Five distinctive characteristics of Mumbai !

 

1. Psst, psst, ……. Love it or hate it, this is the first difference of this city with your known domain ( that is, if you are not a Mumbaikar ) you notice. Actually, in whatever station you get down, you will be bombarded with ‘psst, psst’s ! And, mind it, this habit ( or bad-habit, whatever ) is not at all limited in the so-called lower-middle class or ‘informal’ circle. Was quite surprised while starting to heat a sample with the selivanoff reagent in our biochem test when our Biology camp coordinator, Rekha Vartak ( see Mumbai …… the OCSC experience ! ) called, “ Psst, psst, do you remember how many times are you supposed to heat it ?” !!

( Actually, I remember this long name ‘selivanoff’ only because of this incident and of the fact that it gave an attractive cherry-red coloration on heating with, … er, … probably ribose sugar. )

1. Long live juices and sherbets of Mumbai. They are tasty, they come in varieties, they are cheap, they are great when you are thirsty …… what else? oh yes, the ‘uniquely Mumbai’ juice booths are not found back home here in Bengal or Kolkata, that’s what ‘maketh’ them so special.
2. Why on earth do people root for something like ‘pav-bhaji’ is inexplicable to me. Only a round donut-size pav, glossily fried in oil, and a matar-type bhaaji, or rather curry-ish thing ( often carried over from yesterday ), and two-three sprigs of onion. Sheesh ! You’d get a full masala dosa for the price, which is a whole lot better.
3. Yes, a good thing about Mumbai is its bus-services. Hard to find a fault. Well-organized, well-disciplined, prompt. Especially when you regularly ply on buses in a certain city named Kolkata, it is literally like heaven!
4. Again, I don’t know to love it or hate it. I am talking about the unimaginable key-time rush in the suburban trains. It still gives me goose-bumps. True, the trains are damn punctual, but then, the compartments are filled even when then train comes to halt on the platform. And you have to get on, stay inside, and most importantly, get off the train by very ‘professional’ ( I mean, done with great expertise like you’ve been doing this for long! ) maneuvers.

P.S. Didn’t find a good enough title. Any suggestions are welcome!

A year which didn’t seem that long

Dard mein bhi yeh lab muskuraa jaate hai
Beete lamhein hamein jab bhi yaad aate hai ……

Hmm,…… true, just another year added to my life, but this one will of course be very special. 2007 has been quite off-beat and I did enjoy it.

SPECIAL BECAUSE …

1. Only thrice in my life I have been genuinely very happy and content, and 2007 gave me two of them. Once in March, when I got the news of my selection for the Bio-olympiad camp, and another in June ( 29th to be precise ), when learnt of my selection in ISI. Both are special because they were long-cherished dreams come true. I was fed up with the gimmicky lab-works in school, and the bio-camp will be memorable for the vital hardcore lab-exposures I was badly yearning for, AND the camaraderie there. The rest of the year has been pretty drab in terms of labs, in fact I guess this is the only sacrifice I had to make by opting out of medical even after allotment in counseling. But the next yr for sure is going to make up for all this, yes. In fact, at the end of the year I may end up better off than the 2nd yr college counterparts!Well, what can I tell about the enormity of selection in ISI? It is literally future-defining. My first love has always been maths, and I badly wanted to be here. Yet, only due to lack of practice, the orientation was slipping away from me all the time, from end-11th. True I finished the maths syllabus by June last yr, but after that I left doing maths altogether, barring a few special ISI-types, …… and, the grades suffered. I couldn’t even qualify the regional math Olympiad in 12th, which I did in 11th! Though I recovered completely, my future with maths was very much depending on this very result, because not getting in ISI means going on to study medical, where it is an unknown territory. But after getting in ISI I can still can go on with bio, my second love, maybe not here, but elsewhere. And above all, this institute is a totally different ball-game. After all, some try and try and try to be the best, some are born to be ISI-ans.

2. I am someone who very much likes to sit for exams. But 2007 has managed to exhaust even me. Erm, …… appearing in 40 exams and 4 interviews doesn’t seem less, eh? ( Not to mention the ‘countably infinite’ mock tests! ) April holds the ‘most in one month’ record, 11 exams! It looked like this …
April 1st – CBSE PMT prelims,
April 2nd – Biology practical board exam,
April 3rd – Physics practical board exam,
April 4th – Chemistry practical board exam,
April 11th – Maths board exam,
April 16th – Environmental Studies board exam,
April 18th – Bengali board exam,
April 22nd – WB Joint ent. ( 3 papers of 2 hrs each ),
April 29th – AIEEE ( All-India Engg. Ent. ).

3. I started blogging. Now I am a competent programmer. My FM radio adapter was repeatedly ‘getting ill’ last yr, so had to spend a very boring new-music-less 6 months or so, but now, thanks to the net facilities in our institute, I am growing my collection.

A FEW GOOD MEN …( Of course not in any order )

Those I would be leaving behind ……

1. My maths teacher, Tapas Sir ( Or rather, Tapasbabu, the Bengali way! ). An enormous source of inspiration and positivity. He kept faith in me, when even I was losing faith on myself.

2. My chemistry teacher, Samirbabu, the ‘headsir’ of our school. An encyclopedia, a genius of good-old type chemistry, though maybe tad weak on the MCQ front ( for muggles, MCQ means multiple choice questions, favorite in India for competitive exams ).

3. My bio teacher, Abhjitbabu. I’d call him the human face of biology. Not flawless, but more importantly, a person to quickly concede any error if pointed, he taught the subject with a certain passion, and curious nuggets of information.

4. P.G.Kale, a professor at the bio camp. An endearing fellow to all of us there. His heartfelt cordiality impressed me.

Those I would be going with ……

5. B.V.Rao – Our probability teacher in ISI. Well, he’d top this list. You can’t dislike anything about this short, elderly person. A world-famous probabilist and measure-theorist, he’s literally a man with no enemies, a perfect gentleman, a great teacher, and above all, very close to the students. He’d be in the ‘a few good men’ list of each and every ISI-an, I can bet.

6. Saurabh Ghosh – Our young, short and chubby Statistics teacher, dear ‘sau-daa’ of us all. Again someone close to students, yet very professional and straightforward in academic matters.

ON PERSONAL FRONT …

I have grown up.

Holidays, … oh so good !

Well, ……. The holidays are going on quite well. Just 10 days since the exam and enjoying to the hilt. At home, going nowhere. Most seniors have gone to Goa on a trip organized by the institute, but we first yr ‘bachche’ are not ‘allowed’ to go!

What more can I say generally ? So the special cases ……

1. Books, books and books,……Visiting ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ for the second time. More significantly maybe , starting on Sidney Sheldon. ‘The Doomsday Conspiracy’ was marvelous to me. Commander Robert Bellamy is better than the over-the-top James Bonds. And the message is also profound and significant, I must agree. ‘The stars shine down’ didn’t seem that good. Now I have ALL the Asterix and Tintin comics in e-book form, so fun unlimited ! And many bengali books ( and e-books ) are waiting to be read. So, you can understand how busy I am nowadays !
2. Here’s the new kid on my block, — the EA Sports Cricket07 game! I have an addiction (seriously) to this type of computer games. You can consider me an authority about FIFA 2002. And the cricket game is equally rocking. At least two things are satisfying till now for me here. One, Ranadeb Bose is playing for India (His exclusion from the team despite sterling performances was hurting me and many, so I ‘created’ him!), and two, India is leading 2-1 in the test series down under!
3. Lots of movies and music …… of all kinds. Right now listening Hindi songs by some ‘Strings’. I like their ‘Door’, ‘Sohniye’, ‘Mere Bichhre’ and ‘Mitti’.

AND, coming up, ……

1. I have a hundred percent success record in interviews, and this will be my third interview in one month, … 20^th Dec, the KVPY one (see Fill your mind with thoughts, not facts ……). And there is the big one waiting, maybe the longest test in the world ( just joking ), the jumbo 30-hr ‘Scientific Creativity Test’, the last level of Senior JBNSTS, on 5-6 Jan. And the second sem starts on 7^th.

In the pipeline : Beete Lamhein …

Homeopathy, …… we’re still not there

Surely I am not taking sides.

Just as ‘once upon a time Biology was termed ‘voodoo science’, now this branch of the so called larger group ‘alternative medicine’ is branded pseudoscience, thanks to some stubborn docs and equally, perhaps more, stubborn medicine-giants.

Of course the underlying basics of homeopathy are somewhat ‘holistic’. To the current level of intellect that we humans have acquired, we can’t find out how on world can perpetual dilution and more and more shakes make the medicine more stronger, especially when the basic ingredient is often a harmful thing. And more importantly, at such dilutions in a given amount of the medicine the probability of finding even one molecule of the base is practically zero. The famous Lancet study has even bravely by experiment dismissed the whole great saga of homeopathy as a mere ‘placebo effect’ gimmick. But then, that disapproval is also not universal.

You can’t disprove it yet. We all know homeopathy cures, sometimes, if not often, even better than the conventional ‘Allopathy’. You won’t say the good old ‘Arnica’ doesn’t reduce pain. The concept has since Hahnemann gained a large amount of trust-base, surely it is not totally standing upon fluke and eyewash, that isn’t a stable ESS ( Evolutionary Stable Strategy, ala Selfish Gene, thanks to Richard Dawkins and John Maynard Smith). It doesn’t even violate our scientific notion, it challenges. We are still in our toddler stages when we talk about the minuscule world, the world of atoms. The domain of electromagnetic (broadly) ‘interactions’ remain vast and unconquered before us. Our science doesn’t have a concrete, that is, provable base. Lots of peer-reviewed studies have proved efficacy of this branch of medicine, and though debated, sometimes of infinitely diluted solutions.

Docs are supposed to be nice to patients, and most homeopaths know it very well that the psychological factors of an ‘I care’ attitude can do a whole lot of good to the patient as well. Although overstretching of this is never supported. And then, the ideas of ‘paper remedy’ (“Write the remedy and potency on a piece of paper and place the paper on the left hand side of the body with the writing towards the body.”) ^[is nothing but a placebo, and thunderstorm or Berlin wall supposed to be related to homeopathic medicine, are damn ridiculous. This is of course unacceptable.

Secular country, eh ?

She really could not bear any more. Taslima Nasreen had no other option but to do the ‘about-turn’ ( as the media is terming it ). The government’s attitude is shameless. The defence minister even reacts ‘ it’s good ‘ ! They why call India a secular country ? The gov is only hell-bent upon to solidify its ground for the next election, and for that they are ready to compromise to every extent. All this started because, …… before everyone, the west bengal gov compromised and banned Taslima’s ‘Dwikhondito’, which was creating such furore. That was shameless. Religion, whatever that may be, should never get priority over greater values, like artistic freedom. As long as it is not derogatory to the country, or does not violate common rationale, why stop it ?

And to those who are behind all this. Are your religious values so fragile that you have to be on your wits to detect any do-called ‘derogatory remarks’ and pounce upon it ?

Recovering

At last, a good exam, and that’s also in the most unpredictable subject here, the great ANALYSIS. Got the fundas pretty okay, and although couldn’t do the buffer Q, am more or less clear about the answers I wrote. Sure this is one of my pet subjects, bu, you never cant really bank upon Analysis to get good marks. The midsem paper was damn easy, but when got the ans. script back, I only didn’t tear off hairs from my head ! So, not sure till I get to know the marks.

One more, my pet-est, probability. Especially, when someone like the great B.V.Rao teaches, you just can’t hate the subject ! I wish he would’ve taught us analysis also ( of courser it’s a wild wish ).