LETTERS : MISCELLANEOUS

Admission Trouble (3/7/06):
(appeared in Deccan Herald)
Recently few final year B.A.students from Bangalore University had to forfeit admissions to a Master's course in a university in a neighbouring state inspite of being selected after entrance tests and interviews! Since the final year examinations of Bangalore university were held very late, they were not able to produce certificates needed by the university they wished to join.The timing of the final year examinations are very important for the student and the university should have held such examiantions much earlier. Further, the admission of these students would have been possible if the Bangalore university had the academic machinery to issue projected marks cards as some of the other universities in the country do. Apart from the fact that the Banglaore university needs to be more concerned about the future of its students, the UGC has to issue proper guidelines for a better coordination between the various universities of the country.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6-11-2004

Dear Sir/Madam
Re: USA elections

A little arithmetic and a hard look at the recent election map show that there are essentially two distinctly separate Americas: The first with 55 million voting population ( 47.5 % of the total) preferring Kerry to Bush by 55:45 and the second with 60 million population preferring Bush to Kerry by 57:43. Further, both these can claim to be independent countries since the 29 states of the second group are almost contiguous while the second group with 20 states are from 3 well separated regions but with each region containing contiguous states within itself- the upper east coast , the greatlake states and the whole of west coast. This division seems to be also blessed by time since the voting pattern has not changed significantly in the past few decades. It is a tribute to the democratic traditions of USA that even such sharp divisions have not torn the country asunder!

24-8-04

Dear Sir,
Re: WHAT IF

If partition had not taken place, we would have had a civil war within a decade,
not just because of language differences. Also Nehru would have come to power even
if initially Patel had become the PM.WHAT IF the great man had listened to the Bombay economists at the at the time of the 2nd five year plan instead of Mahalanobis ?They
dissented and wanted stress on mass consumer goods and agriculture instead of heavy industries. Incidentally, this is supposed to be the Chinese model which has been
very successful!

Letters: Media Misdemeanours

15/3/2004

Sir/Madam

You ought to have thought twice before splashing the headlines " KARACHI CAPTURED " in the newspaper. This ' war cry ' is totally irresponsible considering that the two countries are trying to get close !

31-10-2002
Re: Castewise classification of the award winners ?
Thank you for the castewide breakup of the rajyothsava award winners. It would be more interesting if you can get hold of the names of the Rajyotshsava award winners of the last 30 plus years and did a similar grouping. Even more interesting would be if you did a similar breakup of the poeple who work in your esteemed newspaper. Why blame politicians for exploiting caste? The leading newspaper of the country is doing a better job than the politicians ever did.
Yours sincerely

25-10-03

Dear Sir/Madam

Re: Heliocentric theory etc

I do have to point out a glaring error in your article: The subject matter under
Renaissance.. is correct but unfortunately the captions are not. Galileo used the
telescope first in 1609/10 for astronomical purposes. Copernicus was dead by
the time Galileo was born. Therefore there was nothing like a Copernicus telescope
, let alone him demonstrating it. About Arya Bhata etc; A Greek thinker called
Aristarchus in 2nd century BC came out first with the idea of a heliocentric
universe. However the idea never became popular. Copernicus acknowledges
Aristarchus. Also Erasthones again from the same period first measured the
diameter of the earth. Arya Bhata's idea of heliocentric universe never caught on
even in India. It seems Brahmagupta and Varahamihira did not accept them

Yours Sincerely

Letters: Phileas Fogg and the Indian Railways

18-4-2002

During this 150^th anniversary of the Indian Railways, it is interesting to recall the momentous journey of Phileas Fogg. Mr. Fogg, an Englishman with a resolve to go round the world in 80 days , left London on 2^nd October 1872, sailed through the Suez and reached Bombay on 20^th October at 4.30 P.M. At 8 P.M. on the same day he caught the Great Indian Peninsular Railway from Bombay to Calcutta via Allhabad. In the words of his biographer Jules Verne : “ The train had left on time…At the station of Kalyan, it left on the right the branch that goes down to the south east of India via Khandala and Poona…During the night, the train crossed the ghats and came to Nasik… at 12.30 P.M.the train stopped at Burhanpur.. toward the evening into the passes in Satpura mountains” . Mr. Fogg’s train journey was interrupted on the 22^nd morning 65 miles before Allhabad because the track had not been completed. After covering the distance to Allhabad on an elephant during which he rescued an Indian princes from Sati, he resumed the train journey to Calcutta which took him through Benares and Burdwan. He reached Calcutta at 7 A.M. on 25^th October. Thus the whole journey, except for the elephant walk, took almost 58 hours. The venerable Mumbai – Howrah mail via Allhabad ( till recently the famous “4 Down” ) still traverses almost exactly the same route ( a total of 2156 kms) but in about 40 hours. While it may be a folly to trust timings given by a Frenchman, it is said that Mr. Fogg, who is said to have lived by the clock, himself scrutinized the first draft of his biography. Monsieur Verne while describing the whole journey bemoans the fact that the subject of his biography had no eyes for either the beautiful Indian countryside or the flow of the heavenly Ganges!

P.R.Vishwanath

Letters : An Indian in Ann Arbor in '60s
31 jan 2005

Re:THEN AND NOW

The middle ' India connection' by ..... took me back to the days when I was a graduate student in the very same town (Ann Arbor, Michigan). When I began my studies there in the winter of 1968, thre were about 200 and odd Indian (and some Pakistani) students in the university who came together once a year for a Hindi film.The only authentic Indian meal we could get was when some of the married folks took pity on us. We had learnt to make do with whatever was available in local A and P grocery stores. While we did miss India, we were busy soaking up a totally alien culture. There was a pioneering spirit in us but the culture shock also was too much claiming at least two victims in a period of 6 years. Everything in America - The huge supermarkets, the campus life style, the bitter cold etc - was new to us . Added to it, those were also the times of the hippies, vietnam and watergate ! It certainly was ' not like home ' as ....... finds! Alas, Globalization has taken away adventure out of life in alien lands!
P.R.Vishwanath

Letters : The Great Dane
23/3/05

While Hans Christian Andersen is certianly a Great Dane, one would like to submit that there are greater Danes: (1) Niels Bohr, the great physicist of 20th century,who gave the first full atomic theory and decades later tried to curb the proliferation of atomic weapons and who was also known as alter ego of Albert Einstein (2) The Prince of Denmark, who lived and died in Elsinore !
P.R.Vishwanath

Letters : Bumsteads' anniversary party (29/10/05)

It seems like that there is not much time left before
the Bumstead anniversary party. I request you to use
your influence to procure an invitation for a
diehard fan like me. It is almost 55 years ago that
one started browsing your newspaper. And the
cartoon strip by Chic Young was the first thing one
impatiently waited for while the elders took their
time reading the paper. Dagwood and Blondie ! Happy
Anniversary!
P.R.Vishwanath

Letters : The many 'A' s in a name 23/2/06

As for the 'A's in a name, it is quite possible that the name Anantanarayanan with 7 'A's is somewhere on top of the list. The American writer John Updike was so fascinated by this name with so many ' an 's that he even wrote a poem about it. Incidentally, the word Aryan has also an ' an ' in it!
P.R.Vishwanath

Letters : Colin Wilson (8/8/06)

Sir/Madam
Just like Sri Sreekumar Varma, I was also ifluenced by Colin Wilson.. It was in the early '60s that I came across a book called 'The Outsider'. That PAN publication ( original publishers) changed my life in two definite ways: (a) That was the time my identity crisis had begun and I found companionship in Colin Wilson's heroes! And they had theraupetic effect on me (b) It opened the doors of literature and history to a student of science who never knew such beings existed. Wilson introduced me to people like Sartre, Camus, Lawrence, Van Gogh,Hesse, Nietzche , Nijinsky, etc and soon I was reading all types of books. A pavement book seller on DN Road in Bombay specialised in ' existentialia' and kept feeding me such literature. However Wilson's later books did not make much impact on me.
P.R.Vishwanath

Letters - Gandhi and Einstein
15/9/2006
Reg B.R.Nanda’s article on Einstein and Gandhi, it is probably more charitable to characterize the first half of the last century not just as a preparation for the atomic bomb but as the time of a great intellectual revolution in physics. It also happened to be the time that our planet was doubly blessed by having two colossal figures of history at the same time who headed great revolutions in their spheres of activity. The great moments of modern physics and those of the Indian non violent movement did run parallel. In 1894 Gandhiji founded Natal Indian congress and a year later Roentgen discovers X-rays, the first important experiment in modern physics. 1905 was the year of Einstein’s great papers and Gandhiji’s satyagraha in South Africa started in 1906. .In 1913 the atomic theory of Rutherford-Bohr is born; Gandhiji’s march with 2500 people also took place in Natal in the same year . 1919 was the year of the first artificial transmutation of atom by Rutherford and of the first Hartal (which later gave raise to the Civil Disobedience movement) in India. !930 was the year of the Dandi march whereas in physics the first two years of that decade had great discoveries including that of neutron by Chadwick.. The first nuclear chain reaction was achieved in 1942; 1942 was also the year of the Quit India movement. While more parallels could probably be found, it should be noted that among all these events the nuclear chain reaction was the only deliberate attempt towards the bomb.
P.R.Vishwanath

Letters - Liberate Nobel Prize
16/10/2006
LIBERATE NOBEL PRIZE FROM MONETARY CONSIDERATIONS

It is time that the Nobel Prize be detached from its financial aspects. This would lessen extraneous considerations in awarding the prize. Saraswati ( the Indian goddess in charge of education andother academic activitites) can have her choice of a nice saree with some money for repair of her Veena. She does not need the opulence symbolized by Lakshmi (the Indian goddess of wealth) !

P.R.Vishwanath