Muthiah's book on the Madras Boat Club released

‘Down by the Adyar' — the story of Madras Boat Club, a book authored by the eminent writer and historian S. Muthiah was released by the British Deputy High Commissioner (Chennai), Mike Nithavrianakis at the Madras Boat Club (MBC) on Monday.

British Deputy High Commissioner Mike Nithavrianakis releasing S. Muthiah's book ‘Down by the Adyar'. Rabeendranath Rao (right), President of the club and M. Balaji, Secretary of the Club are also seen 

“The book was due to come out during the Madras Week celebrations. But the delay has made the timing more appropriate as it coincides with the glorious victory of the Indian rowers at the Asian Games in Guangzhou”, said author Muthiah.

The book tells the story in three parts; the first part introduces the general concepts of rowing. The second part details the history of rowing in Madras starting from the backwaters of Ennore moving on to the Cooum River and then the Adyar River and the third part introduces the reader to the Club itself – the Association of members and their rowing and non-rowing activities since its formation in 1867.

Muthiah said that India owes her success to rowing to the MBC and the Calcutta rowing club because of their infrastructure and coaches.

“No institution has better records than the MBC. They have the most comprehensive minutes available since 1867. Hope they take steps to preserve it and set up an archive”, said Muthiah.

He thanked his research team which consisted of Susan Philip, who checked the archives, Ranjitha Ashok, who took interviews and Lalitha Ramachander for helping him complete the book successfully.

Mike Nithavrianakis praised the club for their ability to emerge from disappointments referring to the floods of 2005 which took over the ground floor of the club. He quoted an anecdote from the book, “The best pace is a suicide pace and today is a good day to die.”

Vadivel Krishnamoorthy, Deputy High Commissioner for Sri Lanka recalled that the oldest rowing connection of MBC was with the Colombo rowing club which dates over a 100 years.

The MBC took the opportunity to felicitate Sruthi Kamath, an 18 year old who won the gold medal at the Asian Junior Rowing Championships held at Guangzhou and Seetha Muthiah, the wife of the first Indian president of MBC, late M.M. Muthiah.

The Madras boat club focused on rowing and sailing during its early years but later took up rowing alone after the formation of the Royal Madras Yacht club in 1911. The Rowing Federation of India, the sport’s governing body in the country, founded by the MBC and the Calcutta Rowing Club in August 30, 1976 has helped India take the sport to international levels.

medals on display

boats lined up

Hall of fame

CHENNAI REMEMBERS FRYDERYK CHOPIN

This year, the world celebrates the bicentenary birth anniversary of one of the greatest musical geniuses of al time – an exceptional Polish composer and pianist - Fryderyk Chopin.

 

Fryderyk Chopin

Yesterday, Chennai had the privilege of listening to his symphonies performed by Maestro Bogdan Drewnowski, thanks to the endeavours of the Embassy of Poland along with Brihaddwani, a city-based NGO researching on the teaching methodologies of world music and the MCTM Chidambaram Chettiar International School.

                                                                                                                        

The event which took place in the school auditorium was attended by the young and the old alike. Interestingly, there were quite a good number of school students at the concert who readily gave up their chairs for the elderly people who had come. The room which had a dim light setting set the mood for the show and its wooden walls enhanced the acoustics. 

Drewnowski, a reknowned pianist has had the privilege of playing the role of Chopin himself in a Polish movie.                                           

 

Maestro Bogdan Drewnowski 

Drewnowski enthralled the audience for an hour by hitting the magical notes of Chopin’s waltzes and nocturnes. Such a fine pianist is Dwenowski that even when the room was left in complete darkness for two minutes in the middle of the performance because of an electricity glitch, the maestro’s fingers never stopped playing or even flinched from the piano! This left the audience spell bound. He acknowledged the audience’s applause after each performance by bowing to them. 

He ended the concert with a mazurka for which he earned a standing ovation from the thrilled audience. Everyone left the hall with a sense of peace, joy and music in their hearts.

The Polish ambassador to India had flown in just to take part in the concert. As a kind gesture, he presented a copy of the National edition of the works of Chopin to the Head Master of the MCTM School. He said that “As far as we in Poland are concerned, we consider Chopin as a heritage. And we want the world to know how great he is.”

CREATING VISIONS BEYOND - LASER CAMERA THAT SEES AROUND CORNERS

Ever wondered if you could see beforehand if a vehicle is coming from the opposite direction at a turning rather than waiting or honking? Ever thought how rescue operations in mines or during fires could be a lot easier if you could see exactly where the trapped victim is?

Well, a group of science wizards at the Massachusetts Institute of technology have come up with an invention that could answer some of these questions- lets say hello to a laser camera that can see through corners.

The device constructs a basic image of a hidden scene by collecting tiny amounts of light that bounce off the scene.

For this, first, the camera which is called a femtosecond transient imaging system fires an ultra-short high-intensity burst of laser light to illuminate the scene. The laser is on for only a trillionth of a second.  Light reflects off all surfaces including the walls and the floor.

If there is a corner, some of the light will be reflected around it. It will then continue to bounce around the scene, reflecting off objects or people hidden around the bend. Some of the light thus reflected comes back to the camera which can be mathematically sampled and reconstructed.

Image Courtesy: http://www.bbc.co.uk

This smart method is known as "time-gating" and is commonly used by cameras in military surveillance aircraft to peer through dense foliage. The camera shutter remains shut when the light, initially reflected from the top of trees comes back and it opens later to capture the light reflected from the vehicles or objects beneath the canopy. The camera then samples back the image. Everything is merely based on proper timing.

Professor Ramesh Raskar, head of the Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab and one of the team behind the system said "It's like having X-ray vision without the X-rays." 

The applications of this camera are far- reaching if enhanced. Raskar says that the camera has use in search and rescue, robot vision and medical imagery.

He says, "You could generate a map before you go into a dangerous place like a building fire, or a robotic car could use the system to compute the path it should take around a corner before it takes it."

The research indeed is interesting but it is not clear what complexities of the invisible scenes can be computed at this point as the team has not shown the recovery of an entire hidden scene yet.

But the unstoppable team from MIT does not plan to just sit back and bask in the glory of this invention. Their current aim is to use this system to build an advanced endoscope; which if successful could come out in 2 years time.

All the applications intended to be performed by this camera are brilliant indeed but let us hope that an instrument as powerful as this does not end up in the hands of stalkers!

References:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11544037

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-11/mit-laser-camera-shoots-pics-around-corners-no-periscope-required

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article898657.ece

LIVING IN GARBAGE – A SNEAK PEAK INTO THE KODUNGAIYUR DUMPYARD

All of us use garbage bins in our homes. We also make sure that whatever we don’t want to have inside the house is disposed off into the garbage bin. But have you ever wondered where all of this goes after it is taken out of your house?

It was a revelation which our noses detected before our eyes did when we visited the Kodungaiyur dump yard in Chennai as part of our environment elective field visit.

Photo Courtesy: K.V. Srinivasan/The Hindu

Kodungaiyur, a 400- acre dump yard situated in the middle of a residential area, is the largest dump yard in Chennai, collating waste from the whole of central and north Chennai. The residents of the area, not only have to live with the dreadful stench but endure with the insects, allergies and diseases that accompany it. Periodic burning of garbage further aggravates the nuisance and the smoke causes respiratory problems to the people, especially children, living there.

It is unbelievable that although the Rule 8 of site selection criteria under Schedule III of Municipal Solid Waste Handling Rules (MSWHR), 2000 states, “The landfill site shall be away from habitation clusters, forest areas, water bodies, monuments, National Parks, Wetlands and places of important cultural, historical or religious interest”, in Kodungaiyur which is a wetland, “rehabilitated” slum dwellers live in small, dingy flats located right opposite the dump in Kannadasan Nagar, barely 50 meters away!

A. Pandurangan, President of the Kannadasa Nagar Citizens Welfare Association says, “There are no thick walls for the dump and often when it rains, sewage seeps into our homes. Our children suffer from respiratory diseases because of indiscriminate burning of garbage and this has not stopped despite us filing numerous public interest litigations.”

Since its inception in 1989, these residents have been suffering and submitting numerous complaints against the illegal dumping (they claim that only 65 acres was allotted by the corporation to dump waste) and burning of waste, all of which has gone into the deaf ears of the Chennai Corporation, who has not taken the slightest move to solve this problem. Kodungaiyur is an easier solution for them as they can save up on the fuel charge for transporting it far away from the city.

Even bio-medical waste from Governement Hospital, Kilpauk Medical College Hospital and Stanley Hospital is regularly dumped in Kodungaiyur and this attracts stray dogs who often carry them out of them dump and strew them on the streets. This is also against the MSWHR which has a clause that says “Biomedical wastes and industrial wastes shall not be mixed with municipal solid wastes and such wastes shall follow the rules separately specified for the purpose”

The garbage problem at Kodungaiyur, sadly, is not a second grade math problem which has one definite solution. A solution needs to be arrived at, which will address the problems of a number of communities living in the area.

On both sides of the road that led to another part of the dump, we saw a number of people who actually made a living out of the dump. There was a dark little room where 2 men were making ladles and spoons out of the steel collected from the dump and rag pickers segregating recyclable material to sell. There are even news reports that medicines from the dump that have crossed the expiry dates are finding their way back to the chemist stores!

As we were examining the miserable state of the dump, an old lady passed by us. She, thinking that we were people who were trying to close down the dump, exclaimed “who will feed our children if you close down the dump?” Her question is valid indeed and closing down the dump will definitely render a huge number of people who earn their bread because of the dump, jobless. But what we need to understand is that they are not rag-pickers by choice. They will definitely support the close-down if they are provided a better way to live and earn, not just a promise but an immediate action.

The garbage problem in our country can be resolved or at least brought under control only if segregation of waste is done effectively. 75 percent of wastes from homes contain bio-degradable kitchen waste, which if treated properly can be composted and used as manure. The problem of plastic can be dealt with only by educating the common man the dangers it poses to our planet. People should be induced into the habit of segregating waste.Just creating laws without implementation and regular inspections doesn’t help.

Kodungaiyur is just one example. There are so many more all around our country. We, as citizens can make a change. The keyword is ‘SEGREGATE’.

Let us start from our own kitchens.

  

Reference:

http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/25/stories/2010032561540300.htm

http://www.sipcotcuddalore.com/downloads/choking_in_garbage_II.pdf

A 150 YEAR OLD ODYSSEY CONTINUES… THE PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY OF MADRAS

From pinholes to pixels, the mesmerizing world of photography is changing everyday but the Photographic society of Madras retains its charm all the way, fostering talented people from all walks of life.

The photographic society of Madras or PSM as it is fondly called was started in 1857 by Dr. Alexander Hunter and the Honorable Walter Elliot, 18 years after the creation of the first permanent photograph. The society whose membership was restricted to European elites then broke traditions along the way and now, anyone who wants to learn the tricks of photography and interact with other lens- lovers can walk into their homely office in Kasturbai Nagar, Adyar and become a member.

“Anyone who has deep interest in photography can become a member of the society. PSM is a fraternity to meet people and grow”, exclaims Ganesan Pajanissamy, a passionate photographer and member of the society. He quit his high-paying finance job 5 years ago to pursue his love for photography and has never looked back.

The digital camera revolution has rendered negatives and developers extinct. The society has some of the early day photographs still preserved at the Victoria and Albert museum in the UK. They are trying to retrieve it and once they do they will have some of the rarest archaic treasures for the future generations to appreciate.

The 65 programs conducted by the PSM throughout the year, ranging from workshops and exhibitions to inspiring guest lectures by some of the best in the field like Rajiv Menon, Ravi Chandran and Lathika Ramaswamy, keeps members up-to-date with the latest technologies and strategies. The members keenly look forward to the ‘photo walk’ every month, where they stroll along the streets of Chennai with their cameras to capture life as it happens.

If you are a camera buff, you can see where you stand by sending in your photographs to the All India Salon of Photography contest, held by the PSM every year. The eminent judgment panel consisting of Madhu Sarkar, founder of the National Academy of Photography, T.N.A perumal, reknowned wildlife photographer and Ashok Kandimalla, writer for Smart and Better Photography magazines ensure that only the best pictures live through till the end of the contest.

Photographic experiments thrill members like Ganesan who is working to recreate the ever-revered Raja Ravi Varma paintings in digital form by photographing live models in similar costumes. Sundar Guruswamy has currently undertaken a project to photograph Thanjavur temples and exhibit them.

 “We used to do ‘touch-ups’ to photographs in the olden days and that is today advanced through Photoshop. Digital manipulation is accepted in contemporary art”, says Ganesan as he proudly hands out an intriguing ‘photoshopped’ picture of a carnatic dancer.

The PSM is trying to woo more talent in the country. The first chapter is proposed to start in Bangalore by the end of this year.

A journey that began 150 years ago, PSM has come a long way and is indeed unstoppable. If you are a photo-enthusiast wanting to pursue it as a hobby or a profession, stop dreaming, now that you know where to go!

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