The Lansing temple recently organized a special Diwali program. My daughter Shreya participated in a dance and I, as always, took photographs of the event. Click here or the image below to see all 161 of the photographs I took. Enjoy. You can also read a poem written...
Posts related to: India
Happy Diwali
Happy Diwali For an interactive card click here ... . Remember to turn your volume way up, and click anywhere in the sky above the Taj Mahal for some environmentally friendly, fireworks.
New ambigram: Nihal
My friend, Hartosh (I had written previously about his mathematical novel here) and his wife Pam, recently had a baby boy. This ambigram is of his name: Nihal Enjoy.
Jugaad, educational toys from Junk (TPACK at work)
I had written earlier about the idea of Jugaad, the quintessential Indian idea of situational creativity. One of the masters at this is Arvind Gupta. Check out his website for tons of wonderful science toys and experiments that can be made from stuff we typically...
Milap09
I took photographs at the Milap 2009, the annual cultural program organized by the Indian Cultural Society of Greater Lansing. Click on the photo below to view the photos (hosted on Flickr).
Bangalore symposium, now on YouTube
This past August I was in India for a Symposium on Education Technology in Schools: Converging for Innovation & Creativity. The meeting was organized by the Quest Alliance, USAID and International Youth Foundation and was "designed to bring together education and...
Slumdog night (and Rahman)
Slumdog rolled into the Oscars tonight. More important to me were the two Oscars for A. R. Rahman for original score and song. It is time that the world recognized his genius. Here is a cartoon by Kaladhar Bapu from his site Point Blank A.R. Rahman by Kaladhar Bapu
Gandhi, ambigrams, creativity & the power of small pieces loosely joined
This is an extended piece on the manner in which the web, small pieces loosely joined, can lead to “serendipitous connectabilty” (something I had written about earlier here). All this is situated in a story that connects cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstader, Oriya...
The Allegory of the Cave
Plato's Allegory of the Cave (see Wikipedia entry) illustrates "our nature in its education and want of education." It is maybe one of the most famous allegories in literature and philosophy, a precursor to the kinds of mind-games (think brain in a vat) that...
The story of Hari & freedom of speech
Last week, Johann Hari wrote an article defending free speech for everyone. You can read the article here: Why should I respect these oppressive religions?. This article was reprinted in the Indian newspaper, The Statesman. This led to riots, death threats, and the...
Responding to my reading…
I had written a response to Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist a while ago (read it here). Yesterday, I received a note from Irfan critiquing my take on the novel. This is what he wrote: Punya, I read the novel and it does not seem to me, as you interpret,...
Ambi-poetry: A mathematician reinterprets ambigrams
My friend Gaurav Bhatnagar (I had blogged about his new book, Get Smart: Math Concepts here), for some reason, known only to him, has decided to create a poetry-blog based around my ambigrams. Each posting consists of one ambigram (taken from my large collection of...
12 Days of Christmas, the desi version
I love mongrel culture the mashing and creative remixing elements from different cultures and traditions to construct something new and, hopefully, wonderful. A great example is something my daughter, Shreya, showed me the other day. It is the 12 Days of Christmas...
The reluctant fundamentalist
I just finished reading "The reluctant fundamentalist" a novel by Mohsin Hamid over the break. (I had mentioned this novel in another context here). It is a tight, powerful novel, structured as a monologue, (reminiscent of Camus' The Fall, a fact that few reviewers...
11/26/2008
Mumbai, 11/26/08 Nov. 27: School children hold candles as they pay tribute to the victims of terrorist attacks in Mumbai at a school in Ahmadabad, India, on Thursday. (Photo credit: washingtonpost.com) The last few days have been very strange... dream and nightmare in...
Bittersweet Thanksgiving
The recent events in Mumbai have thrown a pall over the Thanksgiving break. That said, this is a moment to celebrate friends and family. Let us spare a moment for all the innocent victims and their friends and family. Happy Thanksgiving! This image, above, captures...
A sad day…
... for Mumbai, for India, and for the world!
Going back home
Amita Chudgar, friend and colleague, just sent me this really nice article in today's NYTimes, titled "India Calling" about the second generation of Indian Americans who are now going back to India. These are kids born and brought up in the US, whose parents had...
We feel fine about ambient findability (really?)
Most of us live our lives with the assumption of practical obscurity - i.e. the idea that what we do, even in public places, is essentially private. There are just too many people and just too few ways of tracking us individually. So we were for the most part,...
Math Concepts by Gaurav Bhatnagar
Gaurav Bhatnagar is one of my oldest friends - going back to 8th grade in Modern School, Barakhamba Road. He recently published his first book on Mathematics for kids, titled, Get Smart: Maths Concepts, published by Penguin India. The book also has an associated blog...
Engineering Education, past & future II
A couple of weeks ago I made a presentation (with Neeraj Buch) to a group of engineering educators from India. This was a meeting organized by the College of Engineering and the Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education. Having made this presentation once I had...
Engineering education, past & future
Neeraj Buch and I were invited to talk to a group of engineering educators from India. This was a meeting organized by the College of Engineering and the Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education. The topic I spoke about was was Improving Engineering Education:...
Happy Diwali
Diwali is one of the most important of Indian/Hindu festivals. The best part of Diwali (at least for the children) are the fireworks. Click here to enjoy a pollution-free Diwali Card. Enjoy (and don't forget to click on the night sky!)
Ads in Video Games
A couple of people have emailed me about the Obama campaign inserting advertisements into video games. Check out this Flickr set with screenshots of these advertisements. Most of the press is reporting that these ads show up in just racing games but as these...
Who is god rooting for?
I have often wondered, while watching sports movies, particularly the ritual prayer scene before the big game, as to who is god rooting for? I mean, surely the other team is invoking god as well? So how does god decide? And if one team wins does that mean their god is...
Avani Amol Pavangadkar…
... was born on the 7th of October, to Amol and Kanchan. [Amol was my partner in crime in the making of Hari Puttar!] We went to visit her yesterday and I took some pictures. Enjoy. View all the pictures
Ganapati 08, Photos
As un-official photographer for the Marathi Group, I took a bunch of pictures of this year's Ganapati celebrations. These are now (finally) on Flickr. Enjoy.
Incredible !ndia
Patrick Dickson sent me this link to an article on Boston.com titled Scenes from India. As the article says: India is home to over 1.2 billion people of wildly varying religions, cultures and levels of wealth.... Though there's no possible way for these images to be...
Ghee Happy
Sanjay Patel is an animator at Pixar and has come up with a beautifully designed book about Indian gods and goddesses. Check it out at his website, whimsically called GheeHappy. [You will need to go to the site FAQ to understand what that means.] The illustrations are...
Surprise gift, mystery solved
The surprise gift I received a couple of days ago was from Nidhi Seth, founder director and CEO of Global Academic Zone, someone I had met at Bangalore at the Quest Alliance Educational Technology Conference. I just received an email from her.. and got a chance to...