Sourav Das

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In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great, with Michael Wood
2007-04-12 05:46:00
Going through my CD case I found In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great , a documentary that I had downloaded about two and a half years back. This four-part series has British historian Michael Wood retracing the journey that Alexander the Great had made during his conquest of Asia. He travels through 16 countries. I am doubtful about whether he went through Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Libya; however the countries that he did pass through are Greece, Turkey, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India. The essential guides that he uses for the journey are the accounts of Arrian and Curtius.Michael Wood seems like a mixture of William Dalrymple and Michael Palin. He likes India, and has written a film, Darshan and a book The Smile of Murugan: A South Indian Journey. He has the ability to bring history to life, much like Dalrymple does in his books and Palin does on his documentaries - hence combining the two. He starts from Mount Ol...
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Tasa
2007-04-06 07:58:00
Here's to another Indo-jazz band! For a long time, I was of the impression that Shakti, or rather Remember Shakti, was the sole proponent of this trend. True, Shakti started it all. But I've noticed in the late 90's and the early 2000's, there has been a spur of Indo-jazz fusion mushrooming up - Remember Shakti, other fusion projects of Zakir Hussain, Jonas Hellborg and Shawn Lane, Trilok Gurtu, and now Tasa, formed in 1999.First off, the name itself is quite weird - seems like an acronym but then there's nothing more than that that I could find. It features Ravi Naimpally, a student of Nikhil Ghosh and Anindo Chatterjee, on the tabla. Info on each of them is available on Tasa's website. Sarangi player Dhruba Ghosh, though not officially a member, features on some of their albums too.That's just about all I have to say about this band. I haven't heard any of their three albums. I just ran into this video called Amravati on Youtube. There's a lot of sound samples on their we...

Parzania, Gujarat and Hindu vs. Muslim
2007-04-06 03:47:00
After a space of almost a year, I downloaded a movie from Desitorrents. The comforts of a dedicated, unshared Internet connection are boundless.Parzania received a lot of attention at the time of its release, particularly because it deals with the sensitive issue of the 2002 Gujarat riots. It was released all over India except in Gujarat where it was released much later since theater owners themselves refused to screen the movie (link). It is based on a true story about a boy (who was actually the son of a close friend of the director), Azhar, who (like hundreds of others) went missing and was never found. The music, composed by Zakir Hussain and featuring Sultan Khan, George Brooks and Taufiq Qureshi, is good but barely noticeable, though it starts and ends off with a nice Gujarati folk song.The director specifically chose to portray a Parsi family in the midst of all the chaos - why a Parsi family? It is not clear whether the actual family was really Parsi or not. Not like it matt...
More About: Muslim , Hindu , Slim

In Xanadu, William Dalrymple
2007-03-25 06:56:00
In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.So twice five miles of fertile groundWith watts and towers were girdled round:And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills.Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;And here were forests ancient as the hills.Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.Xanadu was romanticized by this poem of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. William Dalrymple was however, inspired by the travels of Marco Polo to make this mother of journeys from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to Xanadu (or Shangdu) in China. Like Marco Polo who presented Kubilai Khan with oil from the lamp at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Dalrymple too collects some at Jerusalem and ultimately pours it beneath what is now left of the throne of the Khan. The journey starts off at Jerusalem, Israel and covers Cyprus, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and China.Till Lahore, Pakistan, he is a...
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Special Relativity, Pole in a Barn and the Twin Paradox
2007-03-23 10:04:00
This quarter at Drexel University I took a course called Special Theory of Relativity. Though an honors course, its taught by Michael S. Vogeley of the Department of Physics. The topic isn't actually related to my major but it helped me understand some very interesting stuff that I was vaguely knowledgeable about. Of particular interest to me were the Twin Paradox and the Pole in a Barn problem. What I mention here is what I understood from Prof. Vogeley's notes which may be found here, and from the book Spacetime Physics: Introduction to Special Relativity by Edwin F. Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler.The fundamental postulates of Special Relativity are as follows.Principle of Relativity: No experiment can measure the absolute velocity of an observer.Universality of the speed of light: The speed of light (denoted as c = 3×108) is constant in any unaccelerated frame, regardless of its velocity relative to the source of light.The first postulate isn't as important, at least as far...
More About: Arad

Birth Control for Elephants?
2006-09-16 00:05:00
This is quite hilarious! Since we haven't really been successful in implementing it for humans, the plan seems is being implemented for elephants now. According to this article on BBC News, the West Bengal Forest Department has taken this measure due to a decrease in funding."But our department is suffering a budget cut, so we have been asked to only maintain those elephants that are useful and introduce birth control amongst the whole population," said forest official PT Bhutiya.But are there no alternatives left? Birth control for animals that are being rapidly endangered doesn't really solve the purpose, does it? The article on BBC News suggests calling on private sponsors. I was also wondering if there would be a problem with just letting them free. They are not likely to pose a problem; in fact, it's much better than controlling their population.I have often been appalled by the state of wildlife preservation in India. Some time back, I read an article about tiger poaching s...
More About: Control , Elephant , Birth Control