Two idlis and a wada.. life at IGCAR, Kalpakkam, TN

Doing my B.E. at BITS-Pilani, Goa gave me this wonderful opportunity of doing an intern at Indira Gandhi Centre of Atomic Research, Kalpakkam – one of the top research institutes in the country. Now that its over, and I got some free time, I ll pen down some of my observations.

1. The first thing to notice at the place was that it has practically infinite funding. It as THE most amazing library and a 1 Gbps LAN connection.. Awraa..

2. For a ‘top’ research institution, real high end work goes on only a few of the departments. At other places, people are typical govt office lazy. Lethargy stinks through many of the departments. Its not that people there are not intelligent, but when straitjacketed and asked to complete the given work, and only the given work, even the brightest minds will be disillusioned. Then life tends to reduce to a dreary routine, with days after days of pushing through.

3. The department I worked in – Radiochemistry Lab (RCL) was one such dreary place. Still with some amount of push, we were able to get work done. Literally, we did a bit of pushing – there was no one, but us, to shift the comp from one room to another!

4. At still other places a huge amount of research is on, places like the Research Physics Laboratory, or the Reactor Safety Division will surely be interesting for people in that field.

5. Despite being in a not-so-gud dept, I did get an amazing project. I got to learn lots. Apart from working on the actual 8051 related hardware, the LabVIEW part was also very interesting. LabVIEW is a totally different idea. A graphical programming language, not a single line of code, it’s the most amazing thing I have worked with.

6. In my last week, I went to see my contact at the Safety Division. Got to see the weather prediction model software he has developed. It acquires data from the World Met Council (or something like it) and uses it to predict the radioactive fallout that would happen if there was some leak from the center. It was awesome. You could predict weather with a resolution of 2*2 km.. Talk about cool…

7. Also saw the Instrumentation Dept there. They work with a higher end software similar to LabVIEW – DasyLab. Wonder how it would have been to work in that department…

8. Now for the title: it was my standard breakfast at IGCAR. There was variety, but this was the stuff that I found to suit my palate. Seriously, the only negative aspect of life there was food. Didn’t exactly like it. Still, eventually, by the end of PS-1 found out a couple of good (more like, not bad), places. But walking 40 min way to reach a restaurant isn’t exactly the most sought for luck now, is it?

Chennai... Its blacks and whites

1) Staying at Kalpakkam for the past month, I have visited Chennai atleast thrice.. Time n again, Chinmay’s words resonate in my mind: “This place is a pseudo-metro”. Its like a small town grown which has grown too big. It doesn’t have the metro culture. Other metros; Mumbai, Delhi or even Pune and Bangalore, have a distinctly western influence on the lifestyle of the junta. You see Baristas, McDonalds, Coffee Days and Pizza Huts and the like mushrooming around every street corner. Around Chennai you are still likely to see Adyar Anand Bhavan or some Udipi Restaurent.. All around is a distinct color of conservativism. You would be lucky to see a girl and a boy talking to each other at the street corner… Case in point: Two weeks back on my way to Bangalore, overheard this conversation between two ladies on the train:

(Lady 1 – In her early thirtees, among the type who wear jeans but only with an Indian top. Lady 2 – Pompous 50 year old who would consider love marriages nothing less than blasphemy. Topic : How Bangalore has changed)
L 1: I grew up in Bangalore and I have seen the city has changed a lot.. The IT industry has brought alongwith it very western influences.
L 2: I know. Now you see pubs n discos everywhere. It was never like that before.
L 1: When I was in colleges there would be no such thing. (C’mon lady maybe you didn’t know them, but surely they existed!)
L 2: Last time I was in Bangalore, I got the shock of my life.
L 1: What happened?

(Hold your breath… Such a huge thing happened.. Wait for it.. Now its coming.. You see.. the expectation is nerve jangling.. What a scandal…)

L 2: I had just woken up, and looking out of my balcony at 7 AM, I saw (C’mon I cant take it anymore) a girl and a boy, (What?? Were they doing it??) they were having tea together. (Phew??!!!!)

…Chennai isn’t still westernized. Its still very conservative at heart… Its interesting to see this direct contrast between Mumbai-Pune & Chennai-Bangalore. It makes you think what times would have been around 40 years earlier-even in urban areas…

2) Another thing worth noting is the Poster phenomena – All over TN you will see posters of politicians put every 100 metres on the road (Or is it 10!) Huge faces of Amma (Jayalalitha), Karunanidhi, MK Stalin(How could you name anyone like that??!!) staring down at you or smiling into the emptiness. A poster would be anything from around 6 feet high to a mindboggling 50 feet. I don’t know what they say (they are in Tamil), but below these figures which we generally know are smaller faces of local politicians, of every Tom, Dick n Harry who ever got into politics.. Geez.. The funniest part: When in Pondicherry, there was a poster- huge- of Stalins. Not 1, but 10.. Stalin at his graduation, Stalin as mayor, Stalin with a gold necklace. Infuriating… How do people bear with it? ( And how do these politicians themselves? After all, what happens to the posters after their use? Burnt off? Shredded.. Hehe..)

3) Last weekend Rajnikanth’s movie released. Sivaji- The Boss. All hell broke lose. The whole of South India went crazy to see their superstar. This guy seems to be a cross between Govinda and SRK. Apparently, he is a people’s actor – like Govinda, or Laxmikant Berde in Marathi- he charges rates higher than SRK. From what I hear he charged a cool 35cr for this film.. That’s more than half the film’s budget. But from the crowd pulling ability he has, the spending is totally justified from the producer’s POV. Again from hearsay, his movies aren’t even that good. Just common junta stuff.. I had thought that atleast in the south, where people are more educated, such mediocre stuff wouldn’t sell.. But then I guess, India is still just 60 year old. That’s just a kid in terms of nation-age. She has a long long way to go…

4) The only thing in Chennai that is metro-class (by that, I mean Indian metros, mind you) is public transport. The city’s bus system would be a great envy to Pune. Pune out to learn. Without going into numbers, I bet the public : private vehicle ratio is 5 times that of Pune. The buses aren’t exactly comfy or anything, but they RUN. They will be so crowded, that you cant even stand on the footboard… But still, they RUN… And they do that well… In the overpopulated cities of India, that is what is the order of the day.