The genius of the Gothic period was the invention of the pointed arch and the corresponding ribbed vault to create openings in the wall without weakening the structural integrity of the building. Many developments in Gothic architecture sprang from this solution. …

As a young boy studying at the CMS College High School in the Northwest part of the Kottayam town, I and my school friends would go on long walks to explore that part of the town on Saturday afternoons after school. We would end up in strange places and would…

The Guardian, reviewing Quentin Tarantino’s Cinema Speculation [1] says that “he likes looking under the bonnet and pulling at the fabric, showing how a film was put together. As a critic, it transpires, Tarantino writes exactly as he speaks, in a torrent of information and opinions; fuelled by breathless enthusiasm…

I took part in a meeting to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a centre I had set up in the Institute for Plasma Research to develop and transfer plasma-mediated technologies to industries. I recall the exact moment when the idea of what would later become the Facilitation Centre for Industrial…

You may recall an old commercial about Pepsi, where you win if a number on the crown of the Pepsi bottle gets picked up in a lottery. The un-hero was Cyrus Broacha, who was actually a loser in the commercial, plaintively asking “ mera number kab aayega?”. …

In the late eighties, while struggling with erecting and commissioning ADITYA, India’s first tokamak, I found relaxation in thinking about the behaviour of dense clouds of electrons confined in electromagnetic traps. They exhibit collective effects like waves, instabilities and self-organization and are plasma-like. John Malmberg and his co-workers at the…

The enforced seclusion caused by COVID-19 nudged me to experiment with blogging. I had a dormant blogspot.com account, and I started writing on that site. After continuing on blogspot for a couple of months, I shifted to a WordPress blog site. I started writing on Medium in October 2021. Having…

Song of the Stray Electron I wrote the following poem in 1989 when we commissioned the ADITYA tokamak which produces plasmas at temperatures of 5 Million Degrees at the Institute for Plasma Research in Gandhinagar. The tokamak discharge starts with an electric field being induced around the torus which accelerates…

It was Unni who brought the story of the mysterious gift of Adoor Srikantan to look into the future using a compilation created by Maharishi Bhrigu. Unni suggested a trip to Adoor to verify the facts for ourselves, as he put it. Everyone got excited, even Jacob sir, who prided…