Shrikhand

Shrikhand is an acquired taste. I remember eating it for the first time in Baroda. I was unsure about it. I am still unsure about it. I think it is okay in small teaspoonful doses but not in larger quantities.
Today I made  Greek yogurt. After making yogurt parfait, I had some leftover yogurt and on the spur of the moment decided to make shrikhand.  Basically, you need to beat powdered sugar and cardamom into the curd till it is smooth as silk. You can add nuts- I added almonds- as well as saffron-which I did in miniscule amount, so that it still retains the white colour of the yogurt.

A visit to jail- Site visit for Samarpan foundation

I am terrified of jails.  So when Asha Berkeley asked me to do a site visit to Samarpan Foundation, I thought I had finally the opportunity to get rid of my terror.
Samarpan Foundation has many projects across the country and one of the projects is in Tihar jail where they work with the inmates (both undertrials and convicts). They started this project by helping out the family members of the inmates (getting them ration, providing assistance for education, house rent). After a year or so, the welfare officer at Tihar Jail called them in for a discussion and asked them to work with the inmates. They have been working at Tihar Jail for the past 4 years.
Tihar Jail, which is largest jail in India, has 7 jails. Jail #2 houses the convicts while jail #4 (the largest) houses both undertrials as well as convicts. Jail #7 houses the teen convicts. There is one jail within the complex for women prisoners. Entry is restricted. I could enter only because the volunteer spoke the superintendent and got permission for me to accompany her into the complex and observe her work. You cannot take any money or mobile or anything into the jail complex. The guards were very nice because they knew the Samarpan Foundation volunteer. I was, therefore, ignored and could observe the work without being bothered.
The foundation volunteers do faith healing for the inmates. What I understood from the volunteer was that the healing involves removing negative energy from the patient and infusing positive energy into them. The healing started right at the entrance when the guard recognized the volunteer and asked her to heal him.
The jail complex itself is very clean and neat. The jail is woefully understaffed and therefore, the inmates work in the office premise in various capacities. The convicts are trained in various skills depending upon their interest. Within jail # 2, for example, there is a meditation room, a music room, a library, a literacy/education center, a radio station which plays music through the day. There is also a dispensary but the doctors seem doing nothing other than handing out painkillers.  The superintendent of one of the jails told me that they very badly need dentists or dental clinics as well as spectacles for many of the inmates. They also need lots of computers both for training purpose as well as for official work.  One of the jails has 6 computers which were donated few years back and 4 of them are now unusable. So computers is one of the major requirements.
The faith healing has instilled as sense of confidence in the organization both amongst inmates and the personnel manning the facility.  The inmates open up to the volunteers and tell them their problems. Very often the pain they feel has a psychological connotation. They are often worried about their family especially those who come from economically poor background. When the foundation takes care of their family they begin to trust them and tell them about their problems. Today for example, one person was worried. He had a headache. He has been having it for few days. You see his release papers have not come. It turns out that LG of Delhi has issued orders to release undertrials who have been put in prison for a very long time. This particular person qualifies for that and he is now worried that his papers have not come. So the volunteer healed him and said the papers will come soon. He went off relieved. He just wanted somebody to listen to his problem.
Samarpan foundation also has conducted inter-jail quiz competition which was evidently a success because one of the assistant superintendent was describing it with great enthusiasm. The foundation is planning to now to work with the teens but I could not visit them as the superintendent did not give permission.
One thing I realized was that the smooth functioning of the jail depends a lot on the superintendent. If they are good and enthusiastic, a lot of reform can take place. If they do not care, nothing gets done. The reform of Tihar jail was of course started by Kiran Bedi and it is still continuing.

Why can't the Indians teach their children how to behave?

I am feeling as frustrated as Professor Higgins did in My Fair Lady when he sang "Why can't the English teach their  children how to speak".  The frustration has been building up for quite some time now and it makes me angry when I see the people around me lack even the basic courtesies of life.
The immediate provocation of this blog, though is quite simple. I walk through the narrow path cutting through the jungle to go back and forth between my work place and my apartment complex. This is one of the delights of living in the University campus. It is peaceful and serene, I can observe the birds and if I am lucky, I will catch sight of the nilgais. However, very often I will also meet other travelers. If I do, I will stand aside to let them go. But never do they acknowledge the fact or say a simple thank you for the courtesy I am rendering. Once, in fact, the person actually pushed pass me and did not even bother to say sorry. And never will they stand aside to let the other person pass through. It is almost as if it is their right to have the right of passage.
Why can't we learn basic courtesies like Thank You, Sorry, and Please?
I am not alone in this frustration. My colleague expresses the same thing. She often takes the lift as her office room is on the fourth floor of our building. If the lift stops at a floor, and there are many people getting out, she will keep the door open by pushing the button on the lift. She will also often wait to allow others exit before exiting herself. As she ruefully noted, not one has ever bothered to say thank you to her.
It extends to other spheres too. The footpath is always unusable and if it is useable condition few enterprising motorbike riders will use it as a road. You can observe it when there is a traffic jam or  at the red light. If a pedestrian dares to use the footpath it is that person's fault not the motorbike rider's.
Take the queue. Invariably it will be broken. And if you dare to point out that there is a queue, you are the person who is in the wrong. This has happened to me at the milk booth many times. Few of us will be standing in the queue waiting for our turn to be served when an interloper (really, I cannot call them anything else) will barge in and demand to be served before any one else. If you point out that there is a queue, they will either ignore you and continue their demand or will continue to stand there by saying okay, the vendor can serve me after you (just because I am protesting I suppose). There are few who will sheepishly join the queue but it always makes me wonder.  When I see all this, I always think of those old Hindi movies where they show people standing in a queue at the bus stop in Bombay (watch the lovely song from Mr and Mrs. 55-Dil pe hua aisa jadoo or the wonderful song from Chitchor- Janeman Janeman and you will realize what I am saying).
There is also my other pet peeve- punctuality but that is another story.
So tell me why can't we teach our children how to behave? Why can't we learn the basic courtesies of life?

Teaching DNA structure

The first class I do with every new batch of M.Sc students is on structure of DNA. Every year I struggle to get the concepts across. Accustomed to memorizing and believing that the DNA, as shown in the text book, is a 2-dimensional rigid structure, it takes a lot of effort to demolish these myths. At the end of it I am not even sure whether I demolished the myths and made them realize that the DNA is a dynamic 3-dimensional structure.
There are two concepts that I find exceptionally difficult to get across:
1. The double-helix is a consequence of polymerization.
2. The major and minor grooves arise as a consequence of inherent asymmetry in the double-helix structure. The glycosidic bonds are at 120 degrees. If they had been at 180 degrees, it would have been a symmetric double-helix and consequently the grooves would have been equal.
I do lot of crochet and decided to use it to illustrate both these points. Anyone who does crochet or knitting will realize that the first two lines are the most difficult to do. In crochet when we make a long chain, it has a tendency to wrap itself into a helix shape. Similarly, in knitting, the first two lines will always wrap themselves in a helix. So here is my model of DNA using crochet.

It is very simple. I made a long chain. Then I started working on the first row using treble crochet (wrap the thread twice around the needle and draw the hook through the chain such that you will have four loops on the hook,  bring the yarn over the hook and draw hook through first 2 loops, yarn over and draw the hook through 2 loops, yarn over and draw the hook through remaining 2 loops), ch, treble crochet till the row ended.  As one does this, the crochet pattern will start forming a helix. And since the stitches are at 90 degrees, the grooves formed will be equal in size.
I used this yesterday to illustrate my point on DNA. I like to think that the students got the point. I will know only when I correct the answer scripts.

Yogurt Parfait (Or Wake up to the Smell of Yogurt)

When I last visited my brother and his wife in UK, they were kind enough to get me fruit yogurt to eat in the morning as I cannot abide either tea or coffee.  Those days there was an ad airing there for a particular brand of coffee that went : Wake up to the smell of coffee.  I parodied it to Wake up to the smell of yogurt.
I have an on-off relationship with yogurt. When my allergies become bad I stop eating yogurt as it aggravates it.  When the allergies subside I start eating yogurt again. This is my on season and I noticed that the shops are selling yogurt parfait. Pretty expensive stuff for something which is essentially layers of yogurt alternating with fruits and granola.  As it is very healthy  I decided to make it at home.  All the recipes I found on the internet called for Greek yogurt which turns out to be nothing other than yogurt without whey. This is the same thing that is used for making shrikand.
So I strained the yogurt overnight in the refrigerator. It can be done at room temperature too but the yogurt acquires a tart taste, which I dislike.  In the morning I had a nice creamy yogurt which I layered on a glass bowl. I used Kiwi fruit and granola for the layers. I added honey as sweetener.  I refrigerated it for a day to soften the garnola  before having it for breakfast this morning.

This can also be had as dessert. You can add any fruit.  You can add chocolate chips or coconut shavings or nuts or raisins. 

Lilies and Tulsi

Now that the monsoon has finally hit Delhi, my white and yellow rain lilies have started blossoming.
Here they are:

Nanku Ram and I also discovered that some Tulsi seeds have sprouted. We are allowing them to grow though I do not know how it is going to survive the bitter cold. All my attempts to nurture the Tulsi through the winter has failed miserably.

An aside: I am glad that the Indian bureaucracy has been very efficient and issued an Aadhar card to Hanuman.  I hope they do a similar exercise for the entire pantheon of 33 crore Hindu Gods.

Hostel issues

While returning from Nehru Place (my laptop crashed and I had to give it to Toshiba Service center) I noticed that the new hostels in IIT are multi-storied. The one facing the road had 8 stories and I was impressed. We are building new hostels too but as we believe space is not a constraint we always go for horizontal expansion. So the new hostel will be 4-storied. The rationale being provided is that otherwise lifts will have to be installed and one never knows with the lifts. I would have thought that since we have such shortage of hostels, we would think ahead and build a hostel that would be at least sufficient for few years. But of course I am wrong. The idea is to keep building because that is where funds are. Few years ago I did dare to suggest in informal conversations that the old hostel buildings (which look more like slums than anything else) should be either razed or renovated. I was told categorically that while funds are available for building new hostels none are available for renovation. This is in keeping with policies of other funding agencies too- we always get funds for purchasing new equipments but none for maintenance. So when equipments break down we scramble around for funds. Worse is that we get no budgetary allocation for hiring personnel for running these equipments. Very often we make a deal with the company- along with the equipment you will provide a person to operate the instrument for three years. After three years we are back to square one.
I was also told that the hostels in the institutes have laundry machines and I thought it was a wonderful idea. When I said so I was told that as per UGC rules we cannot provide laundry machines. Also the rules state that each hostel room can have only one fan and one light. Someone should remind UGC that the world has changed. But given the fact that they are too busy trying to impose strict rules about what kind of degrees can be given I guess they do not have time for anything else.
Meantime the hostel mess in the university continues and most of our students do not have hostel rooms. They have been instead provided dormitory space. As far the students travelling from far-flung areas of Delhi, they cannot even aspire to this facility. So the poor kids travel 2-3 hours everyday each way sometimes trying to get to their classes/labs.