A P J Abdul Kalam-an Obituary

Born in Rameswaram, the epitome of Hinduism, (and where he will be buried too) and the one who carried with him the knowledge of the Koran, Gita and the Bible and the one who spoke pure Physics as an academia A P J Abdul Kalaam known as the ‘Missile Man’ is no more. The thought still aggrieves me because he was active and 83 and could have inspired students and guided institutions for another 10 years and that could have produced a still better India.
The humble man who acquired infinite knowledge in his lifetime and who pivoted the missile program and was instrumental in the Pokhran nuclear experiment and like Einstein always rued the negative aspects of the nuclear capabilities a nation achieved.
A great teacher, a grandsire of knowledge and humility an extraordinary writer an intellectual with no bounds is no more with us.
Thankyou Abdul Kalam for letting us know the flames of passion, the soaring of knowledge and the dedication of self and the goodness of life.

Shelved

A poem in appreciation of the moon and continuation of my collection named Pareidolia
Your crescent
Glows and shimmers
In the shadow play
Of the dark clouds
In the clatter of the rains and mist
That shrouds
The night worms screech monotonous weary
They have a story to tell me
Of memories of the past
That has been shelved for a lifetime
Like a book read long back
Nevertheless hidden forever unknown
That was destined to surface
The clouds were just an imposter

Stephen Hawking and Alens

I remember Stephen Hawking saying not to peruse finding aliens for if they know us the deprived aliens will steel all our resources and in the end we will be left with nothing. For such is the ferocity of life in the universe. No mercy just the struggle to stay put on. And today I read of his ambitious multimillion dollar program along with a Russian tycoon to use all resources with fully loaded computer capacity using high resolution telescopes to search for aliens a program much bigger than SETI (Search for extra terrestrial life). The new program will focus on a million neighbour stars, the plane of the Milky Way galaxy and a hundred other nearby galaxies and more importantly to synthesise and analyse radio waves coming from space.
This is an amazing program for the next ten years. And if we can find the most touted bear sized aliens how our life would change! No radio, no television no computer would have changed as much as finding an alien in space not to mention the effect on the lives of aliens.

Walk to your health galore

At the age of forty my heart started emitting unusual palpitations. Over visits to the doctor it was confirmed that I had hypertension (popularly blood pressure) and that my systolic and diastolic needed attention. It was said to be a lifestyle (since when style become a disease)disease and besides regular doses of pills and control on salt consumption I had to be sleeping in time, eating well (!) and exercising at least five days in a week. No strenuous exercises and walking is for hypertensive’s. And so the trial was complete. Rest is left to you to mend your ways otherwise....you would yourself be responsible for your own undoing.
Since then I have walked to my hearts galore. Having walked a few years I realised that trial in question was a blessing in disguise. I walked along gothic streets and boulevard watching men and women in quixotic dresses and in linear diabolic gaits talking silently and in hushed tones or agitatedly pointing fingers. I have criss-crossed empty stadiums, with a fifty thousand crowd echo in my ears supporting my icon, in silent amazement. I have walked meandering pathways below a wooded forest with small springs of water coming down hillocks passing me below a little furrow making harmonious jingles and add to this the mist in winters and the picture is everlasting. I have treaded panting hills with billowing grey clouds and from where you can look down to a serene skyline with a wide road going to infinity and a plane hovering above to land with wild birds chirping around in thickets and a quiet town nestled below making no attempts to move life. I had pleasant walks in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi along crisp roundabouts and rows of never ending flowers of different colours and hues with a background of modern skyscrapers and along a corniche and watch distant dhow sway and heave in sparkling waters. Walk along malls in hill stations, climb difficult steepes, follow simple trails in meadows, walk along a narrow street with high red-stone walls.
All those in their late twenties and thirties should not wait for disaster to strike for the modern life would catch you before you say Oh no! Indulge in walking, jogging or swimming. Strike a gym, go for a yogic session. Find what you like. Keep yourself in shape and be fit. You will definitely love yourself.

Second Sun

When most interested in astronomy were reading ,talking and watching about the Pluto flyby of the New Horizons there appeared a small overlapped photo graph in various media showing Jupiter and a light emitting object. This was in relation to a similar solar system in deep space which had been located with a planet similar in size to the Jupiter but one that was glowing like the second sun in its solar system.
This is quite similar to a thesis our planet Jupiter is known about. It is widely believed that if our Jupiter were to amass a little more mass from its surrounding sky during the accreting process, in times of antiquity, then it would have started glowing like another sun( as a host of parameters would have combined) wherein the process of synthesising hydrogen and helium would have begun.
Having two sun’s to our solar system would have been interesting and the combinations of sunrises and sunsets and the amount of sunshine and darkness and the duration of bright and bleak and dark days and nights and their effect on seasons and evolution is going far too overboard and berserk.

July 14-Pluto Flyby

July 14 has arrived and New Horizons will flyby Pluto in some hours and send back amazing pictures of Pluto once considered greyish with red spots. Tombaughs discovered in 1930 as just a speck of light. His kin will watch the flyby with two inches of his ash tucked inside an aluminium shell in the wombs of New Horizons.
Since Jan 19,2006 New Horizons the spaceship is travelling to Pluto. Is it just a coincidence that it has not met with an accident in the infinite space. Or is it that the distance between two shards or meteors or dust for that matter is so huge that one can glide through easily. Its course has been changed nine times. It has passed through the maze of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter and has travelled a distance of 4.8 billion kms.
Man has learned to manoeuvre these unmanned spaceships, the sizes of cars, with ultramodern technology to their will. It takes nine hours for a command to receive response from New Horizons. Spirit lost a wheel (you could say a leg) but the astronomers still managed to move it on the rugged terrain of Mars on the rest of the three wheels. Qudos!
I sometimes feel the spaceships and these robots are made up of flesh and blood and sturdy bone and bear skin like we all humans do.

Smile

There are smiles and smiles. Some are fair and others are dark. Some more could be brown and others dimpled. Some creased at cheeks with some reaching folds in foreheads. Baby smiles and coming of age smiles, adult and age old smiles.
There are as many smiles as as many faces. Every face differs from the other and we have been naturally taught to appreciate smiles. Mothers want their sons and daughters to smile and they get worried when they cry. Some smiles evoke cries and some may recognise it and others defy.
Some smiles give you assurance, a sort of a guarantee, and there in its depth lies conviction. You start to believe in the first encounter itself that this face will not ditch you, never. You feel like submitting yourself to its awesomeness and following it barely without caring whether you gain or loose. Just give in. Just be submissive
There may be a very indelible sweet smile which you may want to see it forever. It has the depth of a flowering valley which you could be watching passing through an aeroplane. It has the everlasting quality which you would love to visit again and again. Returning to it is a passion that begets you after a tiring season or a worn down sequence of events
How your face can give so many expressions could be a study in itself but the person who can emote all the smiles in the world must know the world better. Actors should be good at this. Can you recall Elizabeth Taylors smile.Try thinking about Anthony Quinn, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Sean Connery any face you like and the reasons would be linked to its witty pleasant everlasting smile.
Awful smiles: There are some faces which don’t look in the mirror to find how their face looks when they smile. So they don’t know how to widen their lips to broaden a smile or to create a dimple on their cheek or stretch their eyebrows in awe of a happening or let a grin off. Their faces are stern, their smiles defensive and people in their presence will not know how to react?
Smiles that laugh at you : The conversation that leads to this smile is sarcastic. You never know how to react to this! If you smile back it would mean your acceptability to being made a fool. If you keep mum there will be an air of disapproval and could be followed by strained moments. Beware of such people.
Never smiling faces: These need to be sent to laughing clubs so that a permanent genetic disorder could be rectified. A huge room filled with fat and slim and elegant faces could turn into a hilarious uproar caused due to a stupid pj but this dumb would remain solid rock unnerved unmoved and unperturbed. I sometimes wonder if their metabolism suffers without a proper churn in their bowels.
Pursed smiles: These vanish away into oblivion the moment they appear. They disappear from one end of the mouth to the other and the observer is bereft of reasons for their disappearance.
Dimpled smiles: They look much better on young female faces. Not that they rub away the handsomeness of men. It is a sheer pleasure to watch the dimples on their cheeks and permanent ones on their chins. The dimples on the cheek that form during smiles are a revelation as they transform the face into a glorious blossom.
Manly smiles : Females could fall in love with this. They will start adoring the person who seems to represent some zodiacal patterns.
Gentlemen smiles: These are absolutely refined and are generated with ease and comfort and are savvy in the presence of a crowd. People may get bewitched and may fall to these unknowingly.
Feminine smiles: You will remember this smile in your dreams. These will flash into your daily chores and make your life miserable.
Motherly smiles: Soothing, assuring asking you to keep going come what may. The wave of arm with a smile as you board the school bus. The assurance is so eloquent when in solving a problem and the expectancy that it gives is a lifetime full of memories. You recall it when in trouble and you look forward to it in times of distress.
Smile of a saint: There is a hundred philosophy bound into one. It won’t be wide and charismatic but deep and divine.
Smile of a witch: This is the most dreaded one. It is huge wide and loud coming out of a creased round face (black or white) with dishevelled hair and with crooked intentions.
Smile of a crooked: These are very unnatural people and their smiles are artificial. They don’t know how to smile and look at worldly things wonderfully. They smile because you like them to otherwise they would look awfully sadistic. This smile will bring you relief because you will have gone through a very stressful time and more importantly it is also a parting smile so that you can immediately show your back and unpack your thoughts in the open air.
A very serious smile: This is something that wants to get out of a situation. Is it intended to fool the surroundings or is it trying to lighten the air one doesn’t know unless and until you are a part of it.
A twitch: This may not necessary be a smile but since it is given out of a corner of a pursed lips we can take the liberty to put it under this category. Normally it is a rejection of whatever is happening or whoever is instigating and it is a response to an activity.
A Monalisa smile: A woman smiling in pregnancy is what has been analysed recently. Otherwise saintly! As mature as ever!! The image of this painting will be permanently stored in one neuron of your brain and will never empty.
An aristocratic smile : Smiles that are exuded by the rich and famous with a thousand things engulfed within its premises and it is a all knowing thing which acknowledges for itself and its successes. The poor cannot imitate this smile since it is cultivated by the rich in environs that are subtly socialite. These are well bred straight faces which never shake under any circumstances. There are too many restrictions to this smile and too many byelaws which need to be honed over a period of time and when you see it executed the visual is awesome and one in enthralled in its sphere of influence.
A smile is a milder version of the laugh which is generous and can create a jamboree of sounds. Laughter is the better medicine like a laughter club can drain out toxicants from your lungs by the angle at which you crane your neck and the manner in which you exhaust your windpipes. It will thunder in a clear sky . But you can have the last laugh and in that sense the laugh can be canny and cunning to say the least. A laugh makes broad chins sometimes a wide agape mouth and your eyes could shine like diamonds. But it could end with drops oozing out of your eyelids like tears breaking down into a pool of drown.
Giggle: Bodily laugh. You have to use your entire upper body to do this. No inhibitions no hidden agenda. Wide mouth, chest heaving, arms shaking, neck stretching. It could be as good as doing some yogic exercise in spiritualism for it releases endomorphins so much required by your body to relieve stress and pain. At the end of it your soul may be free and you may be weightless. And the people who accompany you could too be blessed.

Pluto Flyby

Astronauts have stayed in mock up spaces for about ten months to emulate and understand the hazards of a long travel to Mars in space travel conditions. But can we do that for nine and a half years if we have to travel to Pluto. Difficult! That is one reason why we are choosing to develop alternative modes of travelling in space.
New Horizons began its sojourn in Jan 2006 and after a travel of 4.8 billion kms (24 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun )it will make a flyby 12500 kms from the surface of the dwarf planet Pluto and take reconnaissance images. In the mean time the latest space ships travelling to Mars and Sun have more sophisticated technology than the one employed on New Horizons.
Pluto not long back considered the ninth planet of our solar system was demoted to a dwarf planet since it didn’t fit all the parameters required to be a planet like its wayward trajectory. Thus poor Earth was reduced to an eight planet solar system. Pluto in olden times had just one clinging moon Charon but with time Nix and Hydra were found and in the near past P4. New Horizons sharp camera now has added another moon the newly designated P5.
Monitoring such a long voyage may not have been easy and New Horizons may be quite lucky in the sense that it has not collided with a meteor (it can be destroyed by a one mm grain for it travels at 55000 kmph). The biggest worry for the control rooms now is to put it into ‘bail it out trajectories’ or thrust its disc in front to take all the attacks head on.
The coming week should be as interesting to Astronomers as it should be to the people who look towards the magical skies in amazement.