Ramayana 3392 A.D.

Rama using New Age Bow and Arrow in the midst of Blazing Fire.

Do not worry it is the futuristic approach of mythology. Ramayana, the age old epic told by millions of Indian, the face of Indian culture to the western world and the reason of Diwali is now available in a brand new package known as ‘Rama Reborn’ or ‘The Odyssey of The East - Ramayan 3392 A.D’. Rebirth of Rama in a highly advanced society where common man uses exotic technologies in their mundane routine. Ravana-the evil Asura of this epic is claimed to be made up by nano-technology. I am not joking; indeed it is the new face of Ramayana which is recently launched by the Virgin Comics. Here goes the exact word of the CEO of Virgin Comics.

"Ramayana has inspired the lives of millions of people through the ages. The re-imagining of this great ancient epic through the creativity of a game platform re-affirms the fact that Ramayana is one of the greatest stories ever told," said Sharad Devarajan, co-founder and CEO of Virgin Comics.

I wonder what Swami Valmiki thought while writing down this legend. I pray to God to give his soul peace, I am quite sure he would have not been happy to see Rama and Dashratha talking in fundax English, to make things worse, Laxman teasing Shatrughan by saying ‘Tabby-Ticky ,Tabby-Ticky’. Alas!! If not Valmiki I am quite sure Shiv Sena would not let the Virgin Comics down. On the contrary, reviews are good and it is now a Best Seller in the Indian and the US comics market. After some research I found that this is not the first time Virgin comics trying its luck on Indian mythology. They have already published comics with the exotic Indian names such as Mandakini (The Serpent Girl), Devi (The Female Warrior), Sadhu (The Saint Man). But unfortunately they didn’t receive much attention like the Ramayana 3392, may be because they used just the Indian name while keeping the story line purely westernized fiction.

Preview of the Introductory Page of the comic.
(They deliberately used the brownish color to give it a look of an ancient manuscript. Moreover it seems to be more like a the LOTR themed story with maps and full explanation of the whole legend by a third person, probably Valmiki)

The Graphics of the comic is worth appreciable. When I first saw the preview of the pdf comics I was stunned to see the level of imagination. Pictures have the background of the ancient India but at the same time they also resemble to the would be 3392 AD technology. The ornamentation is excellent and grand. It would be great to watch an epic movie based on this comic similar to Frank Miller's 300. Sony soon releasing a PS3 based on this theme, which I guess would give a strong backing to the market of the comic.

Coming to the background and building of the characters, they resemble more or less to the Valmiki's Ramayana. Characters have similar nature and physique, even the society seems to be similar to the Valmiki's Ramayana. I am using Valmiki's Ramayana because I don't want to mix up the New-Ramayana with the old one. I guess it would be unfair from my side to say that the artist of this comic didn't do anything, so New-Ramayana is the Virgin Comic's Ramayana. They have done a great job to build the characters with time, so that they easily mingle with the 3392 technology. Let us take the characters one by one.

Rama : The central character of the whole legend.

(The Character of Rama is kept very much similar to the old epic. The only thing which has changed, would be the sophistication of the weapons. After all it is a New-Rama-With-New-Weapons)





Ravana: The Main Villain of th whole story.
(He is shown as the evil man in the legend but now few fundamentalists have come up with an idea that Ravana was not a bad person, he was doing his Karma, for which he came on Earth. How Virgin Comic going to portray Ravana is still a debatable issue because they haven't published much of the episodes. Let us wait and see what is there in the box !!)





Hanuman: A devotee of Rama also considered as a God in Hindu Mythology.
(They have beautifully shown the strong built of Hanuman but what is concerning me is the physical appearance, more like a beast than a monkey. Nevertheless, they have also reformed the Gada to an Enlarged-Stone-Age-Weapon.)





Asura: The Warriors of ravana, the rulers of hell and the symbol of evil.
(Asura looking like the Ogres we have seen in the LOTR, which looks similar to one of those Warcraft-characters)

ps: Images have been taken from the Virgin Comics site.

Spectacular ~ Spectacular

Courtesy: Moulin Rouge Movie

The show Must go On, One Day I will Fly away, Spectacular Spectacular ~ These are few quotes from a musical extravaganza, Moulin Rouge. Not a movie but a true visual treat and a piece of an exuberant vision, vision of the director Baz Luhrman. Yes, he is the man behind this spectacular bohemian love story. High quality of animation and intelligent mixing up of new age music with the old classic Moulin Rouge soundtracks makes the whole experience an audio-visual treat. Nevertheless, watching it on the big screen with BOSE speakers was an experience which can’t be written down in words.

Nicole Kidman as usual looked stunning in the role of Satine but I was amazed that she was not only looking gorgeous on screen but had a mesmerizing voice when it came to singing. First time I watched the movie trailer on television when I was in standard 11 and I said to myself only two words ‘Spectacular-Spectacular’. Indeed it is an opus movie made on Grandeur scale to tantalize the senses. Despite of the fact that the story was too cliché still it succeeds in grasping the attention of its audience from the beginning to the End. The story of the movie was inspired form a famous Sanskrit drama wrote in 5^th centuary BC known as ‘Clay’ play. The same play has also been adopted by various movies such as Utsav, story of a beautiful courtesan Vasantsena and her affair with a penniless Poet. To make things worse the evil Maharaja of Vasantsena fell in love with her and of course the ending was an expected juxtaposition of melodramatic events leading to death of the beautiful Vasantsena. The story of Moulin Rouge was no different from this play, indeed the movie ended with the death scene of Satine, perhaps leaving marks on each and every character including the penniless Sitar Player Christian.

Butterflies ~ Too Common Yet so Unique

Courtesy: Butterfly

Biological systems use nanometer-scale shapes to produce brilliant optical properties. Morpho Sulowiskyi butterfly uses multiple layers of cuticle and air to produce unique structure which produces high contrast color change with minimal wing movement. It has been observed that Morpho butterfly fine nano-engineered structure on the wing shows highly selective vapor response by changing the angle of the wing's intricate structure to the incident light. Nevertheless apart from the butterflies, eyes of a common household fly are now being used to study the anti-reflection properties exhibited by them. House hold flies eye is an excellent structure for filtering out UV rays. Moreover these common yet unique biological structures can be used in solar cell research in case we want to filter out specific range of wavelength but the fabrication issue remains questionable because nature is quite capable of producing intricate structures which are still beyond human knowledge. Nevertheless such structures might provide the inspiration for future technological applications.

Potyrailo et. al., “Morpho butterfly wing scales demonstrate highly selective vapor pressure response”, Nature photonics, 2007.

Huang et. al., “Bio-inspired fabrication of antireflection nanostructures by replicating fly eyes”, Nanotechnology, 2008.

Huang et. al., “Controlled replication of butterfly wings for achieving tunable photonic properties”, Nanoletters, 2006.

Taare hain kya zameen par ?

Courtesy: MovieTonic

I haven't given this movie 10/10 in imdb because of the excellent direction or acting but the very fact of dealing with a new idea blew me off. Whole movie revolves around a 12 year kid and his imaginations. Acting could have been more perfect but still it was appreciable. TZP reminds me of the 80's art movies such as Sparsh and other such movies based on the neglected part of our society. May be it is quite possible that we have a soft corner for them and it helps to build up the emotional factor. I liked the beginning of the movie where alphabets tend to form different types of shapes, dancing and doing all crazy stuff. Background music and songs were not great but indeed it was worth appreciable. At least I don't see TZP as a strong contender for Oscars this year. I have huge hopes for Gowarikars Jodha Akbar simply because of its historical background and the execution of the same. Coming to TZP I wish every Parent should go and watch this movie with their kids. It is indeed a thought provoking movie with a preaching in its core. Indian subcontinent including China is facing a fierce sense of competition due to population explosion. The direct effect of the competition can be seen on small kids. This movie, if not all, but I am sure will kindle some kind fire inside the hearts of the parents. It is an eye opener.....

I hope you will like it.

Human Tooth ~ Too Common yet so Unique

Real Life Samples Taken from KJM hospital, Mumbai

Do you know that Human tooth is considered as the strongest component in a human body?

Perhaps this information you read in standard 6 while attending the general knowledge classes. Fortunately I got the opportunity to test the same during my under graduation studies. The following blog is little bit different from general entertainment flicks. In this post I have tried to explain human tooth and its properties by looking at them with the perspective of a Materials Science engineer.

Human tooth is indeed the strongest component in a human body but what fascinated me the most was its unique biomechanical properties exhibited at the dentin enamel junction commonly known as DEJ. Have you ever experienced chipping of the tooth. Yes, chipping of the tooth, not breaking of the human tooth because it is an arduous task to break a human tooth into two halves. In most of the cases tooth gets chipped from the top because cracks cannot propagate further inside the tooth due to the DEJ. I realized the fact and the reason when I was just browsing through a highly acclaimed scientific journal, Nature Publication. I came across a paper by V. Imbeni, J. J. Kruzic, G. W. Marshall, S. J. Marshall, and R. O. Ritchie (The names are according to the order appeared on the journal paper). They published the result of the experiments done on the adult human tooth to explain the unique biomechanical properties of human tooth. They found the toughness and hardness variation of the human tooth on moving away from the DEJ. If you move outwards from DEJ then obviously you are in Enamel section so you will have harder material, whereas if you are moving from DEJ towards tooth root then you are in Dentine which has lower hardness as compared to hard enamel.

fig 1: Hardness Variation from DEJ, positive axis represent
dentin whereas negative side represent enamel.

Figure 1 showing the variation of hardness with variation in distance from DEJ. As you can see hardness drastically drops on reaching the dentin region but toughness properties are superior which makes it soft as well as tough material. Human tooth is indeed a beautiful specimen at microscopic range. It has lots of beautiful pores as shown in figure 2 filled with a material which is present in our bones, you guessed it right, that material is none other than a compound of calcium and phosphorus which is commonly known as Hexa Apetite.

fig 2: SEM images of various sections of human tooth
(a) Dentin, (b) Enamel, (c) DEJ.

I really feel lucky sometimes when I think about my past. Got through JEE and studied in one of the internationally acclaimed university known as Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay commonly known as IIT and widely appreciated by IIT brand name. It gave me such a great opportunity to work with some of the high end instruments; Atomic Force Microscope is one of them. AFM images of human tooth reveal the surface morphology of the enamel and the dentin. The uneven surface due to acid etching clearly comes out when we get the result from AFM. Etching of an inorganic material is done with the help of an acid so we used Hydro-Phospheric acid to etch the mineral part of the human tooth. Figure 3 show the result of the AFM where the uneven pits formed due to acid etching which can be observed in the form of hills and valleys. It is indeed easy to represent data on paper and making comment on them but when it comes to do the experiment then you realize the real hardship behind it. It took me several weeks to get the two pictures which you can see at the bottom. It was not only hard to do the setup but it was difficult to get an appointment from the lab instructor. Yes, it took me around three months to test my samples and by that time you feel exhausted because half of your work is stuck in between due to awaited results.

fig 3: AFM images of various sections of human tooth (a) Dentin, (b) Enamel.

Indeed if I do not show the beautiful and magnificent images of cracks formed because of the Vickers Hardness Test then it would be unfair from my side. Moreover toughness test revealed why we get chipped tooth and not a broken tooth when we fall on our mouth. Figure 4 are the optical images of the enamel near DEJ on human tooth. The colorful picture is due to optical diffraction happening inside the optical microscope. If you observe the images closely then you would notice that cracks do not impinge the DEJ rather they move sidewards as if avoiding the movement inside dentin. The reason as I said earlier is the supreme and yet unique biomechanical quality of DEJ which prohibits the crack propagation inside the dentin.

fig 4: Optical Microscope Images of various indentation on human tooth
showing the direction of prorogation of crack near DEJ regions.

.

Diverting-The-Traffic Strategy

Courtesy: Absolutely

Most nubies in blogging try to divert the traffic towards their blog, they use all different types of tactics such as writing about exotic topics, pasting exotic pictures or even discussing something which you know half a million people would search at the midnight. Yes, indeed it is a good way to divert the traffic but if you continue doing this then your blog will eventually turn out to be just another deceiving pornoblog having nothing except curse from frustrated deceived humans. Unfortunately I don’t have any proof about the percentage increase in HITs but of course I am eager to find out. In two words we can say ' SEX SELLS '. What about Paris Hilton controversy or Pamela Anderson real life video. I am sure they sell more than any other CDs in the internet. Nevertheless, Youtube and Xtube are the prime locations where they serve sex to the virtual world with just ' I-know-you-are-above-18-and-I-Trust-you ' type thinking. I don’t know why they ask for the age verification when they know that it is simply not going to work, may be they trust the dishonest human beings.

Not only internet industry is infected by the SELL SEX addiction but our entertainment industry is highly engrossed in the same business. Just take the example of most of the spoof movies. They cut copy paste the situations from few highly acclaimed Hollywood movies and camouflage their cheap SEX scenes over them. But it tingles’s you; you love to watch it, not the movie but the degree of deformity. Recently I saw two of the spoof movies of their kind, THE EPIC MOVIE and MEET THE SPARTANS. I found the fun factor exceptionally higher than most of the comedy movies. These movies are low budget but at the same time with full hilarious content. The way they deal with controversial Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie and of course Pamela Anderson is worth watching.

I wonder sometime which word is most frequently searched on Google. If you have any clues then you are most welcome to put your thoughts in the form of comment.

Harmony in Air

Courtesy: Istockphoto

You mock him, ridicule him or criticize him but his popularity is unprecedented and appreciated by the wide range of audience, from rikshaw-wala to the midnight disc jockeys. Yes, I am talking about none other than Himesh Reshammiya, a great musician and a victim of nasal singing after Kumar Sanu. I must confess that I am a great fan of Himesh bhai simply because of the foot tapping music he makes year after year while changing the style according to the need of the society. Himesh Bhais music runs on simple harmony, without indulging into complicated turns or windings like A R Rehman's intricate music. The mere simplicity and usage of basic notes strategically makes him an adorned music director. Anu Malik did contributed some similar type of songs in mid 90's but Himesh Bhai is the real Techno wizard.

I came across My name is Anthony Gonsalvis while I was listening to the new dance numbers from the latest Bollywood movies. 'Tum Mile' is not only a fabulous song but it has all the essential ingredients which are required to make a good melodious romantic flick. Pritam is the music director of this movie but this special song has been especially embellished by Himesh Bhai. KKs soft at the same time strong voice goes smoothly with the song. I was only disappointed that Sunidhi Chauhan appears at much later part of the song with her bold tone. May be they would have made a female version of the song since it is a romantic song, and of course I would have loved to listen the song if Sunidhi had sung the same.

I have been listening 'Tum Mile' since two days and still not feeling saturated enough. The melodious harmony as if going deeper and deeper into my soul. Drums and guitar are the essential component part of this song. Nevertheless, the base chords acts as a strong backbone, keeping the listener captivated in the melody during transitions in the song. I also liked the voice overlapping technique they have used to overlap the voice of Sunidhi Chauhan with her voice itself. It results to a mesmerizing low pitched sound with intense feeling.

Tum Mile is an excellent example of a simple, but at the same time intense song which is strong enough to mark its presence in diaspora of Indian population.

Himesh Bhai I am eagerly waiting for your next dance number !!