Netarhat Journey: After 27 Years (Dec 2003)

We started our Netarhat Journey at the ungodly hour of 4 O’Clock in the morning. This was to avoid getting blocked by a call for Bandh given on the day of travel (10th Dec. 2003). I had the driver bring the Tata Sumo the previous night. We loaded all the computers and other items early morning at 3:30 and started our journey with a lot of anxiety. Some stretches of road had so dense fog that nothing was visible but thankfully it was limited in extent. We were cruising nicely and crossed Lohardagga without any incident.

Next, we came to Ghaghara around 7 AM and were stopped on the way and asked to not proceed any further. Help from the Police through Varun Mishra proved a nonstarter as the roads were blocked by trucks. We waited for an hour or so and took the help of local leaders, who helped us in getting ahead. They also gave us the names of their local unit leaders in case we faced any problems.

We were again stopped near Bishunpur and had to wait for 15-20 minutes before they let us proceed. The next stop was at Banari where bandh supporters were sitting on the road. But they let us go without any problem. After this, we crossed the Koel River and were a little relaxed. I took the first photograph (using the Kodak digital camera that we have donated to the school. Pictures here have been scaled down in resolution to suit the low bandwidth of the internet.) of the day showing going up the valley. Now we started moving up the torturous climb to Netarhat. The road did not seem to have changed much. It was difficult to say whether it had become better or worse as compared to earlier.
On the way, I kept clicking along the way in the hope of capturing some beautiful scenes to share with all of you.

We have reached almost near the top of the valley and the school.

Finally, we reached the school around 11:30 AM. Thank God, we, the vehicle, and all the equipment survived the Bandh. As I entered the gate Anil Singh (188, my batch mate and now a teacher at Netarhat) immediately recognized me after 27 years. (Of course, he was expecting me. I am not sure he would have recognized me in an unexpected situation.) We immediately met Principal Karn Jee, who was visibly relieved seeing us survive all the disturbance. I also informed Varun Mishra (SP, Lohardagga, and Hatian) immediately that we were safe.

After some food (we had none since the previous night due to Bandh on the way), we started to unpack the computers in the old aero-modeling room. Electrical work was going on in the Old assembly hall. We went and finalized the layout of the furniture and the electrical points.

Students seeing the Movie

I made the suggestion of inaugurating the projector by showing the students a movie on the 10th evening. since they were going away on the 12th for vacation. It was agreed but turned out that Sixth Set had a Sahbhoj arranged at the same time. Anyway, it was decided to manage both of them. A new white screen for the stage was taken out and fixed on the stage and after some tightening of the screen to remove wrinkles, we could get an acceptable quality picture, clearly visible from the back. It was fortunate that Video CDs are easily available in Netarhat now (Progress!) and Amitabh Bachchan’s “Baghban” was selected to be shown. I did not know that the tradition of showing movies had stopped nearly 15 years back when TVs and VCRs became available. So students were seeing movies together after that many years. They watched the movie in pin-drop silence until near the end when they clapped several times. I was planning to go back to the computer installation but continued to watch the historical movie show (of course, I had seen the movie earlier, courtesy of ICICI bank), just in case any technical difficulty arose. The movie was shown on the generator so electricity was not a threat. It was a great feeling being with all the students and watching a movie in the Netarhat workshop.

A young kid reciting a poem

After the movie, we were invited to the Sahbhoj being hosted in the Sixth Set since there was a change of Ashramadhyaksha in one of the Ashrams. Before this, a small cultural program was organized. Of course, after the movie people were ready to move to dinner fast but this young kid on the right (who had just come a couple of weeks back to the school) captivated everyone by the beautiful poem he recited. He was so small that his dress was oversized. But looking at him and others sitting below in the room, netarhat does not look any different from our time.

Special Assembly

The next day (11th Dec) was the last day before students went on winter vacation. Karn Jee warned me that there was a special assembly in the morning and that I should get ready in time and be there in all senses. I had to give a talk to the students! The talk part was not much of a problem since the last one and half years of teaching at my university have prepared me for that. It was the morning cold that I was facing after a long time. Thankfully immersion rods and the availability of electricity made that task also easier.

Coming to electricity, it turns out that the upgradation of electricity from 11 KV to 33 KV transmission line was in full swing. Due to this, they used to switch off the electricity in the daytime and leave it on during the night. Voltage was low (110 V lamps worked better! USA in Netarhat(?)) and was expected to improve with the installation of the new transmission line. The water supply was normal since electricity was available at night.

This was a special assembly and results were announced. I was given the honor of distributing the certificates. I was lucky to touch that piece of paper since Neeraj and others from my batch always made sure that I did not come in the top three positions to be able to receive that paper. So I had all the fun in life touching so many of them at one go. There was a report from the visit to the NDA (National Defence Academy) by the students. Anshuman Chatterjee went with the students and gave a good report on the visit and also the fact that the students had done well. I got my chance to talk to the students for an hour about my career path, my research, my new institute, and what we (NOBA Parivar) are trying to do to modernize Netarhat. I am not sure how much of that was useful to the students since they must be thinking about their journey home the next day. Especially keep in mind that 300 of them had just joined and this was their first visit home.
We had a meeting with all the teachers at 12:00 noon in the staff room. We discussed the various requirements of the school where we as NOBA members could help. I have made a separate write-up on requirements but there were a few requests related to cultural and sports activity. School needed time to think about what they needed since most of the requirements were vague and details were not available. The requirement for a Gym and Yoga facility is urgent and the Principal gave me a list, which I have passed to Delhi NOBA to find out the price etc. Before the meeting, I clicked the photographs of as many teachers as possible. I will put this up on the Netarhat School website.

I have also made a list of requirements for the school and will be putting it up on the web soon.

Around lunchtime (11th Dec.) rest of my students came by bus since they had got stuck in Ranchi due to Bandh. After a brief rest, I got them to work on the installation of software, etc. You can see them at work in the photograph.

I was requested by some teachers to give them an introductory training in computer use. So I took revenge on the teachers by trying to teach them. I wanted to use the projector for doing this. This showed the teachers the effectiveness of using the projector as a teaching aid and it made my life simple as well. Of course, I am not used to teaching introductory computer courses, so I do not know how it went. But I showed them the various uses of computers: word processing, spreadsheet, presentation software, e-mail, internet, etc. I also took this opportunity to explain to them the process we had used to collect funds through the web and how the status of APCL – Netarhat fund was transparently being shown to any NOBA member around the globe, and how we have used e-mails to discuss issues of mutual interest. Some of them informed me that enthused by our effort many teachers had started purchasing computers. The picture on the left shows the introductory training of teachers going on.

My team members took the opportunity to visit the sunrise point on the 12th morning. Unfortunately, I fell sick at night and had to take rest. Finally, I bid goodbye to everyone and started my return journey at 2 PM and reached Ranchi around 6:30 PM. The picture of the sunrise and a beautiful tree from the garden of Netarhat School is shown below.

Finally, I wish to thank all of the NOBA community and APCL management, who came out to support this venture. I also wish to put in a record lot of hard work Kedar Jee and others at Ranchi NOBA put in to make this a successful trip. They of course have a much more challenging task of organizing the Golden Jubilee Celebration. Good luck!

Miracle recovery with my help!

This is a real story narrated by a beneficiary herself.  I never knew anything like this was possible when she got in touch with me. It was a major surprise and learning too. I have had few other users but this case is very striking. I feel this would open up path of learning for many many persons and we need to look at learning in a different way.

Continue reading “Miracle recovery with my help!”

Learning disability, Mantra and Brainwaves!

I have been trying to understand brainwaves and its relationship to learning disability in children. Scientific research shows the parameter Beta1/Theta waves being a key criteria. To improve this “Brain Entrainment” or neurofeedback can be used. These typically need auditory stimulation of brain. Our Yoga and mediation also seem to work on brainwaves. I was wondering if our traditional “Mantra” also has something to do with this. I found this on net – “In his research conducted a few years ago, Dr Herbert Benson observed that chanting of specific mantras produced a “relaxation” response, causing reduction of heart beat, brain waves and respiration.”

In one more paper,, they claim “Practitioners understand ‘‘meditation,’’ or mental training, to be a process of familiarization with one’s own mental life leading to long-lasting changes in cognition and emotion. Little is known about this process and its impact on the brain. Here we find that long-term Buddhist practitioners self-induce sustained electroencephalographic high-amplitude gamma-band oscillations and phase-synchrony during meditation. These electroencephalogram patterns differ from those of controls, in particular over lateral frontoparietal electrodes. In addition, the ratio of gamma-band activity (25–42 Hz) to slow oscillatory activity (4–13 Hz) is initially higher in the resting baseline before meditation for the practitioners than the controls over medial frontoparietal electrodes. This difference increases sharply during meditation over most of the scalp electrodes and remains higher than the initial baseline in the post meditation baseline. These data suggest that mental training involves temporal integrative mechanisms and may induce short term and long-term neural changes.”

West has started using “mantra” for their benefit as seen in this video :Gayatri Mantra being used in West

So now need to find if learning disability can be improved through our traditional knowledge!

FEDORA 14 LIRC on USB-UIRT

I am writing down the process to get LIRC working on Fedora 14 using USB-UIRC. I did not find any single place, where this was described properly.

1. First you can install LIRC package using yum by giving

yum install lirc-*

This would install lirc, lirc-lib, lirc-devel, lirc-remote and lirc-doc package. Continue reading “FEDORA 14 LIRC on USB-UIRT”

Updated step-by-step wheat grass growing and juicing

This post is based on nearly 2 months of experience and some of the information here is updated, compared to my earlier two posts on the topic:

Let me try to put rest of the information in the form of FAQ!

  1. How much time it takes to grow what grass for juicing? – It takes about 6-7 days to grow to about 6 inches, when it should be harvested for juicing. This depends on climatic conditions and so on.
  2. How to organize this so that I can get juice every day? – What is important is to have this juice fresh. Ideally it should be consumed within 20 minutes of juicing.  So what is best,  is to have seven containers in which to grow this. It should be sowed every day in a different one so that after six to seven days, you start to get fresh grass every day. Once you harvest from one container, you can reuse that and continue doing that. It is also possible to reuse the same plant once or twice more.
  3. What should be the size of container? – I am now using rectangular plastic tray as shown here. Each tray can produce enough to serve 2-3 persons  every day. I have purchased 12 of these so that I have a few spares to handle other needs (e.g covering tray during germination phase, letting soil air for 3-4 days to prepare soil for reuse etc.). I have also purchased two bigger trays to store soil in them. Smaller tray cost me Rs 40 each and bigger Rs 80 each. To organize them, I bought a 4 -self steel rack in Rs 700.
  4. What should be the depth of the soil in the pot? – One to two inch depth is enough. So one could have more shallow pot. My plastic tray are about 2 inch in height.
  5. Should tray have holes at bottom? – I did not have holes in the tray at first. As it was rainy season, I found some time water had accumulated and was difficult to drain it off and affected the plants  I have now been drilling hole to take care of this. With holes in the tray, I put paper at the bottom of the tray before putting soil. This way only water would drain out and not let soil fall through holes and make the place dirtier.
  6. What soil to add ? – One can add good gardening soil. First time I went to local nursery and asked them to fill it in the pots and had some extra too. While buying the larger pots, I got it filled with the persons selling the pot itself. Soil should not be soggy and should not stick together. One can spread it to dry faster before using it. One should add compost fertilizer before sowing. It has been suggested to not use any chemical fertilizers or pesticides etc. However I have found it very useful to add an organic fertilizer  – “bio-field”. I got it in local nursery. See this in my earlier blog here.
  7. Which wheat to use? – I bought it from local grocery shop. They did not have any choice, so used whatever they had. If there is choice, one can use bigger grains.
  8. What quantity of seeds should be used? – I use about 9-10 table spoons for the one tray. But you can adjust as per your experience, this is just initial guess. Amount should be enough to cover the soil fully with seeds without overlapping as shown below:
  9. What preparation to do before sowing? – Wash and soak wheat for about 12 hours or overnight. Then tie it in thick damp cloth for another 8-10 hours. In Indian warm weather, you should see wheat sprouting by this time. Once it has sprouted a little, it is ready to be sowed.
  10. How to sow? – Prepare soil by adding 50% compost to soil first time and mix it nicely. I like to thinly spread  6-7 tablespoon of “bio-field” on top of the soil.  Now I spread the wheat in single layer touching each other so that it is as dense as possible without overlapping(see the picture above). It is suggested to spread a very thin layer of soil on the top of this but I leave it  exposed and have found better result. Now spray very small amount of water to just make it damp. I use a water spray to make this uniform. More water can be bad here. Cover the pot with damp newspaper sheets so that damp environment is maintained inside. If it  is too hot, cover with a plastic sheet or some other thing to keep the seeds in damp environment. Respray twice in a day or so to keep it damp based on climate. Once you see little sprouts coming out, you can start to expose it to fresh air. Direct strong sunlight for long time may not be good for plants in early stage.
  11. When it is ready to be harvested ? – Keep spraying water every morning and evening and plants should keep growing. Once it has reached a height of 6 inch or so, it is ready to be harvested. See the growth day by day here:
  12. How to harvest? – I use a pair of scissors with long enough blade to cut the wheat grass about half inch to an inch above soil . I bought a sturdy  all metal scissors with stainless steel blades. One with iron blades gets rusted and may not be good. I got one with brass handle and stainless steel in Rs 325. Cheap ones with plastic handle do not last long.
  13. How to Juice? – Wash the grass properly and juice it in spice grinder by adding little water. It would become like a paste in this and now one can strain it through a thin cloth to get juice out of the pulp. It is suggested to use a low RPM machine to do this to keep temperature low during this. Higher temperature destroys  some beneficial enzymes.  One could use other means of extracting juice as well. I could not find a low RPM machine in India, but they are available abroad though expensive. I am using normal spice grinder for the time being. However I ordered a hand juicer from eBay (India) for something that looks like this. It was not sturdy enough for this purpose and handle broke. I am still looking for one in India. (one below that is on Amazon.com) :
  14. How to drink? – It is best taken in morning on empty stomach. It is suggested to not gulp it down at once but consume it slowly as if you are eating it.
  15. What to do after harvesting? – One can reuse the plant couple of times more after which it starts to get little harder. I am still experimenting with this but found it essential to add “bio-field” to reuse the plant second time. More than 3 times may not give you much juice.
  16. Can I freeze grass? – One can keep it upto 2-3 days in freeze but Juice should be consumed within 20-30 minutes of making it.
  17. What to do if I see Moud formation? – Some time you may see a bluish-white formation like shown in the picture below. This happens in humid condition and specially if seeds remain ungerminated due to poor soil condition. It is a good idea to air the seeds for some time in the early stage when weather is very humid. One can harvest the wheatgrass above mold and use it.

There is lot of material on the web and you can go through it. I am a learner and not an expert! I am sharing this since many want to try it too and may find information useful.

Update on growing Wheat Grass and Juicing

(Please read more recent version first at https://ranjan.in?p=74)

Since I posted last on this topic, I have gained more knowledge and it is about time to write on this again. I would itemize them to make it easier to read:

  • Reusing Soil – I found that when I used soil first time, wheat grew nicely. But I started to see failed growth when I tried to reuse the soil. It was most likely due to my zero knowledge about gardening. Finally I could figure it out with the help of friends and nursery. After harvesting first time, one needs to add some nutrients to the soil since with limited soil in pot (or tray), it needs to be supplemented. In my local nursery they gave a product called “BioField”, which is produced in Baroda. I was asked to add about 7-8 table spoons to soil every 7 days. So now after harvesting I sprinkle few spoons of BioField+compost and plant regrows healthy and fast. After harvesting three times, I remove the plant and let the soil air for 3-4 days to allow it to gain capacity through nitrogen fixation. Here is the image of the packet of 1 Kg of BioField, which costs Rs 60. They seem to have larger package of 50 Kg only, which is little too large to handle. Would have been nice to have 5 Kg packets as well. I am not sure how wide is their distribution channel but you may be able to find something similar in your local nursery:
  • Organizing pots(or trays) – In the early stage, I purchased round pots and then bigger rectangular pots. However slowly I started filling up balcony space and in no time I started to hear complains! Then I bought plastic trays (I got 10 of them at Rs 40 each). I also purchased a steel rack with 4 shelves to organize the trays as shown in the image below:
  • Now I find it very easy to handle the tray as they are much lighter and can be organized nicely as well as moved around, if needed. I plan to buy couple of big trays to let the used soil air in them. I also use the tray to cover the germinating seeds in earlier stage.

  • Juicer – I am yet to find the right kind of wheat juicer. I got one from eBay(they never claimed it to be for wheat juice but I took a chance) but it is too fragile for juicing wheat grass. I provided details to the vendor and also some Chinese company details He said that once he is able to locate a supplier, he would be in touch with me. Meat-mincers are capable of juicing wheat grass as well but one needs to have some mechanism to collect juice. If any one finds the right one in India, please inform!

Reliance/TATA Broadband data card on Linux

I am going to collect my past postings and new findings related to using Reliance/TATA Broadband card on Linux here. Here is a posting of mine from rimweb.in in Nov 2009:

“I have tested two Reliance Broadband card on offer right now for connectivity on Linux. I have tested this on Fedora 11 and it uses Linux 2.6.29 Kernel.

1. Huawei 1261 card – Works right away – once you insert it, it gets recognized as a USB device connected to one of the ports as a serial device. You can use normal RConnect package for Linux with slight modification for device name to make it work. On older version of Linux kernel, this may get recognized as a storage device and one may have to use usb_modeswitch to put it into modem mode.

2. LG LXU 800 – For this card, I had to insert usbserial module with vendor and device number as follows to get it to work.

login as root and run

#modprobe -r usbserial
#modprobe usbserial vendor=0xeab product=0x9357

Now insert the device and look at the /var/log/messages file or use “dmesg” command to see, if it gets attached to a serial device.”

yesterday I again had to try using a new Broadband Data Card from Reliance. It is from ZTE (Probably ZTE 2726). If you insert this in USB drive, you get the following message from Kernel on FC11 running Kernel 2.6.32:
=====
Aug 27 17:05:00 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 4
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=19d2, idProduct=fff5
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: Product: USB Storage
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: Manufacturer: ZTE, Incorporated
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: SerialNumber: 000000000002
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Aug 27 17:05:01 ranjan kernel: scsi13 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Aug 27 17:05:06 ranjan kernel: scsi 13:0:0:0: CD-ROM ZTE USB Storage FFF1 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
Aug 27 17:05:06 ranjan kernel: sr1: scsi-1 drive
Aug 27 17:05:06 ranjan kernel: sr 13:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5
Aug 27 17:05:07 ranjan kernel: sr1: CDROM (ioctl) error, command: Xpwrite, Read disk info 51 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00
Aug 27 17:05:07 ranjan kernel: sr: Sense Key : Hardware Error [current]
=====

The way to get this to work is to use usb_modeswitch available at

http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/

usb_modeswitch is not much easier to use and comes with support for large number of USB data modem having mass storage built in. Unlike earlier version of this, here you just need to install software package and its data package and it works all by itself:

Download

(1) http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/usb-modeswitch-1.1.4.tar.bz2 (or its newerversion, if available)
(2) http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/usb-modeswitch-data-20100826.tar.bz2 (or newer version)

Install these after extracting by using “make install” command. You have to make sure that you have ‘tcl’ package installed. You have to also make sure, you have libusb-devel package or its equivalent installed for successful installation. Once you install, your device would get detected as a DATA Modem and you can use it to connect to Internet.