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When we were young(er!), we used to be awed by so many inventors and there may not be a kid who would have not heard about Edison!

I remember his many inventions like the Fluoroscope, moving pictures and of course the light bulb!
Not really actually! If you search and try to find out who has been wrongly been credited as the inventor of many inventions, you will find Edison’s name right there on top!

While it is true that Edison’s Fluoroscope became the standard in medicine, it was not the first example of x-ray photography. on 22 December 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen (a German physics professor) saw a picture of his wife’s hand on a photographic plate formed due to X-rays. His wife’s hand’s photograph (shown above) was the first ever photograph of a human body part using X-rays. His contribution to the science of X-rays and X-ray photography is so significant that they are also called Röntgen rays!.

Now it does not mean that he was not a good inventor, it just means that he was a better businessman and much more powerful!
The best selling writer may not be the best writer! And in the same way the most famous and popular singer now like Taylor Swift, may not be the best singer!

Like the journey song goes, so many messages are lost in silence! It is possible that so many get silenced!

Now read the story about the actual inventor of moving pictures!

The first moving picture) was recorded at 12 frames per second by French inventor Louis Le Prince. It was filmed at the home of Joseph and Sarah Whitley, in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England on October 14, 1888 and the people who appear in the movie are Adolphe Le Prince (Louis’s son), Sarah Whitley, Joseph Whitley, and Harriet Hartley.
Ten days after filming, Sarah Whitley died. Two years later Le Prince vanished mysteriously from a train traveling between Dijon and Paris. Another two years later, Alphonse (the eldest son) was found shot dead in New York after testifying at a patent trial against Edison by the American Mutoscope Company.
Edison’s first moving picture (Monkeyshines) did not appear until 1889 or 1890!

The story of light bulb inventors is for another day!
Just remember that growing up you must realise that it is normal for you to accept that even great people are mere mortals only. Being human is your natural trait, being humane; well, that is up to you! But make sure that if you do something, or invent something; feel no shame in taking credit for it! That is your right! What is also right are the roles Birthday celebrity Annu Anil Kapoor is doing nowadays!

Now turn off that non Edison invented bulb and sleep!
Good Night!

This is a Tamil thriller movie which after having a good round in the theatres is now available in Amazon OTT!

Now before you see the movie as a normal or regular movie watcher please know the background! The movie is produced by my dear friend and frankly an inspiration to many, Dr Amar Ramachandran! (The Ram in the name is the added bonus!).
Again if you think what a doctor (before that you will also think whether he is a real doctor or even a successful doctor!) is doing in a movie! Let me tell you how he is a leading Gynecologist and Lap specialist so much so that he has demonstrated his surgical skills in national and international conferences! He does not have to make movies to survive and this is definitely his passion!
I have seen many of my friends get the midlife crisis and start new things albeit half heartedly and give up! But Amar’s steadfast dedication and commitment to his hobby and passion are movies like Route no 17!

Starting from smaller roles to full blown roles, he has climbed the ladder of movies and there is no stopping there!

One fine morning you will find him operate on a complicated case or give good news to a couple (he is also a well-known infertility specialist in case you are wondering on his limits!) while the next day he is playing the role of a stylish police officer with conviction of a seasoned actor!

If in any reunion our batch is asked who is the most successful person in the batch then without a doubt Amar’s name will come on the top and stay there!
A well settled family guy like Amar is an inspiration to one and all! And the cherry on the cake is how the whole family is involved and sharing his passion! The movie also has his son and his doctor wife in important roles!
With this background you can watch the movie! It is of course for mature audience only and there are some thrilling scenes which will definitely give you chills! Being a big fan of horror and thriller movies, I thoroughly enjoyed them!

The essence is a route seldom taken where a young couple go and what happens to them is the movie! Some of the scenes especially how the police investigate have some superb editing and clarity! How it is all linked to the past is the final twist! I was particularly interested in Amar’s role and he plays the role as if he was made for it! So you have songs and trills and a mystery all culminating in a superb ending!

All in all Route No 17 is a route you MUST TAKE!
Amar Ramachandran
#routeno17
#amazonprime

This is a Tamil thriller movie which after having a good round in the theatres is now available in Amazon OTT!

Now before you see the movie as a normal or regular movie watcher please know the background! The movie is produced by my dear friend and frankly an inspiration to many, Dr Amar Ramachandran! (The Ram in the name is the added bonus!).
Again if you think what a doctor (before that you will also think whether he is a real doctor or even a successful doctor!) is doing in a movie! Let me tell you how he is a leading Gynecologist and Lap specialist so much so that he has demonstrated his surgical skills in national and international conferences! He does not have to make movies to survive and this is definitely his passion!
I have seen many of my friends get the midlife crisis and start new things albeit half heartedly and give up! But Amar’s steadfast dedication and commitment to his hobby and passion are movies like Route no 17!

Starting from smaller roles to full blown roles, he has climbed the ladder of movies and there is no stopping there!

One fine morning you will find him operate on a complicated case or give good news to a couple (he is also a well-known infertility specialist in case you are wondering on his limits!) while the next day he is playing the role of a stylish police officer with conviction of a seasoned actor!

If in any reunion our batch is asked who is the most successful person in the batch then without a doubt Amar’s name will come on the top and stay there!
A well settled family guy like Amar is an inspiration to one and all! And the cherry on the cake is how the whole family is involved and sharing his passion! The movie also has his son and his doctor wife in important roles!
With this background you can watch the movie! It is of course for mature audience only and there are some thrilling scenes which will definitely give you chills! Being a big fan of horror and thriller movies, I thoroughly enjoyed them!

The essence is a route seldom taken where a young couple go and what happens to them is the movie! Some of the scenes especially how the police investigate have some superb editing and clarity! How it is all linked to the past is the final twist! I was particularly interested in Amar’s role and he plays the role as if he was made for it! So you have songs and trills and a mystery all culminating in a superb ending!

All in all Route No 17 is a route you MUST TAKE!
Amar Ramachandran
#routeno17
#amazonprime

This is a Tamil thriller movie which after having a good round in the theatres is now available in Amazon OTT!

Now before you see the movie as a normal or regular movie watcher please know the background! The movie is produced by my dear friend and frankly an inspiration to many, Dr Amar Ramachandran! (The Ram in the name is the added bonus!).
Again if you think what a doctor (before that you will also think whether he is a real doctor or even a successful doctor!) is doing in a movie! Let me tell you how he is a leading Gynecologist and Lap specialist so much so that he has demonstrated his surgical skills in national and international conferences! He does not have to make movies to survive and this is definitely his passion!
I have seen many of my friends get the midlife crisis and start new things albeit half heartedly and give up! But Amar’s steadfast dedication and commitment to his hobby and passion are movies like Route no 17!

Starting from smaller roles to full blown roles, he has climbed the ladder of movies and there is no stopping there!

One fine morning you will find him operate on a complicated case or give good news to a couple (he is also a well-known infertility specialist in case you are wondering on his limits!) while the next day he is playing the role of a stylish police officer with conviction of a seasoned actor!

If in any reunion our batch is asked who is the most successful person in the batch then without a doubt Amar’s name will come on the top and stay there!
A well settled family guy like Amar is an inspiration to one and all! And the cherry on the cake is how the whole family is involved and sharing his passion! The movie also has his son and his doctor wife in important roles!
With this background you can watch the movie! It is of course for mature audience only and there are some thrilling scenes which will definitely give you chills! Being a big fan of horror and thriller movies, I thoroughly enjoyed them!

The essence is a route seldom taken where a young couple go and what happens to them is the movie! Some of the scenes especially how the police investigate have some superb editing and clarity! How it is all linked to the past is the final twist! I was particularly interested in Amar’s role and he plays the role as if he was made for it! So you have songs and trills and a mystery all culminating in a superb ending!

All in all Route No 17 is a route you MUST TAKE!
Amar Ramachandran
#routeno17
#amazonprime

Shortly after Barack Obama announced he was running for president in the fall of 2007, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, interviewed him in front of a large audience of Google employees. The hall was full of fresh and experienced tech graduates with tech knowledge tsunami! 

In that tense situation, as a joke, Schmidt’s first question was, “What is the most efficient way to sort a million 32- bit integers?” 

If you were a presidential candidate but have limited knowledge of computers and algorithms then this question would have confounded you! Now of course no one expects you to answer the question in a technical manner but still whatever you answer would make or break you or your run to the election! 

Obama with his calm mind and demeanor answered confidently and boldly: “Well, I think the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go,”! 

Schmidt slapped his forehead in astonishment, and the room broke out in thunderous applause. This particular interview is available online and is mentioned in the Book Algorithms to live by; the computer science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griggiths!

Now you would ask the wrong question what is Bubble sort? Well, Bubble Sort is the simplest sorting algorithm that works by repeatedly swapping the adjacent elements if they are in the wrong order. This makes it easy to understand and implement, it also does not require any additional memory space and it is a stable sorting algorithm, meaning that elements with the same key value maintain their relative order in the sorted output!

That is not the real deal! Even Obama may have only a passing knowledge of Bubble sort but he knew where it could not be used! Bubble sort has a time complexity of O(N2) which makes it very slow for large data sets! That means this algorithm is not suitable for large data sets as its average and worst-case time complexity is quite high!

The relevance here is not that Obama knew Bubble sort! He knew how to handle any questions with just basic knowledge of the tech terms or references! Just how Leil Lowndes mentions in her book. “How to talk anyone 92 little tricks for big success in relationship”!

In the present era of the internet in your palm, information is not far! No one knows everything! But if you prepare yourself with some key points then you can handle any situation! Even if it is a hall full of tech wizards! And you do not have to say or feel sorry! Just thankful! No sorry and no thank you reminds me of birthday celebrity Sooraj R. Barjatya and his numero uno Maine Pyar Kiya!

By the way what would you have answered!?

I would have told, “I will Google!”

Now wrap yourself in the bed and sleep!

Good night!

Do you remember listening to Chitrahar on the TV or the Rangoli on sundays!?

Then later on came the music countdown shows which were very popular like the Superhit Muqabla and of course with the advent of Mtv and other channels, countdowns became more of the videos than the songs itself!

The paucity of good music makes sure that there is no good countdown now! There were days when one film would have more than ten good songs! while nowadays you have ten movies with not even a single good song! Whatever Spotify or Apple music says! 

This is the age of singles! One hit wonders and songs which you sing for some time and forget the next day! The music is produced and orchestra is artificial! The singers are auto tuned and the lyrics are repetitive and garbage! The songs nowadays need a single point of click bait which can be used as a reel and your work is done! 

Did you know that one of the first music (actual music and not garbage of today!) countdown was in India in Radio ceylon and later on Vividh Bharathi which started way back in 1952!?

At its onset in 1952, the program did not rank songs, but rather played seven contemporary songs in no particular order! This was really good since those days the songs were so good and so full of soul that to put a number to it would be an arduous task indeed! 

Later on the program started ranking the most popular Hindi film songs. The songs were initially ranked by a combination of the number of records sold in India and listener votes which were collected and recorded in no particular order since this was not an official countdown but still it was a matter of great pride when the song came in the top three! 

Popularity was gauged by record sales, verdicts from record store owners, and popularity among the shrota-sanghs or ‘listeners clubs’. Each week, the shrota-sanghs would send the radio station their list of popular songs. The clubs were formed because it was possible for a record to be sold out at stores and although there was interest to buy more, the interest would not show up in record sales! 

The year-end lists were compiled based on points earned by songs through the year. Between 1966 and 1970 there would sometimes be no points on the weekly broadcast, but the year-end show would be based on point system!

I still remember how my mother used to be glued on to our old big radio with the dial stuck in AIR and she used to listen to the songs in full blast!

When you see the number one songs the singer on top would undoubtedly be Lata didi!  

It is probably one of the longest running countdown shows ever! Starting in 1952 to 1988 in Radio Ceylon and then from 1989 to 1994 in Vividh Bharathi! With subsequent revivals also in later years! The names used to change but the presenter is one of the most recognizable voices in Radio! His start of  “Behno aur Bhaiyon ”  has been imitated in many movies and songs and is instantly recognizable!

The name of the countdown was Binaca Geetmala, and its subsequent incarnations named after Cibaca—Cibaca Sangeetmala, Cibaca Geetmala, and Colgate Cibaca Sangeetmala! 

And of course the iconic voice of Ameen Sayani…

We lost that eternal baritone and melodious voice today.

My mother would have shed a tear for you sir, I will shed two, one for her and one for you…you will be missed…

Heart felt condolences; OM SHANTHI… 

Most major Tennis tournaments (for that matter any major tournaments like cricket or football) are seeded!  This means that the top-seeded players are much more likely to meet in the latter stages of the tournament. This is helpful from a number of aspects. A top player who has trained hard doesn’t really want to go out to the world number one in the first round. 

Basically if world number one and two meet very early in the tournament and each game is elimination round then very early in the tournament you have a big upset! The second place is decided later but the person who is actually deserving to get the second place may go out early! 

Even from a sponsorship and commercial perspective, a tournament that builds to a clash of the titans in the final few rounds, is exactly where you want to be!

The mathematics of tournaments actually needs every player and team to play with each other and get subsequently eliminated! The IPL is one example which is a better format to get the good team or players! But this cannot be used for all the games since it is time and resource consuming. 

Of course the introduction of seeded tournament has given a possible balance to games and tournaments but even seeded tournaments are not perfect! It is however better than non seeded ones! 

A popular game like tennis was in the early years, non seeded! So you can very well imagine the shock of a seeded player getting eliminated in the early rounds! Come a mathematician called Charles Dodgson. 

Charles also was also interested in lawn tennis and frustrated with the non seeded nature of the tournament.  He wanted to make them fairer, more logical, more mathematically perfect!  

Charles wrote about the rules of lawn tennis tournaments after talking to somebody who was upset after he lost in the first round and then saw a player much weaker than himself make his way into the finals!

Those days the games were played by draws which were composed randomly, so the best and second-best players could very easily meet in the first round!

Charles offered his solution in an essay named, “Lawn Tennis Tournaments, The True Method of Assigning Prizes with a Proof of the Fallacy of the Present Method.”

While novel his system wasn’t as simple as the method in use today. He created a complex tournament structure in which players could not be eliminated in the first round.  Losers kept playing until they had three superiors, three people who had beaten them or beaten someone who had beaten them!

Now of course this method may not work since the time and effort required would have been huge! But monographs and materials like these were responsible for the change in the game play and the way tournaments were conducted including the introduction of the seeded method!

Now there is a chance that not many took Charles seriously when they found his pen name and he had written a book about a girl called Alice who goes down a hole following a talking rabbit! You would have heard of the book! and his pen name! The Author of many books including Alice in Wonderland! Charles Dogson also known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll! Just because he was a mathematician does not mean that he does not have imagination! TV serials and some movies especially in India also needs lots of imagination and to play roles which are routine looks simple only because of the talent of the actor! One such actor was Rituraj Singh; Gone too soon…

Heartfelt condolences, OM SHANTHI…

Now did you know that Alice in Wonderland is told in the format or idea of a dream!? Sleep and  try to dream part 2!

Good Night!

A fast scribe sketch! Happy with the outcome since I can’t shade or erase!

This particular fruit is one of the most commonly used in Indian cooking! The sambar and the most rasams (or Saru!) of the south to the chutney in the north Indian chats cannot be done without this!

When this fruit came to Persians and the Arabs; they looked at its shape and appearance and called it “tamar e hindi” (Indian date, from the date-like appearance of the dried pulp!),

Unfortunately or (fortunately for that matter); if they thought that it is like a date then they were mistaken from the first bite! Like some songs and people, the sour taste of this fruit may not make you like it at first but then when you go on tasting it, it grows on you and you cannot do without it!

The fruit is so commonly used in Tamil Nadu that there is a whole rice dedicated to it and when you make it with Sesame oil, the taste is high!

Being rich in polyphenols and flavonoids, this has been shown to decrease LDL cholesterol and increase HDL cholesterol, thereby lowering the risk of atherosclerosis. The dried pulp was also found to have anti-hypertensive effects, reducing diastolic blood pressure. Of course it is effective only if you take in the right quantity! One of the few fruits which has a high beneficial Magnesium level!

Other possible benefits of eating this fruit are that it may have an anthelminthic potential, it may be an antioxidant, it can also be a carminative (relieves gas) and may be a laxative (cures constipation). Like a double edge sword though, higher quantities may increase gastritis! Remember that even nectar is bad in large quantities and this is after all a fruit!

The best way to take the essence of this fruit is to soak it in hot water and squeeze! My mother used to use the left over squeezed pulp to clean the lamps! It used to give them a good shine! The pulp can thus also be used as a metal polish. It contains tartaric acid, which helps remove tarnish from copper and bronze!

The leaves and flowers are used as a mordant in dyeing. The seeds produce an amber-coloured oil that is used as lighting fuel and for varnishing dolls and idols. The hard, heavy timber is used to make furniture, boats and tool handles. The wood is also valued as a fuel as it gives off an intense heat and makes high quality charcoal for use in gunpowder!

Of course the self proclaimed intelligent people would want to anglicize the name so that it would sound wise! (at least to them!); so the “tamar e hind” was simplified and is now known worldwide as…Tamarind!

The thought of tamarind chutney with hot samosa and maybe aloo tikki is music to my ears! Nice music and great lesson is also the hallmark of movies like Shankarabharanam and Sagara Sangamam by Birthday celebrity Kasinadhuni Viswanath popularly known as “Kalatapasvi”! Have some tamarind rice or bisi bele bath and check them out!

Now stop eating chats in the night and sleep!
Good Night!

We blame the population for lots of things! For once let me give some praise! Do you know that the growth of population and the counting of population or Census is the root reason for the development and final invention of a product which is one of the most useful devices in the world today!? Read on!

In a book called Algorithms to live by; the computer science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griggiths; the authors narrate about the growing population of US and the huge task of compiling and tabulating the data! The whole task of census is done every ten years and there reached a situation in which the data collected for the census in 1880 was so much that the compiling and indexing was completed only in 1888 just in time for the next census!

It had become a mind-numbingly boring, monotonous, error-prone, clerical exercise of a magnitude rarely seen! A simple error and you can bid the census good bye! Since the population was evidently continuing to grow at a rapid pace, those with sufficient imagination could foresee that processing the 1890 census would be gruesome indeed without some change in procedure!

Trust a doctor to come to rescue! It was John Shaw Billings, a physician assigned to assist the Census Office with compiling health statistics who had closely observed the immense tabulation efforts required to deal with the raw data of 1880. He expressed his concerns to a young mechanical engineer assisting with the census, Herman Hollerith, a recent graduate of the Columbia School of Mines and fresh to innovate!

The technological solutions devised by Hollerith involved a suite of mechanical and electrical devices. The first crucial innovation was to translate data on handwritten census tally sheets to patterns of holes punched in cards.

A hole (please read it separately!!) is thus punched corresponding to person, then a hole according as person is a male or female, another recording whether native or foreign born, another either white or Colored (colorful would have been better!)

This process required developing special machinery to ensure that holes could be punched with accuracy and efficiency which Hollerith then devised to “read” the card, by probing the card with pins, so that only where there was a hole would the pin pass through the card to make an electrical connection, resulting in an advance of the appropriate counter!

For example, if a card for a white male farmer passed through the machine, a counter for each of these categories would be increased by one. The card was made sturdy enough to allow passage through the card reading machine multiple times, for counting different categories or checking results!
The count proceeded so rapidly that the state-by-state numbers needed for congressional apportionment were certified before the end of November 1890!

After his census success, Hollerith went into business selling this technology. The company he founded would, after he retired, become this company which led the way in perfecting card technology for recording and tabulating large sets of data for a variety of purposes!

By the 1930s, many businesses were using cards for record-keeping procedures, such as payroll and inventory. Some data-intensive scientists, especially astronomers, were also finding the cards convenient. The company by then had standardized an 80-column card and had developed keypunch machines that would change little for decades!

Card processing served as a scaffolding for vastly more rapid and space-efficient purely electronic computers that now dominate, with little evidence remaining of the old regime! The name of the company? International Business Machines or as we all know it; IBM!

Interesting piece of history of card scaffolding and computer! Another bit of history is Kanchan Chaudhary Bhattacharya who was the second woman officer in Indian Police Service (IPS) in India, the first being Kiran Bedi! Incidentally her younger sister Kavita Chaudhary under her sister’s ‘scaffolding’ directed and starred in series called Udaan based on the life of Kanchan which was inspirational to many girls of that time! We lost her the other day. Heartfelt condolences to Kavita Ji; You will be missed…
Heartfelt condolences; om shanti…

Now shut down the card punch machine, I mean the computer and sleep!
Good Night!

Dunki is a tragedy; not a comedy.

If you remember this line and watch the movie then you will not have any expectation from the movie. When it is a Raju Hirani movie then you will expect some mushy syrupy and an emotional roller coaster with comic elements!

The difference in Raju’s comedy is that it usually filled with so much pain or sadness! It can be showing the state of Raju Rastogi’s house in 3 idiots. If you think about it, the scene is actually very sad! The way his mother uses the Belan to scratch his father’s eczema is hilarious to us! But if you analyse the situation, the poor guy is paralyzed and lying down on a bed with a leaky roof and he cannot even scratch the itch!

Then you have the scene in Lage raho where Munna is telling circuit that someone is breaking and entering Jhanvi’s house! Typical circuit will tell that he is close by and finally realise that it is him! It is so hilarious but really sad!

Even in Sanju you have so many scenes which are funny like the Pinky scene! But the situation is really sad.

Raju has tried his best to elevate Dunki to the level that it becomes entertaining and funny but the issue itself is so sad and depressing that it is an arduous task indeed!

When someone decides to leave his or her country and somehow escape to another better country it is a lifechanging decision! He or she is sacrificing so much! He or she will not be involved in any minor incidents in his family back home. He or she will not be there for kids growing up or parents and elders growing old. He or she may not make it in emergency. Money is the main driving force otherwise no one will ever leave his or her country and go somewhere else.

Even now those who are settled outside yearn for that holiday to the country! Those few days go so fast with the blink of your eye! You have so many things to do and so many people to meet and so many things to eat! And with a clock like a hammer hanging on the top you try to squeeze how much every you can before the long journey back!

Now this is for those who have gone legally and properly which is actually minority! Many who use the DUNKI route have so much more to bear and suffer! Many may not even make it to their destination and even if they do, it is a daily struggle to leave and send money and be a NRI! They would have been poor in their own country but they had fresh air and open fields and an air of independence while many live in deplorable conditions with nothing much to write home about!
In these lines there is an excellent Malayam movie called Pathemari; it is one of the most emotionally true movie showing the trials faced by those who decide to emigrate and are stuck in a loop of work and work. In the movie when he brings some dry fruits to his relatives, one of them offers him and then utters, “Oh, you may be eating this everyday!”. The hero laments how he has never tasted them!

With these points in mind you may not be very surprised at the ending of both Pathemari and Dunki; a regular viewer of course may not be able to digest it!
One thing is for sure, Dunki is actually a much better movie than Pathaan, Jawaan, Tiger and even Animal!

It will make you sad especially if you are an NRI! Of course if you want to laugh with another country migration movie then check out this classic comedy by the birthday celebrity Indra Sen Johar called; ‘Johar Mehmood in Hong Kong’! It is a laugh riot!

Another day, another night, do not smirk, tomorrow you have to work!
Good Night!