Under the Shadow of Covid: Train Journeys Across India

Paravur Kayal (lagoon), Kerala

Has the Covid Pandemic changed the way Indians travel? What has been the impact of the cascade of lockdowns  imposed across the country since March 2020?

An opportunity to seek answers to these questions presented itself a few weeks ago. A bunch of old friends had planned a get-together in Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu and it had been nearly two years since I met my folks in Kerala. So at short notice, I decided to travel across the country to these two states in the cheapest way possible: Second-Class Sleeper on the Indian Railways.

Thanks to the pandemic and the lockdowns that came with it I had grown nostalgic about the magic of unhurried traveling. The joy of settling down with a nice book on a long train journey, of watching the shifting landscapes float by, feeling the rush of wind through the open windows and the occasional explosive rush of a passing train, tasting different foods (and drinking the awful tea!) along the way; the chance to meet and travel with all sorts of different people... just about everything that seemed the opposite end of a lockdown spectrum :)

My two-week itinerary was fairly simple - a 2400km train ride to Bangalore (Train 06528), to be picked up by friends for a drive across the border from Karnataka to Krishnagiri district in Tamil Nadu. A couple of days later, another longer road trip to Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, a week with the family, and finally,  the 3040km long rail journey (Train 02625) back to Delhi. 

Two train journeys ~ 5,500 km

Traveling under the shadow of an impending "third wave" of the pandemic, I had expected to see a lot of restrictions along the way. Sure enough, railway stations along the route were a lot less crowded than usual. This may have been because access to the platforms is now tightly controlled, visitors are no longer issued "platform tickets", nearly all hawkers were in designated uniforms and everybody was wearing a face-mask, at least to avoid getting penalised. 

However once the train rolled out of the platform in New Delhi, ticket examiners were not checking to see if passengers had been vaccinated. Hygiene and safety standards had improved though - cleaning of the coaches and mopping with disinfectants was more frequent, a couple of armed police officers patrolled up and down the trains, reminding everybody to keep the doors closed and even warning us to down the shutters and stay away from the windows at a place in Maharashtra because "children pelt stones in this area!".

All along the journey across multiple states, only at one station did RTPCR test results become an issue. At Bangalore Cantonment as soon as passengers disembarked, all of us were lined up for a quick health-check: 

"Are you coming from outside Karnataka? Where are you going? Do you have an RTPCR negative report? If not, what is your mobile number?"

Straight, simple questions. I had not taken an RTPCR test 72 hours prior to this journey. For a moment I though they were going to send me off to a week-long quarantine but quickly realised that this was just a precautionary measure. The staff who noted down my mobile number checked with the national database accessed through the CoWIN app. Once it was confirmed that I had taken both shots of the AZ-CovidShield vaccine, my destination details were logged in and swab samples were taken for an RTPCR test. By the time I stepped out of the railway station, a message had come in, reminding me of the precautions to be taken, and within the next 24 hours, I had a digital certificate confirming an RTPCR negative report - all for free! Totally understated, efficient and super impressive.

On both the long distance journeys - from Delhi to Bangalore and from Thiruvanantapuram back to Delhi - one big change was that there were very few people travelling all the way. On the onward trip, most of my co-passengers were migrant workers - mostly travelling from the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to serve factories, malls and the gig economy for sending money back home. There were also a few tech workers - interns or trainees taking up their assignments in Bangalore and discussing the finer points of Java and Python along the way.

The return journey from Kerala was quite different. Most of my travel companions from Kerala got off just across the state border in Coimbatore, an industrial city that attracts a lot of workers and students; those who boarded from Tamil Nadu were again traveling a short distance to Tirupati, a centre for pilgrimage. My coach was practically empty when it passed through the states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh. 

The fear of Covid had transformed many of the landmark stations along the way. The famous stalls selling fresh fruit juice had disappeared from Vijayawada station; Chilly chicken was no longer on the menu at the Warangal station canteen. Hygiene seemed to have become an overriding concern - meals were now being sold in sealed plastic trays. Flexible pricing was also in - an egg biryani which cost INR 90 at 12:00 when the train reached Warangal would be available for INR 50 when the train reached Vijayawada a few hours later. If you were not in a hurry to pick up a packet as soon as the train stopped the price would go down still further to INR 40!

Another great transformation was the near seamless availability of broadband internet through the journey. Except for a few uninhabited areas of Telangana and Madhya Pradesh you can use the net to check the news feeds, catch up with old friends on WhatsApp, watch YouTube videos and, most importantly, see your own train moving across the country as a blue dot on Google Maps. This not only allows you to read up on the history and geography of the places you are passing through but also be well prepared to compose photographs of the fleeting yet stunningly beautiful landscapes of !ncredible India!

The Covid Pandemic seems to have changed not only the way in which Indian Railways operates  but also reduced the sense of chaos and uncertainty associated with train travel. If this trend continues I will be looking forward to my next long distance train ride - maybe from Gujarat to the North Eastern states for a change!

Godavari River, Andhra Pradesh

Paddy fields, northern Andhra Pradesh

Windmill farms and cloudscapes, Tamil Nadu

Thiruvanthapuram Central Station, Kerala

Palm plantations, Tamil Nadu

Paddy fields in coastal Andhra Pradesh

Sunset across Wardha river, Maharashtra

Cattle grazing at Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh

Chambal Ravines, Madhya Pradesh

Zzz..

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Journey Map - https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/2/edit?mid=1SpiOwFl7nMqDxqKgqBYHsQ9ZiduMZ49u&usp=sharing 

* Kerala Express (02625) - https://www.cleartrip.com/trains/12625/

Sunny Days

 The precise shifting positions of the rising and setting sun through the year is a phenomenon observed thousands of years ago. The ancient Egyptians aligned their buildings - especially the pyramids - in such a way that sunlight entered the deepest passages only on certain days of the year, such as the summer equinox. The ancient Aztecs did the same, and so did the builders of Angkor Wat, and even the Padmanabha Swamy Temple in Kerala.

While it is relatively easy for communities that have lived at a particular location for many years to accurately predict the play of sunlight and shadows in their buildings through the year, the trick is to figure out how this would change in different parts of the globe. Consider this excerpt from an astronomy website - 

At 40°N latitude (Denver, Colorado / Beijing, China), the sun shifts 7° north. Since the sun's diameter equals 1/2 degrees, that means the sun has been traveling its own diameter (14 days x 1/2 degree = 7 degrees) northwards each day. At 60°N latitude (Fairbanks, Alaska / Siberia), the sun moves about 2 sun diameters or one degree daily.

How did they come to the conclusion that "the sun's diameter equals 1/2 degrees"? What exactly does this mean, especially when you consider the fact that the distance between the earth and the sun varies from summer to winter making it appear larger or smaller across the seasons? 

Things get a little more complicated here. Yet all this has been figured out with such amazing accuracy that we have websites that map the position of the sun to any given location on earth, any time of the year.

What we see here is a sun-path polar chart superimposed on an image from Google Maps. Each point on this is worked out by feeding in the local latitude in relation to the elevation of the sun and the time of day, for that location. For instance, Noida located at approx 28°N would see the sun at an elevation of 62° from the horizon  (90° - 28°) on equinox days (21 Mar., and 21 Sep.).

Solar Altitude (cc - Hartz ) 

This explains why cities located on or near the equator (eg., Singapore - 1.29°N) see very little variation in the position of the sun across seasons. So when a Singaporean stretches his neck to squint at the blazing sun right overhead on an equinox day, a Norwegian resident at the northern-most city in the world, Longyearbyne (78.22°N) would find the same mid-day sun hovering near the horizon all day!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

- https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/india/new-delhi?month=6&year=2021

- Noida coordinates - 28.5355° N, 77.3910° E

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/01/this-is-how-the-sun-moves-in-the-sky-throughout-the-year/?sh=c3af3c573037

- TED Talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm13Kq_E1ik

- https://www.sunearthtools.com/dp/tools/pos_sun.php

- https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/how-far-does-sun-move-on-your-horizon-each-day/

- Sun path - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_path

- https://www.syedshiyazmirza.com/2019/03/sree-padmanabhaswamy-temple-during.html

- https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/fall-equinox-secret-pyramids-near-perfect-alignment-180968223/

- https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/five-ancient-sites-to-celebrate-the-spring-equinox

Books of the World

 

Every now and then the great circus of Whatsapp forwards comes up with a gem, and this is one of them. A beautifully illustrated poster on the "Most Translated Books of the World" by Preply.

A closer look at this tells you that some non-empirical method has been chosen for the selections here.  Perhaps they have excluded books of religious nature, or those that may may be categorised as 'adult literature'. How else can one explain the fact that Paramahamsa Yogananda's "The Autobiography of a Yogi" is listed as the most translated book from India over "The Bhagawad Gita" or "Kamasutra"?   

At least according to the referenced list compiled by Wikipedia, the most translated book from India is the Gita, followed by Isha Upanishad and Yogananda's book in the third place. 

The list has its surprises too. For instance I was surprised to learn that a book we studied at school, "My Name is Aram" by William Saroyan the top book from Armenia. Also Arthur Hailey's "Hotel" is listed as the most translated book from... the Bahamas! 

Minor quibbles aside this remains a beautiful piece of work. The books I have not yet read from this list should keep me busy for a while! :)

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NB: This is also the first time I am seeing a digital image presented in the <webP> format. At just over 600kB this seems to pack in a much more scalable image compared to JPEG or TIFF.  Seems to be an innovation from Google that uses a technique called predictive coding.

A Tragedy Live-Streamed

"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

What has been happening at Kabul's HKIA airport from 15 August 2021 onwards has been surreal, incredulous and depressing all at the same time.

Having been through this airport many times, and seen the many layers of its heavily armed perimeter,  it was amazing to see how thousands of people managed to get past its gates, all the way to military aircraft on the runway. It has been a week now and thousands of people continue to remain there all day, blocking the approach roads, clambering atop aircrafts, sitting inside jet-engine air-vents, getting shot at by security guards, and getting killed in the resulting stampede.

Much has already been said about the levels of desperation and panic in parts of Kabul. What has come as a big surprise to me is that for a city that has been under blanket electronic and police surveillance for decades, mobile networks continue to function normally, streaming live video from people all over the place. 

One particular video clip stands out.  This is a C-17 US military plane attempting to take off from Kabul airport. It is a monster of an aircraft - over 50m long, and capable of carrying over 275 tonnes, but here, as it lumbers on the runway, we see thousands of men were running alongside; some are waving cheerfully at the cameras, a few perched on the wheel carriages or flaps. Among them was one man in a dark Pathan suit, sitting precariously over on a winglet, looking intently looking into his mobile phone!

Incredibly, there is also a clip titled "Last video from the plane" in which we have a man in the same group recording the almost festive spirit of the group perched precariously there. Even as the jet engines rev up into a roar, he is talking a selfie shot, smiling into the camera, panning it around to show his companions waving cheerfully at his friends. Apache helicopters can be seen flying alongside, trying in vain to disperse the crowds. One can almost feel the wind lashing on on those faces, the roar jet engines drowning out the crowds. 

Then another phone records the C-17 taking off. As it climbs up sharply a few men can be seen slipping off and falling to their deaths. One was seen tangles in the concertina wires of a boundary wall, another spattered on a rooftop, and in yet another mobile, recording from inside the aircraft, the body of a man can be seen flailing in the winds, like a rag-doll stuck on a dumpster.

Not one of them would have survived. One can only imagine the levels of desperation and ignorance that led these men to their deaths. One wonders how the "last video" managed to reach FB and Twitter, and how many of them really thought they could get away sitting out there?

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LINKS

*  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/17/human-remains-found-c-17-wheel-well-after-takeoff-kabul/8170724002/

Gokhale's China

 Indians have been suckers for more than six decades. This was my main takeaway from Vijay Gokhale's recent book, "The Long Game - How the Chinese Negotiate with India".

In this elegantly written book, Gokhale traces the path taken by India-China relations from 1950 onwards - from the time when the government of India became one of the first to recognise the communist regime, of giving it a leg up to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, through its military take-over of Tibet, escape of the Dalai Lama, the 1962 war, nuclear tests, all the way to the border dispute that festers to this day. 

All through this, the author may have wanted to show the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in favourable light but seems to have just the opposite effect. One gets the impression that even though the  IFS may have had some of our brightest officers, as an institution it was slow on the uptake, and, as far as China is concerned, it has been incapable of guiding the political leaders through a prudent course of action. 

One of our weaknesses is that we love to talk. Combine this with our lack of meticulous preparations, the ease with which we can be flattered and what you get is a long line of ineffective negotiators. The Chinese, on the other hand, were always better prepared, weighed each word that was spoken and recorded everything and clearly saw that our eagerness to please, to play the 'good neighbour', was a weakness that could be exploited to tie us down with unilateral commitments.

Over the years, it seems some Chinese tactics have become predictable -- setting the agenda by insisting on 'principles' that suit them; things that they do not want to discuss are stonewalled through silence or deemed "not ripe for settlement"; the interpreter ploy of pretending not to know a language to gain time to think through and formulate a response, etc..

We also seem to have realised that that Chinese diplomats are ideological agents of the communist party- not government representatives amenable to logic or reason. Also their leaders, who prefer to stay in the background to "save face" are actually thin-skinned, and that unsettling them by impugning their self-image and how they want the rest of the world to view them can work to the other side's advantage.

Gokhale laments that the dignified and gracious Chinese negotiators of the past have been replaced by the assertive 'wolf warriors' who tend to display aggression, arrogance, irritation and other disagreeable traits. 

Maybe this is just as well because we seem to be better at handling in-your-face aggression rather than the gentle art of gracious negotiations. 

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LINKS

* Gokhale, Vijay (2021): THE LONG GAME - How the Chinese Negotiate With India, Penguin- https://www.amazon.in/Long-Game-Chinese-Negotiate-India/dp/0670095605

Down the Road to Chaos?

Once again, Afghanistan has hit the headlines; once again for all the wrong reasons.

Unlike my earlier post which was written after the most recent attack on Kabul University, this one is triggered by a global event - the withdrawal of USA and its allies after over 20  years in Afghanistan. The withdrawal has enabled the Taliban to sweep across the country with almost daily reports of deaths in bombings, attacks and counterattacks. A sense of uncertainty about the country seems poised to spread across its borders, to the rest of South Asia and the world.

As someone with a bit of experience in Afghanistan(2018-19), I have been approached by friends for an opinion on how things are going to unfold in the months to come. This was my response in a WhatsApp group a few days ago:

Ethnic and tribal loyalties are becoming more important than the "Afghan" identity for surviving this crisis.

Did you see that clip where a Talib asks a man if he's a Hazara and then shoots him dead? The Hazaras will avenge that. The 22 commandos who were killed after they surrendered; the Afghan ambassadors daughter who got abducted in Islamabad today... these too will be avenged, and at the tribal level all this will fuel old blood-feuds on both sides of the Durand line.

About ~$10 billion of annual aid that drove the Afghan economy is now the turning off... resources are limited... people are losing jobs, schools and small businesses are closing down, families are getting split and displaced...a whole new generation is dealing with the jehadis and their insular, medieval mindset.

So far there is no sign of a strong unifying national leader,  so the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras (Shias) will fight against the talibs (mostly sunni Pashto)...and the Pashtos tribes will fight each other to control the border posts (tax revenue) and poppy fields.

The Pakistanis will of course try to push more of these displaced jehadis into Kashmir/India.

Sad days ahead 😞

I hope my rather simplistic assessment is wrong. I hope an amicable solution will be found to prevent a repeat of the devastation that visited Afghanistan two decades ago. I hope all the good work done by the UN and other international agencies - especially in primary education, infrastructure and agriculture - will not go down the drain.

And yet, an interview I saw recently seemed to confirm that this is going to be another long bloody struggle. A retired Pakistani general, Tariq Khan, a Pathan officer who led a government offensive against the "Pakistani Taliban" or TTP, seemed quite sure that the Taliban will take over Kabul in a few weeks because the city is already under a "soft siege" because supplies to the city - especially of fuel - is already being disrupted. While this may be true it is not clear if the Taliban have what it takes to dominate the rest of the country - especially non-Pashtun areas.

Unlike the Soviet occupation era when the mujahids had a strong backing in terms of armaments (USA) and petrodollars (Saudi Arabia), things are a lot more complicated now. This time, money is not so easily available; there is some in Afghanistan's biggest exports - Poppy - but the Taliban is known to be against it;  the non-Pashto groups are better armed and may not give up the cities without a bitter fight, and there seems to be little in terms of common ground between the countries that have a direct interest in the final outcome -- Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan, USA, Turkey, and India.

If the Taliban continue with their refusal to share power with people who represent half the country, what they ultimately get may be a Pyrrhic victory, and the peaceful silence of graveyards. This may not come as an explosion of a grenade with a missing pin but as a slow, painful descent to chaos. 

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LINKS & REFERENCES:

* 26 July 2021 - Turkey eyeing a new sphere of influence in Afghanistan - https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/868701-turkey-eyeing-for-new-sphere-of-influence-in-afghanistan

* 18 July 2021 - Gen. Tariq Khan's interview - https://youtu.be/Tb8hMrqBXP4

Experts vs. Dart-Throwing Monkeys

 

Statistics was never one of my favourite subjects. When faced with grades at the wrong end of the bell-curve, I would console myself with a quote attributed to Mark Twain - "There is lies, damn lies, and statistics"!

However, over the years, I have warmed-up to the subject - thanks largely to the stunning visualisations of Hans Rosling, and books like Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow". This post is about the latter. 

The nudge for this came about ten days ago when a friend posted a book recommendation with a quote by Richard Feynman - "The first rule in science is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool". The book in question was - "The power and paradox of self-deception" by Shankar Vedantam.

The first question that came to my mind was - Is this any different from the ideas described so well in Kahneman's book?  I went back to the book and found that he discussed not only all sorts of cognitive biases but also ways in which the intuitions of subject experts can be built into robust decision-making models.

What I like about Kahneman is that he is a practitioner who moved to academia. Unlike most ivory tower theorists, he served in the fledgeling Israeli Army in the 1950s, setting SoPs (still in use) for officer selection before moving to a university in USA, and winning the first Nobel prize for psychology/economics in 2002. 

Two of my key takeaways from this book were on Subjective Confidence and Intuitions vs. Formulas. Here are two quotes from the book on the topics which are perhaps best described in the author's own words. 

First, Subjective Confidence.

Facts that challenge...basic assumptions - and thereby threaten people's livelihood and self esteem - are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them. This is particularly true of statistical studies of performance, which provide base rate information that people generally ignore when it clashes with their personal impressions

We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers

In other words, people who spend their time, and earn their living, studying a particular topic produce poorer predictions than dart-throwing monkeys who would have distributed their choices evenly over the options. Even in the region they knew best, experts were not significantly better than non-specialists...The reason is that a person who acquired more knowledge develops an enhanced illusion of her skill and becomes unrealistically overconfident. 

...Using an analogy from Isaish Berlin's essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox" -

Hedgehogs "know one big thing" and have a theory about the world; they account for particular events within a coherent framework, bristle with impatience towards those who do not see things their way, and are confident about their forecasts. They are also especially reluctant to admit error. For hedgehogs, a failed prediction is almost always "off only on timing", or "very nearly right". They are opinionated and clear, which is exactly what televisions producers like to see on their programs. Two hedgehogs on different sides of an issue, each attacking the idiotic ideas of the adversary, make a good show.

Foxes, on the other hand, are complex thinkers. They don't believe that one big thing drives the march of history. Instead the foxes recognise that reality emerges from the interactions of many different agents and forces, including blind luck, often producing large and unpredictable outcomes....Foxes are less likely to to be invited to participate in television debates.

On Intuitions vs. Formulas

Paul Meehl's book - "Clinical vs. Statistical prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of Evidence"...This 'disturbing little book' presented the results of 20 studies to examine whether Clinical Predictions based on the subjective impressions of trained professionals were more accurate than statistical predictions made by combining a few scores or ratings according to a rule... The formula was more accurate than 11 or 14 counsellors! It was proven again in other studies on violations of payroll, success in pilot training and criminal recidivism.

Princetown economist and wine lover Orley Ashenfelter shows us the compelling power of the power of simple statistics to outdo world renowned experts. Ashenfelter predicted the future value of Bordeaux wines based on info available the year they were made - he converted conventional knowledge into a statistical formula that predicts the price of wine based on three features of the weather - average temp over the summer growing months, the amount of rain at harvest, and the total rainfall during the previous winter.

A key conclusion... to maximise predictive accuracy, final decisions should be left to formulas, especially in low-validity environments

Does Vedanam's new book present any new ideas? I don't know yet. It does seem to me that path-breaking ideas presented in "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow" may now be getting repackaged in newer books. Perhaps I am suffering from an anchoring bias, but I do believe Kahneman's book is something you need to have on your nearest bookshelf, as a constant reminder that there is more to this world than meets the eye, that intuitions can be trusted - but only to a certain extent. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Cognitive Biases - https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-cognitive-bias-2794963

* Animated book summary - https://youtu.be/uqXVAo7dVRU

* The hedgehog and the fox - http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9981.pdf

* How Big Data can predict the wine of the century - https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2014/04/30/how-big-data-can-predict-the-wine-of-the-century/?sh=5f2c35c531a9

Tauktae

Looks like a Van Gogh? - a painting sequel to the Starry Night perhaps? It's actually a projection of wind-speeds visualised by the big data cats at earth.nullschool. This particular one shows Cyclone Tauktae hitting Gujarat square in the jaw a few days ago.

Tauktae means "lizard" in Burmese and is just one of the random names chosen from an annual basket of options prepared by the met department - IMD. In this instance the name seemed rather appropriate - this cyclone has been constantly changing its colours like a chameleon while racing thousands of kilometres across the Arabian Sea.

According to a report: "Tauktae has been intensifying very rapidly. From a depression formed in the southeast Arabian Sea on May 14 morning, it strengthened into a very severe cyclonic storm -VSCS - by the early hours of May 16.. Any tropical cyclone requires energy to stay alive. This energy is typically obtained from warm water and humid air over the tropical ocean. Currently, sea water up to depths of 50 metres has been very warm, supplying ample energy to enable the intensification of Cyclone Tauktae."

And what a build-up of energy it has been! IMD seems surprised by the way in which this tropical cyclone intensified. On 16 May it swept past Kerala, damaging coastal roads and homes, taking two lives it its wake. The windspeed then climbed to 114 mph off the coast of Mumbai and but by the time it hit Diu in Gujarat it was roaring at over 180 kmph. The lives lost in this section was the highest - over 80 oil-rig workers employed by the ONGC are reported dead or missing.

For an event unfolding about 2000 km away, this cyclone has had a surprisingly strong impact in the Delhi area as well. Yesterday was the most unusual summer day.  At a time of the year when the day temperatures hover around 45C with hot dry wind blowing in from the Thar desert, turning the city into an oven, what we got instead was cool, refreshing rain. Not a passing shower that evaporated as soon as it it the ground but rains that went on and on, for a whole day and a night. For the first time in 70 years, temperatures hit a record low of 23.8C for the month of May.

This came as a bit of a relief to those who have been working our Covid hospitals, wearing stuffy all day. The Covid Second Wave also seems to have eased in North India with a sharp fall in infections and increased availability of spare hospital beds, oxygen cylinders and medicines.

Meanwhile, as Cyclone Takutae ebbs, another kind of second wave in brewing on the eastern side, next to the Andaman Islands. This one is called Cyclone Yaas and let us hope the Bay of Bengal has less energy to spare for feeding another super cyclone!

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LINKS & REFERENCES

- https://mausam.imd.gov.in/imd_latest/contents/cyclone.php

- https://www.indiatoday.in/cities/delhi/story/delhi-records-coldest-may-cyclone-tauktae-cause-heavy-rainfall-1804625-2021-05-20

- https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-in-cyclone-tauktae-a-continuing-new-trend-from-the-arabian-sea-7317913/

- https://indianexpress.com/article/india/cyclone-tauktae-live-tracking-gujarat-maharashtra-7319493/

- https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/environment/tall-waves-lash-west-coast-as-cyclone-tauktae-dashes-to-make-landfall-in-gujarat-76945

- https://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/science/cyclone-taukte-live-updates-taukte-extremely-severe-cyclonic-storm-imd-issues-alert-impact-on-mumbai-gujarat/2253205/

- https://indianexpress.com/article/india/cyclone-yaas-west-bengal-odisha-7321599/

Murakami and All That Jazz

Each time I finish reading a book by Haruki Murakami I swear that I am not going to fall for his formula again. Just like Bollywood script-writers, Murakami too has a set of predictable ingredients in his books - a protagonist who loves eating / cooking, a least one cat, cocktails, jazz music, and a storyline that borders between the vague, the mysterious and the paranormal.

Men Without Women is not a full blown novel but a collection of short stories. It is, as the blurb, says pithily - "...about the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are lovesick doctors, students, ex-boyfriends, actors, bartenders, and even Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, brought together to tell stories that speak to us all."

Stories that speak to us all? I am not so sure about that, but then maybe I am just an outlier, a literary junkie who returns returns every now and then for his Murakami fix, to escape the dreary world of non-fiction.

What I love about Murakami's writing is the way it seems to anticipate and guide a readers sense of curiosity. I like the way it describes the familiar cityscapes of Japan - especially Tokyo, and most of all I enjoy the way it introduces you to music - especially jazz classics. As in - “His voice was low and smooth and reminded me of Barry White’s music...” At this point I can read no further until I have searched the net and found out what is so 'low and smooth' about Barry White's music!

In this collection of seven short-stories, I liked "Kino" the best. This one follows the oft repeated, semi-biographical theme of a guy who tries to reboot his life by setting up a bar, on a street behind the Nezu Museum. It is also the story with the largest collection of jazz classics.

Once again I have finished reading the book by telling myself that I am not going to touch another Murakami. It is a promise I am bound to break in a few months.

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LINKS

* Music from the book "Men Without Women":

> Barry White - Greatest Hits - https://youtu.be/Re_f1UOWyNg

> Coleman Hawkins - "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" - amazing bass solo by Major Holley - https://youtu.be/Ylf7s2_tOxo

> Billie Holiday - "Georgia on my mind" -- https://youtu.be/QkYt9r_B8Qw

> Erroll Gardner-  "Moonglow" -- https://youtu.be/yLWbuDFSZ58

> Buddy DeFranco - "I Can't Get Started" -- https://youtu.be/AiqLALvz8Sc

> Teddy Wilson

> Vic Dickenson

> Buck Clayton

> Ben Webster - solo " My Romance" -- https://youtu.be/mgBdid4aFgI

> Rock or Blues - Derek and the Dominos, Otis Reading, The Doors

> Clifford Brown's solos (jazz)

> Percy Faith - "A Summer Place" --(Greatest Hits) - https://youtu.be/DOko--B4CNo

> Francis Lai - "13 Jours en France" -- https://youtu.be/Qz6R9zEfzd0

> 101 Strings - All tracks - https://youtu.be/4Yd2PzoF1y8

> Paul Mauriat - Greatst hits - https://youtu.be/vEAiwmVkL-U

> Billy Vaughan - https://youtu.be/tUJPg3wa1LU

> Frank Chacksfield - Top tracks - https://youtu.be/VATF93NMujk

> Raymond Lefévre - https://youtu.be/B2M6FYWkB8A

> Montovani - https://youtu.be/e7gMxhVPgCs

> Henry Mancini - "Moon River"  - waiting around the bend, my Huckleberry friend... https://youtu.be/WZ8j-X1hq1I

> New -- Gorillaz https://youtu.be/uAOR6ib95kQ of Black Eyed Peas - https://youtu.be/vMLk_T0PPbk

* 2009 post - "Music and Murakami" - https://dinakarr.blogspot.com/2009/07/music-murakami.html

On Swatters

 

Long ago, a wisecrack noted that mosquitos fly amidst applause. This must have been before the invention of the electronic fly swatter. 

One of the small joys of life is to hear that sharp, sparky zap of an elusive, pesky mosquito getting caught in a fly swatter. This is especially true in summers when the critters seem to be spoilt for choices with so much of exposed skin, and somehow manage to find the most inaccessible point to dig in for a quick, bloody meal, and slip away at the slightest hint of a being caught out.

After one particularly successful swatting spree I found myself looking with much awe and admiration at my battery operated fly-swatter. Who came up with this brilliant invention? How much voltage does it take to electrocute an insect? What does it cost to make this simple, effective contraption?

The answers to the first two questions were quite easy to find - I leant from Wiki that the patent for this device is held by Taiwanese inventor named Tsao-i Shih. First manufactured in 1996,  the "electronic insect killing swatter" is essentially a scaled down version of a cattle-prod, a taser or stun-gun. Built inside its handle is an electronic oscillator, a step-up transformer and a voltage multiplier. 

Designed to prevent children from getting hurt, the bat's double layer of nets are electrodes that deliver a voltage of 1000 volts of more.  While this might seem like a of using a cannon to kill a mouse, the point to note is that the voltage output is controlled by a capacitor rating less than 45 nanofarads (nF), with a discharge limit of 45 microcolumbs (µC). 

What does this mean? I have not figured this nF - µC thingie yet. All I know so far is that a farad is the unit of electrical capacitance - the ability of a body to store an electrical charge. One farad is defined as the capacitance across which, when charged with one coulomb, there is a potential difference of one volt. A nanofarad is one billionth (10^9) of a farad. 

To put the voltage output of a fly-swatter in perspective, a stun-gun delivers an output between 20,000 V and 150,000 V ! 

It is also interesting to know that the cost of making this device in India (~INR 300+) is nearly double the cost in China. This is mainly because the cost of making the plastic components of the bat is more than double in India, making bulk imports a more viable option for traders. 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* How stun-guns work - https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/other-gadgets/stun-gun3.htm

* Electronic fly-swatter patent - https://www.freepatentsonline.com/5519963.html

* Teardown - https://tworks.telangana.gov.in/blog/electric-mosquito-racket-teardown

* Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly-killing_device#cite_note-16

White House, Black President, Grey Matter

A big fat book by a lanky ex-President. I have been seeing it in our bookshops for a year now but being innately suspicious of politicians - especially slick ones - I had flipped through the tome, and put it back on the rack. It did not seem worthwhile to spend time reading about the intrigues of a distant country. 

This attitude changed a couple of weeks ago when I came across an audio version of the book narrated by the author himself. Instead of sitting down with a fat book, now I had the option of listening to it while getting other things done. Now, after seven+ hours of listening I must admit that I am not at all disappointed.

Like any other accomplished politician, Barack Obama too is a great communicator who has mastered the skill of walking a tightrope - at striking a balance between what needs to be revealed to maintain a certain image, and what to leave unsaid.

Rather than a dry, clinical account of his first term as the president of the United States, the book deftly switches back and forth between two lives - the personal and the professional. He starts with the people who inspired him - writers, philosophers, labor organisers, and of course, family members starting with the values he learnt from his mother - "...how you could build power not by putting others down but by lifting them up".

Along the way you also learn about the peculiarities of the US electoral system - of caucuses, electoral colleges, the tussles between the GoP/Reps and the Dems; the "institutionalised procedural mischief—the Senate filibuster—which...would prove to be the most chronic political headache" of his presidency while lamenting the difficulties of getting bipartisan support in the face of "egregious pork-barreling, logrolling, and patronage-dispensing tactics Senate leaders had traditionally used to get big, controversial bills like the Civil Rights Act or Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act, or a package like the New Deal, passed".

Yet what caught my attention was the way in which Obama describes the compulsions of domestic politics spilling over to distant corners of the world with devastating effect. The pressures of not wanting to be perceived as a "weak" president, the consequences of displeasing certain interest groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful bipartisan lobbying organisation dedicated to ensuring unwavering U.S. support for Israel.

Also while lending context to the way in which top generals try to box in POTUS, Obama refers to the long history of West Point, and, in retrospect, the not-so-glorious line of military brass who led the country into a bigger mess - 

"It was impossible not to be humbled and moved by the tradition those men represented, the service and sacrifice that had helped forge a nation, defeat fascism, and halt the march of totalitarianism. Just as it was necessary to recall that Lee had led a Confederate Army intent on preserving slavery and Grant had overseen the slaughter of Indian tribes; that MacArthur had defied Truman’s orders in Korea to disastrous effect and Westmoreland had helped orchestrate an escalation in Vietnam that would scar a generation. Glory and tragedy, courage and stupidity—one set of truths didn’t negate the other. For war was contradiction, as was the history of America." 

In what way did MacArthur and Westmoreland escalate the crisis in Korea and Vietnam? I don't know yet. If the current situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is anything to go by, one can be sure that the art creating a global mess out of regional conflicts continues to be a US speciality.

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LINKS & REFERENCES

Obama, Barack (2019): A Promised Land - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55361205-a-promised-land

Seeking Solace in Music

The past two weeks have quite harrowing for many of us. The news of neighbours, friends and acquaintances losing their fight against the novel corona virus, aggravated by a certain feeling of helplessness that comes from not being in a position to offer real help.  

It has also been a time to reconsider so many things that we take for granted. The freedom to travel and move around; the joys of camaraderie, of meeting family and friends; the mundane act of sharing a meal, of taking a deep breath. 

At a time when thousands of people are stricken with the mutated Covid-19 virus in India, desperately looking for oxygen cylinders and ventilators, the very act of painless, unhindered breathing seems like something we should savour and relish with gratitude.

Ever since the lockdowns began, I had resolved to make a habit of playing the bansuri, at least once a day. This was easier said than done because, for one thing, it has been ages since I stopped learning at the Gandharva Maha Vidyalaya, and except for occasionally picking up the bansuri to practice a familiar tune, my hands had all but lost the tactile memory of the bansuri - its weight and balance, the position of the supporting fingers, the feel of warm breath being released through the instrument as music fills the air. 

It took me a while to get back into the groove. Initially sitting still with a straight back seemed as difficult as breath control. Then there was the difficulty of scales - while my fingers could easily get around the smaller C-bansuri they just could not get a grip on the longer, heavier\ base F-bansuri. The only way forward was to get familiar with simple compositions on the C-scale before trying out more complicated ragas and compositions. 

YouTube has been a big help with its numerous channels that display the talents of accomplished musicians. Many of these cater to folks trying to play the Harmonium or the Carnatic flute, but here are some that I found particularly helpful, and can be easily adapted for the Hindustani bansuri :

* Bhooma Parthasarathi : "Thumbi Va" - https://youtu.be/29J2GZ51DvM and "Kani kaanum neram" - https://youtu.be/q0-AlGyP41s

* Musician66 :  "Zindagi kaisi he paheli.." -  https://youtu.be/gu5JYiCm3tA

* Sargam Zone:   "He Ram, he Ram.." (Jagjit Singh) - https://youtu.be/wEovN0wE8jY; "Ye raatein, ye mausam" - https://youtu.be/FdTVIZsAFHk

Now, as we enter the second round of lockdowns to cope with the "Second Wave" of Covid-19, I have been trying to build my riaz into a regular routine by focusing on two ragas - one for the pre-dawn early morning (Raga Bhairav) using the base bansuri (F scale), and one for the evening (Raga Yaman Kalyan) on a regular C. 

The morning sessions have been especially magical. Sitting on a yoga mat on the terrace facing the east, even the simple aaroh and avroh of raga Bhairav seem to be in sync with the meditative calm of early morning with its the cool breeze, flocks of birds flying high overhead, squirrels scampering about, and the gradual filling out of light in the skies. 

It takes about eight deep breaths for the sun to transform from a sliver of light to a bright orange orb breaking free into the skies. Once the sun rises over a certain level some musical notes - especially the komal Dhaivat and komal Rishabh seem out of place, as though the right moment has passed, the mood has changed. 

It is then time to set aside the bansuri and  Raga Bhairav, to cope with the world of Covid-19 once again, and all the surprises that the rest of the day will surely bring in...

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* https://swarajyamag.com/culture/the-bhairav-thaat-unexplored-ragas-associated-with-raga-bhairav

* https://swarajyamag.com/culture/the-atypical-bhairav-exploring-the-evolved-ragas-from-the-family

* Music and Emotion - a Case for North Indian Classical Music (2017) - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02115/full  

Breathless

 Yesterday was a day of desperate messages on our neighbourhood e-group:

13:50: "Does anybody know where oxygen cylinders can be purchased right now? "

19:02: "Mr. B needs a ventilator immediately...his hospital does not have one to spare.."

01:14: "Very, very sorry to inform you that Mr. B is no more..."

The same tragic sequence of events is being played out in thousands of places across the country now. As the "Second Wave" of Covid-19 infections sweeps across India a major crisis of medical supply-chain inefficiencies has hit India. There has been such a sharp spike in Covid cases that 54.5% of patients during second wave required supplemental oxygen during treatment - a 13.4% increase from the peak during September and November 2020.

The irony of the situation is that there is no shortage of O2 production in the country - India has a total production capacity of more than 100,000 tons/day (7,100 tpd of medical O2 as per HT), of which over 80% goes for steel-making. According to HL Meghnani, an industry veteran, industrial O2 has to be 99.5% pure while medical O2 needs to be only 93% pure, and less than 1% of O2 produced is used for medical purposes. Yet the scale of crisis currently unfolding is mind-boggling.

India's clinical management protocol recommends oxygen therapy as the primary form of treatment: the target is to achieve 92-96% SpO2, or 88-92% in patients with COPD. While proportion of those requiring oxygen beds is still hovering around under 10%, this number is at an all time high with India's active caseload crossing 26 lakh (2.6 million). The demand for medical oxygen has increased by 18% over the last 6 days across 12 states which account for 83% of India's active cases.

Where did we go wrong? What will it take to bring this situation under control? 

One of the points made by Meghnani brings out the nature of the complexities involved rather nicely - "The current crisis arises because of a shortage of road tankers, storage tanks and cylinders... each tanker costs INR 4.5 million and a cylinder costs INR 10,000 in which you sell O2 worth just INR 300" (!) Add to this the location of the O2 plants -  mostly in Western  and Eastern India -  and the decision taken by major hospitals to outsource O2 supply instead of having captive plants, and you begin to understand why the supply-chains collapsed last week.

We are now in the process of rushing in extra cryogenic O2 tankers from abroad, and penalising those who have been profiteering during this crisis by hoarding O2, and driving up the prices.

What remains unclear is a more granular picture of O2 demand and consumption in our hospitals. How many O2 tankers are needed every day to service all the hospitals in our cities and towns? Can some of the shortage be handled by portable O2 concentrators? 

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* 28Apr21 - Gurumurthy S, New Indian Express - Missing Facts, Misdirected Course - https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/why-india-is-facing-an-oxygen-crisis-as-covid-19-cases-mount-101619268862048.html

* 25Apr21 IEexplained - What changed in the second wave? - https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-whats-changed-in-second-wave-7289002/

* 25Apr21 IESunday - Falling Short O2 - https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/nirmala-sitharaman-economic-package-migrant-workers-one-nation-one-ration-card-coronavirus-6410303/

* 24Apr21 - HT - Why India is facing an oxygen crisis - https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/why-india-is-facing-an-oxygen-crisis-as-covid-19-cases-mount-101619268862048.html

Life in the Altiplanos

 

This is a book unlike any I have read so far - simple, direct, brutal. 

It lends voice to many who were never heard before - the vanquished, the defeated, enslaved, and colonised; those who try to articulate themselves in the languages of their conquerors. The author won the Nobel Peace Prize of 1992, and being unlettered, dictated her life's story to Elizabeth Burgos who, in turn, edited and transcribed it as a first person account.

The book narrates a type of exploitation that has many facets, many layers. You can see within it glimpses of the caste system that was the hallmark of India's social structure for centuries,  the maoist movement which plagues parts of eastern-central India, all the way to the way we engage with our own domestic servants everyday.

Rigoberta Menchú is a Mayan from el Quiché province of Guatemala. When the Spanish conquered and colonised the Mayans a few centuries ago, hers is one of the numerous communities that were driven into the remote forests - the altiplanos. Descendants of the conquistadors now come in the form of white  or ladino landlords who try to push them off their land, further and further into the forests. 

Life is tough, food is scarce. So entire families end up as migrant labourers, working in the finca's along the coast, plucking coffee, harvesting sugarcane. Young girls are forced to work as servants in the cities, getting paid a pittance, being treated worse than dogs, and getting fired for refusing to 'initiate' their master's son's into sex... many end up as prostitutes. Those trying to seek justice are hounded, tortured and killed. Judges are bribed to ensure that protesters rot in jail. 

While reading Rigoberta's account you wonder how many millions more have suffered such horrors and privations. One of her brother's died of starvation, another was publicly tortured and burnt alive; her father was among the 38 who were burned to death during peasant uprising of 1980 and the consequent  burning of the Spanish embassy in Guatemala city. 

I saw in Rigoberta's stories the face of ShimaPolayan. A short, dark, muscular man who used to stay on my grandfather's land with his family, and labour in the paddy fields and estates. Perhaps his ancestors owned the area before it was forcibly taken over by newcomers who perhaps saw themselves as more civilised and entitled. Over the centuries, these people lost the confidence to fend for themselves and instead ended up at the bottom of the social pyramid, living in huts with their families and serving the 'upper castes' all their lives. 

ShimaPolayan lived in Southern Kerala and died maybe forty years ago, but during his lifetime he saw his children growing up in a more equitable world - going to school, learning the power of voting rights, and discovering that there was a better world beyond the endless toil in paddy fields.

Perhaps during his lifetime he realised that those whom he served were also slaves of a colonial power. That they may have spoken English with the correct accent, fought their master's bloody wars in lands far afield as Mesopotamia and the Flanders, and had conditioned themselves to believe that they were inferior to the white man.

The old pecking order of white-man, brown-man and black-man began crumbing after India became independent. Thanks to high literacy and democratic norms the ShimaPolayan's of the Kerala disappeared decades ago. 

On the opposite site of the world in South America the struggle still continues. How many more will it be before Rigoberta's people get back their land, and rebuild their communities?

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigoberta_Mench%C3%BA 

* I, Rigoberta Menchu - Nobel laureate, 1992 - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1992/tum/facts/

R-Value and it's Covid Travails

SARS-Cov-2 aka Covid-19, the virus behind the current pandemic continues to be a nightmare for everybody - especially for statisticians. 

It was bad enough to have the Chinese obfuscating the truth about the original 'Wuhan virus' last year, but now we have a range of mutants (and double-mutants) that seem to be spreading in ways that are difficult to predict. This is is making the work of those who prepare statistical models much more difficult, and this in turn is affecting the quality of decisions being taken by policymakers.

Take for instance, the reproductive-value or R-Value for Covid-19. R is the number of people that one infected person will pass on a virus. 

The lowest possible R-Value is R-naught or R0. Also referred to as the Basic Reproduction Number, it is the R-value of a population that is assumed to have zero immunity against a new infection. R0 is the division of the number of new infections by the number of existing infections, or the average number of new infections over an infectious period (R0= new infections/existing infections).

Measles has an R number of 15 in populations without immunity. It means that, on average, every 10 people with Measles will infect 15 other people. For Covid-19, the latest R-value estimate for India, is around 1.30. This number is showing wide variations across states with Uttar Pradesh recording the highest infection value at 1.62, followed by Andhra Pradesh at 1.61.

The problem with the R-Value is that it gives us a picture of the past - by the time you calculate it, the number is already outdated. This is because it is based on data recorded on hospitalisations and death figures to get a sense of how many people have the virus – but the problem with this is that, since the virus’s incubation period is so long, it only gives an accurate picture of a few weeks ago.

Add to this the complications coming from recent mutations of the virus in different parts of the world, each with its own incubation period - the "UK" B.1.1.7; the "South Africa" B.1.351; "Brazil" P1, "India" variants B.1.36 (Bangalore) / B.1.1.7 (Punjab) and B.1.617 which contains two specific mutations - E484Q and L452R which is capable of 'immune escape', and infecting those who have already been vaccinated. 

Add to all this other newer emerging variants of concern (VoCs) and we have all ingredients for a statisticians' perfect nightmare. 

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52473523

* https://theprint.in/health/indias-covid-r-value-increases-to-1-30-this-week-the-highest-since-april-2020/633783/

* https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/covid-19-what-is-the-r-number/

* https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101713/india-covid-19-cases-by-type/

* R0 Explained - https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/coronavirus-r0-reproduction-number-explained-6354339/

Across the Waters

 The Suez was in the news last month. A single, massive ship passing through the canal got blown by the winds and ended up getting wedged across the canal, blocking traffic for a week. During this period it effectively blocked the passage of about 400 ships and prevented an estimated USD 9.6 billion worth of trade!

How did we end up getting so completely dependent on the Suez and Panama canals? What is it that drives us to make bigger and bigger ships that need wider, deeper shipping docks and canals that cut across continents? The simple and obvious answer is global trade, and the economy of scales that drive it. If simple answers do not satisfy you, the book you need to read is David Abulafia's "The Boundless Sea".

This book is a serious piece of work - over 800 pages of which nearly half is references and citations! And yet, it is eminently readable, especially in the e-book format where the act of picking up a book of this size does not remind you of visits to the gym :)

The book covers a wide canvas. Starting from the oldest records of those who ventured out to explore the seas and oceans, all the way to the obsessive search for trading opportunities and power-play between countries that marks our relations with the not-so-boundless seas today.

I particularly enjoyed reading the sections on Polynesian navigators and explorers, trade during the Harappan period; the spread of Buddhism by sea; the Cholas, and the spread of Omanis deep into southern coasts of Africa. Towards the end, details of the arrival of the Europeans on the scene, and their depredations in Africa, the Americas and Asia makes for depressing reading. 

At the end one has to admit that if it were not for the bloody competition between the European powers that completely transformed the world through slave-trading and migrations, the world would have been a completely different place. 

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* 2021 Suez Obstruction - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Suez_Canal_obstruction

* 

Covid Shielded

The lady who helps us with the housework is from a remote coastal village in West Bengal. Yesterday she got a call from her parents and the news was that they were both suffering from fever. A few thousand kilometres away, near the capital city, we too were afflicted by the same symptoms - the expected after-effects of a vaccination national drive against Covid-19. 

We were among the four million+ people who got vaccinated in India today. While the fever and the dull pain of an intramuscular injection abates, it is quite amazing to think of superlative effort that has gone into creating, testing and delivering these vaccines all over the world.

The vaccination program started its rollout in India couple of months ago. First for those over 65 years of age, and for those who were vulnerable due to 'co-morbidities'. At first people were wary, and senior citizens had to be coaxed and cajoled to the vaccination centres. This changed on 1 April 2021 when the government decided to expand the coverage to those over 45 years of age.

The sheer scale of this effort does not hit you until you participate in it. It is a four step process is driven by information technology in which each dose can be traced back to a specific vial at a specific vaccination centre:

(1) Registration at CoWIN site - a single phone can be used to make four bookings at either government 

(2) Selecting a vaccination centre - Based on your postal PIN code you can opt for either the nearest government centres (free of charge) or private hospitals / clinics (fixed at INR 250) 

(3) Vaccination - At the hospitals a queuing system ensures that people maintain social distance. Each vaccine station has three staff  - two for writing out the registration details, one  for preparing the vaccination card, one for checking the CoWIN id, uploading the confirmations online, and a nurse who administers the vaccine. The whole process takes about 8 minutes. After the jabs people are expected to wait for 30 minutes of observation before returning home. 

(4) Certificate - within a few minutes of getting vaccinated an SMS message leads you to an online certificate (PDF) which can be used as proof while travelling.

(4) Follow-up - each vaccinated person is given a card which specifies the vaccine type (Covidshield / Covaxin), the date for the second dose (min. 28 days), emergency helpline numbers and a list of five possible after effects (mild fever, pain and swelling, etc.,)

One thing I have learnt along the way is that the government machinery seems to be far more efficient than the private sector. In my immediate neighbourhood all the hospitals were booked until 14 April, so I expanded the generic Noida PIN code and booked two slots on 1 April at Metro Hospital from a list of about 10 hospitals. 

However my experience at Metro Hospital left me quite disappointed. It is a large hospital in Sector-11 Noida. When I found my way to the entrance the staff seemed paralysed by chaos - there were over a 100 angry, impatient people already crowding inside, with the guards telling the newcomers that they would need to wait for three hours!

I went back to the CoWIN site and got my appointment rescheduled to the  next day at the District Combined Hospital, a government facility in Sector 30. Over here the whole process was a breeze. There was ample parking outside; masks, hand sanitisers and social distancing was compulsory; tokens were being distributed at the main gate and security guards were systematically guiding people through waiting halls while giving priority to the elderly and infirm.

Millions of tiny vials from Oxford-AstraZeneca / Serum Institute of India, Sputnik and J&J have now set out to deal with a virus from China that had the world paralysed for more than a year. Hope is in the air, and in our blood streams.

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LINKS & REFERENCES:

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/covid19-vaccination-over-36-lakh-people-get-the-jab-on-april-1-the-highest-so-far-11617335903675.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55748124 - Covishield and Covaxin: What we know about India's Covid-19 vaccines

On the remarkable role being played by Co-WIN and its developers (19 April 2020, Indian Express) - https://indianexpress.com/article/india/co-win-platform-coromnavirus-vaccine-india-modi-govt-7279432/