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Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
A tale of Homi Bhabha, MF Husain and a trove of art at a science institute
MUMBAI: In the foyer of 'A' Block at the campus of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is an M F Husain that took top honours at an unusual competition. The area is not accessible to visitors in the government-funded, high-security campus, but the mural's expanse and sharp lines are visible even from a distance, through the tall glass facade. The mural came to adorn this 9ft x 45ft wall in 1962 because Homi Bhabha, who founded the institute in 1945, invited the finest Indian artists to compete for a chance to grace a wall at TIFR's then-new Navy Nagar premises with their work. Unbeknownst to them, Bhabha had reached out to Pablo Picasso too, hoping the legendary Spanish artist would oblige. 'As a result of our conflict with the Chinese, it is quite impossible for us to pay anything in foreign exchange, leave aside the type of price that would be appropriate for Picasso,' he wrote to his friend, Irish scientist JD Bernal. 'However, I did suggest we could pay him a first-class return air fare to India and a month's stay at our expense, together with arrangements for visiting and seeing some of the country's famous archaeological monuments,' went the letter. The attempt to entice Picasso did not work out, but Husain's massive mural, Bharat Bhagya Vidhata, lent the campus a special touch, blending the pride of a modern Indian identity with his artistic genius. This was one of the tales narrated by Mortimer Chatterjee, co-founder and director of the gallery Chatterjee and Lal, at a talk that inaugurated TIFR's first Art & Archives Colloquium, organised in collaboration with Art Mumbai. Chatterjee, who has been associated with TIFR's acclaimed art collection for 15 years, spoke of how the collection was acquired between the '50s and '70s, and what it says about Indian art of that time. While Husain's mural was the first painting created for the new campus, Bhabha had been building the institute's art collection for the better part of the previous decade. Bhabha, one of India's premier nuclear physicists, had not traded art for science; he paid keen attention to the campus's architecture and gardens too. He was, after all, an artist himself. 'While Bhabha was the steering force of the collection, he had a whole band of art insiders around him keeping a close eye on the exhibitions and new work being produced. Chief among them was Phiroza Wadia, called 'Pipsy', whom Bhabha painted a few times. Also among them was mathematics professor KS Chandrasekharan, art critic Rudolf von Leyden and Kekoo Gandhy of the Chemold Prescott gallery,' Chatterjee recounted. 'Gandhy would invite Bhabha over the day before his exhibitions opened, for him to have the first pick, while his staff held up frames for Bhabha to visualise. He would get lost in a trance, forgetting that there was someone holding them up,' said Chatterjee, to a rapt audience, on Monday evening. 'Often the paintings would stay hung at TIFR for a while, before purchase, for Bhabha to evaluate them in the setting, just as he did with paintings for his home,' he added. During the eight years it took to build the Navy Nagar campus, the 102 acquired paintings were displayed on the walls of the old Bombay Yacht Club. Then owned by Bhabha's aunt, it served as TIFR's home before the move to Navy Nagar. Few of the paintings had anything to do with science, really. The collection was entirely contemporary. For this, Chatterjee compared Bhabha to 'the spirit of Medici', the Italian patron that fostered Renaissance art, including that of Leonardo da Vinci. The then-budding group of artists known as the Progressive Artists' Group, led by Husain, SH Raza and FN Souza, among others, inevitably took the spotlight in TIFR's art collection, but a wide range of Indian artists is actually represented across it. Bhabha's love of art needed funds to support it. He secured permission, Chatterjee said, to spend 1% of TIFR's budget on art. Bringing things full-circle, Husain helped broker deals between artists and TIFR too. After Bhabha's death in 1966, aged just 56, his successor at TIFR, MGK Menon, continued his mission, building the institute's art collection up to its current strength of 250-plus masterpieces.
Scroll.in
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
Twinkle, twinkle, little star: Cosmology and the composition of verse
Knowing someone on the field as a fellow cricketer is one thing. So too becoming privy to his engaging forays into Maharashtrian antiquities. Quite something else it is to listen to Professor Girish Kulkarni of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research giving a public lecture on the properties of the Universe in its first billion years. Among Girish Kulkarni's beguiling analogies and metaphors, I am particularly struck by his comparison of the way the further you venture out into space, that is also, given the speed of light, back in time, what is known becomes more fragmentary in the way archaeologists digging down under a modern city usually find fewer remains as they go until there is nothing at all. To this model or metaphor, apparently, there is one exception. At a certain distant 'epoch' in space, beyond the imagining except in esoteric mathematical formulae, there is a 'zone' so clear it is as if an archaeologist, digging down into ever lower levels, has come upon a city – some lost Harappa or Pompeii – relatively well preserved. This is a surprise and creates a puzzle for cosmologists since it fits ill with the otherwise established pattern of a diminishing series. History of poetry: 'The Star As a woolly-minded versifier, I find myself provoked to toy with the possibility of an analogy between this riddle of contemporary cosmology and the surprises that can be thrown up by the composition of verse as well as its history. First, a historical example. Let me ask a question such as Girish Kulkarni might ask about versification. Which is the most widely known verse of English poetry? Perhaps something by Shakespeare? Or Wordsworth? Or Byron? Well, that might be so but my own random sample taken from many rambles across the world might suggest by way of answer a verse with which you will surely be familiar. By chance, it is curiously appropriate for cosmology: 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky, Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are'. I have found so many people, especially but not exclusively children, from Beijing to Budapest, from Madrid to Montreal, who, even when knowing little English, can recite this verse. I have seen copies of it inscribed on plates and on wall-hangings. Of course you know this verse, surely we all do, but, since we tend to remember poetry just in fragments, do you remember – I didn't – how it goes on and elaborates on the theme of the twinkling star? The movement of the verse is tied to a constant refrain of its iconic first line in a way that is common to Indian prosody. It returns to it finally via a line no doubt equally congenial to cosmologists as they confront newer objects of astronomical ignorance such as black holes and dark matter: 'Though I know not what you are, twinkle, twinkle, little star'. As with much poetry, often assigned for reasons good as well as bad to Anon, you may have forgotten or never known the name of the author of 'The Star'? It is Jane Taylor who, along with her sister Ann, was a phenomenally successful and well-loved writer in the Victorian era and beyond, at home and abroad. If you have seen the film PK, you may also be surprised to learn that it is indirectly, as stories by Browning and Mark Twain were directly, indebted to another of Jane's works, 'How It Strikes a Stranger'. This moral tale pioneered a genre whereby a stranger from outer space – Jane's from her twinkling Evening Star – arrives on Earth and exposes while experiencing the absurdities of human behaviour. Jane's particular target was Man's greed for wealth and possessions in the face of mortality. Composition of poetry: The Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyám That it is out of an inchoate chaos the coherent patterns of polished poems are salvaged and constructed may be illustrated by the story of a poem as widely read among free-thinking adults of all classes in late Victorian times as the works of the Taylors were among religious families – pirate editions appearing in India as well as England and America. To an astronomer and mathematician, Omar Khayyám, is ascribed a series of verses, none or few of which he may have composed at all. These are the Persian versions of rubaiyát better known to us in Edward FitzGerald's English translations – transcreations more like, even occasionally total inventions. The rubai is, like the ballad, a people's form from the countryside and it is ironic that many of the Persian originals, made available to FitzGerald by his teacher, Edward Byles Cowell, a professor of Sanskrit in (then) Calcutta, were composed in the sophisticated courts of north India. Whether or not Omar Khayyám ever did toss off a rubai or two at the end of his lectures on science, FitzGerald gathered a selection of the ever increasing number attributed to him and, having first tried some in Latin, tesselated them, as he put it, into a mosaic, stringing the disparate and discrete originals into a coherent sequence they never had – and so providing us with a whole galaxy of twinkling stars. Readers frequently return the collection to its former fragmented state by singling out a particularly memorable quatrain, perhaps, for example: 'And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, Lift not thy hands to It for help – for It Rolls impotently on as Thou or I' FitzGerald, who invariably deferred to his – younger – teacher, Professor Cowell, only once rebuffed him and that was to insist on his own more sympathetic rather than his teacher's far more laboured - if faithful – versions of Omariana being published first. In the event the first edition of his Rubaiyát of 'Omar Khayyám (1859) fell dead from the press, the next edition, published curiously in (then) Madras, did no better and FitzGerald died before quatrains from his poem became as familiar as stars in the sky. Reading poetry: 'The Disillusioned Bride' If the composition and dissemination of verse is as volatile as anything in the cosmos, the reading of it can also be as various and puzzling. Scroll back towards the beginnings of Jane Taylor's career and one poem attributed to her is so unlike anything else she ever wrote that it is widely supposed it cannot be hers. The timbered Guildhall Museum in Lavenham once housed an extensive exhibition of works by the Taylor family. A visiting stranger from the 21st century, as if from another star, would have been struck by the difference as well as coherence of their cultural universe. Their tales and verses all have a strictly moral tone. Throughout the long 19th century, these made a substantial contribution to a strain of English-speaking culture that prized domesticity and duty above all else. The works of the sisters outlived them and they were still superstars of the nursery when an enlarged centenary edition of their Original Poems was published to greet the new century in 1903. Two years later their supernova even survived the threat of collapse into a black hole brought on by their own gravity. In his Cautionary Tales Hilaire Belloc published a series of hilarious parodies of their verses for children in which particular boys and girls don't simply suffer a bit of retribution as do Ann's Meddlesome Matty and Jane's Dirty Jim but all die in agony – and of course quite ridiculously – for such minor misdemeanours as slamming doors or chewing bits of string. Perhaps only that alien stranger to the Taylor family exhibition would have been idle or impertinent enough to look behind a door leading out of the room and find hanging there a manuscript poem that simply doesn't fit the picture at all. An adjacent note attributed it to Jane and gave its title as 'The Disillusioned Bride'. This poem has a newly-married young woman, in twelve increasingly spirited stanzas, berating her husband for growing cool towards her and threatening to leave him if he doesn't pay proper attention to her and her feelings. Surely the attribution of this poem to Jane has to be misplaced? Jane herself never had a husband. But did she perhaps have had a friend who, like a young woman in a later moral tale she wrote, 'Display', jumped into a showy marriage she soon regretted? If the subject of Jane's – never published – poem is puzzling, the form of it (pointed up in the title of a second unattributed variant secreted in a Suffolk archive) compounds the puzzle. Jane's poem begins: 'The twentieth week is well nigh past, Since first in church we two were ask'd, Ah would we had not gone at last! My husband…' This use of a stanza form composed of a triplet followed by an apostrophe was also used by Jane's sister Ann in 'My Mother' (published 1804), a poem destined to become as popular worldwide as 'The Star'. But it was not from Ann that Jane borrowed the form: both sisters were indebted for that to William Cowper, a poet whose works were much admired in Non-conformist circles for their domestic pieties. In 1803, 'To Mary', a poem by Cowper, had been published posthumously. It sadly regretted the terminal illness of a longtime companion: 'The twentieth year is well night past Since first our sky was overcast, Ah would that this might be the last! My Mary…' While it is easy to see why Jane could not have published a poem that explicitly followed the syntax of Cowper's so closely, it is puzzling why she would have chosen to speak at all in a loud spirited tone the very reverse of the quiet piety heard in Cowper's poem. Quite possibly Girish Kulkarni, familiar with the peculiarities of the entire cosmos, would have hit upon the answer rather more quickly than I did. The truth is that the lens of the Telescope of Time through which we now look at Jane's poem has been adjusted, if not changed. It is not Jane but we who have upended and abandoned her customary moral assumptions. In reading a dramatic monologue such as these three poems are, we tend to identify with the speaker – unless and until our own values cause us to take exception to what they are saying. While we today may hear the voice of Jane's disillusioned bride as that of a spirited young woman putting her negligent husband right about the needs of his new partner, Jane would have heard it as that of a strident one who needs to learn, as does the young woman in 'Display', to make the transition from being a petulant bride to a sensible wife. Of course it could still be that something of Jane's heart has gone into her portrait of the bride, even as her head has not. Could it be that her bride is simultaneously an admirable and independently-minded young woman and a pitiable and petulant one? Perhaps she owns a cat called Schrödinger? Cosmos Conceptions of the cosmos, so I understand from Girish Kulkarni's lecture, are likewise composed of fragments that might be perceived diametrically differently and re-arranged coherently in diverse ways. That said, can there really be any comparison between earth-bound scribblers mired in the maya of drafting pretty little verses and cosmologists far out in space intent on measuring as they are wafted along on it what the ancient seers referred to as the Breath of Brahma? Girish Kulkarni's recent public lecture on Cosmology at Kaapi for Kuriosity may be found here. John Drew's latest collection of essays and verses, Bangla File, is available from ULAB Press, Dhaka.
Indian Express
24-05-2025
- Science
- Indian Express
Tyre particles: How EVs are a climate solution with pollution problem
By eliminating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, electric vehicles (EVs) play an important role in the fight against climate change. However, while contributing to solving one problem, they may be adding to another. A new study by Indian researchers has found that EVs may be bad news for tackling air pollution. The study, published in Soft Matter, a journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, has shown that EVs, on account of their greater weight, experience higher wear and tear in their tyres compared to conventional vehicles, and release substantially larger numbers of small plastic particles in the atmosphere. This could have adverse implications for the health of both humans and the environment. How tyres are degraded The disintegration of automobile tyres results in the release of small rubber particles that are air pollutants. The normal wear and tear of tyres produces particles of broadly two sizes – one, about 1-10 micrometres; the other, more than 100 micrometres. Particles of intermediate sizes are also produced, but they are relatively fewer in number. The study by researchers from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), IIT Bombay, and Columbia University in the US has, for the first time, established the relationship between the weight and speed of a vehicle to the size of the plastic particles released from tyres as a result of wear and tear. ('Mechanism of microplastic and nanoplastic emission from tire wear', Shankar Ghosh et al.) The tyres of heavier and faster-moving vehicles produce a higher proportion of smaller particles, shows the study. Unlike the larger particles that settle on the ground due to gravity, smaller particles remain suspended in the air, adding to the concentration of air pollutants. The study also brings out, for the first time, that particles of different sizes are produced by different physical processes of degradation of tyres. Thus, degradation caused by sudden braking or encounters with potholes, which the researchers call 'primary fragmentation', results in the release of mainly smaller particles of varying sizes. And gradual wear and tear, called 'sequential fragmentation' in the study, leads to the release of mainly larger particles. Thus, an improvement in road quality would likely reduce the release of larger particles, but would have little effect on the smaller particles. Global relevance of study The results of the study are globally relevant because of the ongoing push for the adoption of EVs. Electric vehicles are significantly heavier than conventional petrol vehicles because of the batteries – which can weigh anything between 300 kg and 900 kg. The weight of the batteries necessitates the reinforcement of the vehicle frame, which adds to the overall weight. Typically, an EV is at least 15-20% heavier than a comparable conventional vehicle. EVs are also able to accelerate more rapidly. This can lead to additional stress on the tyres due to increased friction and heat generation. The tyres of EVs are, therefore, likely to undergo a greater degree of primary fragmentation, releasing larger amounts of smaller plastic particles that add to the concentration of pollutants in the atmosphere. The findings of the study shed new light on the relatively lesser-studied negative impacts of the deployment of EVs, which is being incentivised around the world. Road transport accounts for almost 10% of global GHG emissions, the result primarily of the burning of fuel in vehicles. EVs account for just about 2% of the global vehicle stock, but they contributed to about 20% of new car sales across the world last year, according to an International Energy Agency report. In India, about 2.5% of cars sold in 2024 were electrics, according to a recent report by S&P Global. The government aims to take this figure to about 30% by 2030. In China, EVs accounted for almost half of all car sales last year. Potential responses The researchers say their findings call for different kinds of response measures. Current air quality regulations in most countries are aimed at controlling PM2.5- and PM10-size particles. Tyre fragments are smaller than these. With the proliferation of EVs, and tyre fragments becoming a more noticeable constituent of air pollution, these regulations would probably need to be expanded. At the same time, tyre manufacturers would need to invest in research and development to produce sturdier tyres that are better suited to heavier EVs. Also, emissions standards would probably need to account for non-exhaust emissions from vehicles. The researchers have also suggested possible technological fixes – such as the possibility of capturing the small tyre fragments at the time of their release, preventing them from getting into the atmosphere.
Indian Express
21-05-2025
- Science
- Indian Express
‘An ideal teacher who turned difficult ideas simple': Scientists, groomed by Narlikar, remember their mentor
Jayant Narlikar, one of the best-known names of Indian science, was not just a pioneering scientist, but also an institution-builder, educationist, a science populariser, and science fiction writer. He also groomed generations of new astrophysicists in a country that had little contribution in the field at the global level before him. Narlikar, who passed away early Tuesday morning aged 87, happened to be one of the most recognisable and loved figures in Pune, not the least among school-children who he actively sought out to discuss science. 'The passing of Dr Jayant Narlikar is a monumental loss to the scientific community. He was a luminary, especially in the field of astrophysics. His pioneering works, especially key theoretical frameworks will be valued by generations of researchers. He made a mark as an institution builder, grooming centres of learning and innovation for young minds. His writings have also gone a long way in making science accessible to common citizens,' Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his condolence message. Narlikar had earned global recognition and fame during his stint at Cambridge University in the UK for his ground-breaking research on an alternative model of the universe in collaboration with his mentor and guide Fred Hoyle. After an eventful 12 years in the UK, he returned to India in 1972, first to work at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai and then at Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune which he had helped set up. It was from here that he energised astrophysics research in India, guiding several bright scientists many of whom made seminal contributions to the field. 'He was the reason I chose astronomy. He shaped my life,' said Ajit Kembhavi, a former director of IUCAA who was among his first students in India. Kembhavi said he had first heard of Narlikar in 1964 when he was still in school. 'I had read about him in a newspaper. Sometime later when my teacher asked my class whether they knew anything unique about Indian science, I was able to mention Hoyle-Narlikar theory. It actually turned out to be decisive moment for me,' Kembhavi said, adding that working with his hero later in his life was like a dream come true. 'Narlikar was the ideal teacher. He conveyed a great deal without saying much. He converted the most difficult ideas to simple calculations. He suggested but never insisted, helped just as much as I needed. Our relationship as teacher and student morphed into a much longer association over the years as colleagues and friends, the high point of which was all the work we did together for the development of IUCAA,' Kembhavi said. Ashish Lele, director of Pune-based National Chemical Laboratory, said modern astronomy in India had become synonymous with Narlikar. 'With his passing away, a glorious chapter in Indian astronomy has come to an end. He was truly one of India's greatest scientists, science communicators and institution builders,' Lele said. R A Mashelkar, another celebrated scientist, said Narlikar cared for science, and scientific temperament, like few others. 'I even remember the time when people would ask for his autograph and he would instead tell them to send him a postcard with any science question. He would then address that question,' Mashelkar said. Somak Raychaudhury, vice-chancellor of Ashoka University and a former director of IUCAA, noted the contribution of Narlikar in building IUCAA into one of the finest scientific institutions in the country. IUCAA was unique in the manner in which it had opened its doors to inquisitive public and young students. 'I have known Prof Narlikar since the early 1980s. I was at Harvard when he offered me a job. I chose to return and help build the science popularization program at IUCAA — something I did under his mentorship. He gave me a free hand to build that programme. He would be on stage engaging directly with the audience,' Raychaudhury recalled. He recalled that even the unique design and structure of the IUCAA building was the brainchild of Narlikar. 'It is a tribute to astronomy and its pioneers in a symbolic way. Have you ever seen a government building like that,' he asked. Tarun Souradeep, director of Raman Research Institute (RRI) in Bengaluru, and another student of Narlikar, said Narlikar would offer complete freedom to his students and would patiently listen to their ideas. 'I remember once telling him that my physics background had a lot of holes as I not done some of the courses. He had a simple answer to that and said all of us have big holes in our knowledge. Only later, when I had my own students, did I realize how important that kind of support was,' Souradeep said. Arvind Paranjpye, director of the Nehru Planetarium in Mumbai, who was with IUCAA in the 1990s and was in charge of the public outreach programme there, said Narlikar emphasized the importance of giving interviews and engaging with the public. 'Use every opportunity to talk about science, he would say,' Paranjpye recalled. Lele of NCL said Narlikar had brought astronomy closer to the common man, with his short stories on science. 'I was deeply saddened to hear of his demise today morning. But every time that I look up at the starry night sky here onwards, I will know that Prof Naralikar will be among those billions of stars, shining bright as ever and smiling down on us,' he said. Anuradha Mascarenhas is a journalist with The Indian Express and is based in Pune. A senior editor, Anuradha writes on health, research developments in the field of science and environment and takes keen interest in covering women's issues. With a career spanning over 25 years, Anuradha has also led teams and often coordinated the edition. ... Read More
Indian Express
21-05-2025
- Science
- Indian Express
Express View: A life in science
In the early 1990s, Jayant Narlikar wrote a Marathi short story, Athenscha Plague (The Plague in Athens), which featured a virus unleashed by an asteroid. In a fictional replay of the great Athens plague, the Greek city gets swept away. However, unlike the ancient epidemic, whose causes remain unknown, Narlikar's Athens was ravaged by a pathogen from space. A few years later, the cosmologist led an experiment to collect microorganisms from the upper atmosphere. His research suggested evidence of living matter in the stratosphere. Did some of them seed life on Earth? Narlikar counselled caution and talked of the need for more experiments. The short story and the experiment on the possibilities of microbial life outside Earth encapsulated Narlikar's approach. The cosmologist, who passed away, at 87 on Tuesday, believed in pushing the limits of possibilities. Narlikar, the writer, took readers on exploratory journeys. Narlikar, the astrophysicist, challenged dominant theories and worked assiduously to build evidence to substantiate his claims. His long collaboration with mentor and British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle produced the most significant critique of the influential Big Bang theory. The building blocks of the Hoyle-Narlikar Quasi Steady State Cosmology theory — it contends that the universe did not originate in one Big Bang, but has existed for infinite time and has developed in small spurts — were forged when the young astrophysicist worked with his mentor in Cambridge. But Narlikar belonged to a generation of scientists such as Madhav Gadgil, Indira Nath and Venkataraman Radhakrishnan, who gave up thriving careers in renowned global labs to nurture research and hone talent in Indian institutions. The astrophysicist took up a position at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1972, where he trained scientists whose work would have a seminal influence on Indian astrophysics — they include Ajit Kembhavi, the late Thanu Padmanabhan and Sanjeev Dhurandhar. In the late 1980s, when the UGC invited him to create the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Narlikar suggested that the institute be set up within an existing university. Conceived as a hub where scholars from across Indian universities could come together to brainstorm and share resources, Narlikar's most enduring institutional legacy started in a small room in the Pune University campus in 1988. However, in a few years, it expanded into a vibrant institution, equipped with state-of-the-art labs and telescopes. Narlikar saw himself as more than an academic. He wrote scripts for TV and was a regular contributor to newspapers. The astrophysicist would often use the example of vegetable prices to explain the quasi-steady state cosmology theory — prices go up and down depending on seasons, but over a decade, they go up regardless of the season. Likewise, he would say, the universe goes through cycles of contraction and expansion, but evolves over the long term. He anticipated the predicaments of the AI age in his novel, The Return of Vaman, in which a machine outwits its programmer. The scientist often drew inspiration from Indian traditions — he reportedly asked architect Charles Correa to design the IUCAA campus according to Buddhist concepts. At the same time, Narlikar made it a mission to counter pseudoscience and astrology. He made science accessible while underlining that there were no shortcuts to excellence.
