Window Seat |
Mrinal Chatterjee
Hello 2021
Every
new entity has new potential, or at least the perception of a new potential. So
does the new-year.
2020
has not been a good year. Corona pandemic impacted every aspect of our life.
From economy to education, health services to employment- every aspect was
negatively impacted bringing untold miseries. Free movement became a casualty
as series of harsh lock-downs were enforced. Incidents of brutal rapes like in
Hathras, UP and Nayagarh, Odisha shook the collective conscience. Massive
farmer agitation brought into fore the problems of the farmers.
Hopefully
2021, the UN year of peace and trust will bring much needed respite from the
bombardment of calamities and bad news. Hopefully we’ll have vaccine for
Corona. Hopefully the new strains of the virus could be contained. Hopefully
the farmer agitation would be amicably settled. Hopefully we would be able to move
around freely.
Hope.
That’s what can and does keep us alive and kicking.
Mandala Art with branches
Keonjhar, Odisha based Gorbachove Pothal is a
technocrat-turned artist. Recently he drew a series of mandala art, one of
which I used in our campus of Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) at Dhenkanal. This one has intersecting branches. I was
fascinated to know why he chose to use branches. Read what he wrote about it:
 |
| Mandala Art by Gorbachove |
I've always been fascinated with patterns. It
doesn't really matter what kind of patterns; I've played with networks, leaves
and leaf venation, branches, lightning, flocking, tracing outlines of shapes,
river formation, rock sediments, landscapes, slime mold, lichens,
reaction-diffusion, cellular automaton, some fractals, and a few other things.
I think what I enjoy the most is how complex and intricate results you can get
from a set of simple rules.
Recently I've been particularly interested in
biological patterns, and differential growth. My background is in numerical
mathematics, not biology. So I have limited knowledge of how biological systems
actually work. Even so, I've been experimenting quite a lot with recreating
various biological behaviours. Part of the challenge is to try to recreate some
pattern or behaviour with as few and as simple rules as possible.
Sometimes I manage to recreate the phenomenon I
set out to create, and sometimes not. More often than not I get something
interesting, even if it is not always what I expected.
Here, I started playing with a system where I
grew connected circles that were not allowed to overlap. The way it works is
that you place a seed node (circle) somewhere, and give it a radius and a
direction of travel. Then you attempt to append a new node to the perimeter of
the first node in the travel direction. The important part is that you need the
travel direction to "wobble" a little, so you perturbe the angle randomly
each time. You also make sure the radius of new nodes grows a little smaller
each time you append a new node. [I wrote a Python (a widely used high-level
programming language for general-purpose programming) Script for the purpose.
To get branches you can pick nodes at random and
attempt to grow a new node more or less perpendicular to the branche's
direction of travel. Either it collides, or you get a new branch. For
interesting effects you can make the angle perturbations proportional to the
width (radius) of the branch. Thicker branches are generally straighter than
thin branches. And you can obviously do a lot of other things as well. For
instance you get radically different results if you adjust how much more
"flexible" branches grow as they grow thinner.
Another little note is that when a branch
branches off from an existing branch you should make the radius considerably
thinner than the parent branch. You can see this happening all the time in
trees. The idea is that there should be about as much mass before and after a
branch intersection.
Build New Cities
At the
time and milieu we are living now, Urbanization is inevitable. Urbanization has
its own benefits. It provides the potential for new forms of social inclusion,
including greater equality, access to services and new opportunities, and
engagement and mobilization. However, too often this is not the shape of urban
development. Inequality and exclusion abound, often at rates greater than the
national average.
In
India, this happens because of two reasons: a. dense, unplanned and unregulated
urbanisation, and b. few new cities are being built. People are coming from the
rural areas and settling in the old cities- creating tremendous pressure on the
amenities and resources of the existing city.
We
must build new cities and the time is NOW.
Tailpiece: Covid Vaccines
Covid Vaccines will soon be available to us Indians too
I called the vaccine distribution facility to register for the Covid vaccine
Me: Hello
Reply from the other end: Thank you for calling. To continue in Hindi press 1. To continue in English press 2.
I pressed 2
Reply : For Russian
Vaccine press 1. For American Vaccine press 2 and for Indian Vaccine
press 7
As I want to be atma-nirbhar, I pressed 7.
Response : If you are a man press 1 and if you are a woman press 2.
I pressed 1
Reply : To purchase
vaccine press 1
for free shot press 2
I pressed 2
Reply : To be injected on hand press 1. To be injected on hip press 2 and to be injected elsewhere press 7.
I pressed 2
Reply : please type in your mobile number.
I punched in my phone number.
Reply : thank
you.
For the free
vaccine your name is registered and secured in our data base.
Your wait list
serial number is 81 crore, 57 lakh, 66 thousand 7 hundred and 55.
Under normal
circumstances you will get a call from us after 3 years.
Till then keep washing your hands and maintain distance of 6 feet from the nearest person. Continue to wear mask till then.
Thank you for
calling us.
Good Day. Happy New
Year.
First App
The first app was
invented in Lucknow. It was called Pehle
App.
(Courtesy: Social
Media)
***
Journalist
turned media academician Mrinal Chatterjee lives in Dhenkanal, Odisha. Odia
translation of an anthology of essays titled Mahatma Gandhi: Journalist and
Editor, originally published in English is releasing by mid-January 2021.
mrinalchatterjeeiimc@gmail.com
This column is published every Sunday in Gangtok based English daily Sikkim Express and www.prameyanews.com
No comments:
Post a Comment