How to grow your own fresh air?

This blog is adapted from a TED talk by Kamal Meattle.

Kamal  Meattle is a Delhi based businessman. Some 17 years ago, he became allergic to Delhi's air. His doctors told him that his lung capacity had gone down to 70 percent, and it was killing him. With the help of IIT, TERI, and learning’s from NASA, he discovered that there are three basic green plants, common green plants, with which we can grow all the fresh air we need indoors to keep us healthy.

The three plants are Areca palm, Mother-in-Law's Tongue and Money plant.

Areca palm is a plant which removes CO2 and converts it into oxygen. We need four shoulder-high plants per person.

Mother-in-law's Tongue, which is again a very common plant, and we call it a bedroom plant, because it converts CO2 into oxygen at night. And we need six to eight waist-high plants per person.

The third plant is Money plant, and this is again a very common plant; preferably grows in hydroponics. And this particular plant removes formaldehydes and other volatile chemicals.

An experiment conducted by them in a 50,000-square-feet, 20-year-old building having to 1,200 such plants for 300 occupantsshowed 42% probability of one's blood oxygen going up by 1% if one stays indoors in this building for 10 hours, reduced incidence of eye irritation by 52%, respiratory systems by 34%, headaches by 24%, lung impairment by 12% and asthma by 9%. Also a reduction in energy requirements of the building by an outstanding 15 percent.

Vedic Wisdom - Eating with one's hands

Eating food with the hands per an old saying- “eating food with your hands feeds not only the body but also the mind and the spirit”.

The practice of eating with the hands originated within Ayurveda teachings. The Vedic people knew the power held in the hand. The ancient native tradition of eating food with the hands is derived from the mudra practice, which is prevalent in any aspects within Hinduism.

The hands are considered the most precious organ of action. This is linked to the Vedic prayer of

“Karagrevasate Laksmih

Karamule Sarasvati

Karamadhye tu Govindah

Prabhatekara darsanam”

(On the tip of your fingers is Goddess Lakshmi, on the base of your fingers is Goddess Saraswati; in the middle of your fingers is Lord Govind), which we recite whilst looking at our palms. Thus, this shloka suggests that all the divinity lies in human effort.

Our hands and feet are said to be the conduits of the five elements. The Ayurveda texts teach that each finger is an extension of one of the five elements. Through the thumb comes space; through the forefinger, air; through the mid-finger, fire; through the ring finger, water and through the little finger it is earth.Each finger aids in the transformation of food, before it passes on to internal digestion. Gathering the fingertips as they touch the food stimulates the five elements and invites Agni to bring forth the digestive juices. As well as improving digestion the person becomes more conscious of the tastes, textures and smells of the foods they are eating, which all adds to the pleasure of eating.

This is a prime example of how many things within Hindu culture may seem weird and unusual at first glance, but once a closer look is taken it is surprising, but a vast amount of knowledge is revealed.

Degree Confluence project - a primer

The Degree Confluence project is an all-volunteer web-based project which aims to have people visit each of the integer degree intersections of latitude and longitude on Earth, posting photographs and a narrative of each visit online. The project describes itself as "an organized sampling of the world".

The official website states: "The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures, and stories about the visits, will then be posted here."

The degree confluence project was started by Alex Jarrett in February 1996. The country-wise confluence points and their visit information are available on the website. Also lots of cool facts available regarding most visits, highest visits, etc.

[Image above shows the confluence points in Bhutan: 27N89E, 27N90E, 27N91E, 27N92E and 28N90E]

We first heard of the confluence project when our scholarly former CTO and quizmaster posted this as a double jeopardy question during an intra-organization quiz contest sometime in late 2011. Ever since then me and a couple of like minded friends were keen on to visit a confluence point. 

The "thrill" factor being arming ourselves with GPS receivers and wandering off to locate the integer intersections akin to making our very own discovery of a new land, place, people and culture.

Gubbu gang being Gubbu gang, under the tutelage of Gubbu, planned to make our first confluence visit in Maharashtra during August 2012. The usual suspects: Omkar, Vishal, Sourabh and me did manage a very successful visit of not one, not two but three confluence visits in our very first attempt.

We made several confluence visits:

• Maharashtra IN, 2012
• Madhya Pradesh IN, 2014
• Gujarat IN, 2016
• Maharashtra IN, 2017 

I will be writing up more details of each visit soon.

Mumbai - MCGM and municipal elections

        With Mumbai municipal elections round the corner I set out wrapping my head around what, how, when, why questions about the Municipal corporation that I had.

I am going to write the same in Q&A format.

Q. What is the MCGM?
A. Originally known as the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), now known as Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) is the civic body that governs the city of Mumbai established under the Bombay Municipal Corporation Act 1888. It is responsible for the civic infrastructure and administration of the city and suburbs of Mumbai. Greater Mumbai as Mumbai is made of two districts - Mumbai City and Mumbai Suburban district. 

Q. What are the roles and responsibilities of the municipal corporation?
A.

• The Municipal Corporation is responsible for the creation and maintenance of roads and flyovers, including the cleaning and lighting of roadways.
• It is supposed to maintain sanitation and health; in this connection it manages hospitals, garbage collection and disposal, the sewerage, and the water supply. As part of its duties related to public health, it is responsible for the prevention of epidemics. The BMC must register births and deaths, and holds authority over all crematoria and cemeteries in the city. 
• It is the office of record for urban property and is also responsible for setting up and enforcing building norms. 
• Its duties include the maintenance of parks and public spaces, including beaches, and the provision of coastal safety in the form of lifeguards at beaches and lighthouse maintenance staff.
• The jurisdiction of the BMC runs over the full island city: from Colaba in the south to Mulund and Dahisar in the north. It maintains toll stations (check nakas) at these two northern entry points to the city.

Q. What is the organisation structure of the municipal corporation?
A.

• The head of the municipal corporation is the Mayor of Mumbai. The mayor is the first citizen of the city but the role of the mayor is merely titular. 
• After the Mayor comes the Sheriff (optional) followed by the Commissioner of Municipal corporation. The Sheriff is a distinguished citizen with a term of one year. Duties of the Sheriff are mainly ceremonial.
• The commissioner is in-charge of discharging the functions of the corporation. Under the commissioner are the Assistant Municipal Commissioners (one per ward) followed by an array officers.

Below image shows the organisation structure within a ward. Image sourced from karmayog.com

P.S. Arthur Crawford was the first municipal commissioner of Mumbai.


Q. What are wards / divisions?
A. The city and suburb are divided in to smaller units for better governance called wards and within a ward are further sub-wards called divisions. Currently there are 24 wards and 227 divisions. There are 227 corporators / councilors who are responsible for overseeing that their constituencies have the basic civic infrastructure in place.

Below image shows the wards and divisions.

Q. How are the Mayor / Sheriff / Commissioner / Councilor elected?
A.

• The Mayor is elected form within the ranks of the council. The party that wins the maximum number of seats holds an internal voting to decide the mayor. 
• The Sheriff is an officer of the High Court and the nominal Head of the High Court Department which carries out the orders. The post of Sheriff is apolitical. 
• The Commissioner is a IAS cadre officer appointed by the Maharashtra state government.
• The Councilors (Corporators) are democratically elected representatives.

The date for Mumbai Municipal elections (for next term from 2017-2022) is 21-Feb-2017. The results of the same will be declared on 23-Feb-2017.

I appeal to all fellow citizens to go and vote.

I am also crowd sourcing content for my next blog. Please write to me on issues plaguing your ward/locality. I will try and make sure your concerns reach the intended representation.

Let's make Mumbai great again.

Let's also hope that POTUS doesn't have copyrights on the above tagline. :P 

SCMM 2011: first half marathon

My experience of running my fist half marathon.

I participated and completed the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2011 in the Half Marathon category.

I had kept my participation as secretive as possible due to self doubt.

It wasn't an easy job by any means to pull a near 90+kg body over 21 km and it become even more difficult after getting a blister, the size of the moon, mid-way through the race. 

Quiting never crossed my mind though, thanks to Lance Armstrong's* following motivational verse:

"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever."

I did complete the run.

Also the song that kept me going was Livestrong by Wideawake on loop.

At the end, all that mattered was that I finished this feat in a little under 04 and half hours.

Though not competitive by any means, it was a personal feat.

* - Lance Armstrong had not come out with his infamous cheating revelations till that point & was an idol.

TIL #2: Indic language classification

Taxonomy is a dear subject to me. So also is study of language families and classification. Up until now I found it very cumbersome to link what I had read so far. Recently though with the help of @drawio and online sources I was able to do a small classification.


The task I undertook is very minimal and only covers some branches of the vast language families in question.







 P.S.: This is not the complete classification.

TIL #1: Western Art Music

#TIL is a very popular hash tag on twitter short for "Today I Learnt".

On the same lines I have decided to write short blog entries on various topics of interest to me that I have learnt something on.

The first one I am writing about is the different eras of Western Art Music or Western classical music. The content has been sourced online.

Era	Approximate Timelines	Characteristic	Notable Musicians
Ancient	Pre 1100 CE
Medieval	1100 CE - 1400 CE	Church music comprising of chants. Mostly written in Latin.
Renaissance	1400 CE - 1600 CE	Music written in the musicians mother tongue "madrigal". Instrument music and voice wouldn't overlap.	Gabrieli, Lasso, Byrd, Palestrina, des Pres
Baroque	1600 CE - 1750 CE	Opera music. Instrument and voice combined.	Johan Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Corelli, Monteverdi
Classical	1700 CE - 1800 CE	Modern Ensembles. Development of Symphonies. Defined in structures and phrases. Some of the structures were used up to 200 years later.	Mozart, Haydn
Romantic	1800 CE - 1900 CE	Orchestra. Programmatic music as part of story telling.	Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Strauss, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Brahms, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Faure, Sibelius
20th and 21st century	1900 CE - present	Many different styles. Serialism, American post-war, Modernism, Neo-classicalism, Minimalism, Post-modernism	Too many to list.

Before this short study I had heard only Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin - discovered almost accidentally. You would remember the Titan advertisement music (Mozart) or the MS Windows sample mp3 file (Beethoven). Chopin was a pop culture pickup from Dexter - Detective Frank Lundy.

I have been latching onto whatever little art works I get from any of the above era and compiling them. From what I have heard so far, I can only say it's going to be a splendid journey ahead. Keep listening. :)