifyl white-trunked tree clings to the steep rockface over the main entrance to Udaigiri caves. The guards told me that this was the Kulu Vruksh (Sterculia urens). It is also called Bhutya - the Ghost Tree - because that is exactly what it looks like on moonlit nights!

Udaigiri is home to one of the oldest surviving Hindu temples with the earliest known sculptures of Ganesha and Mahishasura-Mardini. For all its fame this site seemed poorly designed and maintained. You approach Udaigiri from the south on a narrow road separating the hills from the village. The parking lot and ticketing office is at the far end, and from here you need to walk back along the same road (this time inside the fence) on an uneven footpath to see the cave temples and sculptures. 

The most beautiful Varaha-Bhudevi sculpture is on a cave wall that is just about two meters from the boundary wall. On top of this space constraint you have a thick wooden barricade that prevents you from taking in the full view of the magnificent panel. As if this were not bad enough ASI has also blocked the view to the oldest Anantashayana sculpture with a wall of plastic venyl that is so dirty that you can barely see the sculpture behind it.

BHIMBETKA

This place is surreal. On the walls of caves carved by the elements millions of years ago you have an entire complex of rock niches and shelters that served as home to people who lived 12,000 years onwards!

BHOJRAJ TEMPLE

A massive, incomplete temple that stands next to what was once the largest lake in central India. What a sight it must have been in those days! 

The present temple is the result of a great renovation effort by the ASI. It seems when the temple was originally found, the roof had collapsed and split the massive Shivalinga. The roof was subsequently reconstructed albeit partially.

Why did Hoshang Shah destroy the Bhojpur dam in the 1400s?

REFERENCES -------------

. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoshang_Shah

. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabandha-Chintamani -- Sanskrit-language collection of prabandhas (semi-historical biographical narratives). It was compiled in c. 1304 CE, in the Vaghela kingdom of present-day Gujarat, by Jain scholar Merutunga

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhojpur,_Madhya_Pradesh

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihira_Bhoja - Mihira Bhoja's epithet was Srimad-Adivaraha (the fortunate primeval boar incarnation of Vishnu) -- adivaraha dramma billon coins

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teli_ka_Mandir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterculia_urens

Fachu Kandi Pass - Notes from a Crossover Trek

This is a note to myself. As the years go by, and as details of our numerous treks in the Himalayas start to get mixed up, I find it necessary to write down at least some highlights and details of each trip. These notes may also be useful for those who discover that much of what see online, especially on website put up by travel companies, are either incomplete or simply inaccurate.

This year our plan was to go for the Bali Pass trek, a high-altitude rote that connect the Har-ki-Dhun valley to Yamunotri. The weather gods however willed otherwise. This year the monsoon season had extended from July and August into September. Three months of heavier-than-usual rains and cloudbursts in this region had washed away some bridges. The forest department had refused to give permission for this route so our guides decided to take up the next best option - to take a diversion from the earlier planned route to cross over to the Yamunotri valley via the Fachu-Kandi pass. 

Crossover treks are fascinating. They could be a metaphor for life itself - especially when you are travelling with a group of friends in their 50s. The lush green forests of youth stretch out behind you, and what lies ahead seems barren, desolate and depressing unless, of course, you are in good company :) 

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Itinerary

• Day 1 - 13/09/2025 (Saturday) - Tempo ride from Dehradun to Sankri -- Juddo waterfall -- Lakhwar bend-fork diversion -- Lakhamandal helipad -- Bernagad -- Kunwa
• Day 2 - 14/09/2025 (Sunday)- Sankri to Kedar Kantha Base-camp
• Day 3 - 15/09/2025 (Monday)- Across- Phulari Ridge -- Bhoj-Garhi Camp (3405 m / 11,170 feet)
• Day 4 - 16/09/2025 (Tuesday) - Bhoj-Garhi -- Pushtara Bughyal
• Day 5 - 17/09/2025 (Wednesday) - Kota-Damin Byepass -- cross tree-line -- Aruka camp (3829m)
•  Day 6 - 18/09/2025 (Thursday)- Past SaruTal -- KandaTal -- cross Fachu Kandi Pass (4356 M / 14,291 feet) -- Kurshil, Dubril Villages to Hanuman Chatti GNMN Lodge -- Evening aarti at hilltop temple
• Day 7 - 19/09/2025 (Friday) - Drive to Janki Chatti -- trek to Yamunotri Dham and back -- drive to Naogaon Shivalik Camp-Lodge
• Day 8 - 20/09/2025 (Saturday)- Drive to Dehradun -- train back to Delhi

Davai, Pustai, Rabota, Skoreye!

 

If there is one word you would catch from the numerous clips from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, it is "Dawai!" Even though it sounds like Hindi for medicine, it simply means "Move!" in Russian. In the videos the soldiers and civilians are urging people to try and get away from the gruesome, drone-dominated warfare that had hits soldiers and civilians in both countries.

This word turned up time and again in a book I just finished reading - "A Woman in Berlin". Written by a then anonymous young lady in Germany, it records the last days of the Third Reich. A time when the tide of war had turned. Hitlers armies that had spread out all over Europe and North Africa have all stalled. In Eastern Europe, a full retreat is in progress with the Russians rolling back the invaders, taking back their lands from the ruins of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), across the vast steppes, all the way to the nerve centre of Germany's war effort - Berlin.

It was a difficult time for the civilians in the city - especially for its women. For years they have been hearing the exploits of their own soldiers returning from the conquered lands. Stories of cities and towns bombed into submission, of women raped and children orphaned. Rumours of concentrations camps into which millions of jews, gypsies and PoWs disappeared. Now, in Berlin, the shoe is on the other foot. Russians are all over the city, and they are settling scores.

This book gives us a glimpse of the horrors faced by women in war-zones. The author  - now we know her as Marta Hillers - who was an educated, well travelled young lady whose boyfriend was away on some battlefront. She had been staying alone in a bombed out neighbourhood, scouring around for food and water.

The constant forecasts of death by starvation, of complete physical annihilation by the enemy were so pervasive that we're stunned by every piece of bread, every indication that we will still be provided for. In that respect Goebbels did a great advance job for the conquerers: any crust of bread from their hands seems like a present to us.

Homo homini lupus (Man is a wolf to man)...It's true everywhere and always, these days even among blood relatives...Hunger brings the wolf out in us. 

It's a blessing to be able to pray easily and unabatedly; amid the oppression and torture, in all our despair and fear...

In a city teeming with Soviet soldiers, single woman are easy prey, and they often spell trouble for the neighbours as well.

The most bitter thing in the life of a single woman is that every time she enters some kind of family life, after a while she ends up causing trouble: she's one too many; someone doesn't like her because someone else does, and in the end they kick her out to preserve the precious peace.

Marta gets raped time and again until she figures that be best way to deal with the situation is to get 'protection' from senior officers. These connections not only help her fend off other soldiers but also improve her access to food, books, and work opportunities, first as a translator, and then at a laundry.

The high-level connections also give her the confidence (Nicht haben Angst - Not to be afraid)  to deal with petty thievery, and the mindspace to dwell on larger issues ;) 

It turns out that Russian men, too, are 'only men' - i.e. presumably they're as susceptible as other men to feminine wiles, so it's possible to keep them in check, to distract them, to shake them off...

Recovering a stolen radio by pretending to be well connected as a translator - "However it appears that most of life's mechanisms rely on little tricks like that - marriages, companies, nation-states, armies.

It is at the laundry that we hear the now familiar words - 

'Davai, pustai, rabota, skoreye!' = 'Move, get on with it, work, faster!'...On the way back I was swinging my bucket gaily, in the spirit of 'what doesn't kill me makes me stronger'!.

 Over period 20 April and 22 June 1945, martial law comes into effect. Some semblance of order is restored bringing with it rations, water and electricity supply. 

The memoir ends rather abruptly. The book did not find any takers in Germany and was first published in USA in the mid 1950s. It is only in 2003 that a new generation emerged to look back at the war with a fresh perspective.

This makes you wonder about the condition of women and children in today's war-zones - Sudan, Gaza, Syria, Myanmar, DR Congo, Ukraine and Russia - and the decades it will take for the wounds to heal..

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The Body

 

I have been a fan of Bill Bryson for many years now. Starting with "A Short History of Nearly Everything"(2003), I have tried to keep up with his numerous books on popular science that blend hard facts with a wry sense of humour.

"The Body: A Guide for Occupants" is perhaps one of his fattest books. In over 500 pages (excluding the refs and index) it covers not only many parts of the human body but also what happens when things go wrong due to diseases or cancer. 

What fascinated me the most is the number of times he begins a sentence with the phrase "we still don't know", or "It is still a mystery why...".

Take for instance his description of a patient name Frau Deter who approached a psychiatrist complaining of persistent and worsening forgetfulness. She could feel her personality draining away, like sand from an hourglass. The psychiatrist, Alois Alzheimer (1864-1915) now has the disease named after him. Researchers have since figureed out that the Alzheimer's begins with an accumulation of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid in the sufferer's brain. What do these protein fragments do in the normal course? we don't know. Patients also accumulate tangled fibrils of tau proteins about which, once again, we know hardly anything. What we do know is that as these proteins build up in the brain - 

Alzheimer's first demolishes short-term memories, then moves on to all or most other memories, leading to confusion, shortness of temper, loss of inhibition and loss of bodily functions, including how to breathe and swallow...People with the disease die twice - first in the mind, then in the body.

Nobody know why some people get Alzheimer's and others don't. It accounts for 60-70% of all dementia cases, and is thought to affect about 50 million people around the world. Little is known about the remaining 30-40% of dementia cases. We have given some of them unique names and recognise them from typical symptoms but the only thing we know is that is is caused by the "disturbance of neural proteins"! One of them is Lewy Body Dementia which is particularly distressing to loved ones because victims frequently lose inhibitions and the ability to control impulses, so they tend to do embarrassing things - shed clothes in public, steal from supermarkets, etc.,  

BB also has something to say about the limits of "modern medicine". Alzheimer's drugs have a 99.6% failure rate (!), one of the highest in the whole field of pharmacology. At the same time, most  of the money available for research is skewed towards ailments of the rich. There is a whole category of 'neglected tropical diseases' that affect more than a billion people worldwide. One of them, Lymphatic filariasis, affects more than 120 million people. Ditto for leishmaniasis, trachoma and yaws.

Perhaps it takes a kind of mad obsession to tackle diseases of this magnitude, and we owe much of what we know to those who paid with their lives. A German parasitologist, Theodor Bilharz (1825-62) wanted to have a better understanding of a tropical disease called schistosomiasis (akal Bilharzia or Snail Fever), so he bandaged the pupae of cercaria worms to his stomach and took careful notes as they burrowed through this skin en route to invading his liver. He survived this experiment but died at 37 (!) while trying to stop a typhus epidemic in Egypt.

So, as Max Ehrmann says in his Desiderata, "with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world!". For the human body, it is still an extraordinary fact that having good and loving relationships alters your DNA...and conversely, not having such relationships doubles your risk of dying from any cause!

Rainbow Trouts in Bhutan

 

I guess it does not take much of marketing to sell a fish that evokes images of kisses, mountain streams and rainbows. 

The rainbow trout, aka Oncorhynchus mykiss, loves cold, clean, fast-flowing mountain streams. Native to the Americas it has, over the centuries, become a valuable table-fish - thanks to its great taste (it belongs to the salmon family), the fact that it can be reared with relative ease in fish-farms, and because it fetches a good price in the markets. In India it sells for over INR 1200/kg and counts among the 'high-value' fishes sold across the country. Globally, the top three exporters of Trout are Turkey, Chile, and Vietnam. In 2023, the rainbow trout market was valued at US$ 4.2 billion 

Inspired perhaps by the success of Vietnam, many asian countries have been trying their hand at rearing and exporting this fish. Bhutan is one of them. With its pristine Himalayan mountain streams it ought to have a natural advantage in this business but the record so far has been limited. What could be the reasons for this? 

Efforts started way back in 2008, National Research Center for Riverine and Lake Fishes (NRCRLF), at Haa. Personnel trained at trout farms in Kokernag, Kashmir, replicated a raceway at Haa, and this has been been the centre for trout farming efforts in Bhutan for nearly two decades. The Trout Breeding Centre at NRCRLF has been producing and distributing hundreds of thousands of fingerlings to affiliated farms which in turn produce around 35 tonnes of fish every year. Yet, even at the most fancy restaurants in Thimphu, you are unlikely to find rainbow trout on the menu. Why is this the case? Where does all the fish production go?

One logical answer to this could be that all the rainbow trout produced in Bhutan goes across the border to the Indian market. It takes about five hours to cross 167km of mountain roads to reach Phuensoling, the border town. Even across this border, competition is likely to be stiff from Indian trout farms. 

In Sikkim alone, for instance, there are 760 rainbow trout raceways with an annual production of 340 tonnes in 2022–23, up from 95 tonnes in 2014–15. The state also operates nine hatcheries, producing 619,000 fingerlings in 2022–23. Next door in Arunachal Pradesh, trout broodstock and seed production is being done in two main hatcheries situated at Shergaon of west Kameng and Nuranang in Tawang district. Shergaon has ova production capacity of 100,000. 

India's rainbow trout production has increased from 147 tonnes in 2004–05 to over 842 tonnes in 2015–16 (31% annual growth rate!), with a notable rise in private sector involvement. Key states contributing to this growth include Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, and Arunachal Pradesh . With such competition just across the border, it is not easy for Bhutan. 

Two crucial inputs trout fish farms - eggs/ova and feed - is dependent on expensive imports. Annually about 200,000 one-eyed Ova (fertilised eggs) are imported from Denmark. Specialised fish feed, with a purported high feed conversion ratio (FCR) of 1:1 (!) is imported from BioMar in the Netherlands for around Nu.200/kg. Biomar itself learnt the ropes of the fish-feed business from American companies and is among the dominant players now. Quite amazing to think that fishes being reared in the Himalayan streams need to be fed with something that is imported from a tiny country 7,300 km away!

This brings us back to the Vietnamese. How did they make themselves one of the top exporters of rainbow trout? As in the case of cashewnuts they surely have many lessons for those who want to approach agribusiness with a clear head and a hard nose for business!

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REFERNCES & LINKS

• Global Rainbow Trout Market (2023) - https://www.factmr.com/report/2084/rainbow-trout-market
• Bongo Gewog, Chukha, to Launch Rainbow Trout Project 
• https://derafarms.com/products/himlayan-rainbow-trout

Dynamics of the North East

At first glance Sanjoy Hazarika's book may seem rather dated. It gives a snapshot of the North Eastern states up to the early 1990s. 

Much of the turmoil described in the book has died down - insurgencies that roiled the North East for decades after independence has given way to a superlative push for development -  the new longest river bridge in India, 10,000km of new highways, railway links pushing further eastwards,  and ten new airports, a new impetus to the agriculture sector...all this has done much to integrate the region with the rest of the country. And yet, thanks to the recent troubles in Bangladesh, and the breakdown of trust and goodwill bodes ill for the seven sisters. 

This history of the seven sisters is a lot more complex than I expected. It also goes way beyond the unequal Treaty of Yandabo (1826) through which the British grabbed large swathes of Burma into British India.  The vast Brahmaputra valley has seen multiple invasions from the east of whom, perhaps the Ahoms lasted the longest.  Originally from the Shan region bordering Burma and China, the Ahoms conquered the area in the 13th century, adopted Hinduism, married into local communities and ruled for the next 600 years.  Even during this period it seems the tribes inhabiting the hills raided the plains but the rules were sanguine about pursuing them into the hills - 'can an elephant enter the hole of a rat?'

In terms of language and culture, a certain pecking order was imposed on this region. Soon after the British conquest of Assam, Bengali became the language of the courts and remained the official language till 1873. The Assamese in turn tried to impose their language on the hill states much to their resentment.

Partition of British India, tensions between India and Pakistan and  the creation of Bangladesh cut off the North East from its natural trading partners. The most accessible port at Chittagong went to Bangladesh even though it was located in Chakma region dominated by christian tribes. On top of this, power politics in North India forced the NE to subordinate it natural resources to states like Bihar. Petroleum extracted from Assam was sent in pipes all the way to Barauni refinery for processing!

Hazarika's book is a valuable record of the missed opportunities in the North East. It also provides a perspective on how the ongoing transformation of the seven sisters.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

- PIB Press Note on the North East 

- 

Yantras of Jantar Mantar

 

 Jantar Mantar is one of the iconic monuments of Delhi. It figures in almost every representational image of the city skyline alongside the Lal Qila, Qutub Minar, and Lotus Temple. It is supposed to mean "instruments for measuring the harmony of the heavens", and yet there is hardly anybody who is able to explain how these astronomical instruments were used.

 The Jantar Mantar is Delhi is one of the five built by Raja Sawai Jai Singh about 300 years ago. For a city that dates back a few thousand years, this site is relatively new, so it is all the more surprising that there are no oral or written records of the Raja's purpose or intent of building many such sites in North India.

Recently the Hindustan Times seems to have taken some interest in drawing public interest to these monuments. Earlier this year, Aheli Das informed us - "Delhi’s Jantar Mantar observatory on the road to former glory". More recently, Kabir Firaque wrote a more detailed, engaging piece titled, "Delhi Heritage - The Science of the Observatory - How Jantar Mantar Read the Cosmos" 

Alongside the descriptions of the Samrat Yantra, Misra Yantra, Rama Yantra, Jai Prakash Yantra, it was interesting to know that there are instruments here about which we have absolutely no clue - the Niyat Yantra (the four semi-circles), and the "wall of mystery". The task of deciphering these puzzles has become all the more difficult after earlier attempts at 'restoration' plastered and painted over the graduation markings on many of these instruments.

Despite these constraints, some good people labour on - Dr. Aalok Pandya of IGNTU-Amarkantak, Sheh Kesari, a Ghaziabad based amateur astronomer, and a leading expert, Prof. Virendra Pratap Sharma who is now with the University of Wisconsin. Then there is architect Rachana Sankhalker who has written a graphic novel titled, "The Astronomical Observatories of Sawai Jai Singh" (PDF download available for free!).

Lets hope all these efforts will help us add some meaning what seems to most of us like abstract pieces of art spread out in the middle of a park in New Delhi!

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References & Links

Delhi’s Jantar Mantar observatory on the road to former glory - https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/delhi-news/delhis-jantar-mantar-observatory-on-the-road-to-former-glory-101736533001106.html 

Snooping on YouTube

 

If you are curious about something but nobody is willing to tell you, what do you do?

Recently, BBC reported on an interesting method of gathering market intelligence. The question researchers at the University of Massachussetts were trying answer was - how big is YouTube?

This may sound like a simple question but for various reasons - commercial, or otherwise - this is not the kind of information YouTube, or its parent company, Google, would like to place in the public domain. As the article puts it - 

In its 20 years of operation, YouTube has shaped entire generations' sensibilities and redefined global culture. Surveys show YouTube is the most popular social media site in the US by far, with 83% of adults and 93% of teenagers among its patrons. It's the second-most-visited website on Earth by most estimates, topped only by Google.com itself. But as the platform enters its third decade, the most basic facts about YouTube are still a closely guarded secret.

So how did the researchers at UoM get this information?

They started with the URLs that appear for almost all YT videos. They all start with  "youtube.com/watch?v=", and a unique 11-character identifier. Eg - Gangnam Style's identifier is 9bZkp7q19f0. 

This is where the raw computing power comes in. 11 random alpha-numeric characters can be arranged in more than 18.6 quintillion ways! So the researchers then wrote a program that would trawl the internet with random addresses and download the videos that scored a hit. It seems to collect the first 10,016 videos, the scraper tried more than 18 trillion potential URLs!

The conclusion?

When Google first acquired the platform in 2006, around 65,000 videos were uploaded every day. By 2022, they calculated that YouTube housed more than nine billion videos. By mid 2024, that number had grown to 14.8 billion videos, a 60% jump!!

In the cat and mouse game of corporates and snoops, perhaps it is just a matter of time before YT/Google comes up with ways to foil this kind data-collection and verification. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250213-youtube-at-20-a-computer-that-drunk-dials-online-videos-reveals-statistics-that-google-doesnt-want-you-to-know

Non Volatile Memories

 

Last Sunday I got a big scare - one of my newest external hard disk drives (HDD) let out a few scratchy noises and suddenly stopped working. Its LED light went out and the icon just disappeared from my desktop screen. Disbelief, panic!

I checked the plugs and ports, tried changing the USB port, tried restarting the system but the HDD just would not turn on. I had purchased this Seagate 2TB model just before Covid lockdowns! For a while, I just stared at the screen, shocked, confused, bewildered, wondering if I had just lost my collection of thousands of photographs, music, movies and other important documents.

Not sure of what to do next, iI checked for possible solutions online, hoping for some tips on how to resuscitate a cold metal box that held some of my prized collections and memories.

A YT video, "How Safe Is Your Data?" seemed like a good place to start. I was hoping to learn something reassuring from Christopher Barnatt, the acclaimed guru of Explaining Computers - on the lifespan of hard-drives, solid-state drives (SSDs), and other magnetic, solid-state and optical media. Far from being reassured, this video raised the panic levels!

Consider these facts presented by Barnatt -

• Magnetic tapes can last up to 30 years
• Most hard disk drives will last 3-7 years (!)
• SSDs depend on type of cells and number of re-writes, but should last 5-10 years. However if left un-powered for 1-2 years, data may be lost!

  In other works, as with everything else in life, nothing is permanent. More so in the world of charged electrons - a hard disk drive just wears out of spinning in circles; there is nothing solid about solid-state memory; Non Volatile Memory (NVMe) may be the latest thing when it comes to packing in superlative amounts of memory into tiny spaces but it is still volatile!

I have three HDDs - one each from Transcend, Western Digital, and Seagate. The oldest one is from Transcend and I had purchased it online in Japan in 2010 (15 years old!), and it stopped working last year. I tried accessing it from older laptops and Macs but it just refuses to show up on the desktop even after powering on.

So what is the solution? According to Barnatt, the most durable option (30+ years) is to burn all your important files into optical laser disks (high quality DVRs - read only). This however demands access to specialized equipment. Optical drives have all but disappeared from the new laptops. So the next best option could be to have multiple backups.

 As a first step I urgently needed a full backup of all my photos. Since the total size across HDDs came to around 750GB, I decided to try out the new kid on the block - NVMe SSDs. One thing I liked in particular about this option was that unlike traditional HDDs, you could order these à la carte. You could get the memory chips from the company you wanted (Samsung /WesternDigital / Crucial / Seagate), choose the capacity that I could afford (higher the better + you need to leave some space free for maintenance) and fit it into a a box enclosure of your choice.

So, after doing a bit of research and checking some options, this was my final configuration - 

• M.2 NVMe SSD enclosure from PI India (INR899) - comes with a GPT drive (GUID partition table), connecting cables (USB-C to C / USB 3.0), heat-sink sticker, pouch
• Gum-stick card - 2280 Western Digital/Sandisk Blue 580 M.2 NVMe 4gen (INR5399) -- a YT video from PI was useful for making sure it was fitted in properly
• Formatted on MacBook Air - exFAT (for MacOS+Win access) + GUID partition table (GPT seems more robust than MBR - master boot record) 

 So far the set up has been working beautifully. NVMe cards are so much more compact and seem sturdier than the clunky old HDDs! Now I hope the NVMe card will live up to its claim of being non-volatile.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

 
SSDs

• Explaining Computers (EC) - https://youtu.be/xA9Xq7hb6Q0
  
• M.2 SSD, PCIe adapters and USB enclosures - https://youtu.be/Ktqa11VT1xI (EC)
• SSD Life Expectancy - https://youtu.be/bv-IGhkcbP8
• M.2 NVMe Enclosures (desi gyan - BabaTech) - https://youtu.be/_huh7wb6Res - 
• How to Choose M.2 NVMe SSD - https://youtu.be/eGT-EIJNb_0 
• SD cards 2025 - EC - https://youtu.be/HtgIHfqQiC8
• SSDs - EC - https://youtu.be/F8k_XIEhKWo
• M.2 NVMe SSD explained (animated) - https://youtu.be/HvfIeTieXOI
• Wiki on M.2 SSD cards - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2
  

• Partitions - GUID/GPT vs MasterBootRecord/MBR - https://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats-the-difference-between-gpt-and-mbr-when-partitioning-a-drive

 

 

Boston 11 - A Biting Problem

 

Adidas Adizero Boston11 Refuel. Quite a mouthful for a brand-name but it certainly counts as the most unusual pair of marathon shoes I have used so far.

Long ago when I stepped into the world of distance running, shoe-salesmen used to emphasise on flexibility. They would hold up a pair and twist and roll the running shoes, making the heels touch the toes, to show you how easily they would adapt to your feet. Over the years the sales-pitch has changed completely - now they make a big show of how inflexible the soles are. They now sing praises of shoes with rigid soles and claim that flexible, soft soles trigger injuries to your ankle and feet.

I have been using an Asics Amplifoam for a few years now and it has stood me in good stead. Its semi-rigid sole shows little signs of wear but the fabric upper had got torn in a couple places, so it was time to buy a new pair. I checked out a few new models in all the major brand-stores - Asics (old loyalties!), Nike, Puma, New Balance, and finally, Adidas. It is at the last store that the Boston11 caught my attention. 

It was different. Even though it was relatively lightweight, the shoes felt quite sturdy. Being an older model it was also going for an attractive discount. Still,  the compulsive skeptic in me had to  step out of the shop to check the reviews, and confirm that it was not available cheaper online before deciding to make a purchase decision.

A few days later when I took out the Boston11 for my usual Sunday 10k run, I found my feet would not get in easily. Unlike any other pair of running shoes i had used so far, this one had a full fabric sleeve under the tongue which was meant to grip your ankles, but the broader part of the feet would not get in easily unless a shoe-horn was used. Once you managed to get the feet in, the shoes fit snugly on your arch, instep, heel and ankle.

The second problem came up after the 5k stage. The upper part of the sleeve would bite into the bridge - the part of your feet just under the shoelaces - every time the ankle flexed while running. At first I thought the laces were too tight but no amount of adjusting would ease that biting pain in the upper ligament. I looked it up on the web and found that the pain point was exactly at the junction of the superior and inferior extensor retinaculum. Ultimately, I figured that if the extra-long shoe-tongue on the Boston11 was folded inwards the bite would be eased to a large extent.

Was this a common problem for runners using Boston11? 

So far I have not come across any review specifically highlighting this problem. Many of them do indicate that this particular model has a longer break-in period. 

Apart from this glitch the new Adidas  Boston11 has been absolutely solid for road-running. Rigid soles have their uses i guess :)

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REFERENCES & LINKS

Boston 11 - https://www.adidas.co.in/adizero-boston-11-refuel-shoes/HQ3701.html

Review - https://runrepeat.com/adidas-adizero-boston-11

https://sportsmedalabama.com/contents/patient-education/foot-and-ankle/

Shooting with Pancakes

 

Last year when I switched from my old Nikon D90 + 18-105mm kit lens combo to a full-frame Sony A7C I had agonised over right lens to go with it. Ultimately I had opted for a Tamron 28-200 E-Mount. 

It has been a pleasure learning the new syntax of shooting with mirrorless cameras, and the I have been amazed by the versatility of this Tamron lens which can go from macro to a fairly good zoom with sharp images. The lens however weighs over 600g and this sort of cancels out one of the main advantages of the light-weight A7C camera body.

Recently I came across a review of the new Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 Full-Frame Lens for Sony E-Mount. Weighing just 60g, with dimensions close to a camera lens-cap, this is the lightest and thinnest lenses for e-mounts. It is also attractively priced at $99 (INR 13,000 on Amazon India).

Is it worthwhile picking up this F4.5 28mm "body-cap" lens? 

So far the reviews have been giving a mixed verdict. While the size and portability are attractive pros, the cons seem to be a serious dampener -  body-cap lenses generally suffer from numerous image quality issues such as heavy vignetting and poor image sharpness.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

https://viltrox.com/products/28mm-f4-5-fe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancake_lens

https://www.creative-photographer.com/pancake-lens/

https://www.videolinks.com/viltrox-af-28mm-f-4-5-lens-for-sony-fe-full-frame

Dholavira

An endless white expanse of saltpans, blue skies, and Dholavira.

If you are a history buff nothing quite prepares you for the ancient Harappan site of Dholavira. Perhaps you recall hearing about the place in school classrooms, or visits to museum galleries or books. Bits and pieces in our collective memory about the ancient civilisation that covered an area larger than known sites in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or China; cities with carefully designed streets, water supply and drainage systems, and of a script that is yet to be deciphered. And yet the scale of it all does not quite sink in until you see the place for yourself.

Kutch, the district in Gujarat where Dholavira is located, happens to the largest in India - 45, 674 sqkm! There are about a dozen Indian states that are smaller than this one district, including Kerala and Haryana.  Most of Kutch district barren scrubland or saltpans dotted with solar and wind farms. 

We reached the site after a long drive from Bhuj, with stopover at Hodka village, and a drive along the so-called "Road through Heaven" - a 50km road that cuts straight through an area that was once covered by the sea.

The open sea is today about 300km away from Dholavira. All available evidence suggests that maritime trade was the mainstay of this city with its seals and jewellery being found in the Nile Valley, Egypt.

Unlike most Harappan cities excavated so far, Dholavira is the only one which is built from stone. Most of this stone was quarried out of areas that became the large tanks for storing water. Canals, sluices and wells ensured that water was available throughout the city with special arrangements for those staying in the 'upper city', an area where the elites resided.

There is a nice ASI museum at the site but not much information seems to be available on the web, except for some websites aimed at attracting tourists to the luxury tent-cities that are built every year. YouTube does have some good talks on the Harappan sites in general but IO am yet to come across anything that does justice to the the oldest known port city in ancient India.

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REFERENCES and LINKS

YT - Michel Danino on Harappan Civilisation - https://youtu.be/_s5EDxuL0Vs

Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dholavira

https://www.evokedholavira.com/blog/dholavira-a-harappan-city-with-intricate-architecture-and-rich-history/