Ghumakkad in Hindi means 'the wanderer'. That is what I am. On the move any time anywhere!
This blog chronicles Ghumakkad's travels/teachings/learnings around the globe as picture stories. In addition, there are Picturesque Quotes (PQs) created using my pictures. Enjoy it.
If you have also been to the places/topics described here, please feel free to add to the content.
Your comments/ suggestions are welcome.
"No classes. No teachers. You are your own teacher", this is how I described a convocation ten years ago. Even now, isn't it true ? Think.
Convocation is a formal event. Mostly stiff, long drawn and repetitive. Yet, it triggers excitement because it happens once for the graduating students, unless they decide to study further! Am sharing a short picture story of a convocation which I attended recently. This convocation was different for many reasons:
Convocation of the Founding Class
Parents of Chancellor's Awardees honoured on stage
Valedictorian Address by the topper of the Batch
Recognising the Best all-rounder
Rewarding the Dean's List on stage
Designing of the gowns by a student
Fun moments
Founding Class
It was the founding class (2021-23) of BITS School of Management (BITSoM) at Mumbai which received their degree certificates. The excitement was writ large on the faces of the graduating students. BITS Pilani is Ghumakkad's alma-mater. A globally renowned institution for Science and Technology, it added a new School of Management in Mumbai in 2021. I remember attending the 1st convocation of BITS Pilani in 1964 as a school student. The loudest applause then went to the first PhD from BITS Dr RP Jain, if my memory serves me right! Yes, the founding class has special status as far as institutional memory is concerned.
Mr Uday Kotak was the Chief Guest while Mr Kumar Mangalam Birla delivered the Chancellor's Address. Mr Birla gave out four tips to become a pioneer in your profession. Browse the short clip below inserted with permission:
Mr Kotak recounted his younger days when he wanted to be a cricket player. Do listen to him in this short 40-sec video.
Honoring the Parents
Parents are always invited for the convocation at all the universities. But the parents of Chancellor's Award recipients at BITSoM were invited on stage to receive the Award along with their ward. This innovative gesture by BITSoM honouring the parents goes a long way in inspiring the future batches. It also strengthens the value system taught at the School. I met the mother of Samarth Mishra, the batch topper after the event and congratulated her. It was an overwhelming feeling more so as he had lost his father when he was 18. Similarly, the parents of Ayush Ranjan, the Best All-rounder of the Class were also honoured by inviting them on stage to receive the Chancellor's award alongside.
Valedictorian Address by Batch Topper
Another innovation which I observed at the convocation. The batch topper was given the privilege to deliver the Valedictorian Address at the convocation. Just listen to the inspiring and touching speech delivered by Samarth Mishra, who topped the Class of 2023 at BITSoM. Look at his self-confidence, composure and delivery- like a seasoned stage speaker! If the YouTube link below doesn't open, you may click here.
It is a custom in most universities in north America. Dean's list honours those graduating students who achieved a GPA between 3.5 to 3.9 on a scale of 4. Dean's list awardees get a signed certificate of appreciation. BITSoM also honoured the top-10 students of the graduating class. Actually the number was 11 because there was a tie for the 10th position. This reminded me of 20 merit scholarships being awarded every semester by our batch at BITS Pilani. The first cohort had 21 awardees because there was a four way tie for the 17th rank. Talk of coincidences in life!
Designing of the gowns by a student
Another innovation by BITSoM was designing of the convocation gowns by a student of the graduating class. Ms Pallavi Savant felt so elated on her design being selected by the Institute.
Fun Moments
Every convocation the fun moment arrives with the tossing of the hats on completion of the ceremony. The BITSoM graduates also did that. But there were more fun moments like:
Screening of the Year Book made by the graduating class
A professional music performance in between
Sharing few pictures of the Convocation to give you a feeling of vibrancy at the venue- National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai.
For two of us from the graduating class of 1973, it was a privilege to attend the convocation of another graduating class 50 years apart! From 1973 to 2023, BITS has been an integral part of our life as BITSians.
Previous Convocations
Ghumakkad has been privileged to have attended many convocations in the past. We are sharing below two of our earlier stories of BITS convocations.
Hope you liked this short story. It proved that innovations are meant not only for product designs, but it can be applied even in mundane activities like a college convocation. Well done Dr Ranjan Banerjee and his team at BITSoM.
Thanks for browsing.
- Harsh-the-Ghumakkad with inputs from Samarth Mishra and the ABG Group/ Secunderabad/ 15th May 2023
Postscript 16th May 2023:
Dr Vijay Vittal of Arizona State University, USA wrote: "At our university's convocation our President asks all parents of graduating students to rise and then asks the graduating students to acknowledge and thank the parents for their sacrifices that helped them achieve their goal." Another noble way of acknowledging the contribution of the parents!
Everyone doesn't get such a chance when the Prime Minister (PM) recognises your work and mentions it publicly. Even if you are not mentioned by name, so what? It is your work which gets recognised.
This is the story of a fellow BITSian whose social venture in Hyderabad was mentioned by the PM recently in his monthly talk Mann Ki Baat मन की बात.
Devender K Ahuja graduated in Electrical Engineering from BITS Pilani in 1975. After successfully running Ahuja Engineering for more than 30 years, he and his daughter Shruti ventured into Solid Waste Management. IICT had developed technology for converting vegetable waste into electricity and bio gas using bio-methanation. Ahuja Engineering Services (AES) thereafter designed and set up a plant at the largest vegetable mandi- Bowenpally wholesale market- in Hyderabad. The plant is a perfect example of PPP model of governance. See the visuals below.
Visual courtesy TOI.
This 'waste to energy and fuel' story was mentioned and applauded by the PM. See the video below and listen to PM's voice appreciating the waste disposal plant.
Readers may view a TEDx talk about the efforts of AES here. The concept of waste to energy is explained in this video.
We did a quick conversation with the social entrepreneurs. Excerpts:
How does it feel to be mentioned by the Prime Minister himself?
It feels like life has come a full circle. All our hard work, persistence and conviction is finally getting acknowledged. Thanks to our PM, this important yet neglected issue of waste management has taken centre stage. The implementation in this area has been slow by both government and private industries, so having the PM himself congratulating our work is very satisfying.
When did it all start and what are the hurdles that you faced?
It all started when my younger daughter Shruti came back from the US after completing her Masters & leaving the Job with AT&T in 2012 to explore opportunities in India.
She was not inclined to carry forward our business of executing electrical contracts. We encouraged her to become an entrepreneur and to look for new problem areas in the Society. She took about a year brainstorming various ideas. After visiting various poultry farms she homed on to the issue of poultry litter disposal. From there on we started working on ‘Waste to Energy’ and named our venture as ‘Trash to Treasure’. She faced a lot of hurdles having chosen a not so glamorous field of waste management. Becoming an entrepreneur and that too a young woman posed additional challenges. Lack of awareness and regulatory enforcements in the area of waste management are other issues we faced. However, with PM's validation of our work, hopefully this will change now. (Ed: see a 25-seconds clip of the plant below)
In addition to Bowenpally Vegetable Mandi, what other installations have you done in the country?
It has been seven years now on product development. We have a fully baked turn-key waste-to-biogas plant solution for food waste/kitchen waste/vegetable waste. We have done more than 20 installations all over India successfully. We also have an R&D laboratory and are preparing for other areas of waste management.
People at your age think of retirement. How did you deal with this transition from electrical contracts to waste management?
This venture became my ‘second innings’. More importantly, I was able to retain all my staff and have successfully trained them in fabrication and operation of biogas plants. It’s very satisfying to provide employment to so many people and to provide them with new skill set as well.
Environment is everybody's responsibility. But most people don't think so. How did you overcome this mind set?
This mindset of people started to change from 2014 onwards when Mr. Modi started the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan as a national mission. It’s still a long way to go, to build more awareness, and for people to really ‘own’ their waste and not think that waste is someone else’s issue. However this is a global problem and world over the number of biogas plants are not as high as they should be. Technology is not an issue but problems around waste segregation, waste mafia exist. We are encouraging more transparency in the system and providing proven technology solutions. Our solution ensures that segregated waste can be treated onsite in a decentralized manner so that it never gets mixed up with dry waste and does not end up in our landfills. We are slowly seeing this mindset change. Hopefully next few years will see faster adoption and implementation of such solutions.
One criticism against such waste treatment plants is that they consume lot of water. What do you say?
We recycle the slurry in our plant. It reduces overall consumption of fresh water significantly. Of course the slurry as our byproduct is an excellent manure for plants and trees. (Ed: See the video below)
Going ahead what are your plans for future?
The future will see the use of biogas as compressed fuel (CBG) for vehicles as well as piped gas (Bio PNG). We are gearing up towards this end. We will also be offering turn-key biogas plants for industrial wastes such as poultry litter, slaughter house waste and other agricultural wastes like palm oil bye-products, bamboo, elephant grass etc. All these have a high potential to convert into clean fuel.
Postscript: We are delighted to share another recent video clip हरी भरी बिजली meaning 'Green Electricity' posted on YouTube on 20th June 2022.
Once again, our congratulations to Shruti Ahuja and her team for constantly innovating newer ways to preserve the environment.
____________
We thanked the entrepreneurs. Isn't their journey so inspiring? Indeed it is. But it raises few questions?
Why do engineers shy away from working as engineers? Most become managers, teachers, bankers, software programmers, analysts and so on. We need more engineers like Ahuja who have successfully applied their engineering knowledge and skills to solve larger problems of the society like waste management.
Why don't engineering students do projects and internships in organisations like AES where they can learn application of knowledge. Germany and Japan have 100 times more apprentices/interns every year compared with India. Food for thought for all.
Well, let us return to our theme of saving the environment. Environment and its preservation is the responsibility of all of us. Let us do our bit to keep the environment clean and green. We can help in many ways like generating awareness or cleaning the lakes etc. We are sharing below links to some of our earlier stories concerning the environment.
This is the story of
four buddies from college days, now into their sixties, and their spouses who
chose Africa for an adventurous vacation. These four guys celebrated their
college alumni day (BITSians Day) in Dar-es-Salaam. Following picture posted on
facebook on 1st August 2014 received an incredible 500+ likes from
fellow BITSians and other friends world over!
Our wildlife safari
kicked off with a domestic flight to Arusha. All eight safari enthusiasts had
been profiled in the curtain raiser of our African Adventure. If you haven’t
yet browsed the story titled ‘Life Begins at Sixty’, here is the link to the adventurous-eight:
Arusha is the wildlife
capital of Tanzania as all wildlife tours for Northern circuit start from here. See Tanzania flag below. More on Arusha
later.
Ever since we returned from African Safari, many friends and
readers of Ghumakkad’s blog have been pressing for pictures of African
adventure. Individual stories of National Parks/regions in Tanzania are still
under compilation. So we decided first to share a story on the Big-Five.
What is Big Five?
In Africa,
the big five game animals are the African elephant, Cape buffalo, African leopard, African lion and White/Black rhinoceros.
The term big five game (sometimes capitalized or quoted
as "Big Five") was coined by big-game hunters and refers
to the five most difficult animals
in Africa to hunt on foot. Subsequently the term was adopted by safari tour operators for
marketing purposes. The term is used in most tourist and wildlife guides that
discuss African wildlife safaris. The members of the Big Five were chosen for
the difficulty in hunting them and the degree of danger involved, rather than
their size. Wikipedia, the source of this information adds, “The 1990 and later
releases of South African Rand banknotes featured a different
big-five animal on each denomination”.
Countries where all the
big five can be found include South Africa, Tanzania, and Kenya. However, you may not sight all the “Big five” in one wildlife
park. We visited four National Parks in Tanzania's famous northern circuit.
Here are some pictures
of the “Big Five” seen “live” by us across all four parks in Tanzania-- that's why the title "The Big Five Live". However, the Big Five are not so easy to spot. You have to start early. At times before sunrise-- as in this picture of rising Sun from our moving 4x4 Land Cruiser below. The vegetation in African parks varies from acacias on the slopes of Ngorongoro highlands to thorny shrubs in the plains of Serengeti. See the flora map of Tanzania. Credit for background
information on each of the Big Five animals described below goes to Wikipedia.
African Elephant
The African
elephant (Loxodontaafricana) is a very large herbivore having
thick, almost hairless skin, a long, flexible, prehensile trunk, upper incisors forming
long curved tusks of ivory, and large, fan-shaped ears. The elephants are
difficult because despite their large size, they are able to hide in tall grass
and are more likely to charge than the other species.
We saw herds and herds
of African elephants in every national park which we visited. Here are a few
pictures clearly showing their fan shaped ears and their care for the babies.
A family of elephants grazing near our vehicle with open canopy. You get as close as this!
Another male elephant walking along with us!
This family decided to cross the track. Of course we gave way to the elephants. They have the right of way!
Even the baby elephant's ears have the fan shape!
Cape Buffalo
The African or Cape
buffalo (Synceruscaffer) is a large horned bovid.
Buffalo are sometimes reported to kill more people in Africa than any other
animal, although the same claim is also made
of hippos and crocodiles. It is considered the most
dangerous of the big five, reportedly causing the most hunter deaths, with
wounded animals reported to ambush and attack pursuers.
Buffalo and other herds can be spotted from a distance from the dust which they raise while walking. See the wildebeest herd and the panorama of the vast plains against the wall of Ngorongoro crater. We saw from close
quarters many herds of Cape Buffaloes. They tended to size us up, our vehicle
as well as our posture. Only when the lead male buffalo gave ‘all clear’ to
fellow buffaloes, they shifted their ‘numbing stare’ elsewhere. You can get a
feel through the pictures below.
The stare which numbs you!
And the leader then sounded 'all clear' to rest of the herd.
African Leopard
The leopard (Pantherapardus)
is a large, carnivorous feline having either tawny fur with dark rosette-like
markings or black fur. The leopard is considered the most difficult of the big
five to sight because of their nocturnal and secretive nature. They are wary of
humans and will take flight in the face of danger. The leopard is solitary by
nature, and is most active between sunset and sunrise, although it may hunt
during the day in some areas. Leopards can be found in the savanna grasslands,
brush land and forested areas in Africa.
Our encounters with the
African leopard were at a safe distance—unlike the lions, elephants and
buffaloes where the animals brushed past our 4x4 land cruiser! We had three
different sightings of leopards-- two on a tree and a third on a rock. Here is the first sighting on a tree some half a km away! Can you spot the leopard on the tree?
If yes, you have sharp eyes like our guide-cum-driver Rama who had amazing knack of spotting the animals as well as birds! Here is an enlarged view. The leopard had carried its kill- Grant's Gazelle, an antelope-- up the tree. You can see both the leopard and the kill in the picture below. Notice the different shade of its fur in the belly and rest of the body? That is the characteristic of African leopard.
It was a female leopard. How do we know? Because it had carried its cub and safely perched it atop another tree close by. See the hanging legs of the cub in the centre of the picture below.
It is a challenge taking pictures in such poor lighting. However, we got luckier with another sighting when the sun came out just in time. See the picture when the leopard-- once again on the tree beautifully camouflaged-- posed for us by turning its head!
Black Rhinoceros
This is another of the
Big Five from whom a distance is to be maintained. It appeared to be shy of
humans. The black rhinoceros (Dicerosbicornis) is a
large, thick-skinned herbivore having one or two upright horns on the nasal
bridge. Here are the pictures of our sighting almost a kilometer away!
An enlarged view showing the two horns-- unlike single horned rhinos of Kaziranga, India.
Even at that distance, it did not like to be disturbed. See the expression and the charge!
And don’t miss the number of safari vehicles which converged within 15 minutes from across the 400 square mile Ngorongoro crater. Rhino sighting is not easy.
Lions are easier to sight! Read on.
African Lion
The Lion (Pantheraleo)
is a large carnivorous feline of Africa and northwest India,
having a short, tawny coat, a tufted tail, and, in the male, a heavy mane around
the neck and shoulders. See the picture below.
The male is conscious of its beauty! Here he licks his mane to keep it clean! Big cats and small cats-- all clean up themselves.
Lions live in the
savanna where tall grasses, shrubs, and bushes obscure them and provide cover
and camouflage. This thick undergrowth is commonly referred to as jess.
As lions are ambush hunters, they use this natural cover when stalking to creep
as close as possible before making a final charge to catch their prey. Lions do
not generally avoid confrontation, but will usually face a challenger. Lions
are unpredictable and may charge when sufficiently annoyed or confronted by
danger.
We had many sightings
in all the three parks except Lake Manyara. Here are a few pictures of the
lions. A male lion walks past our safari vehicles.
Here is Anand Jain admiring our biggest sighting-- 11 lions together under a tree. Don't confuse the lions with dogs who sleep during the day!
Mothers will be mothers. A lioness licks her cub.
Little Five
Before we end this story, the Big Five have company-- the "Little Five"-- Elephant Shrews, Ant Lions, Leopard Tortoises, Buffalo Weavers and Rhino Beetles. Credit for this revealing information goes to Lonely Planet and their excellent book on Tanzania. Though we sighted only the buffalo weaver, readers of this blog may share their sightings of the other Little Five! Hope you enjoyed the “Big
Five Live”. Every evening after the wildlife safari, when we returned to the
safari camp/lodge, it was an additional treasure trove of memories. The Sun
never seemed to set in Africa.
Your
comments/observations on this picture story are welcome.
Watch out for next set of stories on our African Adventure.
-Harsh-the-Ghumakkad/
24th Aug 2014
Postscript: Almost after eight years on 25th March 2022, Ghumakkad posted the story on African Lions titled 'Lazy Lions'. The story has pictures and videos of African Lions and its cousin the Asiatic Lions as well. The story also includes the winning captions for a picture of two male African Lions which made it to NatGeo YourShot! Browse it here.
