Newsletter of Research Scholars

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() Indian Institute of Technology Madras -

02/ ReNews

Disdaimer

Ajey N M. S Scholar

Mechanical Engg.

The views represented in ReNews in the reader contributed artides may not nec­essarily represent the views held by the ReNews team. The research scholars solely are responsible for their views.

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Editorial 03

Dean's Message 04

Awards & Honours 05

Letter from Readers 05

RAS Desk 06

Correspondent's Corner 07

Fet:s hike, students' protest qnd back to work

Events

Workshop on 'Python for Scientific Computing' PopSciCie Meeting

Columns Reading Between Lines Alice Wonqers : "'Who mat/e the !AFI" Experiences fi.om Exchange Evolution of a Scholar Ek Aur 1<4hani

Readers Articles

Are We Really Developing? Ant/ the Journey Goes On .... intelligent 5ansktit These Bqbies Sell Themselves

- ~~~ unamvention~l oomuni~tion 4pproqch

My Experiena:s The Lost Music Luxury of Equtpments ant/ Experiments- c/o we deseNe ttl

La vida es Bella The Encagecl Soul The Zero Gtavfty WorM The Calm Befote the Storm Painting

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ReNews /03

Editorial

VaNaKkam from the new editors.

We feel privileged to release this issue of ReNews with our names on top of the editorial board. The ex-editors have brought this newsletter a long way since its inception in April 2012. A huge round of applause to them for their efforts and dedication towards this idea which has grown to such stature today. We would also like to thank the readers for showing their interest through regular contribu­tion.

The present issue is a cumulative response to all the impact it had on the Re­Public of IITM. It fills us with great joy to have such an overwhelming welcome. The Dean(AR) has consented for an article addressing the scholars and we would like to keep this coming as frequently as possible. A number of new col­umns have been introduced: "Evolution of a Scholar" brings us words from our alumni and seniors. Through these words, they revisit their days at liT -Madras, and share with us the good times, bad times, and lessons learnt. "Alice Won­ders" explores where curiosity can take us. Sometimes we get answers, some­times we do not. But through our search, we always learn something. "Reading between lines" gazes into books of all kinds: from classics to best-sellers, that we have read or would like to read. "Experience from Exchange" is a platform to share the incidents while on a trip to some foreign university.

A detailed description of the various teams is presented by RAS. Two events of June have been covered.

The news of Uttarakhand flash floods brought a moment of national grief. We extend our deep condolence to the affected people. The beauty of those mountains has been revealed in a pictographic article.

As Greg Anderson has said "Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it", we also would like you to be a part of this wonderful journey and enjoy it to the fullest.

We love feedback. You can send us all your words at renews@smail.iitm.ac.in.

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Please mention "Feedback" in the subject. We are on Facebook too! https:f /w- ( ww. facebook. com/ReNewsiiTM

r;~ Ranjan Piyush

1lf<,_pu..;_ 99Jf( Malini Rajan

~new academic year is ready to set in. Although for research scholars every day is a part of research activity without long breaks, this is definitely the time to welcome new research scholars to the

Institute. The research community at ITT Madras is changing fast both in number and character. While there is steady increase in the number of research scholars opting for Ph.D/M.S, the number of avenues

through which the student can take up challenge of research has also been increased significantly in recent times. Following the report of liT Madras Graduate Research Task Force and the recommenda­tion of the Kakodkar Committee, new initiatives such as enhancing the direct Ph.D programme, inviting

GATE toppers for Ph.D, enabling the M.Tech students to convert for Dual Degree (M.Tech and Ph.D) are some of the avenues introduced to reinforce the research community. To make these initiatives suc­

cessful liT Madras for the first time has conducted OutReach programme at 5 cities where the research ambience and initiatives of liT Madras was presented by a stream of experienced faculty members to

the prospective applicants. This has resulted in increased interest in ITT Madras research programmes, evident from the number and the quality of applicants this time. As a result the research admission

offers sent this time is considerably higher compared to last year.

Another unique initiative was the inter-disciplinary Ph.D/M.S, where offers has been sent to the candi­

dates interested in truly cross-department research work. The above initiatives will not only increase

the strengthen the already strong research community at liT Madras which at this point is about 1/3 of the student population, but this will change complexion and character of the research community as

well. With more number of younger direct Ph.D candidates who will also take more number of higher level courses, definitely the research culture is expected to change at liT Madras. This year the number of Ph.D degree to be awarded at 5Qth Convocation has increased 10% over last year. All the above facts

indicates a substantial change in the eco system of research at liT Madras.

ITT Madras for the first time has conducted a Special Senate Meeting only to consider the issues related

to research scholars and accepted among other the charter of rights and responsibilities of the research scholars. I think it' s the first ITT to do so. We have also addressed a number of issues in which there­

search progress and evaluation procedures have been changed, such as making the DC meetings more event based than time based, allowing a mix of Indian and Foreign examiners without making foreign

examiner mandatory and making Ph.D Seminar evaluation by DC members. I hope that the above ini­tiatives will have positive effect on the research ambience of ITT Madras and will open up route for fur­

ther reforms to see ITT Madras at the top of research performance in the country.

Dear friends, while it is your desire and our duty to confer you research degree, research is far from just

getting a degree. It is to develop the excitement and passion for a lifelong engagement. I hope through our combined efforts we will be able to elevate research at liT Madras to a level which all of us will be proud to be part of.

Best wishes for your research.

Prof. Sarit K. Das Dean, Academic Research

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1. Mr. Suyog Sawa la (CH09B084), Dept. of Chemica l Engg. has won the Best Project Award under the Mechanical Division for his robust method for feature extraction of applications in colloidal science and biology. He has been guided by Dr. Basavaraja Gurappa, Dept. of Chemical Engg. and Dr. Sridharakumar Narasimhan, Dept. of Mechanical Engg.

2. The team comprising Mukul Mohan (EE08B043), Dept. of Electrical Engg and M. V. Jairaj (ME08B024), Dept. of Mechanical Engg .have won the Best Project Award under Electrical Division and the overall Best Project Award for the development of low vision telescope. Ms. Sailaja, Shankar Nethralaya and Syed Sufiyan (EE10B041) have also worked on this project. They have been guided by Dr. Sujatha Srinivasan, Dept. of Mechanica l Engg, Dr. Shanti Bhattacharya and Dr. Nitin Chandrachoodan, Dept. of Electrical Eng g.

3. Dr. Rajiv Sharma, Dept. of Ocean Engg. has been appointed as a Guest Editor for a special issue on ~dvances in Computer Applications for Ship Design and Production' of the Int. Journal entitled 'Journal of Marine Science and Application' (JMSA).

4. Vaibhav P. Singh, Dept. of Electrical Engg. (EE11S070) has won the Best Paper Presentation Award for his paper entitled 'A Time Synchronized Wireless Sensor Tree Network using SimpliciTI' at the Int. Conference on Wireless and Optica l Communications held during June 8-9, 2013 at Kaula Lumpur.

5. Our alumnus Ravi Kumar, has been appointed dean of the Nanyang Business School (NBS) in Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

6. The recent paper "Motion of drops on inclined surfaces in the inertial regime" co-authored by Assoc Professor Dr. Baburaj, Dept. of Applied

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Mechanics, IITM has been selected to feature in 'Focus on Fluids' section in Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

7. Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala, IITM is this year's recipient of the prestigious AV Rama Rao tech­no logy award.

8. Our senior alumnus H.R.Mohan (1976-BTME) who is currently Associate Vice President -Systems at "The Hindu" has been elected as Vice President cum President Elect of the Computer Society of India (CSI) for the year 2013-14.

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The main events were formation of teams. All the teams have names now! The teams are, (1) ReCruitment Cell, (2) ReTex, (3) ReBranch, (4) ReConnect. (5) ReGCell, (6) ReTune, (7) RePlay, (8) ReNews, (9) ReWeb. I believe the role of each team is evident from their 1ames.

S We now have branch councilors from k all the departments! We are trying to

strengthen each team and all the teams are slowly starting to pick up by organizing small events. We are reaching out to all the departments

faster with the branch councilors now. They need to have a session with the students of each department at the earliest to introduce them to their respective departments and to become their "representative".

ReTex is organizing ReFresh, a freshie orien­tation which will also have ice breaker events from ReTune team. This will span over three days 29/07/2013, 30/07/2013 and 01/08/2013, with a mix of both technical and non-technical events. This will be announced at the earliest.

RePlay is starting Research Premier leagues, which will start with cricket (obviously!) and move on to other sports.

ReTune is organizing a cultural nite, called Reload on 06/07/2013, 6 pm, ClT.

The members and contact details of all the teams will be passed to the Dean (St) office and to all the students through researchportal.iitm.ac.in.

There is a proposal to have a research article by one of the scholars in the home page of research portal. which will be tried out. ReWeb team is actively involved in trying to provide us with a very much user friendly and wonderful research portal at the earliest. ReConnect team is trying to increase the contacts of all the PG alumni through FB,

gmail and phone numbers. The next step that they have planned is to increase the connectivity of these alumni with the insti­tute, thereby benefitting both the parties.

ReCruitment Cell has got the list of all schol­ars who are sitting for placements this time, and has formed a google group to commu­nicate the news regarding placements. The team is trying to get co-ords from all the de­partments who will be allotted a group of students working in that area.

The new ReNews team has taken up from the oldies!, and this edition is coming from the new ReNews team. Hoping to see the new vi­brant team taking the ReNews to the next level!

There was the python workshop which was introduced by Guru Venkat, PhD scholar from EE department on 05/06/2013, in ClT. The participation and interaction from the students was very good and the students have asked for more such sessions in ad­vanced topics.

The doubts of regular and QIP scholars re­garding housing allotment is clarified and a policy is made which was circulated to all the scholars. Few more clarifications were sought from Dean (Admin), Prof. Sriram, who assured that if there is any disrepancy found regarding the usage of allotted quarters, strict action will be taken.

The 115th BoAR meeting was held to discuss the Rights and Responsibilities of the re­search scholar. Even though there was some skepticsm among few professors regarding the list of rights and responsibilities of re­search scholar, Dean (AR), Prof. Sarit Kumar Das cleared all the doubts. This was passed by the BoAR committee and will be passed on to the Senate meeting for its consider­ation. The minutes and details of the meet­ing was shared with everybody in an effort to increase transparency of all the decision

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making processes.

Few other complaints were obtained from the research scholars regarding basic ameni­ties in the department and library, which is passed on to the respective authorities and is being tracked.

The proposals which was published in the last edition of ReNews was put before Dean (AR) and he promised emails will be send to all the faculty to make the process of guide allocation transparent to research scholars and he also mentioned that research schol­ars will have a say on the area of research that they want to work. Right to placement for deserving candidates was proposed, but he said that nobody can ensure placement

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Fees hike, students' and

back to work I :t.ta~~~

Like a saint who merel)~itnesses the work- ....... ..,..~ ing of the world surrounRing him, I tried to ""lilt!il~~ de~elop isolation from emotions and look at the whole issue of fees' hike as a spectator. ""~--'"""""

The article is based on the 11eports, articles, Bll=ta students' views and other people who •av<lii'~~

voiced their opinion either in open forum or ~~ in social media. Before venturing into the Ill~~

topic, let us travel back a few years anctthen ll!ltJ.~~ C(i)me back to the p·resent. I

Fees revisions in ~ecent past

No doubt it will be poor idea to compare cost of living a decade ago with the present. II"JPI;Jio~~

Our parents paid a pittance as college fees ~o:~O&Y~~

and graduated. Still the best point to start •1.~;;"-.'1='

for a particular person how much ever good a person might be. He asked the placement team members to increase the directory of contacts through alumni (which is under­taken by the ReConnect team) and other sources.

Vijay Diwas is on the pipe line, to be sched­uled on 26 July, 2013, with a list of events and participation of a promising list of army men! There is also an attempt to increase collabo­ration with Airport Authority of India, and hopefully Indian army. I believe we can and we should solve the problems of the society, which has the habit of looking towards for­eign market for solutions. •

knowing something that is understood only in relative terms will be to study the past-here, the recent past. The fee for the un­dergraduates was hiked from Rs.25000 per annum to Rs.SOOOO per annum for the aca­demic year 2008-2009. This was followed by the formation of Dr Anil Kakodkar Committee by Ministry of Human Resource Management (MHRD) vide its order dated 3 February 2010. The idea for the formation of committee was "to suggest a roadmap for strengthening the financial, administrative and academic autonomy of the IITs" . The consequence was an 80% fee hike, which to­taled to Rs. 90000 per annum as the tuition fees for undergraduates from academic year 2013 onwards (subject to change, of course, as given in liT act 1962-33(b)). The tuition fees for the masters programme and PhD doubled from Rs.4100 to Rs. 8427 (for Hostellers). Other fees like accommodation fees, gymkhana fees, medical insurance pre­mium etc has also increased over the span of years.

Thus, the fees-year curve has shown a posi­tive slope twice within a decade. Price rise is very common word these days, in fact, as common as pollution. But the price rise for education-it' s new. This intrigued me to read a Government report.

From the pages of Kakodkar committee report

Since the Kakodkar committee has played a pivotal role in restructuring the fees for UG and PG, I tried to grasp the line of reasoning which forms the basis for any logical deci­sion.

Kakodkar committee has proposed that "fee charged by the IITs should cover the

full operational cost of education, which works out to be roughly 30% of the total cur­rent cost of education" . It further adds that a hassle-free bank loan shall be arranged for the students who require financial assis-

tance. It also has suggested that the students from reserved and "socially disadvantaged groups" will be exempted from paying the tuition fees. The committee takes into con­sideration the annual income of the family-if the student comes from the family whose income is less than 4.5 lakh per annum (subjected to change) then he/she can be ex­empted from paying tuition fees (25 % seats will be scholarship with 100% tuition fee by Government funding).

The committee also notes that the brand name for liT and the global ranking is based on the research output. Hence the commit­tee has suggested a goal of producing 10000 PhD scholars annually. (As per the records given in report, China was producing 5000 PhDs in the year 2006 while India produced 1500 PhD in the same year). In order to in­crease the number and enhance the quality of post graduation studies as well as doctor­al studies, the committee recommends Government funding of 100% tuition fee for MS/PhD scholars under proposed scholar­ship scheme.

Funding for an HT comes from the following sources:

This pie-chart (data from pp.74 of the Kakodkar report) shows operating revenues of seven IITs in the year 2009 (942 Cr.) and 2010 (1283 Cr.) in order.

a Students fees

Iii Government Receipts

" Investment Receipts

Iii Others

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"' Students fees

11 Government Receipts

g Investment Receipts

From the data available, it is not far from the truth to say that a major portion of the finan­cial needs ofiiTs are met by Government (see also Table.l). One can argue that funding for higher education in a way is our Government' s responsibility, since it is to benefit our society in the future; but accord­ing to the report, to establish a complete au­tonomy, the institute should become inde­pendent of the Government for its financial needs.

The decision of the committee, as stated in the reports, has reflected the voice of stake­hoi ders of liT (stakeholders include a I u m n i of

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liT, industries that hire liT students, UG, PG and PhD students of liT, educationalist, public at large, etc). An online survey was conducted with aim of registering the views of stakeholders. The details of the survey can be found in the website http://www.cas­de. i itb.ac. i n/kakod kar-comm ittee/stake­holder_survey/. The survey consisted of line responses as well as radio button responses. The collective data of all the recorded re-

sponses in chart format can be found on the website.

In summary the following passage can be used as substitute to skip all the recommen­dations and analysis used in coming up with the decision. The passage is from the Kakodkar report pp.76 under the title "Key recommendations on fee and scholarship" .

"For the established HTs, assuming the fac­ulty: student ratio to be 1:11, for modeling purpose, the break-even point is between Rs. 2-2.5/akh/student/annum levied across UG, Masters and PhD programmes based on the

current expenditure and student intake pat­tern. Our recommended fee for UG, Masters and PhD is therefore of the order of Rs. 2-2.5 lakh per annum. This excludes the cost of hostels and living costs for the students."

Further the committee adds that the above suggestion on cost estimates is based on fi­nancial reports submitted by IITs and "may need to change based on the timing of the decision on fees being taken by the Government and other factors"

Students' protest

With the money involved in various scams reaching astronomical figures, the wide­spread conception among students has been that mis-governance has resulted in the fees hike. Among students, there is great competition to study at Government funded institutes. The reason is two-fold: an en­riched learning experience and lower cost. In the world of privatization, the reason for stu­dent to compete for a seat in Government institute is slightly skewed towards the lower tuition fees and other expenses. Hence a fee hike is viewed as a red flag indicating a future where the education becomes a commodity coming with a price tag.

Since food, clothing and shelter are essential needs of a common man, education is the need of a country with vast resources and promises of becoming a developed country in foreseeable future. As given in the report by Pawan Agarwal on "The higher educa­tion in India: a need for change" , there is a deficit of 40% on educational expense per student per annum based on the assumption of Rs.60000 per student as expenditure per annum (The figure is for overall higher edu­cation in India and not restricted to liT). Hence, there is a need for a change to bridge the gap to improve the standard of higher education. But the change must not create a burden on the capability.

Many "what-ifH questions were raised by the students as an initial reaction to fees hike. A common platform to discuss all such issues related to fees hike was organized on the topic "Privatization of Higher Education".

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Panel Discussion and Protest march

The panel members were from education stream and from law background.

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The panel discussion started with an intro­ductory speech by panelist, followed by questions from students.There was a sug­gestion for adopting differential fees for stu­dents from different backgrounds by Professor Dr. Rahul Siddharthan. He refor­mulated the question of fees hike as "for those who can pay this [revised] kind of fees, are they getting their money' s worth?" . He answered the question in affirmative. Professor from economics background questioned the logic behind fees hike as the students' fee forms only a part of the total operating revenue of IITs (see pie-chart). He argued that in a way Government funding in health sector is justified as healthy individual is essential for country' s growth, investing in higher education will also benefit the soci­ety as a whole. Mr. Jimraj Miltonwas vehe­ment in opposing the privatization and illus­trated a "what-if" situation where a stu dent graduates without loan and a student with bank loan. The question hour was lively with students' interaction with panelist-in fact,so lively that sparks started flying with some questions. The idea of panel discussion could have achieved much more had the dis­cussion been with concerned people who had the final say in fee structure.

Nevertheless, the panel discussion mirrored a section of students who found the hike a

cause of concern.

The protest march was organized soon after the panel discussion. In spite of the drizzle, students participated in silent march from Gajendra circle to Main-gate.

In short, one can imagine living in a place with familiar sounds and silence greeting him/her everyday. Suddenly, the surround­ing feels it has been quiet for a long time. One-by-one things making up the surround­ing starts adding up to noise level. The result is unrest and a sense of things going out of control for the person staying up in such an environment. Likewise, the fees hike has come at a time where the general cost of living is showing a trend of exponential growth.

Where is the pointer pointing?

The facilities a student enjoys at the campus are better than what is available outside the campus. These have never been on mone­tary grounds. The reason for better facilities, to my understanding, is to create an environ­ment that lets the student focus on develop­ing his/her potentials. A fee hike may bal­ance the economic deficits but whatimpact will it have on students?On a related note, what message does the fees hike sends across the educational institutions? The pri­vate institutions have made education a business already-it is an open secret, so I don' t mind saying it. What will be the con­sequence of fees hike in a premier institution like liT on the students of private institu­tions? With a few more unsettling questions, I go back to my research problem pushing aside rest of the world worries-a thing Dan Brown would call as "denial" ·•

Vasa nth Kumar Gurushankar M.S Scholar, Applied Mechanics

"I (ike to 90 a(ovt9 R.K.L.axrMavt'S 'corMIMOvt rMavt' avtd see how how

the world works!"

Events

PopSciCle Meeting

Popular Science Clique, more famously known around the Biotech department as PopSciCie had its monthly meeting for June on the 28th. Previous meetings of the Clique had largely focussed on relatively serious sci­entific topics but the two talks announced for June immediately caught one' s atten­tion because at first glance there seemed to be very little science involved! The topics

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were - II Cheating 101: A Course in the Basics of Cheating Technology by Sneh Badle and "The Scientific basis behind the not so scientific inability of men in under­standing what women convey by their eyes . .!" by Mallu Abhiram Charan Tej.

How were the guys going to talk Science when the topics in question were Cheating and Women' s expressions? With this ques­tion in mind, interest naturally piqued, I went to catch the talks. Sneh opened his talk with a basic definition of cheating, following it up with real time instances, quoting examples

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ranging from the pharma giant Ranbaxy to the use and abuse of DC++ by liT junta and a few instances where research papers were withdrawn from journals for various reasons ranging from inaccurate data to plagiarism, thus establishing the fact that cheating is rampant in the academic world. He ex­plained an interesting concept- cheating is a balance between immorality and goals that can be achieved by the immoral act of cheat­ing- so when the balance is tilted towards more goals getting achieved, people resort to cheating. If, however, the risks or immoral­ity involved are too great in comparison to the goals achievable, people abstain from cheating. In addition, he also explained how herd mentality is applicable to cheating by explaining an elaborate experiment done by Harvard researchers (while jokingly noting that Harvard funds such necessary studies too!). In their experiment, examiners had an­nounced to students (one of whom was an actor) that they would be awarded a dollar each for every problem solved in a test within 5 minutes and the actor wearing a cer­tain university' s jersey would finish first each time and get rewarded without his an­swers being checked. The study proved that the students belonging to the same universi­ty as the actor (his jersey rather) would im­mediately follow suit and cheat for the reward; when the actor on the other hand wore a rival university' s jersey the majority group abstained from cheating as if they viewed it as being immoral! So Sneh ended his talk by concluding that people tend to cheat more easily if their peer group does it and that more research into cheating has to be done to curb it especially in research. When someone in the audience questioned the speaker' s stand on cheating, he hon­estly admitted that he would do it if his peers did so ....

The second talk by Abhiram opened with a picture of a beautiful pair of eyes. The audi­ence were asked to guess the emotion, and almost everyone got it wrong. It actually was

Aishwarya Rai' s eyes conveying anger! He then went on to explain or rather justify why men could not be faulted for not under­standing the messages women convey through their eyes using two concepts: Theory of Mind (ToM network) and Empathy Network of Brain. The speaker explained how researchers via a recent PlosOne publi­cation have concluded that the regions of the brain involved in understanding one' s thoughts, feelings and emotions (parts of the ToM network) and empathizing (ENB) were differentially activated when male sub­jects viewed male versus female eyes. This had been established by administering the Reading-the-Mind-in-the-Eyes Test (RMEn, where pictures of male and female eyes con­veying different emotions were shown to a male population spanning different age groups and an fMRI was simultaneously done to monitor brain activity. Men recog nized the gender by seeing the eyes easily as also proven by increased activity in the re­spective regions of the brain but when it came to emotional recognition and empa­thy, men were more successful in recogniz­ing other men' s emotions than those of women- a huge difference in the activity o the right amygdala was seen (part of the brain involved in empathy). The speaker ex­plained that this could be because men can use their own emotions as templates when it comes to understanding their gender whereas with the opposite gender they only had past experiences with other women to base their guesses on. The speaker adminis­tered the RMET test on 2 members of the au­dience - a male and a female volunteer. Although the female volunteer scored much higher in the test, majority of the audience opined that the female volunteer got more time for guessing than the male volunteer. The speaker could have better timed his talk because the concepts were a little complex to understand and less time was spent on ex­plaining them as compared to administering the RMET test. While the speaker concluded his talk by telling the female audience that

the research done had not taken female par­ticipants into account; the speaker too con­tended that the research remained incom­plete in that respect.

Overall the talks proved to me at least that it is possible to find Science in pretty much every area of our day-to-day life. It was, no doubt, entertaining but it left two serious questions in my mind:

1. Have there been studies to document just how much cheating /plagiarism in research go undetected or are impossible to prove?

2. Now that there is scientific evidence to show that men cannot easily empathize with women, where does this leave society which of late has witnessed incredibly heinous crimes committed by men on women? •

Column

Aarthi V Biotechnology

Reading Between Lines

The story is about estranged unidentical twins Rahel and Estha, who are reunited after 24 years. Something happened 24 years ago that haunts them. Estha has gone mute and Rahel has an emptiness in her eyes. The story is revealed non-chronologi­cally in bits and pieces through flashbacks. The novel leads you to bigger things through small things.

Small things like the things going on in chil­dren' s minds; the ideas they form about things they don' t understand, meanings they assign to words they don' t know and

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Column :

A Passing Thought It was another fun-filled day at lab, and I was happily engaged in work. I wiped the floor of the LAF with spirit, poured agar into petri­plates, let them solidify and inoculated them with bacteria. Once I was done, I took the plates to the incubator, and all other things to their rightful place in the lab, and cleaned the floor of the LAF with spirit. And as I moved my hands, my mind wandered to all the other labs in the Biotech department. Excluding computational biology labs, every other lab had at least one LAF (Laminar Air Flow) chamber, popularly known as "the LAF" , "hood" and "clean bench" , with­out which work was not at all possible.

It made me wonder, "Whose was the

the significance they give to the careless words spoken by grown-ups.

Small things like the instinctive love of a parent for his/her child.

Small things like the inherent character of people and how their character and preju­dices affect their actions.

The bigger thing is the tragic story of Indian society: the social discrimination in India. There is discrimination based on caste; reli­gious discrimination; gender discrimination; racial discrimination. Unwritten laws dictate, 'Who should be loved. And how. And how

much." These words are repeated again and again in the novel and the unfairness of these words forms the underlying theme of the novel.

But sometimes, the attitude of author seems

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watchful pair of eyes that recognized my need for a sterile environment that could be kept free from particulate contamination, and maintained that way for a long time? Whose was the industrious mind that re­sourcefully put together a H EPA filter and UV lamp in a box and thoughtfully added a light? Did the eyes and the mind belong to the same person?"

My curiosity took me to the nearest comput­er.

Down the Rabbit Hole A search on Google threw up pages after pages of suppliers and manufacturers of LAFs, advertisements, and flyers displaying prices in pounds and dollars. But this was not what I was looking for. So, I steered my cursor to the scholarly resu Its, and went back in time, all the way back to 1968 and found the first report on LAF being used success­fully for animal cell culture. By this time, mi­crobiologists were routinely using it for

too one-sided. Some characters like Rahel, Estha, Ammu and Velutha are always shown in bright light; their actions are always de­fended; their tragedies are highlighted.

The style of writing is direct and brutal. The bitter truths are told in a matter-of-fact manner. The author disregards grammar, twists and breaks words. Still the language is so natural, easy-flowing and beautiful that you don' t mind. Overall, the book is defi­nitely worth reading. •

Prajakta Naval Ph. D Scholar

Biotechnology

"A (~y day, a co::.y corl!\er al!\d a good book: a perfect stress buster"

working with germs. However, it turned out that they were not the first to use that equip­ment. The aerospace industry was already using LAFs for protecting sensitive machine parts. I tried to scroll further back in time, but it was of no use.

I decided to take up the topic in the depart­ment canteen, where a white board was ded­icated to scientific questions and discus­sions; and had been blank for months to­gether. I moved my marker across. When I finished the first question, uwho invented the LAF?H I was greeted with yells of "It was ME! I did it:' And with the second question, 'Who used it in microbiology for the first

time?" someone yelled, "Your guide! Your guide! He was the one." I left the canteen, giggling with amusement.

At the End of the Day I did not get all my answers. I came to under­stand that someone made what I would con­sider a primitive LAF for use in the aerospace industry. And then microbiologists started to use them. Perhaps additional fixtures like the UV lamp evolved along the way, to improvise

Column ,

The University of Passau to which I had been for an exchange program has a beautiful campus and a calm academic atmosphere. Going to Passau as an exchange student was of great importance to me because, it was my first experience living in a foreign coun­try for six months. I got my maiden experience at work being a teaching assistant in the Chair of Operations and Logistics Management. In research, I got focused guidance and was provided with all resources required for carrying out my re­search. I got to learn the German language,

it for the unique needs of our labs. And in 1968, animal cell culture became easier be­cause of those improvizations. Today, the majority of microbiologists and biotechnol­ogists cannot even imagine working without a LAF. The LAF continuously evolved to give us better and safer bio-safety cabinets, which protect not just the material being handled, but the person handling them as well.

I understand that some microbiologist, working in the 1940s or 50s understood his own needs very well, and found a solution in a seemingly unrelated place: the aerospace industry. I realize the importance of being aware, not only of the problems people in other disciplines face but also the ways in vhich they tackle those problems. •

Malini Sundar Rajan Ph. D Scholar

Biotechnology

"L.ost ... il't ... words ... "

which was fun learning with students from different countries who neither knew English nor German.

Though most of the conversations were done in German I faced minimal problems while conversing in English with the faculty or the students. The faculty and the students were very friendly and accommodative. I got a new view about life, met different people from various cultural backgrounds; and though I am from a tropical country where the climate is invariably hot, I learnt to adjust in a place where the temperature was ex­tremely cold. Adapting to different food habits was equally interesting. The most striking quality of the Germans, which I would highlight is their punctuality and this is one value I would really like to imbibe.

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Column :

We invite our alumni, or scholars who are about to graduate, to share their experience and how it made them evolve as researchers. What did they think of research before they joined? We ask them to describe some good times and some bad times, and how these helped them grow. What is their take on re­search now?

Manisha Juneja, Alumnus, Biotechnology revisits her days at liT -M

After finishing B.Tech Biotechnology, I was pretty confused like several others about what I should do next. Further studies? Yes. But what will that yield me? What did I want to do ultimately? At that time, I certainly did not know what research meant. Neither did I know the pros n cons of this field. When I heard of a course MS (by Research) in Biotechnology at liT Madras, I thought of using the chance to get to know what re-

Whether it is to meet people casually, or attend meetings, they are always "on time" . I could see how people were able to balance their life at work and home by being punctual. Apart from studies, the University also had good recreational activities like sports, dance and student clubs where they organized various events for the students. On the whole it was an unforgettable experi­ence which will remain indelible to my memory for years to come. •

Ramya Ravi Ph. D Scholar

DoMS

"Loves good covwersatioV\S, paiV\tiV\g, (isteV\iV\g to W\uSic aV\d basica((!:J a

foodie"

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search is and to see if that' s what I would like to pursue for my career. My curiosity became my inspiration and I went ahead and started my Masters.

First couple of days we were assigned to choose our supervisor/mentor for next two years. It was then that I got to know form se­niors about the actual structure of this pro­gram. Unlike a usual masters project of 6 months, I very soon selected a full time mas­ter' s project in the area of cancer biology in Prof D. Karunagaran' s lab. I had always been inquisitive about understanding cancer from my school days so this kept my enthusiastic from the beginning. I started reading the literature, and learning about tools and techniques from my colleagues.

Very soon, I realized that there are so many hurdles during the course of research. One of them, which I would like to share, is quite silly, but it really drove me crazy. I had to work with human cancer cells for my project and my work was completely dependent on proper culturing and maintenance of these cancer cells. And there it came, the most frustrated phase of my life! My cells used to get contaminated almost every week, some­times with yeast and sometimes with bacte­ria. It took a couple of months for me to go completely insane and soon my fellow col­leagues started making fun of this whole thing, saying "Your glare is toxic enough to kill the cells.11 Not just this, once I was so an­noyed that I picked up those contaminating bacteria and started growing them to look for what kind of bacterial contamination I am getting. I said to myself that "This thing is not meant for me!l/

I never knew at that time what the future held for me.

Apart from that I also learnt that collabora­tions are an important part of scientific life. I worked with Dr. K. M. Muraleedharan (Dept. of Chemistry, IITM), Prof. K.N.Rajasekharan

(University of Kerala) and Dr. Rama Rajaram (CLRL Chennai). I was not aware at that time how beneficial this experience would turn out to be.

What did I get from my masters at liT madras as a research scholar? Fortunately, almost everything an aspiring master student should get. I do cell culture routinely in my PhD with great expertise that I obtained from my Masters experience. On a lighter note, I can identify any sort of contamination for my other colleagues as well. I am using the skills I learnt during collaboration.

Most importantly, the place where I am today is a gift from my masters at liT. It was liT that showed me what research is through my experience and through experiences from my PhD friends and colleagues. Although I sometimes get very frustrated, I still think research is one of the most chal­lenging fields and puts to test not only our intellectual capability but also our emotional stability, patience, stress, time management skills and communication skills. But I would like to emphasize that one positive and ex­citing result from our research compensates for all the stress and worries.

My master program helped me take the de­cision to pursue research further and I ap­plied for PhD at Max-Delbrueck Center for molecular medicine. When my boss asks me how a girl of my age with very little previous research experience is able to handle her project very well, I proudly answer it' s all because of my Master' s program at liT Madras. •

Manisha Juneja pursued MS in ..._....._ Biotechnology (2008-2010) and

is currently pursuing PhD at Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin.

Readers les

ARE WE REALLY DEVELOPING?

Are we a developing nation or are we down­trodden group? This question looks so simple but consists of a numerous facts and scenarios to stun all. Every New Year we think of ideas that we wish our nation to strive for and at the end we see that we are back to square one. Sometimes I feel the chasm of corruption, exploitation, selfish­ness and apathy is so vast that we were

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···rrr-r.-r·r -..... r --r -~r -~~1" .::J J'("J :T <:.fJ OJo!l' <:.f} :::. ~IJ :-..

better before independence.

Even after 65 years of independence, it is sad that we could not even learn to behave as fellow Indians. Well the root cause can easily be attributed to the illiteracy but is that the

ReStrArcl-.ing W\f:JSe(f ... pl-.rrASing tl-.e feelings.

Photo credits: Chaitanya Vijay

the significance of these questions as a re­searcher? Well I believe before I answer these questions or try to make a point, the answer might be known to most of us for sure.

only reason? Don't we see the literate and I saw an advertisement in the television a the well educated abusing the power en - year ago, which left a beautiful imprint on dowed in them by the society? my mind. A lady kept a saucer containing a The leaders of the society manhandle the little water and a few tea leaves, on the stove ones who elect them. in order to prepare the tea. The water kept Someone may ask me: Why am I thinking of on boiling but she refrained from adding the such issues now? Why didn't my emotions milk. Seeing that her husband asked what arise in the past? Why should I care? What's Nas she upto and why wasn't she adding the

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milk. She gave a subtle reply that more the water will boil the darker the color induced by the leaves and better the taste offered by the tea. At the end she adds: Currently the nation is burning with anger, boiling with desperation and awaiting for judgment, more it boils better shall be the end result. I know most of you might have seen this ad­vertisement, but its the message left behind that affected me more. Its not that emotions in favor of nation never erupted in the past, but I believe I was a little young to under­stand the deeper strata of this plagued game.

The more I read the newspapers, more I pon­dered over these facts. But the bias of news media has even deprived us of the real facts now. I care for these things, as this is the nation where finally I have to reside and where my fellow men reside too. If we don't think about the atrocities occurring by the hands of goons, politicians and even the bu­reaucrats, then indirectly we are accountable for all the miseries present in the system. Whichever way we start to think today might not affect us at this very moment- as it may be a minuscule change for now - but may end up as the reason for a greater chaos for the future generations.

As a researcher these questions may seem obscure for the moment but can eventually be a cause for a profound impact. We re­searchers come from different societies and various backgrounds. Intact we have been part of the ground realities where we have seen how the education system exists and how the social upbringing of our fellow mates have occurred.

At liT we are part of a plethora of opportuni­ties about which most of us didn't even dream of before being part of this liT family. But now, we at least know the weakness of the existing system and its flaw. I am not penning down this thought to enumerate the set of existing problems in the current

system or trying to selectively solve these problems. Rather I wish to stimulate the thought process that could find problems and design solutions, which shall be helpful to the society and eventually, the nation. •

Suyash Gupta M. S Scholar

Computer Science

"Living fife to fu((est is w"hat r believe i/1\.' 1

Readers .. les

Hello Friends.

In an institution like liT Madras, learning technology is a key goal for any student or researcher. Just like any other student, I also learnt a lot in technology during my stay here. During my last few days at the Institute, I would like to share with you one of my learnings for a lifetime ... one that I experi­enced during my journey at IITM from 2010 to 2013 as a Research Scholar.

If an exceptional positive dream or a great thought arises in ones' mind, then one should be quite sure for it to be a ticket for an unexpected long journey in his/her life ... it may even be a journey for a complete life­time!

Such extraordinary dreams can be com­pared to the childhood dream of touching the sky and the journey is the infinitely long distance in free space to reach there. Sometimes we start the journey ignorant of the forthcoming hurdles, thinking that the first step in the right direction will definitely lead us to our destination, but it is usually not so. We do understand that, taking the first step itself needs great courage, but moving forward in the right direction with

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perseverance, needs even greater courage, one similar to that of a brave warrior who paves his path ahead, irrespective of the op­ponents' power in the midst of the battle field. It is only then that the battle is won.

Initially, the journey looks small and the des­tination too near. Also in the initial days, the journey looks joyful and the time just flies in front of our eyes, but as time passes we become aware of it. We start realizing the importance of every hour of the day and sometimes even every hour of the night, since we do not want to waste it by dream­ing- as already a bigger dream (earlier set targets) needs us to be awake every moment.

We usually hear people saying that a "work begun is half done" -if we think deeply, we can assure ourselves with the truth -actually work is either "complete" or "not com­plete" and is never half done, even though it appears to be so. The satisfaction levels are not up to the mark at this stage of accom­plishment, since we are aware of the unac­complished fraction of the work. It has always been the nature of human mind to be in a state of dissatisfaction most of the time. This leads to a situation of constant unhap­piness and distress throughout the "travel" . However the most astonishing

aspect of this journey is: though we have fixed our destination at the beginning of the journey, knowingly or unknowingly we dream of the next higher goa 1- this happens automatically "during the journey" . Thus, a work which looked half accomplished some time back, now looks null and void! The idea, that once upon a time gave energy, enthusiasm and a great sense of achieve­ment, makes us feel low during the journey, as it never seems to be accomplished. Intact, it is not so. We are definitely moving closer to the earlier set targets, and at the same time we are setting higher targets for our selves and pushing our own "new destina­tions" farther and farther. The best part that

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that needs to be understood and appreciat­ed is: it is this "tough journey with hurdles at every step" towards our first goal, that gives us the courage to dream higher and bigger in I i fe, setting newer goa Is farther and farther ...

So, let us keep this aspect of the journey in our mind and enjoy the 'journey" itself rather than craving for the destination which seems to be going farther and farther away from our reach. We are definitely achieving much more than what we dreamt of as our own destination a few years back ...

'f\nd the journey goes on. . . . © " •

S.V. S Suresh M. S Scholar Engineering Design

"Persevera~-tce a~-td Dedicated work i~-t ri9ht directiM are the W\a~-tdator~ tools for t/..W~-ti~-t9 a 'DreaW\' i~-tto 'Rea(it~~ "

Readers les

INTELLIGENT SANSKRIT

The Sci-Fi movie Ironman-3 was released a few weeks ago. The protagonist of the movie, Tony Stark, is a rich and ingenious in­dustrialist. The visuals of Tony' s lab are a treat to the eyes of any engineer. I was par­ticularly fascinated by the Tony' s intelligent computers which executed direct spoken commands in natural English. Although the story line of the movie is completely fiction­al, yet it palpably depicts a long standing dream of computer scientists, to enable commuters to understand natural languag­es spoken by humans. Natural language processing (NLP) involves many challenging steps including speech recognition, syntax decoding and understanding the semantic relationships among words in a sentence. NLP is considered as an AI-Hard problem1.

There is widespread belief that artificial lan­guages are unsuitable for computer pro­cessing. The expression of ideas in natural languages is generally ambiguous and cum­bersome which computer languages, like C or Java, can render with great precision and mathematical rigor. Yet, perhaps most of us will not be able to enjoy poetry or drama written inC! Artificial languages are not suit­able for carrying subjective ideas while natu­ral languages are not designed for objectivi­ty. But this apparent dichotomy probably is not true for all natural languages. There is at least one language, Sanskrit that was a living spoken language for at least 2000 years and has a considerable literature of its own.

Even a cursory study of this language reveals the almost mathematical structure of its grammar which allows it to express ideas in most unambiguous and precise manner. Contrarily, it is also the carrier of one of the tersest philosophical texts in the world, Vedas and Upanishads, with highly subjec­tive expressions. This can be attributed to its unique capacity of expressing both the sub­jective and objective ideas with equal ease. It' swords are not merely dictionary based, but are derived from a few root sounds (about 200) which are the most natural sounds associated with the actions that they are intended to express. When these roots are combined with appropriate suffixes and prefixes they can give rise to millions of words. Mastery over a handful of basic sounds and structural combination rules (sandhi) enables the speaker to express any idea; if you have something to say, you can always find a word for it. You can even form your own vocabulary and the idea will still be communicated. In this article I will try to elu­cidate a few apparent reasons that perhaps make Sanskrit the strongest candidate for NLP.

Generally, the first step in NLP is recognition of the spoken word transmitted via sound. The current state-of-art systems in speech

recognition are nowhere near the capabili­ties depicted in the above mentioned Sci-Fi flick. We have yet to go a long way before re­liable voice recognition systems become a part of our life. Most voice recognition re­search has been focused towards English, which is a non-phonetic language. It is obvi­ous that phonetic languages, having direct correspondence between sounds and sym­bols, are more suitable for speech recogni­tion. All major Indian languages are phonet­ic except for Tamil, which is partially phonet­ict. While we will probably confuse the com­puter, when we will say chemistry and chat with ch carrying different sounds for both words, but there will be no issues if we say the same thing to a speech recognition al­gorithm designed for a phonetic language like Hindi, where we will say 4->ff:l f"tl and Q"TC

which have well defined characters for each symbol. On a lighter note, it is not possible to have competitions like spelling-bee in Indian languages. Sanskrit, being strongly phonetic, has an obvious advantage over English as a candidate for NLP.

Apart from being phonetic all its words are actually derived from few root sounds, by adding appropriate suffixes and prefixes. This provides it with a huge vocabulary where new words can be manufactured by the speaker at will. Whenever a listener hears a new word he need not go back to the dic­tionary to find its meaning; if he knows the roots and the proper decoding techniques he can intelligently guess the meaning of any new word. For example suppose you found a word hitherto unheard of like: 3qcr~"J'8Cj; we may decode it as follows:

3qcr~"J'8Cj = 3tf + ofr + 'ftC! 3tf =Near ofr = Take 'ftC!= Truth

So, 3qcr~"J'8Cj means something which takes near the Truth. This capability which is full blown in Sanskrit is seen even in other Indian

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languages to some extent. This malleability to form desired word makes it the ideal vehi­cle of poetic and philosophic expressions. In NlP this feature can be fruitfully exploited to recognize a vast number of words with a small database of root words, suffixes and prefixes.

The third and probably the most important character of Sanskrit language is the tightly held and well defined semantic relationship between words. To understand this concept we will have to understand a few basics of noun and verb forms in Sanskrit. All forms of any noun are represented as a 7x3 matrix where rows represent the auxiliary action over the noun, known as Vibhakti, and col­umns denoting the number. It is important to note here that Sanskrit has an additional dual case. let' s try to understand the noun forms by taking one simple example of noun ~{boy) {Table I).

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At the first glance we can immediately see the perfect structural arrangement of all 21 forms of noun in a matrix arrangement, with position of each element corresponding to a unique auxiliary action over the noun. For demonstrating a complete example I am also including the first two rows of the table for the noun ':!'f.!C1Ch (book) (Table II).

Similarly, each tense of all verb forms is ar­ranged in 3x3 matrices. The three rows rep­resent the person of the action and the three columns the represent number. I elucidate the form of present tense ofqq (read) root in Tablem.

Now, we have just enough resources to un­derstand the basics of semantic network in Sanskrit. let' stake one example:

English Sentence: Boy is reading a book. Hindi Translation: ~ fehC1 1 ~ q;T qq;c:rr 6" 1

It' s quite easy to convert the sentence to Sanskrit by looking at Table I, II and III. Boy is 3rd person Singular number so we choose matrix element (1, 1) i.e. tJ"C>"fc1 for expressing the act of reading, being performed by a third person. There are two nouns, boy and book. Boy is the agent of the action and is singular number so we choose (1, 1) element from the matrix shown in Table I i.e. ~:. Book is the object and thus second row and first column has to be selected from the aux­iliary matrix of '1f!_C1Cf1 noun which is '1f!_C'1Cf1J'! (from Table II).

Thus the sentence in Sanskrit is:

~: q'f(1Cf1CR tJ"C>"Fc1 i .J '

Let' s now do a bit of stress testing to see how much damage each language can with­stand when we try to modify the semantic structure by simple permutation of words:

English Sentense: Boy is reading a book.

Modification 1: Boy is a book reading. (Incorrect)

Modification 2: Is boy a book reading. (Incorrect)

Modification 3: Book is reading a boy. (Incorrect)

Modification 4: Reading is a book boy. (Incorrect)

In the above modifications we see that even with mild modifications in sequence of words, semantic structure of English breaks down very easily. Now let' s consider the Hindi sentence:

Hindi Translation: ~ fchC1 1 ~ CJ1T qq;c:rr t 1

Modification 1: fef>C1 11Sl CJ1T ~ qq;c:rr t 1 (Correct)

Modification 2: qq;c:rr t fef>C1 1 ~ CJ1T ~ 1 (Correct)

Modification 3: qq;c:rr fef>C1 1 ~ CJ1T ~ t 1 (Correct)

Modification 4: ~ CJ1T fet>C1 1 ~ qq;c:rr t !(Incorrect)

Here we can see that Hindi is much less frag­ile and can take quite a bit of torture on the syntax. Only place it breaks down is when we move the term "Cf;)-'' which comes after the object Cfef>C1 1 ~) and place it after the Agent (~).In Sanskrit this "Cf;)-'' is built into the object term itself (Second row of noun forms) and there is no breakdown when we shuffle the words in a sentence.

Sanskrit Translation: ~: q'f(1et>CR tJ"C>"Fc1 1 .J '

Modification 1: ~'fC'1et>J{ ~: tJ"C>"Fc1 1 (Correct)

Modification 2: qofc:r ~'f(1Cf1CH__ ~: 1 (Correct)

Modification 3: ~: tJ"C>"fc1 q'f(1et>CR 1 (Correct)

Modification 4: q'f(1et>CR ~: ~ 1 (Correct) .J '

Thus the position of a word in a sentence does not matter in Sanskrit. This is because each noun form carries the information of auxiliary action along with it; ':!'t!C'1Cf1J'! doesn' t mean only book but ':!'t!C1Cf1 Cf1)" (Book as the object). Similarly, each verb form carries the person information along with it. This tightly held semantic structure makes Sanskrit probably the best language for NLP. Additionally, in Sanskrit most words carry gender and number information as well.

As in every other natural language, Sanskrit also has many exceptional cases, but here astadhyayi of PananF comes to our rescue. It is a phenomenal work of Sanskrit grammar with 3959 sutras and lists all rules and excep­tions in Sanskrit in highly compact and quite terse form. The sutras are totally non-redun­dant and succeeding principles are many times derived from the preceding once like mathematical equations. Panini' s rules can be encoded into the NLP system for Sanskrit to take care of all exceptions.

If we try to visualize a NLP system designed in Sanskrit then it will have the following major steps in its execution:

1. Detection of separate words from the re-

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corded or live speech signals. 2. Words are converted to a phonetic script. 3. Words are broken down into prefix, suf­fixes, nouns and verbs. 4. Root words are found for each word. For example if detected verb is tJ'OTffr then root is found as 'qQ. 5. Generation of table of the verb or noun forms of root words. 6. Finding the complete semantic relation­ship and meanings by scanning the position of the words in the tables. 7. Checking for grammatical or syntactical exceptions using Panini' s rules.

The above steps are only speculative and determining the exact challenges will re­quire more rigorous analysis. But, it can be seen that modern field of AI shares a mysti­cal relationship with this ancient language. Prof. Rick Briggs of NASA wrote in one of his remarkable paper in this field3 that, "(Sanskrit is the only language) where we

find that a natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a wheel millennia old." Unfortunately, like most of our other prized inheritances, we have completely ne­glected Sanskritic studies in India. Most in­stitutes of Sanskrit studies are in pathetic condition with scholars being paid paltry amounts as stipends-\5• In our own institute, liT Madras, we have courses being offered on French, German and even Chinese, but Sanskrit never features in our course lists. It is unfortunate and perhaps even dangerous to neglect this language that is so important for the cultural unity of this country.

tTamil written in Grantha script is fully pho­netic, with one to one correspondence be­tween sounds and symbols.

Acknowledgements: The author owes all his knowledge of Sanskrit to Sri Nikesh Rajagopalan, faculty of Samskrita Bharati at liT Madras. The author also thanks Vijay K. Gurugubelli, Ph.D. schol-

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-ar at Dept of EE, liT Madras, for proof read­ing the article and giving valuable sugges­tion based on his long association with Sanskrit language.

References: 1. http:/ /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-complete 2. http:/ /en.wikiea.org/Wiki/P%C4%81 %El%B9%87ini 3. Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence, Rick Briggs, AI Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 1, (1985) 4. http:/ twww.sanskritnic.in/scholarship12-13Jpg 5. http:/ twww.sanskritnic.in/Notifiction %202012-13.pdf

Ash ish Kumar Sahani Ph.D Scholar

Electrical Engg.

"Ashish is close(!j associated with V$C avtd takes deep ivtterest ivt

lvtdiavt phi(osoph!j. " .___...~_....J

Readers · les

These Babies Sell Themselves -An Unconventional Communication Approach

Is advertisement, the trump card for the Indian giant firms to communicate their brand? Rather, can there be a way to com­municate a product or service without ad­vertisement? This article will discuss this un­orthodox marketing strategy along with its implementation so that we could try and find out, "Is there any way, that could help reducing the advertisement expenses from the company' s income statement?''

Let us first look at the data what we are deal­ing with. Indian companies spend roughly around $17.14 billion on advertising every year, including online advertising, outdoors, and social media. This massive amount can fund roughly five 1000 MW nuclear power plants per year in India. This Media and en­tertainment Industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15% over the next five years. (Source: Economic Times)

But how was this trend started? The history

of advertisement takes us 4000 years back when in 2000 BCE, the Egyptians started carving out names of their shops on stone. This was the first time when a vendor cried out to introduce his brand. The real adver­tisement, what we see today, started from the year 1631, when for the first time 'La Gazette' newspaper printed a classified ad. The emerging technology started giving birth to various media for advertisements. We had radio ads, television commercials (TVC), direct selling and what not? Then came the online ads, which were backed up with bulging e-commerce industry. After the launch of Google in 2004, it was clear that dotcoms could also earn massive amount of revenue, without even selling or buying any item. Google' s revenue model is based ma­jorly on online advertisements, which is now valued at around $23 billion.

The evolution of advertisements took a rapid pace after the 19th century because the in­dustry was able to get enormous customer base and ultimately earning more profits due to these communication methods. Meanwhile there were few big brands that did not advertise at all. They never budgeted a single penny on ads and other Above the line (ATL) activities. And yet they earned huge amount of profits, and are famous! You think it' s not possible? Read on for a major paradigm shift.

Think of a brand, a giant from Italy, famous for its cutting-edge automotive engineering and photonic speed of its product. Ring any bells? Ok, what if I say 'tangy red' ? Yeah! It' s Ferrari! Ferrari has set up a huge empire, a huge name all without any glossy adver­tisements, flashy outdoors and even without any vanity fairs. People buy Ferrari because they are passionate about the car, the tech­nology, the speed and most of all, the Ferrari as a brand. The only promotion activity Ferrari enjoys is 'word of mouth' , and this base is growing wider on social media. In an article bye Terry 0' Reilly, he poses a ques

-tion,

"How do the management in Ferrari mea­sure the effectiveness of this unorthodox

strategy?"

The answer is simple,

"They sell every car they make!"

Other examples at a global front include Costco, The Body Shop, Ben & Jerry' s, Zappos etc. These are few brands that have not spent significant money on advertising. They have made their brand so popular, their product so distinguished that consumers are crazy about them.

Lets come to India. Nalli Silk Sarees is a $100 million Chennai based Sari retail chain. According to lavanya Nalli (liveMint, Aug 26, 2011) Brand Nalli, which is an 84-year-old legacy, is growing at a rate of 12%; more than the market average. Yet they have never actively spent any penny on the brand promotion. No advertisements, no sales promotion no events or PR. lavanya, a HBS graduate still feels that there is huge amount of demand from Indian market, which they need to satisfy in order to grow the business. If a businessman (businesswomen in this case) is getting drift of such voluminous demands, then spend­ing on ads is like burning money. Shahnaz Herbal Inc., a 30-year-old beauty brand has not spent anything in advertisements either. In an interview done with IndiaAfrica Connect Shahnaz Hussain said, ·r special­ize in Chemicals, not advertising at air . She also quoted, nlf the Americans and the British say it's amazing, this itself is the big­gest publicity for the product" .

What does the above two cases infer? Looking at the positioning, it can be con­cluded that these brands have made them­selves so strong and their product so special, that the customers are attracted by the

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product ' s technical & functional quality itself. Let us try to plot the above-mentioned brands in the following Credibility Visibility chart (CVC):

~ High .c ~

! o Low

Visibility

Undiscovered ~~paralle~

Unknown Undesirable

Low High

All the above-mentioned companies have placed themselves at the top right quadrant of the chart. This shows that their credibility as well as visibility is ext remely high which gives an unparalleled positioning of the brand in the consumer' s minds. So, firm' s entire plans for an unconventional strategy of communication should focus on bringing the brand from unknown or undiscovered state to the unparalleled state. Please note, here the visibi lity does not stands for the communicat ion of the brand, but it' s a mere notion to expose the brand more to the consumer. But the question now arises is, how? Well, increasing the credibility of the product is not something what firms can' t control. The motive is to give a high value package to the customer that could do the following tasks.

1. Distinguish: A good positioning says it all. Brands are not expected to communicate the positioning. A product must be designed in such a manner that a customer should be able to locate the product in a specific space in their minds, far ahead of their competi­tors. 2. Price exclusivity: Offering more value in the product on same or less price than the competitor gives an extra edge to your brand over others. This way the brand can be fu rt her distinguished on the basis of price exclusivity.

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It is advisable that the strategies, briefed above should be deployed at the New Product Development (NPD) phase itself. The reason is, that adding value to the prod­uct in the later product life cycle stages can prove costly.

So it can be concluded that focusing on the correct placement of the brand in the eve can help it grow and make a good impres­sion in customer' s mind. The main advan­tage of this approach is that all the efforts and expenditure on the marketing activities can be easily tracked and further changes can be done in the strategy to get the de­sired results. We all know the loyalty is not made on the basis of cool TVC' s or hilari­ous print ads, but it is as a result of the high quality. And loyalty is what modern busi­nesses crave for, right? Imagine, if all the firms start working like this, then what will happen to the 4000 year old legacy of adver­tising?

"Well, that' s worth a thought!• •

References: II www.ovengreaves.com 11 www.cbc.ca M www.abcnews.go.com II www.eatbigfish.com II www. ta/entzoo.com M www.businessinsider.com II www.info.shine.com II www.livemint.com M www.Indiaafricaconnect.in

Sumit Smha 2nd yr. MBA Student DaMS

"fvlo.rketiV\g , CoV\Su W\er beh.o.vior, CRJvl . "

Readers .

ReNews has undergone a sea of change. The ReNews team also changed from this month. When the new editor, Mr. Ranjan Piyush, asked me to write an article on being RAS for the past year, I thought it will be another report of mine. He, then, explained he wants the evolution of me as a person during the post. It sounded interesting and so I have taken up this ardent task of writing the same. So, before I plunge into my "self-realization saga" , I would like to apologize if I exceed this article for more than what you can read. After all, it is self-boosting and I will not leave this opportunity so easily. God knows, if I will ever be asked again by anyone to write such articles and moreover I am no more in lime­light! On a serious note, I would like to thank the editor, for this opportunity, as it gives me a chance to look back at my past life and think in a philosophical perspective.

I cannot go about telling my past experience without dwelling a little more into my past than the past year. To tell the truth I am an in­trovert, a hard core one, and I am not very comfortable with human interaction. For that matter, I am not comfortable with any-being interactions. I was also, to tell you frankly, I am still, a person who complains about everything. From the moment I wake up, from the cleanliness of bathrooms to the dinner food in the mess, to the time I get to sleep in the night, I have problem with every­thing. I have been in liT M for five years now and leaving the first year, as I was busy with course work and more importantly being in the trance of "I am an IITian" , the whole of second & third years I have complained about anything and everything. Then came the transformation! I met my "Guru" ! Whom I cannot name here, made me realize, or rather question, is it really so difficult to get things done here! That was the starting

point of my "transformation" . See that is why I said this is going to be my "self-reali­zation saga" . Anyway, I took up the post of General Secretary of Sarayu Hostel, when I realized, things are not so difficult to be done, as has always been portrayed to me. To be honest, I have not done so badly on that front as well, as some of the Sarayu resi­dents probably can vouch for it. Then came the big step. Without going into the politics of the whole issue, as a normal person, I was also not sure why I should contest for the RAS post. I was not sure if I can do it, and moreover, with people telling me that it is a very big post and I cannot handle it, made me think twice. Then another "realization" dawned on me (Of course my "Guru" has been again an integral part of this, in which way, though I cannot tell you here)! When I was the General Secretary, it was difficult, but I coped with the work load of my re­search parallel with the post. It is like, the more on my platter, the better I will fare. So, I decided to go about contesting for the post. Now to think of it, the work I have done as General Secretary is minute as compared to the work load of being a RAS! After all my stints, now my efficiency at doing work, whether research or some other, is far great­er than it was a couple of years back. The point I am driving at is, do take up new roles in your life. Experiment! You will not get the chance again. You want to change some­thing, be that change. I am not preaching anyone, but it is just something I cannot but tell. Moreover, I have realized, again, with my past two year stints, that I cannot inspire many in this world. If I could have there would have been more people fighting for RAS post, instead of going without nomina­tions at all. Anyway, that apart, I will now come to the past one year of my experience.

To be frank, I loved the work. The past year has been extremely busy, trying to juggle ev­erything on my platter, to synchronize my life. The experience has been tremendous. I have grown as a person. I learnt how to

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handle things. Most of it. I learnt from the mistakes I made. I finally realized, I can inter­act with people and it is not very difficult. Though, this is still not a virtue of mine, I think I can do a decent job on that front. As I said earlier, my efficiency increased tremen­dously. I have understood myself better, my strengths, my weaknesses, etc. Yes, it had its own disappointments, scholars blaming me for not being able to do certain things. I, on my part. could not do certain things as I would have wished to. The best part about this being, after the day I have made Mr. Aravind, in-charge RAS, I could feel that I am not leaving this place just cribbing about it. I did what I can. That satisfaction is more than what is required in my life. This has also given me confidence that. I can do some­thing beyond my work, routine or otherwise, which I have always wanted to do. I always thought I should do some social service, but never thought I can do it. mainly because I have never known my potential in handling many things at a time and also because of my very nature of being introvert. Now, I have overcome both of these. I started out by contributing to my hostel, first. Then to the institute. So, now, what? I have joined Bhumi, an organization that takes care of re­quirements (educational and otherwise) of children, who are placed in orphanages or state homes, in their own way. I would not have been able to pull myself to do this, if not for my past. I am glad and more than happy. I cannot but thank each and every one of you for having made me what I am today. I can at least feel, if not anything, that I am better than yesterday. •

jtu1.e 2013

Ishita Kumar Ph. D Scholar

Aerospace Engg.

"History is what creates presevtt avtd future."

Readers ·

This was written two years ago, when I was still at home.

It was just past breakfast time. After my sports class was over, I caught an auto-rick­shaw to go home.

The driver was quite young and dark. He was wearing sunglasses and showed the style and the poise of an actor. His white shirt was lined with golden design which made him look fancy.

He was humming a song to himself. It was barely audible. When we stopped at the signal, he started drumming on the steering and on the metal frame. He made new pat­terns of sound when honking. He was also occasionally bending out to take the sun­shine on his face. His expression was that of some celebrity.

Yet it somehow gave the impression that he was not at peace in his mind. Because there was no flow to the music he created, there was some restlessness in it. It was as if he was searching for something in the drumming and honking which he was not finding. He was searching for the lost music.

Then as we came a little more ahead, we saw there was traffic and we had to stop the rick­shaw. Some person had tried to drive a huge sedan crossway, which had blocked the cars going both to and fro. So, this driver started drumming on the steering. His drumming became more and more impatient. He bent out of the rikshaw, this time not for the sun­shine but to see what was happening ahead and to express how inappropriate it was to drive such a big car crossway, to the driver in the rickshaw ahead of us. Now his music was

not there. He started honking loudly. He had lost that bearing of style.

It was surprising how the whole counte­nance had changed due to traffic.

How often we do such a thing. Many a times we do not know what we are searching for that we still do not feel satiated. Then we impose conditions on ourselves in the delu­sion that after we do the daily "chores, we will feel good, but that is not enough. We want to say at the end of the day that I

"did,, so much today. We forget that actu­ally we all are little children of Him that all that we think we do is actually done not by us, but by a far greater power.

We are in search of something constantly and because we don, t find it anywhere, we get restless. We worry about ,what would, and keep searching for assurances. If we get the assurance that tomorrow is good, we worry about the day after. This is endless.

No, what we search for is not assurance. We are searching for the lost music. We try to find it in the Television or the cell phone or many other things. We do not get it anywhe-

Readers les

We in our labs have components and equip­ments, which is arguably one of the best in the country (if not in the world). That basically means that we are priveleged and also, we are using very costly components for experiments. It must be noted at the beginning itself that not many in the country has facilities or fund ing to do experi­ments, and do not have these components for their research. Now two question that I need to answer is (1) why should we get these equip­ments and costly components ? (2) where is the money coming from ? There are lot of associated

-re simply because we search at the wrong places and we fail to search where it actually is.

Then we need weekends and hill stations and vacations. Then we feel the need to relax in the proximity of nature. It is logical that we feel better when we are close to nature, be­cause nature makes us look within, where the music is. And the beautiful thing is that Nature is all around us. The joy that we get when we go trekking in the forest or in the Himalayas can be experienced even by look­ing out of the win dow at the tree on the road or by looking at the flowers in the garden. For us, we live in a forest...we should be grateful.

Music is all around us, especially because it is within. The lost music is not lost at all.

All we need to do is listen. •

Nandan. N. Pitre B. Tech Student Engineering Design

"Just avt adVV\iriVtg traveller OV\ avt iVtfi beautiful jourVtey ... "

questions linked to each of these two questions, but let me confine myself to the second ques­tion. I am not going into the first question simply because I will have to rip apart all the notions that we have in our mind about ourselves, let me keep it to a later point in time. Second question­where is the money coming from ? All the proj­ects (well 99.99% maybe) are funded by govern­ment directly or indirectly. Government is not funded mainly by philanthropy, so where is gov­ernment getting money from ? Well, govern­ment does print notes and produces coins, but if that is going to be the source of funding, just think what will happen to the value of ruppee. So where is the money coming from ? Common man, from the 1 billion people in the country (removing the 0.3 billion millionares, let us not worry about them now). When they buy their

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Readers

Walk in the rain bare feet to feel the moist grass beneath; listen to rustling leaves and enjoy the sweet the smell of the land. Let the rain purge you of the sins.

Sit at beach savouring the beauty of twilight; let your eyes dance with seagulls flight; watch the waves lapping the sand and take the seashells in your hand. Let the gentle breeze bring sweet reminiscence of past.

Contemplate the brightness of dawning sun and commune with infinite intelligence; follow the gleam of light which illuminates the path of wisdom.

Dare to venture into wildest jungle, climb in to zenith of mountain and plunge into deep Blue Ocean to vanquish all your fears.

Lie down under the endless cerulean sky; watch the parting clouds and glinting stars; listen to million stories they unravels.

Saunter in the garden of flowers and breathe in the redolence of love. Let moonlight tryst with the love be surreal to hold her in arms and kiss passionately.

daily food, spend money on their basic necessi­ties, a port ion of it goes as tax, and there are vari­ous (simi lar) sources of tax. Without going into the details in numbers, it is a plain fact that common man (who are right now painti ng the department, cleaning the floors etc) is funding the equipments and experiments that are run ning in the lab.

Now, tell me one thing - why should these people who, most of the days, sleep with little or nothing in their stomach pay for the experiments that we are doing ? Some funny answers- (a) we are publishing papers, improving the research output from the country, (b) we are doing basic research, output of which cannot be quantified looking at the immediate effects, (c) few other random reasons .... Please call up a labourer, tell

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Be graceful to the creators of your soul for wondrous things they have blessed you with. Be modest to the fellows who defined you.

Nurture the silence of Deep Ocean in heart and carry the lighting of dreams in your eyes. Keep your arms open to every moment and embrace simplest pleasures of life. Fill your life with cherish-able moments.

Live your life to the fullest and be most beautiful. May your life be blessed, that your last words eulogize the beauty of life: "My life was worth & I have lived to it the most & nothing is left to be realised. Now, I happily travel to the world of eternity" .

San jar Mohamed A. B M. Tech Student, Civil Engg.

" I was borV\ aV\d brought up iV\ a rustic village iV\ 'Qod's OWV\ CouV\tr!;l'· fv1!;1 life VVI.otto is "huVVI.bi!;J. chase the exce((eV\ce

wit h VVI.oralit!:l. aV\a discipliV\e heV\ce have successful aV\a blissful life./ believe iV\ the beaut!;! of life aV\d worth of relatioV\S"

him/her that you are taking some money from her wi thout he/she realizing it, and try convinc­ing him/her that she should be giving money, by expla ining your reasons.

Last, but the most important, do we real ize these, respect these ? Maybe in thoughts, but I do not see it in actions. •

-Anonymous

32/ ReNews

Readers ·_

There was an eagle, It was an eagle, So it was mighty. It was kept in a cage, Of forty by forty by forty,

les

And its mightiness was suppressed.

Every day it longed, It longed for the sky, It longed for the clouds above, And it longed for the sun. But the thing it longed for the most, Was a fast and strong FLIGHT. ..

For years it had not flown, And not cut the sky, For years it had not swoo ped, For any scurrying mice. For all it did was flutter around In forty by forty by forty ...

For years it watched crowds, And crowds watched it daily. It saw amazed faces staring at it And staring faces were amazed. It even saw thousands of birds, Soar above its head in joy ...

'there' s no use in flight' he thought. 'no one looks at those who fly,

No one stares at those who hunt Life is all staying in a cage' It thought so and felt so, And it lost its longing for FLIGHT ..

It sat everyday on a cut tree-branch; Where every eye may spot it And shout out loud- "That' san eagle" And it glared at the crowd before. Soon, it sat t here all day long, And did not even fly in the cage.

Until one day, when summer was at end, And migrating birds flew past, One huge Eagle soaring by, Saw the caged soul on the branch. It felt pity that the cage was smalt And the caged eagle' s heart so small. ..

Seeing this eagle swooshing past The caged eag le thought and thought; He thoug ht about the sky, And he thought of the clouds above, And he thought of the sun, And he thought about FLIGHT.

'must I fly?' said he to himselt 'though I know not what it would give me,

Fame? Surely not not at all. Name? surely not not at all. The who will say that I am an eagle? No, no one at all.

So he decided to spend his life, In the fo rty by forty by forty cage. It thought its life was better, Better than the sky and clouds and the sun, Better than the speedy FLIGHT. So it stayed there, entangled ...

Unt il a day came when the cage opened, And it was expected to fly. But the problem was- how to fly? For it had not flown in years. When he was out of the cage, in the trees, He kept sitting on a leafless branch.

But now no one looked at him, amazed. No one shouted- "That' san Eagle." It felt that there was no hope, Now that there was no fame and name. So it thought again of FLIGHT. But lack of confidence got the better of him ...

And it tried so hard but could not fly, It tried to reach the sky; It tried to reach the sun and the clouds, It t ried to soar, but could not fly. And it grew silent and silent Until it itself did not know it was an eagle.

So this is the story of the encaged soul, Encaged and entangled in fame and name, It lost its will; it lost its hope; Until it could not fly. As its emptiness had created a vacuum, In which no wing could unfold ... •

Nandan. N. Pitre B. Tech Student Engineering Design

"Just al'\ adW\iY'il'\9 traveiier Ol'\ al'\ il'tfi beautiful jourl'tey ... "

Jrute 2013

Readers

THE ZER_O GR_AVITY WORLD

Kaycee: Oh my God! Tom how are you?

Tom Cruise(yes it is THE TOM CRUISE): Great! How have you been?

Kaycee: I' mjust off limits! My gratitude is totally unfathomable at the present moment. It' s pretty hard for me to believe this is the reality.

Tom Cruise: I always cherish my fans and you are the dearest. <3

Kaycee(blushes): Gosh! (fidgeting). I just want to keep looking at your face. I don' t want this moment to pass by as if it' s a dream!!

Tom Cruise: Oh my dear, yes it is! Kaycee(astonished): Sorry!! What?

Tom Cruise: Have a glance down. The ground is sinking beneath our feet!!

(Both of them now looking down)

Kaycee(bewildered): Wha ... What is the matter??

Angela(Kaycee' s roommate): KAYCEE!!! Wake up! It' s already 9:45am! We have to be in office by 10.00 am!!!

(Kaycee still in her quilt wondering how real was the dream!!)

Hard indeed is to quit the mesmerising world of dreams and re-enter the apparently real world. Everyone has an internal urge to seek a world of wishful life and there we enter the world of dreams. Like Kaycee, all of us have an infinite amount of desires and wishes to fulfil. So my dear fell as, let' s try to sneak peek into the intriguing world of

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dreams.

Dream in literal sense is a phenomenon of unconscious imagination. It is a by product of the ensemble processes emerging out of one' s mind. However our rationality sug­gests why even bother about dreams? A common man would answer there' s actual­ly no necessity to ponder upon dreams. So what, at t imes we have dreams and at others we don' t

In my opinion, Science itself dint have a di­rected goal to accomplish except to satisfy one' s curiosity. It is the curiosity hammer that keeps on hitting until we find a satisfac­tory answer to it. The subject of dreams proj­ects one such example. Moreover, dreams occupied a significant share of ancient myths and cultural folklore. On the advent of systematic studies as in the case of science, we have now a rich literature documenting the importance of dreams. Freudian era was a sort of boost for the progress in field of dream science. His book 'The interpreta­tion of dreams' is popular and vividly talked about That' show the saga of Dream science started.

Dreams are infact one of the most enchant­ing topics I could ever think of. You have wings in your dreams, you have almost all supernatural powers in your dreams and you ca n actually have a relationship with your crushes and hunks! So, I guess that adds on to the flavour. As wonderful they are, at times they could make you feel at your worst. So what actually grounds all your dreams? Nobody has a precise answer of late although we do have some pieces to this great amazing puzzle. Sigmund Freud' s, (a great psychologist in my view although has controversial popularity) endeavours to ex­plain the 'why' s' of dreams ought to have a significant mention. His initial theo­ries were appreciated by the contemporaries but later, a lot of people disregarded his the­ories due to the impinging element of sexual

elements in his theories. Whatever the case may be, a psychological explanation for dreams could not be ignored.

In technical sense, dreams are the figments which arise in one of the well characterized phase of sleep called the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage. Amongst the four stages of sleep, this is the most alluring topic both due to the basic characters of this stage and of course the association of dreams.

~ state so subtle in the quiet slumber Active is the brain and the mind wandel"

The beauty of science lies in the fact that it unfolds both gradually and subtly. The curi­osity of man initially led to the discovery of sleep state; a state still not defined precisely. But the curiosity of humans did not restrict the science to the simple discovery of sleep rather extended to more elaborate classifi­cation of various states of sleep eventually leading to the discovery of paradoxical state of REMS. It is said to be paradoxical as the EEG (electroencephalogram) pattern is ap­parently similar to that of wake state and unlike that of typical sleep state. This para­dox added fuel to the curiosity of the Sleep researchers and thus we see the present state of art of REMS.

Thus, the 'how' of dreams is more estab­lished than the 'why' of dreams. Scientists throughout the time in the globe are trying to formulate hypothesis for the latter ques­tion. Exemplarily, some theories describe that dreams are a sort of vent for mind and therefore you have lot of dreams associated with your routine. Some orthodox views consider dreams to be a bridge between your past life but without any scientific grounding. So people like me would rather avoid these views for now.

Evidently, the questions do have the same origin but are being answered by two differ­ent strata of science. The psychologist tends

to look into the 'why' of dreams whereas the neuroscientists delve into the 'how' of dreams. Of late, the two of them are col­laborating to get a holistic picture of dreams. Intact Sleep research has become an indis­pensible part of neuroscience in particular.

One could just write volumes about sleep and dreams but the cent ra l t heme of dis­cussing dreams is the enthralling capacity of our mind which makes us t raverse the whole space in infinitely small segment of t ime. In some unknown way they modulate our lives too as is evident from the dream stories of great thinkers of our t ime. Conclusively, I wou ld leave you with one such dream story.

Friedrich August Kekuh~ von Stradonitz is a remarkable figure in the history of chemistry and our high-school Chemistry textbooks.

Twice Kekule had dreams that led to major discoveries!

Kekule discovered the tetravalent nature of carbon, the format ion of chemica l/ organic "Structure Theory", but he did not make this breakthrough by experimentation alone. He had a dream! As he described in a speech given at the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (German Chemical Society):

"I fell into a reverie, and lo, the atoms were gambl ing before my eyes! Whenever, hither­to, these diminutive beings had appeared to me, they had always been in motion; but up to that t ime, I had never been able to discern the nature of their motion. Now, however, I saw how, frequently, two smaller atoms united to form a pair; how a larger one em­braced the two smaller ones; how still larger ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller; whilst the whole kept whirling in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger ones formed a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them, but only at the ends of the chain. The cry of the conductor: "Clapham Road," awakened me from my dreaming;

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but I spent part of the night in putting on paper at least sketches of these dream forms. This was the origin of the Structural Theory."

later, he had a dream that helped him dis­cover that the Benzene molecule, unlike other known organic compounds, had a cir­cular structure rather than a linear one ... solving a problem that had been confound­ing chemists:

" .. .1 was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gambling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the re­peated visions of the kind, could now distin­guish larger structures of manifold confor-

Readers Articl -

The (q(m betote the Storm

It is quite unfortunate to hear about the heavy rains which have ravaged Uttarakhand recently. As I write, our security forces are ac-tively involved in saving many r · more disheartening to me

aroul')d

mation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail , and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hy­pothesis."

The snake seizing its own tail gave Kekule the circular structure idea he needed to solve the Benzene problem!

Cheers!! •

Karishma Chhabria ~ S Scholar

Bir.tPrhnology

" Subtle is tl-le Lord, V~~~~Aiicious he is not."

"Tl\e long and winding route tS...rougl-1 tl-le W\ountains. This road is closed as I speak due to landslides and

incessant rainfall (Place: Lohajung!Wan).

36/ ReNews

T~e Ius~ greeVI. ~ig~ altitude ~Meadows and t~e SVI.ow-covered peaks iVI. t~e backgrouVI.a (Place: Ali BugyaQ

We would not have been able to do it with ­out our faithful friends, the ponies and mules, who carried our essential supplies like ration, oil and camping equipment. This photo named "Black & White" captures the emotions between the white horse and its black offspring.

ReNews /39 ~~ O< 0' 0 0

The Himlayas are considered the holy abode of the Gods. Temples are aplenty in various sizes and forms. This is a one-off temple structure nestled in the hills.

Last but not the least, the people of this region, Kumaon and Gharwal, are amongst the most hospitable. They are extremely helpful, simple and true to their word. It goes without saying that, it is our duty to help them in their time of need now. The best way in my opinion is to continue to visit places abound in such natural beauty in the months to come as this will benefit the people of the region, ensuring their main source of income through tourism does not ground to a halt.

Here is bidding a good-bye to all of you with that last photo. Hope you have enjoyed the journey. This article is a tribute to all those who have lost their lives in the deluge and to the armed forces which has rendered selfless service in the face of danger & uncertainty. •

ReNews 0< fl , -.

Editorial Board

Editors I Ranjan Piyush, M. S Scholar, Applied Mechanics 1 Malini Rajan, Ph. D Scholar, Biotechnology

Design & Graphics I Aneesh Prabhakar, Ph. D Scholar, Mechanical Engineering

Correspondents I Aditi Yadav, M. S Scholar, Management Studies 1 Vasanth Kumar Gurushankar, M. S Scholar, Applied Mechanics