Science Camp, Cultivation, City of Joy etc!

Hello everyone on Blogosphere. It seems like a decade I am away from this blog except to those who are in space or in Miller's planet (courtesy: Interstellar). Coming back here was not a compulsion by the way, but a reflection of the fact that I have been living some beautiful days since November 9 in the city of Joy, Calcutta. The best part of these few days was the freedom I was awarded to do whatever I want which is rare in a government job. I am indeed thankful to my official as well as practical hosts in this city as well as to my university for sending me here. I came here on duty leave taking our students to the National Science Camp held during November 10-12 at Science City here. Although the organizers sent me a hard copy of invitation letter, they simply denied accommodation to me after my arrival, thanks to the lack of communication between national and local organizers. Although they took good care of our students, I had to roam here and there before somehow managing to get into the IACS guest house. Thanks to all who helped me out and gave me a place to stay at night within such a short notice and that too on a weekend. Although the trip to Calcutta started like this, it took off very smoothly as I could utilize my day time reading and discussing things at IACS theoretical physics department. I felt as if I am reading some new science after a long long time. The hectic teaching and administrative work schedule at my workplace hardly allow me to do something creative or read something new. Days were fun with science, whereas the evenings were fun with tasting new food with friends at places like Tandoor Park (Jadavpur), South City Mall (Jadavpur), Peter Cat (Park Street) etc. Visiting the Victoria Memorial at night was simply amazing, such a mesmerizing structure. My stay here also allowed me to watch the new movie Interstellar released last week. This would have never been possible in a small town like Tezpur where I work. Before leaving tonight, just thanking everyone who made my stay comfortable and enjoyable. Also a big thanks to the National Science Camp organizers who could not offer me a place to stay but finally paid for my stay at a place which I am sure is better than anything the organizers would have offered. Adios City of Joy, hope to visit again!

Off to Delhi for three weeks!

Finally its decided. I am going to Delhi to attend to XXVI SERC school on Theoretical High Energy Physics at Center for Theoretical Physics, Jamia (as an unofficial participant this time). It was very hard for me to decide whether to go there or do some work in the institute itself. As two of my papers were under review, I had couple of things to do for the last few months. But on 26th January, one of them got accepted in Physical Review D and brought tremendous relief. But just around that time the reviewers comments came for the other paper. One of those comments was a bit technical and I had to re-do some calculations and re-draw some of the plots. Thankfully I could finish them from my side yesterday and now completely ready to go to the SERC school with almost zero load on my head. My fellow friends might complain that I travel too much, as is obvious from my blog also. But truly speaking, I enjoy it although I have hard time in Indian Railways most of the time. Last time I went to Delhi on New Years eve, the train was 20 hours delayed (9 hours on the station +11 hours on the way). But this time I just called up Indian Railways information center and they said that my train is delayed by 1 minute. I felt great not because of the delay by just one minute but because of the fact that Indian Railways count up to the precision of 1 minute ;-) But the train this time is a chair car train (where it is easier to get reservation within 1 week of departure date), so it might be tiring to travel for 16 hours. But anyway I believe it will be better than a sleeper coach travel for 30 hours. Looking forward to a great school this time (unlike the not so great school in Panjab University, Chandigarh last year)....

Calcutta 2011

As I have mentioned in my previous post, I was in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) from 4th Jan to 9th Jan'2011 attending a workshop at Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics. The workshop was awesome both from academic point of view as well as the hospitality. Academic part I mentioned more or less in my previous post. Regarding the hospitality part, it was perhaps better than many conferences/workshops in Europe or in the US I believe. The food, the drinks, the banquet dinner were so amazing, I am having a hard time now in getting adjusted to the hostel food :( I would love to go there whenever I get an opportunity. Calcutta as a city I did not explore much, although I had one whole day free. But the public transport there is not so good although this is the only Indian city which has bus, metro and tram both. The problem is that metro and tram covers only a small portion of this huge city and 99% of the time you have to travel by bus only. And the roads (as far as I have seen) there are so small compared to other metro cities like Bombay and New Delhi, it takes too much time to travel by road. The first day I reached Calcutta, I took a cab from Howrah station to Salt Lake Sector 1 and it took more than one and a half hours although the distance was around 10-12 km. Apart from that Calcutta suffers from various political turmoils also. Political parties start rallies, protests anywhere on the street resulting in huge traffic jam. It happened during my stay there also after eight villagers were shot in Lalgarh area of West Bengal. The security of the guest house I stayed advised me not to take the risk of going out on that day. I believe there are many things to enjoy or explore in this city but the city has still to grow up to make it more tourist friendly for which better roads and better public transport is a must.

New Year's Eve!

Maintaining the tradition of spending new year's eve in the capital, I am "planning" to leave for New Delhi tomorrow. I am saying "planning" because there is still chances of this trip getting ruined. There are some strikes going on in Rajasthan through which my train is supposed to pass through. The Gujjar community there are protesting against the government by blocking rail and road traffic. Their demand is around 5% reservations in education, jobs etc. Anyone can imagine how ridiculous the way of their protest is. As far as their demand is concerned, I would say all the Indian citizens should get reservations so as to remove the existing bias as well as to rule out such stupid agitations in future ;) My train has been diverted from the usual route I guess, and hopefully I will be able to reach New Delhi before new years' eve. The dense fog around the capital is another problem hitting both rail and air traffic. I am still optimistic about reaching Delhi somehow. I have to leave for Calcutta also for a workshop in SINP from 4th Jan-8th Jan'2011.

Rajasthan 2010

I was in Jaipur for around one week attending a conference in LNMIIT as mentioned in the previous post. The city of Jaipur has got tremendous historical importance and the number of monuments in and around the city are still carrying the pride of Jaipur and the kings who ruled there. First of all the whole city is surrounded by hills and on top of the hills you can see various forts and huge walls. The ancient city of Jaipur was slightly away from the main city today and it was surrounded by huge walls. The fort of Amber was simply amazing. The beautiful ceilings inside reminded me of some of those in Vatican museum. It was great to see the Rajasthan Government taking all necessary steps to keep the monuments evergreen. Apart from the this grand fort, the Jalmahal, the Jaigarh fort, the Nahargarh fort, the Hawa mahal, the City Palace were also amazing. Jaipur don't look so good from the point of view of a modern city, but it has got so much historical monuments that no other city in India can probably beat Jaipur. And the interesting fact is that most of the cities in Rajasthan have such huge monuments which make Rajasthan a hot tourist spot in India.

Apart from historical monuments, Rajasthan is famous for wildlife also. Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary and Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve are pretty famous for that. Bharatpur is around 4 hours journey by bus from Jaipur. It's a small town, a bit dirty and unorganized. But the autowala took us to a nice place to stay. It was a part of a person's residence which he gives to tourists on rent. It was pretty close to the gate of the Keoladeo National Park (or Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary) . We went inside the sanctuary twice: we walked on the first day and took bikes for the second day. Although the sanctuary is spread over an area of 30 square kilometer, most of it were unavailable for tourists. Apparently a tiger came out from Ranthambhore national park and entered into some village from where people drove him off to Bharatpur. The authorities are yet to transfer that tiger from Bharatpur to some other national park. People said , it would be done within one week and the entire park will then be open for visitors. We saw a wide varieties of birds there mostly unfamiliar to me. The Siberian Cranes for which the park was very famous at one time, don't come nowadays. According to a guide there, since the Afghan war started, those birds stopped visiting the park since their route to India was over Afghanistan. Apart from birds, there were deers, antilope, wild lizards, jackal and lots of cows, bulls.

Ranthambhore national park is around 190 km from Bharatpur. And there is no good bus service between these two famous tourist destinations. We had to take some pathetic train to reach Sawai Madhopur (which is the district center and very close to Ranthambhore). Sawai Madhopur is again a very small town, but fact that the town has more number of hi-class hotels than shops surprised us a lot. We need to survey a lot to find a room which fits our budget. The Taj Group , the Oberoi group also have hotels over there. And due to high demands from lots of tourists, the prices of rooms were a bit high for Indian grad students ;) Anyway, we managed to find a small tent for us at 600 rupees per night. We took two safaris there, one in the afternoon and one in the morning. Although the afternoon safari went in vain (in the sense that we could not see any tiger), the morning safari made it possible. The guide is the second safari was a bit more experienced than the first one. He followed the warning calls from spotted deer and sambar deer and lead us to spot the tiger. The tiger quietly came and crossed our roads. We felt so lucky to see it in the very second safari, people don't see tiger there even after taking 4-5 safaris. The park is spread over an area of 392 square km and there are only around 30 tigers. So the probability of spotting a tiger in a 3-hour long safari is quite low. Apart from tiger, we saw many birds (which we already saw in Bharatpur), crocodiles, deers, antilope etc.

Area-wise Rajathan is the largest state in India, and of course it's not possible to cover everything within just few days. There are many more interesting places like Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Ajmer which we could not cover. Will have to plan some trip again to this awesome Indian state in near future :)

Maiden Trip to South India

I had my maiden trip to South India this weekend. The diwali vacation along with the weekend put me on an advantage to make such a trip. I went to the city of Bangalore, the capital of the Indian state Karnataka. I am sorry that I would stick to the older name of this city in my post, as changing names of cities don't make any sense to me at all. The new name of this city is perhaps Bengaluru if I am not wrong. Anyway, the trip to Bangalore from Bombay is 24 hour journey by train. The journey was very pleasant as the weather was cool all through. The train route was like a train route to a Hill station. There was no electric lines, the train had a diesel engine and it passed through forests, mountains etc. I really felt as if I am going home and not to Bangalore. There were hardly any famous or big stations on the way, the train was mostly passing through rural areas, forests, paddy fields etc. The altitude of most of the stations coming on the way were more than 500 meter from sea level and may be the that's the reason why the weather was pretty cool throughout. Even if there is rainfall, people don't feel the humidity. It was a different experience from Bombay, where rain means too much humidity and you sweat like hell.

The city of Bangalore was really nice, I found it quite clean and systematic compared to Bombay. I missed the Bombay local train there. The only mode of public transport was bus there. Although I did not have to take any bus, I could guess how difficult it would have been for me if I had to. The sign-boards in the shops, restaurants, buses were mostly in local language, neither in Hindi nor in English. I could just imagine how hard it would be for a new-comer to get adjust to the city life. I found it a bit weird, at least English should be used in the public notice boards if not Hindi. I did not have much time to explore the city, but these were my first sight experiences. I would love to go there once again, may be in March next year. This time I am thinking of visiting IISc for a week or so, so that getting leave from IITB will no longer be an issue. And at the same time will get an opportunity to explore Bangalore and its neighborhood (Mysore for example).

Venice trip!

I managed to make a trip to Venice while coming back home from Trieste. My flight was on Saturday morning and I came from Trieste at 2 PM on Friday. Three of my friends also came with me. We reached Venice at around 5 PM. The weather was thankfully very shiny although it was raining like anything on Thursday. Venice was really different from other cities. The whole transport system in the city is based on boats. We did not take any boat ride although they are not very expensive compared to the famous Gondola. The city is pretty small like other Italian cities and we managed to walk around for sight seeing. We walked from the station to the piazza San Marco. That was the most famous place in the city I guess, there were lots of people there and some live concerts were also going on. It was a lovely atmosphere there. We stayed in the city till 10 pm and then took a bus to the airport. Venice airport is terribly small with hardly any shops inside. I could not find a shop to buy some food also, forget about my plans to buy chocolates and wine from there. We spent the whole night in the airport and then took flights at 7 am.

Italian Experiences!

During the ICTP summer school, we had a weekend in between and the plan was to make full use of it. Although there was a news of train strike during the weekend, fortunately it did not happen and we could stick to our earlier plans of visiting some places. Just after the lectures on Friday were over, we had dinner and then left to Trieste Central Railway station. By the time we reached, the ticket counter was closed and the only option left was the buy tickets from the machine. I got my ticket without any difficulty from the machine. But when my three other friends tried to buy their tickets together, somehow the machine did not deliver them and 130 euro got stuck inside. We went to the customer care and the guy (in little English and more Italian) told us that we have to fill up a form which he would sign and then show it to the ticket counter on weekdays (during work-hours). Losing 130 euro just before going out for a long trip was damn frustrating. But still we did not change our plans. My friends bought their tickets individually and we left for Rome.

As expected, the train was crowded and we could not have enough sleep in the train. The ticket inspectors kept coming one after another to check the same damn ticket and waking us up. I probably slept for 2 hours just before reaching Rome and that proved to be good enough for me. Just after getting down at the Rome station we bought a day ticket for the metro and went to locate our hotel. After asking couple of people on the streets, we finally found the hotel. The guy at the reception (to our surprise) was a Bangladeshi. He offered us free breakfast, although we could not check in at that time and he asked us to come at 2 PM. We then left for St. Peter's Basilica by metro. This place is damn crowded specially on weekends and fortunately we booked the entry tickets online and hence did not have to stand in those ques. We went to Vatican Museum, Vatican Church and finished everything there by noon. That was remarkable indeed. After that we went to see the Colosseum. There also we applied a trick (which was suggested by one Indian who is a ICTP regular associate). Instead of waiting in the long que in Colosseum to buy the ticket, we went to Roman Forum where there was hardly any que and bought the combined ticket to see both the forum and Colosseum. It took around 2-3 hours to see everything there. We felt tired indeed after that. We took rest in the hotel for sometime and came out in the evening to see some other places like Fontana di Trevi. We went to the Colosseum again to see the night view, it was really amazing. One very funny thing happened in the hotel with us by the way. We all four were(half naked) on our beds and gossiping, suddenly a lady came in and tried to teach us how to use the western toilet. Her English was pretty bad and one of us had to go with her to the toilet and understand what she wanted to say. We could not believe it, using the toilet was such a trivial thing. May be she thought we don't look western and might not be used to such toilets ;)
Next morning we went out for Pisa. It was a four hour journey by train, and was pretty enjoyable. The train was running just along the western coast of Italy and the beautiful beaches were often coming on the left side of our train. Pisa is a very small town with river Arno passing through it. Apart from the leaning tower there was nothing much to see there and hence we finished everything within 1-2 hours and then went to Florence. It took around 1 and a half hour to reach Florence. Florence was really amazing. The architecture, the various sculptures, the crowd, music and everything there were simply incomparable. The city has tiny streets with huge buildings on both sides, we found many street singers who were as good as professional ones. The river Arno added another charm to it. We had to come to another station at night to catch the train back to Trieste. We had lots of problems in finding out the station called Carpe di Mar (I guess). We got lost at many places as we did not have a map of the city. Finally a German lady helped us a lot. And we could manage to find the station. We had to wait there for couple of hours as our train was at 1:45 am. The train was again crowded and I could not sleep much which forced me to bunk the lectures on Monday (except the first one) :(

Arbit Experiences/Surprises in UK

The first surprise to me in UK was too many Indian faces. Just after coming out of the aircraft, while standing in a long que for immigration I was surprised to see most of the airport staff there Indians. Only after coming out of the airport, I felt like coming to a foreign nation. The city of London was very much similar to south Bombay, same double decker, same architecture of buildings, similar work culture and all. I felt as if the city is very close to me.

Me and my friend had no idea how to go to University of Southampton (Winchester Campus) from the hotel. We called a taxi and surprisingly the driver was an Indian. Although we were talking in English only, the driver suddenly turned on the FM radio where everything was in Hindi. I asked him what's going on, he said Southampton has a Hindi FM radio station also. We just said :"Wow, cool". The driver also gave us discount of 3.5 pounds..many many thanks to him for saving almost 300 rupees.

On the last day of our workshop at Winchester, I was waiting at the bus stop to catch the national express coach to Bournemouth. As there was enough time before the bus reaches there, I went to Subway there to have some food. Once again I found Indians there, not very surprised this time as I got used to it by then. But I really got surprised when the guy there told me that he is from Manipur. Once again I got discount of 1.5 pound may be for being an Indian or may be for being a person from his neighboring state Assam.
On the last day of my stay at UK, I was coming by a taxi from my friend's home in Bournemouth to the coach station. The driver, a British this time asked me where I am from. When I told him I am from Bombay, then he asked me if this is the same place where there was a terrorist attack two years back which killed around 200 people. I said yes, it's the same city. He was asking me if these things are all happening because of Kashmir and all, why India don't give freedom to Kashmir. I did not say anything, as these problems don't have any such straightforward solutions as people in Britain might think of.
These are some of my arbit experiences during my six day stay in UK which surprised me to some extent.

Trip to Bournemouth...unforgettable experience!

After my workshop was over at University of Southampton (Winchester Campus) on 2nd July, I went to Bournemouth to meet my friend from BSc days, Prashant. He is currently a PhD student at University of Bournemouth. It was a great pleasure to meet him after four years and that too in UK. And the city of Bournemouth is so amazing with beautiful beaches and all, I fell in love with it immediately. The next day we did a lot of cycling and went to see the beautiful Old Harry Rocks near Swanage village. The white shining rocks in the blue Atlantic were looking really superb. We spent lots of time over there as well as on the beaches. It was very tiring of course, but place was so scenic that we hardly felt it. I returned from Bournemouth at night to London to catch my flight back to India. My trip was really short to see all such beautiful places, I am now really looking forward to my second trip, hope it comes soon!

Life@Winchester

Today is my last day at Winchester, UK. I came here on Monday, 28th June to attend a workshop called TOOLS at Winchester campus of University of Southampton. This is a small and beautiful city, two hour journey from London. My hotel was around 3-4 km away from the city, and walking everyday in the morning and the afternoon was very enjoyable with beautiful valleys on both sides of the road. The weather is fluctuating a lot, sometimes it gets hot, sometimes it rains but overall it was comfortable for an Indian at least. The workshop went fine, many experts from across the world who develop various numerical codes for high energy physics computations came and gave updates about their respective packages and future projects. Although four days are not enough to learn lots of things, yet I got to know of many useful tools which I never heard before. The food here was typical English food with just bread, meat, fruits, drinks in the meal. I am dying to eat rice and roti, have to wait another two days anyway. I am leaving for Bournemouth after two hours, will meet a friend there and will leave for London tomorrow evening. Will update again after I reach India.

AF (BOM->CDG) once again :)

I booked my ticket to ICTP two days back. And its the same Air France flight I took two years back from Bombay to Paris. I have one hour stoppage at CDG, Paris and then have a flight to Marco Polo Airport, Venice. Last time I did not enjoy my flight much, I was very much scared, anxieties made me so nervous. Just after I boarded the flight in Bombay, I slept although not in a comfortable way (I really did not like the tiny economy class seats of AF). I missed my food, wine everything. My experience at the CDG airport was also not so good, I felt like lost. The airport was so crowded. One old American gave me company at the airport. He liked my t-shirt quote and started gossiping with me. I think this trip will be more fun, as I am no longer scared of international travel. And the good thing is that I am going there for just two weeks. It feels great when the date of coming back to homeland looks very close :)

In Ahmedabad once again!

I reached Ahmedabad today morning by Ashram express from Delhi. The weather here is a bit hotter than Delhi. People have started using electric fans. Yesterday the weather in Delhi was so awesome that I was not feeling like boarding the train to Ahmedabad. It was raining there and with the mercury going down, the weather became ideal for a night out party. I wish I could be with my crazy cousins and friends there. Anyway, I reached PRL, Thaltej campus at around 8 30 in the morning. Thank God, they provided me a single room to stay. Since I know couple of students here from before, I am not feeling as lonely as one might have expected. I went to the PRL main campus at 9 am and came back by 3 pm. The traffic was as crazy as I saw one year before, there is absolutely no traffic light and except a few junctions, there were no traffic police also to handle the traffic. People drive their cars in whatever way they like which made the streets really chaotic and scary. I hardly think I would dare to drive on such streets. Forget about driving, even walking is too scary to me. Thank God I could come back safely to the hostel after walking around 3 kms to the market for buying something. Apart from the traffic and very hot summer, I have absolutely no complain about the city. People say Gujarati food is not good, but I have no problem with that. After coming out from my state Assam seven years before I have tasted so many different varieties of food that any food is okay with me nowadays if its not very spicy. I hope to have some good time ahead here both academically as well as non-academically.

Recent Home Trip

This is the first time I have gone home in the month of January. Just after I came back from Mahabaleshwar, I took a flight to Guwahati. Although I was expecting the weather to be very cold, I found it average type which was really embarrassing. During the magh bihu (3rd week of January), the weather there was very cold and when my mom told me about it, I got very tempted. But as soon as I landed at Guwahati, it seemed as if the winter is gone. After sunset however the weather became cold, but during the day it was sunny and hot as well. Although I reached home almost ten days after Magh Bihu, yet I could find a Harli Ghar (a hut built in the paddy field after harvesting on the occasion of magh bihu) where we had party at night with a bonfire. This was like a never before experience for me, when I was at home till my class 10th, my father did not allow me to go out at night. We did many crazy things there at night like stealing woods, bamboo from people to keep our bonfire alive. I stayed at home for one week and came back to Guwahati three days before my journey date from Guwahati to New Delhi. I spent some really good moments with my girlfriend there, did some shopping as well. I reached New Delhi on 5th February and fortunately its end of season sale going everywhere here, the best time to do shopping. I did shopping this time in such a way as if I am buying stuffs for next one year. I am leaving for Ahmedabad tomorrow and will be staying there till June. Hope to have a nice time at PRL and do some good work.

Leaving Bombay for six months

I am leaving Bombay tomorrow for approximately six months. I will be going to Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad via my native place in Assam. I am hopeful of doing some good work there with the phenomenology group there. I have been roaming a lot nowadays attending schools, workshops; may be I should settle down and do some work and wind up my PhD within next two years. I don't know how tough that will be but I have no choice. I am also thinking of not attending the SERC main school this time, but not decided yet. PRL is a nice place, and they are providing me office, good accommodation and library facilities. Hope to have a great time there. But of course will miss IIT campus and my favourite Hostel 13.

Leaving for New Delhi tomorrow

I am leaving for New Delhi tomorrow for new year's eve celebration with cousins and friends. I will directly come to PRL, Ahmedabad to attend WHEPP from 2nd January 2010. Looking forward to some good times there with sub-zero temperature and good company :). Its a great pleasure to go to Delhi specially in winter. The chilly weather and the delicious street food like chats and all are so nostalgic to me. I will be there for just three and a half days and won't be able to meet all of my friends there. I hope they won't complain even if I don't meet them since I will be there for a small period. I am planning to meet my friends in IITD, JNU this time, but not very sure yet since these places are quite far from the my cousin's house where I will be staying. Anyway lets see how things go. I will have to utilize these three and a half days properly since I will be in Gujarat (a dry state) for the next six months. At the same time I will have to make sure that I can attend WHEPP from 2nd Jan without any hangover. Just keeping my fingers crossed :P

Leaving for Calcutta->Guwahati tonight :)

I am leaving for Guwahatii via Calcutta tonight. Its a pretty long journey, around 3000 kilometers. Although going to my state is always a great pleasure, I will probably be missing couple of things in Bombay. There are some lecture series coming up in this week organized by the SAPD. One more important thing is that my supervisor might come on 4th Dec and I did not know this before I booked my tickets, so can't help. I hope he is not coming to take a note of my research progress, he might be coming for some academic office meeting as usual. After coming from home I was planning to go to PRL, Ahmedabad for one week but not being able to get a ticket. So not much sure about that. Anyway hope to get a feeling of chilly winter in this trip after leaving Bombay where people are still sweating.

8522km

8522 km...Don't think I am talking about some new neutrino baseline which people might guess since they always complain I never write anything other than physics. It's the distance I have to cover by Indian Railways during a span of just one month from 2nd Dec to 10 Jan. It could have been fun if trains were like some of those in Europe. But the trains here are disgusting, they don't have good catering service, clean toilets, clean stations as well. And the worst thing is the crowd, they are simply unbearable nowadays specially those who travel in the second class non-AC compartments. But after spending lots of money on my home trip by air during Durga puja two months back, I can't even afford to make journey by AC-coach of Indian Railways. Except for one ticket, I have made all the tickets in non-AC coaches. The problem is the school and workshop I will be attending in between are not providing me any travel grant also, so not in a mood to spend money from my own pocket. Hope I will enjoy the journey somehow. Even if it's not enjoyable, hope it won't be embarrassing as it happens in many case when trains get delayed by so many hours. Just keeping my fingers crossed now :)