Sci560
READER
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International License. This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only if attribution is given to the creator. Published by Science Gallery Bengaluru, a not-for-profit public institution. Bengaluru, 2026. All photographs used in this Reader are attributed to respective individuals and institutions, unless stated otherwise. When citing this work, please use this reference: Ganguly, Sarasi, Jahnavi Phalkey, and Shambhawi Vikram, eds, Sci560 Reader: Science Gallery Bengaluru, 2026. Design by Shubhani S and Srinidhi Sairamakrishnan. For a digital version of this copy, please visit: https://bengaluru.sciencegallery.com/ Science Gallery Bengaluru 10-11, Bellary Road, Sanjaynagar Bengaluru-560024, Karnataka, India
CONTENTS
01 EDITOR’S NOTE
8-11
JAHNAVI PHALKEY
02 SCIENCE IN THE CITY INSPIRED BY THE STARRY NIGHT SKY ANNAPURNI SUBRAMANIAM
BLACKBOARDS–A MEDIATION RAJESH GOPAKUMAR
INK JAHNAVI PHALKEY
ELECTRIC WAVES AND THE BRAIN’S WAVES SANJEEV JAIN
JUXTAPOSING MACHINES, IN SEARCH OF THE LIVING SHASHI THUTUPALLI
THE STM: EMERGING FROM THE TROGLODYTE ERA OF IMAGING THE VERY SMALL SHOBHANA NARASIMHAN
THE CAMERA VENU MADHAV GOVINDU
THE SIMPLE DISSECTING MICROSCOPE K. VIJAYRAGHAVAN
03 IN YOUR WORDS
12-53 16-19 20-23 24-27 28-35 36-41
42-47 48-51 52-55
56-97
FROM THE MENTOR JAYAPRIYA VASUDEVAN
59
ALL ELSE AIZAZ
WHEN THE WATER ROSE ANANDITA BALSAVAR
PG BALCONY CONGREGATION ANANYA MEHTA
TRUE PASTORAL ANKITA SARDARJOSHI
PAST STORIES, KILLED LIZARDS, LOST LIBRARIES: SOME MEMORIES OF A CITY I LOVED CYNTHIA
RANGOLI ON CONCRETE DANISHA S
60-63 64-73 74-77 78-81
82-85 86-87
DRIFTING THROUGH THIS CITY, KEEN, HARSH GARIMA
IT’S COMPLICATED ISHA KADAM
WHAT IS THE CITY, BUT THE PEOPLE? JANE CARYN
GLITTERING NIGHT, BUZZING DAY SHYAMSUNDER BUDDH
04 THROUGH YOUR EYES
88-89 90-91 92-93 94-97
98-171
INTRODUCTION GAYATRI MANU
101
FEATURING
104-171
AMOGH M ARADHYA COW AKA KAUSHIK FAHAD RUTVIK SATYA SAMPATH CHRISTOPHER BAPTICIA KUMARA GURU HRITIKA SHAH
05 CONCLUDING NOTE SHAMBHAWI VIKRAM AND SARASI GANGULY
172-177 173-176
06 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
178-181
07 BIOGRAPHIES
182-189
08 ABOUT SCIENCE GALLERY BENGALURU 190-193
01 EDITOR’S NOTE Sci560 Reader 2026 / 9
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FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK You have in your hands our very first Reader! Finally! We launched Sci560, our exhibition about stories of science in Bengaluru, in August 2024. We began with the awareness that Bengaluru is India’s most recognised military-industrial-academic complex today. Our exhibition was one way to question why that may be so. Bengaluru is a rather distinct microcosm of India. Over time, we have known Bengaluru as India’s garden city, military city, industrial city, and today—as an IT city, hi-tech city, start-up city and at times, India’s own Silicon Valley. A dynamic twentieth century has shaped Bengaluru’s current status as the city of new science and engineering. In this reader, you will find essays by leading scientists from Bengaluru about scientific instruments and other objects that interest them. You will also find prose and poetry about the city by young writers mentored by Jayapriya Vasudevan for our In your Words programme. Interspersed are photographs submitted to our Through your Eyes programme mentored by Sameer Raichur. We hope that our exhibition, a digital version of which will stay online for years to come, will become the starting point for many to discover the stories of everyday science and technology in Bengaluru. We want to thank Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies for the generous support that made possible both—the exhibition and its digital twin. Explore with us, dreams, aspirations, and obsessions that today make science and culture in this city! Jahnavi Phalkey Founding Director, Science Gallery Bengaluru
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02 SCIENCE IN THE CITY Sci560 Reader 2026 / 13
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A mediator shows Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium’s Opto-Mechanical Projector at Sci560, 2024.
“With modern civilisation requiring large infrastructure and extended cities, what is lacking is a dark sky with minimal light pollution.”
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Inspired by the Starry Night Sky Annapurni Subramaniam Right from the ever-fascinating Moon, a night sky full of stars is a natural wonder and has always been an object of interest for children and adults alike. Humanity has always been guided by the objects in the sky to follow the time of the day and night and seasons. Stars helped voyagers to find the right direction for navigation. For example, the two fuzzy looking galaxies in the southern hemisphere called Magellanic Clouds, were named after Magellan as they helped him to navigate in the southern oceans. In fact, understanding the positions of stars in the sky was considered as a life skill for countless generations, as this helped people know the time and direction before the days of machines. But gone are those generations who knew to find out the time based on the positions of stars in the sky. Not only have the skies fallen into disuse because they are no longer essential, but also the night skies are bright with the glow of light from cities, and stars are hardly visible except in remote locations. Civilisations connected the stories of the legends to the constellations in the sky in an attempt to have a cosmic connection. The astrological system divided the zodiacal path into twelve zones, identifying the position of the Sun during birth and accordingly assigning a zodiacal birth sign to the person. People from all walks of life were inspired by starry nights. Poets, philosophers, artists became mesmerised by the beauty of the sky and were inspired to create innumerable art works. Several intellectuals spent huge amounts of time watching the sky and that helped in learning about the “wanderers,” which later became known as planets. In the years after Galileo turned his telescope to the sky, many discoveries followed. This millennium has seen a great deal of technological advancements, resulting in the detection of planets around Sun-like stars, images of black-holes and detection of gravitational waves. Modern telescopes take pictures of the sky from ground and space in unprecedented detail, providing images of various objects in the universe across the electromagnetic spectrum. The sky has been central to my work. The dark sky studded with innumerable stars that was visible in my childhood days inspired me to take up Astrophysics as my career. I took up observational astronomy with a focus on star clusters, and spent significant amounts of time at the observatory of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA). While I was doing research for my PhD, I worked in the Vainu Bappu Observatory of IIA for extended periods of time, collecting data using the two largest telescopes as well as processing the collected data. On several occasions, I remember sitting on the cat-walk adjacent to the observing floor of the telescope, watching the center of the Milky-way rise in the east, or waiting for passing clouds to disappear to get a clear sky. I have spent nights sitting on a ladder and trying to make the star stay in the cross-wire of the finder telescope so that I could get sharper images–a process called ‘guiding the telescope’.
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If I dozed off for a few minutes and the star moved away from the cross-wire, I would get elongated, egg-shaped images of the stars! As all our Indian observatories are in the northern hemisphere, I am used to studying the northern sky. However the Magellanic Clouds, the interacting pair of galaxies that are neighbours to our Milky Way, was a particular focus of my research but was in the Southern skies. In order to study the star clusters in these nearby galaxies I had to rely on data collected by observers in the Southern hemisphere. When I was visiting the European Southern Observatory, I spent some time at their observatories in Paranal and Cerro Tololo, located in Chile. It was a dream come true for me to watch the Large and Small Magellanic clouds in the sky from these observatories. Needless to say, I spent most of my free time during that trip gazing at the Magellanic clouds with the naked eye. Having spent enormous amounts of time observing from different telescopes, I gained expertise of not only star clusters, but also telescopes, the instruments that captured the images, and post-processing software. Later as a faculty at IIA, I was engaged in the calibrations of a space telescope that takes pictures of the sky in the Ultra-violet region of electromagnetic radiation, named the Ultra-violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) on AstroSat. Using this telescope, I was able to carry out my research about hot stars that emit copiously in the ultra violet region in star clusters. The stunning starry skies are the hallmark of Hanle, located in the Union territory of Ladakh. The Indian Astronomical Observatory, operated by the IIA is located in Hanle. This high-altitude desert with its large number of clear nights was identified as a potential site for astronomy in the late 1990s, and a 2-metre telescope was established at an altitude of 4500m above sea level in the year 2000. The Hanle region harbors the darkest of skies and presents an ideal site for scientific exploration. In order to preserve this site, Ladakh has designated an area, located within a radius of 23km around Hanle, called the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve. This is an initiative to support the local economy through astro-tourism and preserve the dark sky, along with the fragile ecosystem. Several villagers are trained as astro-ambassadors to guide the tourists at Hanle. It is an ideal location for astrophotography and enthusiasts regularly produce stunning pictures of the sky from here. The sky is the laboratory for astronomers, and today’s cutting-edge technology helps create instruments that produce images with unprecedented magnification and sharpness. The race is on to image the faintest of sources in order to understand the beginning of our universe. Incredibly stunning pictures of the deep sky with unprecedented detail are now available from various space telescopes. With modern civilisation requiring large infrastructure and extended cities, what is lacking is a dark sky with minimal light pollution. These days, it is not possible to get a glimpse of a starry night in a modern city or even village environments. I often meet people who have no idea that there are countless stars in the sky that should ideally be visible to the naked eye, but are completely masked by the glow of artificial light. The needs of modern civilisation have robbed us of the wonder of starry nights. We do not have the wonderful natural dark sky with the multitude of stars littered in the sky anymore to inspire the next generation of astronomers, poets, and artists. I wish we become more aware of this and protect the night sky for future generations.
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Ultra-violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) Engineering Model. Courtesy: Annapurni Subramaniam.
“Blackboards are canvases where thoughts unspool from the mind, and are reified and refined.”
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Blackboards—A Meditation Rajesh Gopakumar Why blackboards? If you are not a scientist, you might associate blackboards with fuddy-duddy schools of a distant time—a prosaic antique. After all, in an era of smart boards, even that monstrosity called the whiteboard (which is as different from a blackboard as chalk and cheese, so to say), appears passe. Why, then, do blackboards evoke strong emotions amongst scientists, specially in theoretical disciplines? Blackboards are canvases where thoughts unspool from the mind, and are reified and refined. Ideas incarnate as pictures, equations, or “graphiti” as they attempt to leapfrog from one mind to another and trigger further neuronal cascades. From this ferment, a few ultimately survive, which then cohere into a scientific result or even more occasionally into the breakthroughs that change our conception of the world. We often get to know about the end product of this process, but rarely about their fledgling beginnings. When visitors come to International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), they are often struck by the profusion of blackboards on campus. Not just in offices and lecture halls (our Ramanujan auditorium has perhaps one of the longest blackboards in the world!) but in the public spaces—the “commons,” if you wish. These boards, often green, but also deep indigo (but never white), are in corridors, alcoves, in the garden (in Santiniketan spirit), and even the cafeteria. I observe their daily changing tableaux as I walk to my office or for lunch, and to me they are a signifier of the health of the institution. Our various blackboards have slightly different characters depending on their location. The ones in offices, which you can glimpse through open doors, are the sites of close(d) collaborations. Here the guru-shishya jugalbandi unfolds as students master how to think through this medium, as they take their first steps into research. Gradually a mode of collaboration arises from the sparring of minds and the dueling of chalk. Parenthetically, chalk inspires strong feelings too. The connoisseurs swear by Hagoromo chalk, produced through a secret process. It is fondly said that it is impossible to write a false theorem using this chalk. A friend recently gifted me a box and I am waiting to see if it will do miracles for my research. Lecture rooms, on the other hand, are typically more like performance venues–of compositions already prepared, though with room for improvisation. Some lecturers write beautifully, and even after the rooms are emptied, their calligraphy stands for a transient while to please the eyes. The blackboards here transmit old and new wisdom as younger generations are drawn into the adventure of scientific discovery.
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There is also whimsy in evidence, especially in the public areas, in the form of a slogan or a sketch. Recently, ICTS has had its in-house Banksy, whose Manga style artwork materialises overnight. I find myself looking forward to spotting a new illustration as I enter the building every morning. Central to ICTS are the blackboards in the quadrangle near our pantry. The coffee and the chalk are essential ingredients for the thrum of creativity. Here it is more like music making in the park, with passersby listening in or daringly plunging into some heated discussion. The boards are an illegible scrum of scrawls and yet somehow everyone there is able to discern the different chords and chime in. Our continually changing set of programme visitors also gravitate here and add their own tunes to the Antakshari. Magic happens. If there is such a thing as an institutional or collective mind in a place like ICTS, it is these spaces with their boards which bring it out and give expression to it. Yet through all these very human dramas, the humble blackboard itself stands zen-like, as a testifier to the ephemeral nature of thinking. Ideas, good or bad, are eventually swabbed away by the cleaners, leaving again the blank slate. Cohorts of students come and go, perhaps retaining memories of their times spent at the boards in this place. Eventually, with the years, even the faculty move on, having lived their life in science while the institution inheres. I look at Einstein’s or Feynman’s “last blackboard” and see snapshots of a mind interrupted in its flow. But the blackboard simply waits for others to pick up the chalk.
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Visitor interacts with a blackboard on display by the International Centre for Theoretical Science’s Inscribing Theories, Scripting Research at Sci560, 2024.
“Mine is also the ink that on occasion slides into a drawing pen. After all, even cephalopods come along with their own and at times, luminous ink. Octopuses with black ink, squid with blue-black, and cuttlefish ink a shade of brown–all of it usually squirted to make an escape. Draw an escape. Ink an escape. Words can sometimes be rendered optional.” 24
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Ink Jahnavi Phalkey “Through distant regions I can fly Provide me but with paper wings; And fairly show a reason why There should be quarrels among kings” - Jonathan Swift (Riddles, on ink, around 1724) In late 1995, I spotted a copy of Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink at the Waterstone’s on Gower Street, London. The play was first performed in February that year at the Aldwych Theatre. I was then studying at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. The words “Indian” and “Ink” both leapt out, and I think meant something to me. That something I barely knew what it was then, and hardly understand any better now. The sighting, however, was one I could not ignore. And just like that, ink settled as an obvious object of interest in my imagination. Ink is uncomplicated: pigment, liquid, and a binder. Ink started out as solidified smoke when soot and lampblack was pounded and pressed to make ink pastes with fish glue in China or animal hide fat in Japan. And yet, today, how many inks there even are? The list is long: Chinese ink-sticks, printing ink, indelible ink, invisible ink, typewriter, stamp-ink, toner ink, and so on. We got the magical ball point ink to work at high altitudes and without smudges (how?!). The Hungarian journalist Lazlo Bíró with his ball-point ink was followed by the American Milton Reynolds, and then the French Marcel Bich of disposable Bics. Mine, though, is the ink that today flows in and out of a writing pen: one that draws, if we allow ourselves some TS Eliotesque drama, on blood. Ink, somewhat like blood, as the historian Michael Winship says, is mysterious if not magical: “how does it know when to be liquid and when to be solid?” If George Gordon Byron was allowed a performance, ink he says, “falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands perhaps millions, think.” Let that loquacity be somewhat tempered with a warning from Mark Twain: “The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice,” prejudice that is the “body and colour to our thoughts,” if we heed to Jacques Herbin, among the first commercial ink makers in the world. Jacques Herbin was a French sailor who travelled to India for shellac to manufacture sealing wax and Chinese ink (called Indian ink), operating via the French East India Company trading posts in Pondicherry (India) and Mahé (Seychelles). In 1798, while continuing to trade in wax, paper, and pigments with the Mediterranean, the Levant, and India, the House of Jacques Herbin began producing writing inks.
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Well known were the adventures in colour: Encre violette (Violet ink, used in schools of the French Third Republic), Perle des Encres (Pearl of inks), and Encre des Voyageurs (Travellers’ ink). By the mid 19th century, Herbin inks were winning medals at major international exhibitions. Mine is the ink that solidifies into words on a page. Like Vladimir Nabokov, ink is my drug of choice, but unlike him, not once have I chanced upon the “miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamouring to become visible.” My writing process resembles medieval dentistry. Every word has to be separated from the soft tissue of my intention and imagination with a knife, and then pulled out with pliers. This makes me a barber-surgeon of a writer, which is a terrible but accurate thought. Jonathan Swift, in his riddle about ink, from which the epigraph to this piece is drawn, speaks of ink that is dead “except, I live in light.” Ink takes us away from where we are ,with paper for wings, and can “fairly show a reason why, [T] here should be quarrels among kings.” Ink makes it possible to go beyond pithy inscriptions on stone, metal, and clay. Ink makes historical reasoning and argument possible. Should this be true, ink makes history writing—my profession—possible. Mine is also the ink that on occasion slides into a drawing pen. After all, even cephalopods come along with their own and at times, luminous ink. Octopuses with black ink, squid with blue-black, and cuttlefish ink a shade of brown—all of it usually squirted to make an escape. Draw an escape. Ink an escape. Words can sometimes be rendered optional. I remember my excitement in middle-school when we were finally expected to use ‘fountain pens’. No more HB pencils, sharpeners, blades, or scented erasers shaped like hippos and what not. It was going to be blotters, filler-pumps, and fingers smudged with Chelpark blue-black, royal blue, and permanent black inks. Only recently did I learn that “Chelpark” is a portmanteau of ‘Chellaram’ and ‘Parker.’ Chelpark started out in 1943 as an Indian subsidiary of Parker Pen Company with the Chellaram Family, who traded in Parker products for the West African region. Chelpark was in fact Quink, rebranded for the Indian market. Invented by the chemist Francisco Quisumbing, and introduced in the 1930s by Parker, it was among the first “quick-drying” inks that no longer needed blotting. Years later, in my undergraduate years, a classmate’s grandmother apparently said this about her: she drinks ink and eats paper. I could never believe her. Why would her grandmother describe me in order to stage her! This would simply not be allowed!
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Ink stained paper, blue ink on white. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons.
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“The discovery of electricity and magnetism, and their capacity to influence the material world at a distance, and the elucidation of laws that governed this, had a profound impact on science in the 18th century.”
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Electric Waves and the Brain’s Waves: Technology and Neuropsychiatry in Bangalore Sanjeev Jain The discovery of electricity and magnetism, and their capacity to influence the material world at a distance, and the elucidation of laws that governed this had a profound impact on science in the 18th century. In the lay mind, however, these were forces that were not directly accessible to the sense organs, and were thus ‘mysterious’. The growth of secular science, and Newton’s ideas on gravitation, had already changed the notion of the Universe and the place of humans in it. Electricity and magnetism brought the realm of these unseen ‘forces and waves’ much closer to the human experience. This, in a way, gave rise to the ideas of Anton Mesmer and animal magnetism, and the whole idea of people’s minds being affected by yet ‘unknown’ forces. Since this was also the age of reason, and none of these ‘forces’ could be detected, Mesmer was expelled from the French Academy of Sciences (by a committee consisting of Lavoisier, Guillotin, and Benjamin Franklin). Moreover, the very idea that minds could influence each other, and were thus, in a sense, equal, was too radical in an age that was just moving from feudalism in Europe to colonial exploitation in the rest of the world. Mesmer was a big influence on Charcot, and thus on Freud, and these ideas were modified into the latter’s ideas of ‘psychic energy’ that were transformed into the symptoms of hysteria and other psychological disorders However, the idea that static electricity could produce sensations, and even fasciculations in the muscles, was quickly recognised early in the 19th century, when it was used by the famous neurologist M. Magendie for neuralgia, and by Duchenne for stimulating muscles. It became quickly established as a new way to explore the human body, and its use quickly spread to those complaining of ‘nerves’, ‘weakness’, paralysis, inability to speak. But these symptoms did not correspond with what was then understood as hysteria. Electric current quickly caused disappearance of these symptoms, and became a preferred treatment. Machines for this were used extensively during and after the American Civil War to treat neuropathic pains, local paralysis, and various ‘nervous diseases’. They became quite popular in the USA, and this was also related to the developments in electrical engineering and the aura of the technical ‘fix’. Various machines were developed, including one by Edison, which extended the early efforts of Davis & Kidder Patent Magneto-Electric Machine for Nervous Diseases (1854).
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These machines became the mainstay of the ‘organic’ treatment of hysteria and shell-shock, especially during the First World War at the Queens Square hospital, which was then known as the Hospital for Epileptics and Paralytics (and now as the Institute of Neurology). Dr. Francis Xavier Noronha, a medical officer in the Kingdom of Mysore, was seconded to the British Army, and served in the Middle East campaign during the First World War. Soon after the war, he was appointed as the medical officer in charge of the Lunatic Asylum, Bangalore. He was then sent to the UK to acquire a specialist’s education in psychiatry. This was part of a wider reform in colonial medical services, as doctors from all over India and the Empire were encouraged to travel to the UK to train as specialists, especially those in charge of the Asylums. It was in this context that he would have encountered this machine. The machine was manufactured in England, under patent from the original American model, and shows a close similarity. It was used widely at both the Maudsley (and Bethlem) Hospital (where Noronha worked) and also at the Queens Square hospital (which was more ‘neurologically’ inclined). The understanding of electricity and magnetism was being radically transformed in the early 20th century. The invention of the telegraph, radio, radar, amplification, phonographs, moving pictures ,etc. had a huge impact on how electricity could be used to interact with the human mind. Eindhoven invented the ECG in 1901 (and showed that the heart functioned via electricity), while Hans Berger invented the electro-encephalograph in the early 1930s, and thus demonstrated that the brain also used electric oscillations in its functioning. The fact that both the heart and the mind depended on rhythms and waves had a profound effect. The biology of the action potential, nerve impulses, and how they travelled across the body, opened a whole new world of nerve conduction studies, and electro-neuro-myography, which helped doctors understand what Duchenne and Magendie had observed a century earlier. Edison and Westinghouse fought over the rights to build the electric-execution chair. In abattoirs, electric stun-guns came to be used to render animals unconscious. And in Italy, Cerletti and Bini discovered that electric currents could change the behaviour of mentally ill people, and electro-convulsive therapy was invented. During the Second World War, Edison and Swan electricals manufactured the Ediswan machine, which became the first machine to be used in India (at Ranchi), and soon after the war, also at the Mysore Mental Hospital in Bangalore. From Noronha, to MV Govindaswamy, to Willi Mayer-Gross and Lieberman (German Jewish psychiatrists who were deputed by the WHO to independent India to establish psychiatric education), there was a consistent interest in exploring the interface between electricity and its medical applications. India was not part of the lend-lease agreements during the War (much to the dismay of Lord AV Hill, Scientific adviser to the British Government), and thus the import of these machines became impossible after Independence (as the technology and patents were still held by those industries). Bangalore, however, had been an industrial hub during the War, with extensive facilities to repair and maintain aircraft and radar (later to develop into HAL and BEL). In addition, IISc offered a scientific base, alongside various engineering colleges. Since these instruments basically consisted of nothing but a step-down transformer and timers, a local machine was developed in Malleshwaram (Electrona) and was sold for a few hundred rupees by the mid-1950’s.
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T.A Edison’s Magneto Electric Machine. Patented September 19, 1882. Courtesy: Suiter Swantz Intellectual Property.
The newly established AIIMH identified this as a worthwhile area of research. Prof Narasimha (from IISc, father of Roddam Narasimha) and MV Govindaswamy established a Department of Biophysics and electrical engineering to develop EEG machines, and related electrical apparatuses for use in India. These machines were used for a long time all over India. Now the NIMHANS has a whole range of apparatuses that use electro-magnetic technology. The CT, MRI and PET scans, electroencephalographs (EEG), magnetoencephalograph (MEG), ENMG machines detect variations in the electromagnetic fields produced by the brain. These are used to detect and diagnose epilepsy, degeneration, tumours, strokes etc, and explore how hallucinations, delusions, and temperaments occur and transform over time. Stimulations can be delivered to the brain via computer-aided ultra-brief pulse electrical stimulation, rTMS, TDCS and even an electrode can be inserted into the brain (Direct-brain-stimulation; DBS) to treat movement disorders and obsessivecompulsive disorder. From the simple magneto-electric machine of the 19th century, brought to Bangalore in the 1920s, to the various instruments used now in the 2020s, has been a rapid growth of technology. Much of this has refined medical diagnosis and treatment, as well as our understanding of how we create thoughts and feelings. Some have remained as ‘mysterious’ as they were to the early pioneers in the 19th century.
Endnotes 1 Channing, WF. “Notes on the Medical Application of Electricity.” Note on the medical application of electricity. 1849. 2 Rockwell, AD. Lectures on electricity in its relation to medicine and surgery. Lane Medical Library. 1879. 3 Bartholow, R. Medical Electricity. Lea Brothers. 1887. 4 Suiter Swantz IP Staff, “Patent of the Day: Magneto Electric Machine”, Suiter Swantz Intellectual Property, 2016, https://suiter.com/patent-of-the-day-magneto-electric-machine/ 5 Linden SC, Jones E, and Less AJ. Shell shock at Queen Square: Lewis Yelland 100 years. Brain, 2013. 6 King, Gilbert. “Edison vs. Westinghouse: A Shocking Rivalry.” Smithsonian Magazine. 2011. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo-ry/edison-vs-westinghouse-a-shocking-rivalry-102146036/ 7 Radhika P, Basavarajappa C, Da-hale AB, Arumugham SS, Jaisoorya TS, Jain S, Murthy P. “Exploring the early history of convulsive therapies at the Mysore Government Mental Hospital (currently NIMHANS). Asian Journal of Psychiatry (November, 2023), 89:103747. https://pubmed. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37647785/ 8 Hill, AV. A Report to the Government of India on Scientific Research in India. A Report to the Government of India on Scientific Research in India. 1945.
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Image of the Patent Magneto-Electric Machine on display at Sci560. Courtesy: National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru.
“I once returned from travel to find the radiometer as always and the EcoSphere subtly reconfigured— new filaments, different swimming paths. The lesson is the dynamics: living systems do not just respond; they re-make their own conditions of response.” 36
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Juxtaposing Machines, in Search of the Living Shashi Thutupalli Metaphors are powerful objects through which to look at the world. On a window sill in my office sit two such objects. One is a sealed glass sphere filled with water harbouring micro-organisms (bacteria and algae) and some brine shrimp—an “EcoSphere” that has been thriving for years. The second is another sealed glass compartment enclosing a four-vaned rotor, one side of each vane blackened; it turns when sunlight strikes it—a Crookes radiometer. Sunlight keeps both glass spheres “running”—one is a living ecosystem, the other, just a machine. My office is in the Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, where my work centres on what separates the living from the non-living. The “living systems as machines” metaphor is tempting: some engineered machines begin to approach biological complexity, so perhaps organisms are simply very complex, self-organising, evolving machines. This quest towards “living machines” can be viewed in two contrasting ways: studying organisms using the machine metaphor, and constructing systems that may be considered living. My two window-sill spheres keep me honest about where that metaphor clarifies and where it misleads. Of course, in some sense, both are just machines–designed and manufactured products of mechanisation. That shared provenance, however, is in stark contrast with the organisation and dynamics within. They are both sun-powered and both sealed, yet one sustains a slow dance in which matter cycles and structure persists; the other does exactly what its physics dictates: it spins. The radiometer’s motion might be mistaken for something “purposeful”, and yet it is an ingenious interplay of gradients—heated, rarefied gas slipping past black and white vanes—a reminder that inanimate gradients with clever geometry can easily give rise to life-like movement, a molecular motor driving the flagellum of a bacterium perhaps. The EcoSphere, by contrast, is sometimes untidy. Algal films wax, shrimp populations fluctuate, the water clouds and clears. It is not choreographed; it copes. Occasionally, the EcoSphere stalls—too little light in a rainy spell, perhaps, or a perturbation I cannot diagnose. The shrimp hide; the algae thin. In those periods the radiometer becomes almost mocking in its relentless reliability. Sunlight? Spin. No questions asked. Yet a week later the EcoSphere may surprise me with a resurgence. I once returned from travel to find the radiometer as always and the EcoSphere subtly reconfigured—new filaments, different swimming paths. The lesson is the dynamics: living systems do not just respond, they re-make their own conditions of response. Bangalore’s sun—blunt in April, filtered by monsoon clouds in July—modulates both devices. On bright days the radiometer whirs noisily; the EcoSphere, too, photosynthesises more vigorously, but the consequences appear days later in population dynamics, not seconds later in spin rate. Sci560 Reader 2026 / 37
That difference in timescales is instructive. Machines often deliver immediacy; organisms integrate, remember, and respond over extended horizons. The pair has become an icebreaker for students and visitors. They ask the obvious: “Which one is alive?” We then try harder questions. What is the minimum set of processes that keeps the EcoSphere from drifting to quiescence? Where does information reside? In the genomes of shrimp and bacteria, certainly, but also in the environment they collectively engineer—the oxygen levels set by algae, the detritus that buffers nutrient pulses. The EcoSphere teaches that living systems externalise memory into niches they create. The radiometer, in contrast, has no internal state beyond a bit of thermal inertia; change the light and you change the motion immediately. It remembers nothing. I use the pair to talk about boundaries. Both objects are “closed” to matter and “open” to energy, a configuration that makes them enticing analogues of cells. But closure alone does not make a system living. The radiometer’s boundary isolates and accentuates a single physical effect; the EcoSphere’s boundary creates the necessity for cycles. Inside it, waste must be processed, resources recycled, and structure maintained through continuous throughput. Boundaries do not merely contain; they compel. Because my group aims to build and probe minimal living systems, these objects are not mere prompts. They shape how we design experiments. When we assemble protocell-like chemistries or study microbial collectives that sculpt their own flows, we ask: are we merely extracting motion from a gradient—a radiometer with softer edges—or are we building a network of processes that maintains itself? The former is clever engineering; the latter edges toward guided self-organisation, toward “livingness”. The distinction is subtle but crucial. A device that moves can be described by a fixed input–output relation; a living system changes the very map from inputs to outputs as it grows, differentiates, and repairs. It redefines the game it is playing. We set ourselves criteria for “livingness” in systems we build: energy harvesting and dissipation; self-maintenance of boundaries; internal cycles that regenerate key components; robust response to perturbation: and some form of memory. It is not a checklist to be ticked once but a set of pressures to be balanced. The radiometer ticks the first criterion impressively and none of the others. The EcoSphere, ever imperfect, comes closer. When an algal bloom overshoots and the water grows cloudy, the system does not fail, it adjusts. That, more than motion, is a signature of life. There is also something specifically Bangalorean about the pair. This city’s scientific life is a collage of precision and improvisation. You can walk from a lab with a worldclass microscope to a street where someone repairs your instrument with ingenuity and a hand-turned screw. The EcoSphere and the radiometer reflect that blend: one is a polished curiosity, the other a portable micro-biosphere that unfailingly surprises. On slow evenings I have watched the radiometer’s vanes turn in a shaft of light while a shrimp sculled past a filament of algae next door—a juxtaposition that feels true to the city. A blackboard is a natural companion for a mathematician: hypotheses become symbols, lines, and arrows that invite immediate critique; it is both a stage and an eraser of errors. My pair of glass spheres plays a quieter role.
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They are less for displaying thought than for cultivating questions. They sit in peripheral vision, applying steady pressure on how I frame problems. The radiometer’s spin asks, “Are you mistaking mechanics for life?” The EcoSphere asks, “Are you attending to interactions, emergent cycles, and histories?” The two spheres keep me wary of the machine metaphor’s overreach. Metaphors, like instruments, have operating ranges. The machine metaphor excels when we need clear decompositions—feedback loops, control architectures, signal processing. It falters when it tempts us to assume that an organism has a designer’s blueprint or a single objective function. The radiometer is all blueprint; the EcoSphere is also about interactions, emergent dynamics and historical contingencies. Every photon absorbed by an algal chloroplast and every scrape of a shrimp against the glass adds to a trajectory that cannot be rewound simply. This pair—an intentional dyad rather than a single artefact—has mattered more in my work than most laboratory tools. Together they embody a productive tension that has shaped my practice: build with the clarity of machines, and incorporate the interconnectedness and dynamic variability of ecosystems into thinking. Above all, they remind me that objects can be working metaphors. The radiometer and the EcoSphere are exactly that—practical metaphors that drive how I design experiments, evaluate “life-like” claims, and teach the physics and chemistry of living systems.
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Ecosphere (left) and Crookes radiometer (right) at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru. Courtesy: Shashi Thutupalli.
“I also find that, rather often, I seem to think about scientific problems visually rather than mathematically, which too may be why the STM appeals to me.”
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The STM: Emerging from the Troglodyte Era of Imaging the Very Small Shobhana Narasimhan Though I’m a theoretical physicist, it is a piece of experimental equipment that I’ve chosen to write about. Ever since my days as a graduate student, I’ve been fascinated by an instrument called a scanning tunnelling microscope, or STM for short. To explain why, I will first go all the way back to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. In his ‘allegory of the cave’, Plato imagined prisoners chained inside a cave. The poor prisoners have a limited view of reality because, instead of being able to see objects in the outside world, they are only able to see the shadows that these objects project on the wall of the cave. While Plato intended this allegory to demonstrate the shortcomings of our uneducated senses, I think it also furnishes a nice example of the difference between performing ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ experiments in science. In the former, the evidence presents itself directly to our senses, requiring comparatively little in the way of interpretation. In an indirect experiment, it is only by making some assumptions and constructing a chain of deductive logic that we can go from the observation made to the conclusion drawn. Interpreting the results of an indirect experiment requires more ingenuity on the part of the scientist, with also more scope for error. An indirect experiment can be less informative and less convincing, especially to the untutored mind. An example from physical science for which Plato’s cave is an almost literal parallel: already in the 5th Century BCE, the curved shape of the shadow of the earth on the moon during a lunar eclipse was appreciated as indirect evidence that the earth is round. However, it was the first ‘full disk’ photographs of the earth, taken from space in the late 1960s, that convinced even the flat-earthers (except for a few die-hard conspiracy theorists!) that the earth is indeed round. Seeing is believing: these photographs of the earth, showing in full technicolour the deep blues of the oceans, the russet browns of the continents and the cottony whites of swirling clouds, are certainly more convincing, and contain more information, than the shadow of the earth on the moon. This direct proof that the earth was round was first obtained when I was in elementary school, but our textbooks took a while to catch up: in high school, I remember asking my geography teacher why we had to memorise the various indirect ‘proofs’ for the earth being round–such as lunar eclipses, and tall ships appearing bit by bit over the horizon–when the photographs from space provided such incontrovertible evidence! In school and college, I was also taught that all matter is made of atoms, and that in most materials, these atoms are arranged in regular rows, like soldiers lined up in battle formation. For almost a century now, these assumptions have formed the very foundation of condensed matter physics, the field of science I now work in.
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However, we could not directly see atoms, because they are much too small to be imaged using an optical microscope, let alone our naked eyes. All evidence for the existence of atoms and their microscopic arrangements was indirect: the zigzagging trajectories of pollen particles suspended in water and buffeted by impacts from moving atoms and molecules, and the complex shadows (called diffraction patterns) cast by crystals illuminated with x-rays or electron beams. In a famous experiment performed a hundred years ago, the American physicists Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer scattered a beam of electrons off a nickel crystal. The diffraction pattern they obtained could only be understood if one made use of a healthy dollop of mathematics and three assumptions: first, the quantum mechanical principle that particle-like electrons also possess a wave-like nature; second, that nickel crystals are composed of atoms; and third, that the atoms on the surface of the nickel crystal are arranged in regularly spaced rows. Tremendously exciting for physicists, and garnering Davisson a Nobel prize, but still–indirect. In physicists’ language, such diffraction experiments are said to provide information not in ‘real space’–the space we live in, and that the atoms are arranged in–but an imaginary conceptualised space called ‘reciprocal space’–somewhat akin to the space of shadows seen by the prisoners in the cave. We can say that direct imaging experiments result in pictures in real space, and indirect experiments in reciprocal space. As physicists, we are extremely interested in finding out how atoms are arranged in materials, as these arrangements play a big role in determining a material’s properties–be it the magnetism of iron, the electrical conductivity of copper, or the hardness of diamond. In biology too, it is the precise arrangement of atoms in a protein that determines its biological function. However, drawing conclusions from information gathered in reciprocal space can be fiendishly tough; the challenge is not unlike that faced by Plato’s prisoners trying to understand the world by looking at the shadows on the cave wall. Indeed, it is so very difficult a problem that several Nobel prizes have been awarded to scientists who succeeded in using diffraction patterns to discover the atomic arrangement in various materials and biomolecules. Then, in 1982, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, working at IBM in Zurich, developed a revolutionary new instrument that they named the scanning tunnelling microscope. The heart of this device is a tiny metal ‘tip’, so very sharply pointed that there is just a single atom at its apex. This tip is used to scan the ‘sample’—the material one wants to image–just as a laser beam scans a document in a desktop scanner. While scanning, a fancy electronic mechanism ensures that the tip does not touch the sample, but always hovers at a very, very tiny distance above it—a distance of a few Ångstroms, less than 1/100,000th the width of a human hair. As the tip moves over the sample, in yet another quantum-mechanical phenomenon, electrons ‘tunnel’ through the tiny space separating the sample and the tip, resulting in a flow of electrical current. There is a flow of current when the ultra-sharp tip is positioned directly above an atom in the sample, but no current when it is positioned between atoms. In this way, the measured changes in the current as the tip moves over the sample produce an image, in real space, of how the atoms are arranged on the surface of the sample. And voila, one can now ‘see’ atoms in real space!
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I was a PhD student when I first saw pictures produced using an STM. These early STM images were—like the first daguerreotypes or photographs—a little blurry, and in black and white. Nevertheless, I was enraptured and excited by them—I had never imagined that we would be able to see individual atoms! These early images showed us that atoms on the surfaces of materials can be arranged in unexpectedly complex periodic patterns that vary from material to material. Many of these repeating patterns have the intricate beauty of an Escher tessellation, rather than the boring regularity of bathroom tiles. Astonishingly, physicists had already guessed at some of this intricacy by making clever use of diffraction patterns, but the STM revealed several new surprises. Its invention was such a breakthrough in our study of materials that, within four years of its invention, Binnig and Rohrer were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. My favourite research project as a PhD student was stimulated by an STM image. Working as doctoral students with Gerhard Ertl and Jürgen Behm at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin in 1989, Johannes Barth and Harald Brune made the surprising discovery that atoms on gold surfaces are arranged not in a simple grid, but in a zigzag pattern dubbed the ‘herringbone’. Each repeating unit of this pattern contains thousands of gold atoms. My advisor David Vanderbilt and I were able to provide a theoretical explanation for the formation of this long-range herringbone pattern. I also thought of a simple way of theoretically simulating STM images, and wrote a computer code to do this—my first completely original contribution to a scientific project. In the early days of photography, in order to obtain a sharp image, the people being photographed had to stand still and unmoving for the duration of the long exposure time. Similarly, to obtain sharp STM images, the atoms must not jiggle around during the course of the scan. This can be achieved by working at ultra-low temperatures at which atoms get frozen in place. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, by cooling samples down to a temperature of -269 C, another IBM scientist, Don Eigler, obtained some of the most beautiful STM images ever. Eigler also switched to using colour rather than black-and-white. In these famous pictures, the atoms look like brilliant gemstones, glowing with the blue of sapphires or the violet of amethysts. It turns out that imaging surfaces is not all that the STM can be used for. In a frequently invoked talk delivered in 1959, speculating about how miniaturised machines could be built one day, the famously brilliant and charismatic American physicist Richard Feynman mused: “…I am not afraid to consider the final question as to whether, ultimately–in the great future– we can arrange the atoms the way we want; the very atoms, all the way down! What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them…?” Feynman’s ‘great future’ came sooner than most of us expected when, in 1989, Eigler showed, that an STM could be used like a Lilliputian crane. He used an STM tip to pick up a single atom at a time,move it around and then drop it where desired. In this way, he arranged 35 xenon atoms on a nickel surface to spell out ‘IBM’, thereby constructing the world’s smallest logo, measuring only 50 Ångstroms × 170 Ångstroms. Similarly, he used an STM to arrange 48 iron atoms on a copper surface, to build a ‘quantum corral’. The stunning STM images of this assemblage show the iron atoms forming a spiky circular fence, within which one can see ripples formed by waves of trapped electrons. More than thirty years after I first fell in love with the STM, much of the theoretical and computational work in my research group at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) is still driven by data obtained from STM experiments by groups in India and abroad. The work is fun, but not always easy.
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Despite the very real (pun not intended) advantage of being a real space method, and advances in technology over the last three decades, STM experiments sometimes yield data that are hard to interpret. As my students and I sit in front of a computer screen and stare, puzzled, at the light and dark pixels on a hugely magnified STM image, I am often reminded of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film ‘Blow Up’. In this mystery movie, a photographer believes he may have accidentally captured a murder on film—or has he? The blobs on the grainy blow up of the picture he has snapped are hard to interpret… A friend, who specialises in X-ray diffraction experiments, likes to tease me about my fondness for STM images; he says I should really learn to think in reciprocal space! I confess: I do indeed think best in real space, and in two dimensions rather than three, which may explain in part my affinity with the STM. I also find that, rather often, I seem to think about scientific problems visually rather than mathematically, which too may be why the STM appeals to me. I also understand why Eigler arranged his STM images in an online ‘art gallery’ that prominently featured his Picasso-like ‘Blue Period’—to me, STM images are not just science, but art… and beautiful!
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Scanning Tunnelling Microscope (STM) at the Museum of the History of Science of the City of Geneva. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
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“In a fundamental sense, the camera has transformed our ways of seeing.”
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The Camera Venu Madhav Govindu In the discipline of computer vision we ask: what do images tell us about the properties of the world? My area of interest is geometric computer vision wherein we seek to recover the three-dimensional shape of the world through its images. Apart from the inherent value of understanding the nature of problems in this context, there are a range of real-world applications that include building accurate 3D representations of cultural artifacts, digital models of industrial objects, map making, autonomous navigation, etc. It stands to reason that our object of interest is that ubiquitous device—the camera. Since the development of cameras around two centuries ago, photographs have served a multitude of purposes. The sense of authenticity inherent to images is key to their role in modern science. Owing to their richness of representation, images have increasingly informed our understanding of the world, nay, the universe, and our place in it. A number of technical advancements afford us images that encompass spatial and temporal scales far beyond the limits of normal human perception—from the images of biological cells to those of galaxies, from events that happen in a nanosecond to changes that occur over years. Beyond this role in understanding the physical world, images allow us to take a measure of social worlds and geographies that lie far beyond our physical ambit. Images are also highly effective and can evoke strong emotions. Indeed, some photographs become iconic when they speak to us in the deep sense of great art. In contemporary times, with a camera embedded in almost every mobile phone, our lives are awash with the sensory excess of images that are good, bad ugly and increasingly fake. In a fundamental sense, the camera has transformed our ways of seeing. Given these widespread impacts, one may ask ‘What is a camera?’ A seemingly prosaic answer is that a camera is a device to collect light. We arrive at a clearer understanding if we recognise how a camera achieves this objective. A camera consists of a pinhole that admits light which is captured on an imaging plane, i.e. sensitive film in the past and largely photosensitive electronics in our times. The reader has likely encountered this simple ‘pinhole plus plane’ model during their school years. While a real camera has a number of other elements, it turns out that the pinhole model is an adequate and powerful description of the process of taking a picture. Much before the development of actual cameras, the rules governing the formation of an image have been effectively used to evoke geometric authenticity in European art that followed the so-called rediscovery of linear perspective by Brunelleschi in fifteenth century Italy. This approach was based on recognising the role of a focal point which was effectively the pinhole. The central role of the pinhole is reflected
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in the noun ‘camera’ which is a contraction of the Latinism camera obscura or ‘dark room’. Early efforts at imaging that pre-date cameras consisted of admitting light through a small aperture or pinhole into a darkened room. Our contemporary understanding of image formation goes far beyond the intuition and ingenuity of artists of a bygone era. By treating the camera as its bare essence of the pinhole, we arrive very naturally at a powerful mathematical abstraction. Indeed, we can assert that a camera is nothing but the pinhole. The resulting abstract form—known as projective geometry in mathematics—is key to our understanding of the nature of a camera. Around a quarter century ago, researchers used such tools of projective geometry to develop a complete description of the relationships between cameras and the world. An image is a two-dimensional representation of an inherently three-dimensional world. This entails a tremendous loss of information that simply cannot be recovered from the image itself. A major consequence is that we cannot make authentic measurements of physical attributes of the 3D world through a single image alone. For instance, objects that are far from the viewer appear smaller, implying that one cannot judge true size by looking at a single image. To overcome this limitation, humans and other animals developed binocular or stereo vision wherein we look at the world from two different vantage points. Comparing the differences between the two views leads to our perception of depth and the shape of objects. Modern methods extend this use of two eyes to an arbitrary number of cameras. A further consideration is that the appearance of the world depends crucially on the vantage point of the observer. What you see is an entangled product of where you are with respect to the objects out there in the world. However, to discern the 3D shape of the world in an objective sense, we need to factor out this dependence on the observer. We achieve this by figuring out where the cameras are with respect to each other and the world they look upon. This challenge of recovering the ontological relationships within a collection of cameras from the images opens up many fascinating lines of inquiry that lie at the intersection of a number of disciplines, including geometry, statistics, and network theory. The camera is a portal to many real and abstract worlds. And yes, it also takes nice pictures.
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3D digital representation of the statue on the left. Courtesy: Venu Madhav Govindu.
“Today, the simple dissecting microscope is a powerful first step in many experiments.”
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The Simple Dissecting Microscope K. VijayRaghavan Walk into a top cell biology laboratory today and you will see huge laser-scanning microscopes that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their sleek shapes and the images of cells and their insides that they project onto their screen, the fluorescence of the samples illuminated by the light shining on them give—when analysed by carefully designed software—a deep insight to a world out of reach of our eyes. Such microscopes are the workhorses of quality cell biology today, but are completely out of reach of small laboratories (The good news, though, is that a variety of opensource movements and efforts to assemble high-end microscopes from salvaged parts are afoot. These are beginning to give some broader access to high-resolution microscopes, though costs and training are still barriers). While our laboratories use microscopes of all kinds, the simple ‘dissecting’ microscope remains a powerful tool for many areas of research. For example, research on the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster has been a major force in enhancing our understanding of many aspects of life. You can see Drosophila hovering over ripening and open fruits. The flies, their larvae, and their eggs are barely visible to the naked eye. Under a simple microscope their beauty hits you in the face. I walked into a laboratory room of the Molecular Biology Unit of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, in Colaba sometime in July 1978. The room smelt of ether— then used as an anaesthetic, we now use carbon dioxide—and was musty from the monsoon rain outside. On the table were milk bottles with cotton plugs, inside each bottle were specks of flies, larvae crawling on the walls and on the food below, and pupae on a paper sheet coming out of the food like a skyscraper in Colaba coming out of the ground. I banged a bottle on the table and the flies fell to the bottom of the bottle. Opening the cotton plug I quickly inverted the bottle over an ‘etherizer’, a simple setup that exposed the flies to ether. Once they had gone to ‘sleep’ the flies could be spread on a porcelain tile. Switching on the lamp to illuminate the flies, I looked at them under a rickety binocular simple microscope, bought from East Germany in Indian rupees at a time of great foreign exchange shortage. At first, I could not see anything, but I soon learned to use both the eyepieces simultaneously, to adjust and focus on the flies, and to use a brush to move them around. It was love at first sight. I don’t think I had previously used any kind of microscope or even looked at a biological sample, except my skin under a magnifying glass. I had seen pictures of Drosophila in research papers and popular articles but to actually see a threedimensional fruit fly—its brilliant eyes, its thorax, its wings, being able to distinguish males and females—was simply mind blowing for an engineer converting to being a biologist.
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Of course, the dissecting microscope gets its name because it allows you to prepare samples for experiments by dissection. For example, under the dissecting microscope, you can dissect out the salivary glands of the larvae and process them for examination of their polytene chromosomes under higher resolution microscopes, called compound microscopes. Today, the simple dissecting microscope is a powerful first step in many experiments. For example, tissues of small animals or plants can be carefully examined, albeit at a coarse level of resolution. Dissected samples are then processed to stain them or label them with probes that ‘light up’ specific organs or cells, which can be viewed by high-resolution microscopy. Today’s dissecting microscopes come in fancier varieties. Many biological samples today are studied by labelling with a green fluorescent protein (GFP, encoded by a jellyfish gene inserted into the organism of interest). GFP can be seen only when the illumination is by an ultraviolet light source, and when such a source is used on the dissecting microscope another stunning world is made visible. Yet another modification to the simple version is to examine samples under polarised light. You can easily attach a ‘polarizer’ and an ‘analyzer’ to the microscope and see the organisation of muscles and their filaments. Again a new world is opened. Today, there are many ‘do-it-yourself’ kits that allow you to make your own simple microscope at a fraction of the cost it takes to buy one. Before you take your sample to even this simple microscope you should look at it under the Foldscope—a paper microscope designed by Professor Manu Prakash of Stanford—whose versatility, resolution, and reach takes your laboratory to the field. With a dissecting microscope the work of the microcosmos is open to every school, college and university. With a Foldscope it is open to every person. Together with curiosity and thought, great discoveries are still open with these simple tools.
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Foldscope DIY Microscope. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons.
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FROM THE MENTOR Jayapriya Vasudevan When I began this journey with a group of writers, I had no idea of what the outcome would be. The brief to me was ‘Cities’. I used parts of books featuring cities in various styles as their prompts. A paragraph is not a short prompt, it’s so many different moods. Therefore it required the participants to be both reader and writer. This group ran with it and responded with writing that addressed the themes of migration, a feeling of home and finding their way in a new city with both poignant and humorous stories that were engaging and enjoyable. There are so many tones in the writing. Grief. A sense of leaving home. A sense of finding home. Some writers responded with poems and I brought in poet and writer Abhishek Anicca to weigh in on a very specific form of writing. Abhishek read these poems, with a heart full of admiration. Admiration for the poets, for the beauty and craft, and those who pursue it. He feels that he played no part in mentoring these poets because when they came to us, they already had a voice, a style, and words full of imagery. In all the writing, they have marked their own reflection. The more we look at the city through their eyes, the more one is driven to gaze towards the writer. These stories and poems are full of personalised anecdotes, observations, feelings and emotions that are accessible and transport you to the cities that live in their head. The most beautiful thing about the writing is that whenever you revisit them, it opens the door to an image or an idea locked somewhere in your head, inspiring admiration and creativity. I do hope all of these fledgling writers find more of their own voice and continue on their writing journeys.
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“Grey, as pigeons; Sailing winds, perching wet, In window sills and window-sides.”
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All Else Aizaz Befitting, I surmise, How all else bends to betray my passing time, And in an April summer, betrays the sun and clouds the skies. Today: Greying as above as below A grey, in gradients, Kinetic, blurring the blue benign. Grey, as pigeons; Sailing winds, perching wet, In window sills and window-sides. Grey, as buildings, bulbous, In clogs of concrete, Of Spatula-pasted-tapered tips Dripping tapers and blocks of houses, housings, Buildings, city-sides –– bridges running off between, For metros running off between, Grey, as sky scraping strokes of clogs, In strands of hair falling over my eyes, wet and coarse. Befitting. Titans of concrete, under treacherous summers Dip their feet In water run channels Of Tar-peted roads, Of Turtle’d Wagontrucksedanautos, Of Tarpaulin’d homes, Of my tarnished hooves of shoes, Off –– The great clop I crash into the collecting water. Today: a water, so below as underneath; As though urbanity upturned (Clop). As though drapery once stuffed (Clop). Under the garments of my city (Clop). Were unfurled upward (Clop). Though as a flickering tongue (Clop). Whispering a plea,
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Though as a reality too hard to contain (Clop). Were freed finally. So, clop-clop knee-deep down the water-run side-walk By a station picking metros by a bus struggling by cars turtling, By side-walks with people with unfurled umbrellas and bags, by hands, juggling Through fingers by palms and bags by fingers –– plastic’d like the tarpaulin, Or the flood’s floating waste, or, in the air, the floating acrid aftertaste, Of whatever wafting dirt-y smells drool out the vinegar-y gutter-y wells, And complementing reality come real like the Styx come leaking to the surface Like curtains –– hanging out the undergarments of my city, As though drapery once stuffed, Now curly around the clopping steps of me, Stepping bubble-make eddies, As though nature declaring itself in the whirling, As it does on the whorl of the bald spot on me. Befitting, this mischief, which flutes this passing time. Uneven, accidental, Perfect. Nature once could be the only beautiful accident, But to the me today: so mindless, soundless in this flood, Awaiting a call about your mind and sound from the hospital. As your tears break into the loud rains anew, Say, what birth could deliver nature like you?
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“They began to chase the sea away. The sea that swallowed, the sea that drowned, the sea that took bites of what glowed on the shore. So the sea began to run away.”
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When the Water Rose Anandita Balsavar We came from the sea. We came from the half of the world we call the shore, when it was still part of the whole that is the sea. We did not have names for the fish. We breathed in bubbles, swam in circles, floated with the waves. We knew our world as a circle, no beginning, no end, only a centre from where the water rose. The Water Rose, a blossom yet to bloom, just a bud, pale white caressed by the red of a sunrise we had never seen, not yet named, edges glowing pink, luminescent. We dreamt it one night, and we woke up curious at daybreak. It was rising, we did not know what it was or where it rose, just that we must follow. We dreamt of the sun whose hands had made the water rose blush, the moon that the water rose mirrored in its glow, the world to which the water rose was rising. Words began to bubble in the ocean. Words for light, words for air, words for what glowed and what twinkled and what burned, words for what could sail out of the water, words for what was green under the feet. Words that swam from behind the seaweed and dug through the sandbed, crawled out of seashells and peeked out of caves, floated out of the currents and on the backs of the sea turtles. We swam to the water rose, still rising, and waded out of the sea. It was all a dream, they said, when our toes sank into the warm grains of sand. A dream of drowning, they called it, as our toes wriggled against green grass. It was We who from the water rose, they declared, as the soles of our feet sat snug in leather shoes, to shield them from the sharp teeth that grew from the land. They began to chase the sea away. The sea that swallowed, the sea that drowned, the sea that took bites of what glowed on the shore. So the sea began to run away. The sea hid away, in someone’s dream. The pearl was still rising, far away, in someone’s dream. Something still lived under the sea, in someone’s dream. These dreams, we drew them together, like whispers, braided them together, like nets, threw them into the shallow water, like a rope. They took our hands, they took our nets, they took our words. Our greed, they called it. Our hands had chased the sea away. So it was Our duty to leave it alone, in peace. The wall rose by the citadel. The water rose in someone’s dream. Once upon a time.
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When I am twelve, Amma begins singing to herself. After a long day at school, sitting cross-legged across her as she grates coconuts, I ask her why, and she pretends she doesn’t hear me. Amma continues humming to herself, the words of her song, for the first time, lost to me. I wait for her to speak, letting my gaze rest on her nose-ring, the swirling blue gem that glinted on the arch, which, for the first time, looks like a flying fish. From this moment on, I begin to remember. My first memory of the swirling sea mists hardens into the dull stones. They’re everywhere, sharp and sticking out like tiny gravestones, like teeth, on the road to school, the footpath with wobbly drain covers we jump over. I begin to remember how the light beats upon granite in the afternoon, how it burns my soles when I walk barefoot, wobbling on unsteady legs to gather the clothes hanging on ropes twisted out of fishing nets. We have to use them somehow, Amma once said, shaking her head, so many nets and not enough sea. I begin to remember how scooters sputter along the road. Learn how to tell when a biker wants to hunt me or when a car wants me to go first. How my eyes learn to dart from red light to green light, left side to right side, to move my legs how the greenlight-person in the signal does, how many ring roads I must cross to reach home from school (two, but one if you take the shortcut), what ice lolly to choose on a Friday when Uncle offers a discount. I begin to remember the city. One long snake of a city, slithering across the ring road, breathing with every flicker of lights from red to yellow, yellow to green. A snake of a city with many fins, an eel of a city, fizzling with electricity and power cuts. City of dust. City gathering dust, slowly buried under it, yellow dust that creeps on white shoes on Wednesdays, hides behind shirt collars and under the folds of socks. When we scramble up the apartment’s dingy staircase, scatter across the eighthfloor terrace, the city stretches out like a flat palm, clawing into the faraway sea like fingernails caked with dirt. When I am twelve, I begin to remember the sea as I see it. A faraway crescent of light, rippling, docile; a dull gleam at the edge of the city’s dust. This sea reflects nothing but the sun, almost a drying puddle. Amma remembers the sea as it was. I imagine Amma thinks about the sea all the time; while she’s grating the coconuts or luring the cats into the kitchen, while she walks home from the market on granite that has never been touched by the salt sprays. When I am twelve, Amma begins to guard her memory of the sea even from me. She stops telling me about its hunger. She won’t sing to me about who swims and who floats and who roams the depths as shadows. She won’t tell me how salt used to taste before it tasted like smoke. She won’t tell me where I can hear the sea, she won’t cup her hands over my ears and make me listen to her shell bangles twinkling like stars over the gushing waves. “Amma won’t eat fish anymore,” I say. “She says,‘How can I eat the fish even cats refuse?’” “Do you eat it?”
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“Teacher says it’s good for us and good for the earth, good for the sea too.” “Does Teacher know what colour the sea used to be?” This person grilling fish over the fire looks like Amma if she dressed like Teacher. The same middle parting, the same wiry strands springing out of her black hair, even something on her nose that glints when it catches the light, what must be the light. “Do you?” I ask. “Do you?” she asks me, smiling. She sounds like if Amma dressed like Teacher and spoke like me. “Blue,” I say, “Blue in the afternoon, orange in the evening, grey when there’s neither light nor darkness.” “Oh! So you’ve seen it!” I shake my head, “Have you?” She grills the fish over a long metal spike, humming as she turns it over the fire, as the silver of its scales begins to shrivel and char. The fire doesn’t smell like smoke. Like Amma, she pretends she can’t hear me. Like me, I clam up. “It’s been a while,” she finally says, offering the fish to me. I watch the eyes of the fish, wondering if it’ll blink at me, like the walking person in the light signal. “It’s been a while since I saw the sea up close. Where I live, I can see only a glimpse. Just a glimpse of what looks like these scales, you know. Imagine you saw some light on it, that’s what the sea is.” “The sea is on the back of a fish?” “Oh, I like how you’ve put it!” “No,” I say, when the fish doesn’t blink back at me, “I’m asking you. I haven’t seen the sea either.” “You will,” she says, “You’ll see the sea soon and you’ll know you’re right to describe it that way.” “When?” I ask, but she won’t answer. She hasn’t answered. If I crane my neck, I will see how our footsteps in the lilac sand we walked across look like seafoam. But I always find myself sitting here by the fire, a pale sky, a long pink streak across its middle, which becomes the sea. She’s begun to hum again, grilling another fish over the fire. Its fins look like bird wings, white with feathers, which begin to flap as she turns it over the heat. I can’t tell who is humming. It might be the fish.
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They said we couldn’t live on the hills because they were flat now. Equal people, equal grounds, the advertisement said, half-moon spectacles twinkling on a man whose white beard curled on one end, like a seahorse. Amma did not want me to know his name. We lived in a sand coloured building that swayed in the breeze like a coconut tree when Amma put us both to sleep in the afternoon. Ritu Aunty, our neighbour, said it was because this land used to be the shore once, long ago, when the sea first began to run. Each collection of flats, she said breathlessly, grew from the roots of palm trees that were long gone. She hadn’t seen the sea either, but her mother had, Ritu Aunty said, and Ritu Aunty’s mother had almost drowned in the sea too, as a girl. Ritu Aunty told Amma that proudly, prouder still because Amma had seen the sea, sailed in it, sighted shore when the shore had still been a thing that was far away, a thing to be found in an expanse of blue. Amma liked remembering the sea as something that could swallow. She would tell me that story, about how the sea used to take a bite out of the moon every night, until the moon was left a crescent. The moon would hurry behind the veil of night, so her sister, the sun, couldn’t see her in a state of undress. Amma would point at the moon while she told me that story, a moon I imagined as a great feathered being, wings of white down it drew around a rotund body, like a shield. “So you have seen the moon?” the person with Amma’s face asks. “Long time ago,” I say, waiting for the fish’s wings to stop fluttering, “I don’t remember anymore.” Amma said that a ‘before’ was only when the ‘after’ would come to be. She said she would remember the ‘before’ because I had come alive into the ‘after’. The ‘after’ was where the land was flat, where the moon drifted beyond her veil of nighttime, peeping out twice a month, like one of the faraway stars. The ‘after’ was what she used to brush out of my hair, quick to tangle, while hers was a flowing river of black that pooled around her hips when she let it down. The ‘after’ a bag of tangled hair she kept hidden in a cloth bag behind her clothes, to feed to the lemon tree of ‘before’ at Amma’s mother’s house, the house in the village we couldn’t visit anymore. Then, Amma began guarding her memory of the ‘before’ too, as she did the songs she sang me, as if edging me on into the ‘after’ she had lost me to. When I was little, she said she wanted to keep me with her, before everything happened to tear us apart. Because it would, she knew, because I was not the same as her. Because the dream crystallised into a memory, a mirror where she and I were no longer one. When I refused to sleep, as a child, she told me the moon would come and take me away into the sky. She used to speak the moon’s voice in low hums that I imagined in a milky green, like an ash gourd; a sound meant to mimic the silence that would come when I was torn away from her.
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The city where we live, in the daytime, is full of sounds; soft sounds, dull sounds, a din of sounds. Someone’s mixer grinder growling at the dryness of the coconut freshly shorn off and thrown into its belly. Ritu Aunty calling out to the vegetable seller, asking about fish. Amma’s sigh tucked behind the spice rack when the seller dishes out his wares: chickfish, redfish, green-snow-pea-fish, and even ragifish, a new healthy option. “We used to catch fish that could fly,” Amma used to tell me, “We wove nets like blades, heavy like armour, but still so delicate, shining like sunrays over the ocean.” She doesn’t sing to me about those fish or the thing called the ocean, but the net is what we still use over the cot to keep out mosquitoes, one woven on top of the other. In this city with lots of mosquitoes but not enough rain, a small black spiral puffs out an eternal coil of smoke from the corner of our bedroom. Amma puts it out only when the sun sends a harsh battalion of golden light marching over the grey tiles. ‘After’ is when I learn of what happened to this city, a nameless fraction of a world beyond our imagination. ‘After’ begins on the day I return home from school to echo what I have learned: that humans owe it to the sea to save it from ourselves, our greedy hands, our fishing nets, our footprints in the sand. “Whose hands?” she asks me. She stares down at hers, the shell bangles on her slim wrists, the veins wandering under the skin of her palms, blue and green, like currents. She won’t argue with me again, she will stare at her hands, just like that, when she packs food into my tiffin box, a dosa that will grow cold by the time I eat it with a dry green chilli pickle Ritu Aunty sent down to us. Her fingers trace the dent left behind on the edges of my steel tiffin box. I rub sheepishly at the patchwork of cuts on my elbow, remembering that both are marks left behind by the shards of stones littered across dirt paths and footpaths, rising even from the sparse green grass. I have no answer to her question. That becomes ‘after’ where she asks a question and I search for an answer, becomes the memory of ‘before’ when her thoughts would float into my mind, and my thoughts would flow out of her voice. “Ours,” I stutter, echoing Teacher’s words, “Humans.” “We are one when they want us to be,” she had said, folding the dosa into a neat cone, “Then it becomes Our hands, Our land, Our greed, Our sea.” One morning, Teacher said, the sea began to run away, and so we ran to catch it. “When the sea was still ours, it was full of fish.” This time, Amma is not telling a story. “So many fish, so many that we knew them all by name. So many fish, you wouldn’t be able to imagine them anymore.” “It was nothing like your Teacher’s sea. Our sea was always hungry. We ran from it because we knew it could bite. Our sea had a mouth and a tongue made of foam, and it could swallow crabs, people, and boats. We didn’t know what lay under it
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or what was hidden in its stomach, we didn’t want to pry it apart, and we wouldn’t leave it alone.” Teacher insisted that the sea began to grow shallow because we were fishing too much. We emptied it, Teacher said, we marched into it with our nets and rods, we disguised our greed as hunger. “It wasn’t the fish, but the oil,” Amma says, “It wasn’t our nets, it was Their drills. Not our hands, but Their ships. It began with Their ports, Their docks, Their tanks. The sea ran away from us?” she scoffs, “Another lie they feed us with the dead-fish. “The sea ran away from them, so They chased it. The sea was still with us, so They chased us away.”
The dream begins where the stories did. Some place that gets nauseatingly green in the monsoons, where weeds leap up from the soil before you know it. Some place by a pond full of water lilies, still bulbs, white like gibbous moons with their ends blushing pink like finger-nails. Some place where I can only look forward, following a georgette dupatta, a blushing white like the water lilies. Some place that sounds like Amma’s hands cupping my ears. Some place inside the seashell Amma once showed me, white walls soothed by ocean waves. Some place where the ground keeps scattering under my feet, rough like fabric, grainy like salt. Some place where the shore meets the sky, blushing pink and almost purple, some place where the sky becomes the sea. In the dream, I watch the person with Amma’s face grill herself a winged fish to eat. I shift the metal skewer upon which my fish is mounted from one hand to another, trying to hold it in varying grips of different fingers. I don’t eat it because I don’t know how to. The only fish we get is filleted, portioned out, and sold in vacuum-sealed packets tucked into newspaper bags. I don’t know where to start with this one, not when the wind ruffles through its charred feather-fins every time I bring my teeth to it. “She calls it dead-fish,” I tell her, “Fish even cats refuse.” “Does it look like a fish?” “Amma told me how they used to look, but I’ve begun to forget.” “Did you ever see one?” Not with my eyes, but I’ve seen it. The same way I’ve seen the moon up close, the way I’ve stepped into the sand, felt the sea nip at my ankles. I want to tell her I’ve seen all of them, sailing on a boat through Amma’s dreams. That’s why forgetting makes me afraid, forgetting the sea and its fish is like forgetting Amma and her stories. “Hm,” she turns her fish so its belly floats over the fire, “Then I’ll have to show you.”
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“Here?” “If you see them here, you’ll see them out there too.” “But the sea is running away,” I say, “Where will I see the fish?” “They’re everywhere,” she says with Amma’s face, “Alive fish, golden fish, jelly fish, even in the clouds, big fish, little fish, all sorts of fish. Open your eyes and you’ll see them all.”
My eyes open to a winter radish sunrise, dark pink, that is diluted into the yellow of this city; yellow sunrise, yellow sunset, yellow afternoon haze. Beside me, Amma is still asleep, her fingers interlocked and laid neatly over her abdomen, like a Pharaoh in a sarcophagus, except for how her chest rises and falls, with her mouth ajar, like a fish. The cheap satin of her grey nightie ripples like scales on a fish. The blanket pooling around her feet flutters under the fan like the fins of a fish. A fish is a winged creature, a fish is silver, a fish has eyes like beads that never close. My mother has her hands folded at the elbows into triangles, shell bangles hanging on her wrist. My mother is grey now, but she will change into a maroon and white kurta when we go out today. My mother, asleep, has pale pink eyelids drawn over her black eyes. Amma is not a fish, but Amma comes from the sea. Amma comes from a sleepy village by the seaside that woke up to trash and tourists. Then came the orders to build a wall along the coast, to keep the sea safe from human hands and human greed, followed by ones to return the fisherfolk and shoredwellers to the city of dust. Amma’s memory of the sea awakens as Amma’s stories of the sea in my dreams.
I am twelve when I see the Water Rose. A pearl, I call it, because it glows. A rose, I call it, because it is the bud of a blossom. The moon, I call it, because it emerges in crescents, halves, gibbouses; the sun, I call it, because the floating fish are like planets in its orbit. When I open my eyes, I shall see it as a dome, the pinnacle of a city. A city at the edge of ours, a city drowned, a city rising. “I’m dreaming,” I say. “I’m dreaming,” the person with Amma’s face says. Once upon a time, I floated inside Amma like a fish in the sea. In that dream, we were one, one fish, one sea. In this dream, I stand in lilac waters, watching the milky ocean part around what rises. “What is it?” I ask the person with Amma’s face.
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“What does it look like?” she asks me, in my voice. The moon, I think of saying. Instead, I fix my eyes upon the dome of bright pink arches and tell her, “An onion.” She laughs, just like Amma, and though Amma doesn’t laugh so much anymore, the memory of Amma’s laughter returns to me. I realise where we are, when we are, before she tells me. “You remember this place, don’t you?” “Do you?” “Yes,” she breathes in, “We were here. Long ago. Long before you remember.” I set my eyes on the rising dome, how it is the light and becomes the light and holds it. I blink, and I see how the glass bowl cups the flickering street light, the wings that flutter around it, in an orbit. “But this is a dream.” “You’ve dreamt this ‘before’,” she says, “And you’ll remember it ‘after’ you wake up.” The person with Amma’s face smiles at me, and I know I’ll only see her again, long after, in the mirror.
A yellow fish dives into the milk Amma is boiling and wades between the milk foam. Amma fishes it out with the long spoon she has been stirring the milk with, watching it swim in circles. When Amma emerges steaming after her bath, a school of fish follow her out, fins like wings as they fly, glowing like glycerine and smelling of oranges, trying to hold on to the ends of her damp, coiling hair. I glimpse, reflected in the dented stainless steel of my tiffin box, a little silver fish whose belly is growing pink. Amma takes it into her hand, and the fish, made of light and made of milk, the ones that wriggle out of tomato pulp and burrow out of coconuts, all gather to take a look. The city is built on the back of a sea turtle. The teeth on the asphalt, I realise, are all seashells crunched up and spat out, rising out of the dust. The lights that shift from red to yellow, yellow to green, are fish of the light, winking, blinking, twinkling, as they float in a black pool caked with dust. What trickles out of the jet spray at the nose of cars are fish, grey-white fish, squeezing out of tubes and pipes to lap up the dust. The crescent of light is rippling with colours, the blue and green and yellow and red, even the white and grey, fluttering like a wing. The crescent of light is full of fish, and it is still rising, still curving one fish at a time into the sand, still edging towards the wall. Amma’s shell bangles clink as she cuts open the onion. Between layers of white, it
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blushes a pale pink, then glows as its spray hits my eyes, making it leak saltwater. Amma’s humming bubbles into words as she tosses the onion into a pot. Half an onion rises from the boiling water, its other half floats in our dream.
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“The sun undoes, brushes out its lustrous tentacles armed with an extra half degree or two to infiltrate our telepathic communion.”
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21°, 7.30 a.m., IMD predicts heatwave conditions // PG balcony congregation Ananya Mehta
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A degree drop on a mid-March Sunday morning is excuse for assembly, is rationale to retrieve Ma’s chai masala dabba and announce to my fellow-faithfuls that the weather calls for it; releasing a pinch into mugs that permit spice-blessing.1 Even the mynahs and generator cease their three-part harmony to join us in our silent prayer. Only the diminuendo of one flower falling for every twelve leaves, crushed fruit beneath barbet beaks, the flailing of the JSR/angry hanuman flag2 that confronts us from the terrace across like an epileptic clownfish as the wind that threatens its eviction sets floral undies aflutter, eight pairs of teeth dismantling bhatura and the hushed liquid gush into the glum black Sintex. All lull until the sun undoes, brushes out its lustrous tentacles armed with an extra half degree or two to infiltrate our telepathic communion. Out of the molten quiet, trickles a hiss-whisper from S: How the hell ya?
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° now, mugs and plates cleared, words thawing in our throats, we worship aloud:
1 2
Jaifal, elakki, sunthi, taj-laving, mari, saunf—none of us can list in one language anymore. To forget is to remember to forget, title of a play I am yet to watch.
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Achchooo, Pakkadmane3 Husky is going to be so happy, no? Who were those people saying ohoho4 Bangalore will be hotter than Delhi this year5? My face. Bro in my home we’d be frying kanda bajji; I will make one day. (Simply you say like this) (Yeah you never make anything ya) (Only that time when your mom come no,) Can’t do chikan kurta today; yaar maine iron karke rakha tha6. I think some cyclone is coming somewhere, that’s why. (Why for every damn cyclone this city has to pull stunts?) (I swear to God man Pondi has Fengal means here it will flood7; my grandmother will sneeze means our roof will fall) Siddu8 is asking for our forgiveness for not giving free bus tickets this women’s day. (One year they kept then forgot lol) (Man’s too busy hiking Metro fares) Each puts down each’s reason (the weather calls for it); withdraws with the wind.
3 His last name, but it is said before his first. Supposed to mean “next door.” Speaker unaware of said meaning. It is therefore, first and foremost, his last name. 4 Read as (making infinity shapes with head, or don’t read at all.): oooOOOHOhoho HOOOOO! 5 India Today. “Bengaluru to Be Hotter Than Delhi This Year: Weather Body.” India Today, 17 Feb. 2025. www.indiatoday.in/cities/bengaluru/story/bengaluru-records-higher-temperatures-than-delhi-met-dept-predicts-e arly-summer-2681361-2025-02-17. 6 Translation unavailable. Keywords: yaar, iron. 7 DHNS. “Cyclone Fengal Gifts the Chill to Bengaluru.” Deccan Herald, 1 Dec. 2024. www. deccanherald.com/india/karnataka/bengaluru/cyclone-fengal-gifts-the-chill-to-bengaluru-3299421. 8 If you don’t recognise a man’s nickname, it is not worth finding out his full name.
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“All sense teeming towards a unified theory of scent–mother.”
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True Pastoral Ankita Sardarjoshi
[Found text poem in response to “Siolim and I have changed…”] true pastoral the iconic 70s. explore the snake, a landmark. St. Anthony’s Chapora. river has changed. Siolim. Pastoral, grand. old houses everywhere. better explore the backwaters. everywhere, we have changed. hills, not sure. to climb its legend. other than the river, I have changed. Siolim holding, not sure, but the better. coconut trees and fields, iconic. the better pastoral, truly other. not sure we have changed. [Prose Poem in response to “Petrichor”] I’m glad to have left. When it rains in Chicago, it smells of nothing. When it rains here, the air carries mud, becomes the hair in my nose. All sense teeming towards a unified theory of scent–mother. Dupatta on a clothesline. Bring the clothes in, B’s knee is shaking, it’s about to rain. After it does, we’ll sit around smoking it, the rain, fragrant refrain, forever. “Forever” in Bangalore–45 minutes–torrential downpour. I’m touched by the tease. Rainwash, breeze, bug weak in the knees. Worms crawling into gridlocked loops of brick and tile. When we were children, we shrieked in the rain. Playing. Now we sit, drooling, over the scent in our face. [Poem in response to “We reached Jammu around nightfall…”] Malabar Macabre a chicken by a fire through a dirty window. Bangalore-Coimbatore, 6 hours on a train. beaks of bills butting against bulls. bulls grazing softly, not in grass but dust.
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stains from train dal, hot, yellow. early arrival, then, near-haunted house. dead grandparents, cologne, sarees in drawers. neighbourly milk for coffee next day. clothesline swaying by a thing like a crow. omens at play, banana leaf wedding. a Ghat looming, Western, nearby. on asking the bride to please drink water, she smiles, pale sweat, says she’s perfectly fine.
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“This library I had loved so much— green-wallpapered and quiet—is no more.”
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Past Stories, Killed Lizards, Lost Libraries: Some memories of a City I Loved Cynthia My romance with reading began not because of my reticence or inability to connect with my peers, but because of my father. Appa taught me to read by denying me stories after indulging me with them every waking moment. Appa told me stories to wake me up, to get me to eat, to entertain me on our daily walks that spanned several kilometres, to get me to sleep. On cold nights, I remember tucking my tiny legs under his lungi both for warmth and for protection against the monsters lurking under the bed. Appa’s limbs over mine were slightly uncomfortable, because Appa’s body felt like a block of wood carved into a man—“irumbu katta maathiri”, Amma used to say. Appa often drifted off to sleep in the middle of a story. He and I were fellow insomniacs, but he stole some sleep for himself in these moments until I kicked him awake to listen to ten more minutes of his story. Every Sunday, Appa, Amma, my little brother (also called Burrito or Moota Poochi) and I would walk from Yio Chu Kang to our home in Yishun after Amma and Appa played badminton with their friends. The walk home spanned 7-8 kms. I am not sure how we walked all this way without Google Maps then. Amma says that we followed the metro home when I ask her now, many years later. Amma and Burrito always walked much ahead of Appa and me—Amma walked to get to places; Appa walked because it was beautiful to look at the skies. Every time Appa re-spun a story, he changed the colour of some of its threads. No story was ever the same retold. My favourite was the story of the golden parrot. Appa would sneak in a new princess the second time telling the story, a giant who belched frogs the third. In some renditions, the hero of the story became the antagonist. It is hard to remember Appa from 17 years ago. In slightly grainy photos, he looks exactly like my brother. Lean powerful limbs that Amma dubbed stiff, perfect for walking. Appa’s body has been softened by age now, his head of thick hair whittled down by time into a bald moat surrounded by a fringe of white curls. I started reading because I had kicked Appa awake too many times for another story. He told me, “You go get these stories yourself by reading”, before rolling over and snatching another twenty minutes of sleep. Every day, after school ended, Amma got me a huge block of ice cream wedged between two wafers, and then took me to the Yishun Public Library, which was 15 minutes from home. Amma sat with me patiently as I read several volumes of Mr Midnight, a very popular supernatural thriller-horror series in Singapore, written by the Australian writer Jim Aitchison (better known by his pen name James Lee.) You could write a letter to James Lee asking for your friends’ names to be the characters’ names in the upcoming volumes. James Lee and his team also held contests for plotlines.
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If you won, your story would be fleshed out by Lee, and you would get a copy of the book and a goodie bag. While Mr Midnight was not the only book I read in this library of my childhood, it was one of the more memorable series because of how fast-paced and fun it was. There was not one volume I missed reading. This library I had loved so much—green-wallpapered and quiet—is no more. There is a fancier library that was built around the time we moved back to India, in 2008, close to the MRT station. One of my most intimate moments with lizards was born in the bygone library. I was in Primary 4 then, and my peaceful reading was disturbed by some light scratching and skittering down my back. I first wondered if I had imagined it, but I could feel something moving helter-skelter under my clothes. My uniform shirt was tucked into my skort, so I couldn’t find any opening to get the creature to leave, and I was terrified by the thought of locking myself into a toilet cubicle with this unknown danger. So when it moved from my back to my side, I caught it and squeezed. The creature struggled harder the longer I squeezed, so I squeezed more ruthlessly. I ran-walked home as fast as I could safely execute it. When I was but midway, the struggling stopped. I was scared of the creature tricking me, so I didn’t let up on the squeezing. When I finally reached home and got my mother to open the door after a telephone call that seemed to last an hour but was probably 10 minutes, I shoved down my skort and discovered a stone dead lizard that looked surprisingly whole for how much I had squeezed it.
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“Espressos carefully balanced in to-go cups Juxtapose the juggling of water pots on children’s hips Doomscrolling on the phone—is too little known?”
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Rangoli on Concrete Dhanisha Sateesh Dawn breaks, the crimson rays spilling on the muddy road The soft murmurs of the Ajji’s echo, huddled over rangole, traced in front of every mane They judge the skills of women young & old, Friendly rivalries abound…. Neighbours sipping bisi bisi kaapi, waiting for the paper boy to show Dishing the dirt—too much is known The sixth cousin’s elopement, The great aunt’s misfortune, The arthritic uncle from two streets over, Who wailed louder than the colic baby of plot no. 4. Dawn breaks again, the rays reflected by cement stones Electronic beeps from fitness bands announce the motley crowd Of joggers and cyclists tracking their calorie count Espressos carefully balanced in to-go cups Juxtapose the juggling of water pots on children’s hips Doomscrolling on the phone—is too little known? Faceless names & nameless faces amalgamate, Hardly anyone recognizes another Beyond the apartment gate Yet, people care That trendy café?—Great for spilling the tea That dirty lake?—restored due to a reel on IG! The city reshapes and grows, But never forgets its roots The heart always beats the same.
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“It is also to recognise that the stares are curious, judgemental even, but not always hostile.”
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Drifting through this City, Keen, Harsh Garima Once I was on a bus in a sweltering March, coming back from Parry’s Corner. I had bought mallipoo, as usual. In the bus sat beside me an old pati with a flower basket on her lap. She was weaving mallipoo. I smiled at her—or perhaps she saw my flowers. She said something but not knowing Tamil, I did not understand what she was saying. And not knowing English, she did not understand my generic reply. But she still showed me how to weave the jasmines into a mallipoo string. Her hands progressed slowly—much slower than her younger fellow mallipoo weaver-sellers’. They chatted with her, indulged her, nudged her along, helping her get off at the right bus stop. She smiled a bright smile, knotting one flower after another in the long long chain. There are many such lovely things to write of Chennai—the beaches, the slowness, the public transport, the helpful akkas on the buses and the bus stops, and oh, did I say, the beaches! Everybody carries their backpack on their back unguarded in Chennai buses and metros. In a crowded bus, if you have a seat, some aunty coming from, or heading to, a tiring day of work will very likely dump her bag on your lap. In a bus filled to the brim (and then some), the bus conductor rendered immobile, monies and tickets will be passed across the ends of the bus from the hands of one stranger to another. But to be in Chennai is to be sweaty. To feel the stickiness deep within your skin even on a cool-ish winter evening. It is to sit with the discomfort of perspiration trickling down the back of your neck not even five minutes after taking a shower. It is to draw stares when you step out legs blazing in shorts to combat the heat. It is also to recognise that the stares are curious, judgemental even, but not always hostile. Which is not to say that there aren’t hostile stares—of course there are. Chennai is, like any other city, a gendered city, after all, in spite of the abundance of women in the buses, on the streets, in the metro. Walking the city by myself, as I often do, I keep thinking about that post (on Tumblr, or Twitter, perhaps—I can’t remember now) about plotting or executing a murder in your head while walking alone in the city—so that you appear aggressive enough for the men to leave you alone. I hate it. I want to be relaxed, I want to meet people with openness when I’m walking in the city. All in all, I suppose, one must always carry an umbrella while stepping out in Chennai, even if the sky is clear and the weather app, or the website, shows a minimal chance of rain.
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“Growing up in and out of the city has made me realise how the two names Mumbai and Bombay, and someone’s choice of name for the city reflects their relationship with it.”
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It’s Complicated Isha Kadam “Where are you from?” asks the 15th guy I have spoken to on a dating app. A question I have learned to expect and yet struggle to articulate a response to. How does one put it into words that will fit the character limit of the app, life lived and years passed across cities and pick one to belong to? Where am I truly from ? The city my parents live in, where my friends stay minutes away, where my heart sleeps next to me or the city that my laptop live wallpaper picked up for display—making me lose track of time in concocting a life I never lived. I share a strange connection with Bombay, I can’t call it home but there are moments where I belong to it. A connection tethered by strings of familial ties. Strings that have frayed over the years by uncle’s mood swings, father’s workaholism and my reluctance to attend family gatherings. Growing up in and out of the city has made me realise how the two names Mumbai and Bombay, and someone’s choice of name for the city reflects their relationship with it. Mumbai—if the city has witnessed you grow up in humble surroundings, towering over you like an elder brother that bullies you in an attempt to toughen you up. Bombay—if the city is someone that you look up to, seek approval from and try to please. It runs on its own clock and you learn to tune yours accordingly. Mumbai has a tendency to make you feel like a side character in your own life. Amongst the harmonious clanging of the metal handholds in the local train as hushed whispers of an alleged affair float in the air, someone that just boarded the train inquires about the station you disembark at in hopes of getting a seat soon, a hungry child wails on the other end as the mother hunts for the packet of biscuits in her purse while a tiny cockroach scurries past your feet in their direction to grab the crumbs. On that seat, at 7pm on a Monday night, how is one to remember who they are ? At that moment, does it even matter who they are?
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“A bus never goes too fast, with its ample windows making you feel as though you’re one with the place you’re travelling through.”
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What is the City, but the People? Jane Caryn Thomas I was returning home one night in a moderately crowded BMTC bus, when a heavyset woman, appearing to be in her 60s, climbed in at a crowded traffic signal. She seemed to know the conductor, and soon the two began exchanging conversation. All the while the bus stood in the clogged traffic, unmoving. She then offered him a piece of an orange she had pulled out of her tiffin. I observed this exchange with a smile. It warmed my heart knowing that in this city that is determined to keep everyone at arm’s distance, there were still some who made the effort to form personal bonds. As she was getting off, she said, “See you,” in Kannada. I was still smiling and so was the conductor. After she had walked a few paces, he turned to the driver and said, “Some people are too friendly.”
*** Living on the fringes of the city, I can confidently say that I must have spent at least 40% of my time in transit, and the remaining 60% complaining about it. When I’m not running after a BMTC bus like a CID officer chasing a suspect, my journey on it becomes a meditative time. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the many lives people lead here, and how I’ve come to see this city of 14 million itself as a person. Travelling in the bus makes you see the world in a way that you never would in the backseat of a car with the windows rolled up or in autos that whoosh past at the speed of light. A bus never goes too fast, with its ample windows making you feel as though you’re one with the place you’re travelling through. You place yourself in the shoes of the greying woman selling flowers at the bus stop, the school student with tired eyes, to the conductor who should’ve been a stand-up comic. You get a glimpse of the different lives people lead in the city, and in turn see its vivid hues reflected back in them. Bengaluru, I’ve learned, is a bundle of contradictions, much like ourselves. If that’s true, then I suppose loving a city is similar to loving a person. It’s never easy, but we do it nonetheless.
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“The locals of each place know the webs and the underlying connections between things; they know how to interpret meaning from images; they can read the language of the city.”
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Glittering Night, Buzzing Day Shyamsunder Buddh Every time I visited the island, its look changed. I couldn’t ground myself enough into the environment to have a sense of it. I didn’t understand how things stood in relation to each other. I no longer knew what was where, or how to get anywhere. I couldn’t figure out the purpose of buildings. I felt the anxiety of being in a bad dream. For me, everything—each building, road, locality, park—existed separately, independently, without connection or relation to each other, rising out of mist. No matter where I went, I wasn’t at a state of rest. I was always seeking to leave wherever I was, but the place I wanted to return to no longer existed. The old places had been built over, the coastline had advanced outwards, the roads I used to take would now run through people’s houses, and both their origins and destinations were gone. It was as complete a transformation as could have been made. The young people had decided to scrub out the past, to vanish it, to replace it with a vision of the future, and they had been entirely successful. And what a dazzling future it was! Clean, wide roads; pretty trees along promenades; tall, gleaming buildings; well-nourished people that seemed to enjoy the city. I saw many women, often alone, often late at night, often fashionably or freely dressed. This was more convincing of the safety and normalcy that they experienced and implicitly assumed than any statistic could be. This was also among the images that jarred the most with my recollections of childhood here. It was as though a bright white light had suddenly been shined from above on a bundle of my forgotten memories, unkindly revealing the ugliest shapes and features. These I had accepted so deeply, so easily and unthinkingly, that I had ended up completely oblivious to them. One mental photograph, once blurry and warm and fuzzy, but now suddenly cold and awfully clear, was: my sister, fully covered, squatting by an indoor stove in a small, dim room, the shining overhead clinical light of the future reflected in the myriad beads of sweat forming on her small light brown forehead; and my mother, of whom my sister looked a small copy, supervising her. I knew this wasn’t the full truth, I knew this couldn’t be; but so unprepared was I for this examination that it was all I could see. How did the kids do it? How did they escape the fate that seemed a web you were born into, that pulled you into place every time you strayed, whose tugs on your limbs told you which ways were easy to move and which ways were hard, the web that you hated in youth, grudgingly accepted in middle age and yourself wove in old age? And what was their web now? For, nobody, nobody is without a web. Everybody is a spider. And here, I was a spider without its web, and other spiders climbed around on threads invisible and intangible to me. Ironically, the actual street lights of Singapore were much softer: a bulb about three meters overhead that sent a stream of white-yellow light upwards, which was then reflected by a curved panel onto the street. This diffused light provided a bright but gentle glow whose source you could not see–like the sun behind a cloud. And just like it concealed itself, this glow revealed nothing about the sources of things, illuminated nothing deeper than the pleasing surface of objects.
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The locals of each place know the webs and the underlying connections between things; they know how to interpret meaning from images; they can read the language of the city. I used to be able to do that too. There is always a rhythm to a city, and you are either on the beat or you aren’t. There was a ringing dissonance to my interactions. Nobody behaved as I expected them to. With everyone I met, I wore the same confused expression and bore the same awkward, out of place statements, making me stand out. So, car drivers shouted at me; shopkeepers were disdainful, youngsters stared at me with a mixture of pity and confusion, sometimes fear. I suppose to their eyes, it would have seemed like they had just seen a ghost. I would reply by directing my angry gaze at all of them only for it to be misunderstood as some sort of confused old man stare, since the very expression of anger seemed to have changed! People are supposed to be connected to their place, their land. This place is my mother land, where I was born and raised. And yet, now I am even worse here than an obnoxious, ignorant tourist. They killed and buried the old Singapore and the new dazzle spread its roots all over it, nourished itself and grew out of it. If the shrivelled corpse still remains, even like a reclining relic deep inside and in between the root system, can I find its heart?
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04 THROUGH YOUR EYES Sci560 Reader 2026 / 99
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FROM THE TEAM Sci560: Through your Eyes began with an open invitation: look at Bengaluru as you experience it. The participants worked with six prompts—Adjust, Froth, Dust, Raste, Mane, and Put Scene—and each prompt asked them to observe the city without rushing past it. What emerged from this invitation is a portrait of the city built from small, everyday observations. Under the mentorship of documentary photographer Sameer Raichur, the participants learned to stay with a moment instead of chasing after one. Raichur encouraged them to trust ordinary scenes: an auto ride that stretches longer than expected, the surface of chai settling, a street corner where people wait or drift through. This approach is clear in the responses to Put Scene. An auto becomes a temporary room where time slows down. Friends caught in traffic sit together without any real plan. These images show how the city creates pockets of shared time, moments that usually disappear without notice. Mane brought out questions of belonging and distance. One participant photographed the grounded aircraft at Science Gallery Bengaluru—built to fly but now still—using it to think about home as something that shifts. Another photographed a bird in flight to reflect on wanting direction and the feeling of being held in place. Home, in these works, is less a location and more an ongoing negotiation. Through Raste, participants looked at the city’s roads as places of work, movement, and chance encounters. One photographer, new to Bengaluru, described how seeing a street from above helped her understand its energy. The images show roads not as routes alone, but as spaces where people constantly meet and separate. Dust revealed the city’s habit of carrying traces. A group of boys playing in the evening light made one participant think about childhood and how places shape growing up. Another focused on objects left behind in corners of the city—small markers of people who passed through or moved on. Dust, here, becomes evidence of ongoing change rather than a symbol. Across the programme, participants kept returning to small details: a hand waiting for a train to stop, a rope being pulled inside a truck, a pause at a roadside tea stall. Through Raichur’s mentorship, they understood that these details matter. They show how people adjust, navigate, and find rhythm in a city that rarely slows down. In the end, Through Your Eyes shows how noticing the ordinary can change the way we understand the city. Gayatri Manu Programmes Manager, Science Gallery Bengaluru
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PROMPTS 102 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
ADJUST FROTH DUST RASTE MANE PUT SCENE Sci560 Reader 2026 / 103
FEATURING 104 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Amogh M Aradhya Christopher Bapticia Cow aka Kaushik Fahad Kumara Guru Rutvik Satya Sampath Sci560 Reader 2026 / 105
ADJUST
Swalpa Adjust Madi
Amogh M Aradhya About the Work SP Road isn’t just a market, it’s the IT Lifeline of Bengaluru. Amidst tangled webs of telephone wires, relentless traffic, and jam-packed footpaths, thousands of people navigate their way through chaos with purpose. The street might be narrow, the buildings old, and the cables wild, but it all works because it has to. This photograph captures the messy, beautiful rhythm of a city constantly adjusting, constantly moving. 106 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Adjust: SP Road full of people.
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Adjust: SP Road full of vehicles.
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Adjust: An evening view of SP Road full of people.
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ADJUST
Swalpa Adjust Madi
Cow aka Kaushik About the Work Fruits that are seen in my photographs and all over the world are not just food, they are the things that relate to our endless surroundings. My photography often emerges as a concept of merging reality with fiction. This photograph shows how the inside of a papaya can reflect as bright as the ocean. 110 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Adjust: Reflections inside a room.
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Adjust: Plate of papaya.
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Adjust: Frame of a window.
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ADJUST
Swalpa Adjust Madi
Fahad About the Work Stuck in traffic, I saw him—half inside a truck, surrounded by plastic drums and baskets, pulling on a rope. Something about that moment lingered. In a city that runs on extremes—abundance on one side, survival on the other— he looked like he was adjusting not just his posture, but his place in it all. Maybe that’s what the city demands of most of us: to make room, to fit in, to keep going. 116 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Adjust: Man in the back of a truck.
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ADJUST
Swalpa Adjust Madi
Rutvik About the Work Moving across the streets of Yelahanka, the changing natural light and dense evergreen trees have become companions. While I see a lot and sense a lot, the lens is restricted to capture only some. If something must replace memory, shouldn’t it have the capability to speak to narrate or at least tell a story. How does it happen? Is it even possible? What is an image? 118 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Adjust: A balcony. Sci560 Reader 2026 / 119
120 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Adjust: Abandoned house.
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122 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
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Adjust: A shopping complex.
ADJUST
Swalpa Adjust Madi
Satya Sampath About the Work These individuals are adjusting to the streetscape, waiting, chatting, and resting. It shows how public spaces become an extension of life in Indian cities. 124 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Adjust: Individuals in a streetscape. Sci560 Reader 2026 / 125
FROTH
Bubbling to the Surface.
Fahad About the Work Somewhere along a long ride out of the city, we pulled over for chai. A tiny roadside tea shop, a dusty bike, and a pause. The froth on our glasses had already started to settle, but the warmth stayed—of the tea, the conversation, the road, and the silence in between. Not all froth is loud or toxic. Sometimes it’s soft, barely there, like a reminder that we were here, and we shared something simple.
126 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Froth: Hands holding half-filled teacups.
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DUST
It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere
Christopher Bapticia About the Work Shot during the high evenings, this picture features a shattered mirror left abandoned at the side of a busy road. Despite being shattered, it still reflects a tree on itself. I took this picture because, in my life, I’ve seen people dream big but settle for less. It wasn’t because they chose to, but because they had to bend to their circumstances. Their dreams eventually become like this mirror, shattered, and left in the dust. The vibrant mirror contrasts with the monochrome background, which symbolizes how bleak the world can be and how dreams act as a form of hope for people to believe in. The mirror reflects the tree, a “what could have been” that never blossomed into its full potential. Dreams are what drive humanity to exist and thrive. Then again, what are we without a dream to hold onto? 128 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Dust: Odaintha Kanavugal/ Broken Dreams.
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DUST
It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere
Cow aka Kaushik About the Work The photograph shows an orange peel acting as a galaxy, surrounded by stars and planets that are their seeds, reflecting the prompt Dust. 130 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Dust: A light source.
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Dust: Imprints on the floor.
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Dust: Patterns.
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DUST
It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere
Kumara Guru About the Work Captured on a local train in Chennai, it portrays an elderly woman’s hand clasped together in restless anticipation of her stop. The wrinkles on her hand were caused by age–a reflection of time passing by, and the experiences lived. Every wrinkle of hers is a tale left untold. *** In the haze of dust and golden sunlight, childhood comes alive—barefoot boys chasing a ball, not for glory, but for joy. This dusty ground may not shine, but it’s where friendships are built, goals are imagined, and dreams rise with every kick of dust. 134 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Dust: Small town, big dreams.
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136 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Dust: Slice of reality.
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RASTE
Branching Paths
Amogh M Aradhya About the Work Shot at the Baiyappanahalli Metro Depot, this image captures Bengaluru’s lifeline. Each track, with its twists and turns, represents a different journey, but they all converge toward Majestic, the interchange where stories from all parts of the city cross paths. In a city constantly reinventing itself, these tracks remind us that every path matters, and all are somehow connected. 138 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Raste: All tracks lead to Majestic.
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140 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Raste: All tracks lead to Majestic.
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RASTE
Branching Paths
Fahad About the Work Somewhere along the curve through Bandipur forest, on a long ride from Bangalore to Wayanad, I caught the forest not outside—but reflected in the window beside me. The trees, the slow light, the silence—all held in glass, like memory. Roads do this to me. They stir up thoughts I hadn’t named. They let stories outside weave into the ones I carry within. In motion, I find a kind of stillness. In transit, I find space to feel. And maybe that’s the secret of roads: they don’t just take us elsewhere. They take us deeper into ourselves. 142 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Raste: The road remembers—and so do I.
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RASTE
Branching Paths
Kumara Guru About the Work Captured on the roads of Cuddalore, this image shows a tribe of goats moving together as one-seemingly identical to the casual observer. But beneath the surface, each is different, lost in its own silent journey. They walk in unison, yet each carries a quiet search for identity, a subtle metaphor for the human condition. 144 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Raste: Exploring Identity.
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RASTE
Branching Paths
Hritika Shah About the Work This piece of work is photographs made on the streets of Bengaluru. The use of softness, warmth, and motion along these raste, represents an emotional reflection of the artist’s own self. It is an ongoing collection of fruits and flowers in the city and the people that carry it.
146 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Raste: Exploring Identity.
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Raste: Exploring Identity.
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Raste: Exploring Identity.
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MANE
Amogh M Aradhya About the Work This picture was shot at Science Gallery Bengaluru, the very home of Sci560. They say that the aircraft has to fly, but it stands grounded in the portico of its current home, surrounded by sharp shadows and silence… 150 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
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Mane: Aircraft at Science Gallery Bengaluru.
MANE
Christopher Bapticia About the Work The photo captures a solo bird in the sky flying over a patch of trees. Taken during the mellow light of late afternoon, it represents a search for belonging; the desperate need for a home. The trees reach upright toward the sky, resembling the tall walls of an enclosure, a symbolic prison. In contrast, the bird soars above it all, knowing its liberty has no bounds. It can fly wherever and whenever it chooses to. Through this image, I wanted to portray how I sometimes feel like a spectator watching these birds fly while my own wings have been bound together with shackles forged by the choices I’ve made; choices that were never truly mine
152 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
to make in the first place. Despite the shadow puppetry at play, I still hold on to my siragu virithu parakka aasai and I hope that one day it shall set me free. *** The picture captures a seemingly emotionless dog resting in the middle of Cubbon Park. He’s alone and isolated from everything around him. There are people around, but his resting spot is so far away from all of them that it doesn’t feel like he’s in the presence of other life. I took this picture because sometimes I feel like that dog. Clueless of purpose and numb to emotions. What am I doing here? What do I exist for? Most people spend an entire lifetime seeking these answers. Some perish without them. One must consider oneself blessed to find out. The isolation and loneliness add to the mix. Bengaluru is a big city, and it may feel diƯerent for someone who’s moved from a city where everyone knows each other. It makes you feel insignificant, like a stray in a metropolis, surrounded by towering buildings and strangers who ignore your existence. *** The picture portrays a hand reaching towards a light in the dark, about to grasp it. I took this picture because it reminded me of Icarus, who dared to fly too close to the sun. He may have fallen to his death, but for a moment, he was a happy man who’d embraced the experience that brought him joy. We know that Daedalus watched his son fall, but what if Icarus smiled as he fell? As he felt the winds of freedom brush against his skin? The light represents an opportunity, and the hand could choose to seize it. The future is uncertain, and you get to write it with the choices you make. Grasping the light requires the will to dare. While it may burn you, it also holds the potential for you to become the person you’ve always wanted to be. So, reach out to that light while you still can.
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154 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
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Mane: Siragu Virithu Parakka Aasai / A Desire to Spread Wings and Fly.
Mane: Edharkaalam en Ullankayil / The future is in the palm of my hands.
156 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Mane: Naan Yaar? / Who am I.
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MANE
Cow aka Kaushik Information Required About the Work The photograph was shot through a window that shows how light can pass through leaves, suiting the prompt Mane (home). 158 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Mane: Nightime view of a building.
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Mane: A woman spreads a piece of cloth.
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Mane: View of leaves.
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MANE
Kumar Guru About the Work As time flows, many find solace not in walls but in pillars—ancient temples become second homes where the heart feels at peace. For aging couples, these sacred spaces are more than places of worship; they are sanctuaries of memories, silent conversations, and eternal connection. 162 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Mane: Couple sitting in a temple.
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MANE
Satya Sampath About the Work Many workers sleep in markets, making these their temporary homes. It reflects the uncertain and unstable lives of those without a permanent place to call home in the city. 164 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Mane: Worker’s feet.
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PUT SCENE
Fahad About the Work Auto rides in the city aren’t always about getting somewhere. They’re where time stretches. Where you share silence, sweat, and the view from a scratched mirror. A break between things. A moment that doesn’t need a reason. Sometimes, just sitting in an auto with friends, caught in traffic, is the plan. That’s the scene. 166 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Put Scene: People reflected in the rear view mirror of an auto.
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PUT SCENE
Rutvik About the Work I have a left squinted eye, caused due to burning incense sticks. After every 8 years doctors rewire my muscles for a healthy fetch of neurotic muscles and aesthetically locate my eyeball passing according to human standards. This image in Put Scene is inspired by Dadism, that helps me step back and zoom in on a few things that might slide in with the genre. Something when questioned felt different but can there be a way of documenting or storing any form of memory, or imagination. 168 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
Put Scene: Invaders.
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170 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
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Put Scene: An image of a cat.
05
CONCLUDING NOTE Sci560 Reader 2026 / 173
174 / Science Gallery Bengaluru
The story of Bengaluru has long been intertwined with the story of science. Though today its identity appears inseparable from a tech-driven boom, the city’s entanglement with scientific imagination is far older, quieter, and more intricate. Long before glass towers and algorithms shaped its skyline, Bengaluru had already grown into a cradle of laboratories, research stations, observatories, and restless minds. Sci560: Science in the City, our year-long exhibition, was a gesture toward honouring that layered history. This Reader extends that gesture, tracing the many contours of the city’s scientific life through textual and visual renderings. When we set out to compile the Sci560 Reader, we imagined a volume that would carry forward the exhibition’s spirit. We wanted to retell Bengaluru as a city of science—through its stories and objects, its institutions and inventions, and through the individuals who shaped, and continue to shape, its scientific temperament. Equally, we hoped to view the city through the eyes of those who inhabit it: commuters, dreamers, migrants, researchers, students, and wanderers. How do they read the city? What rhythms, sensations, and contradictions define their encounter with it? In Science in the City, scientists speak from within the places where knowledge is made—laboratories, classrooms, and field stations. Their reflections reveal the shifting phases of science in Bengaluru, mapping how the city became a gathering point for some of the country’s most luminous thinkers. Paired with instruments and archival traces from the exhibition, these writings offer a glimpse into Bengaluru’s 20th-century scientific landscape. They help us ask: Why here? How did this city become a locus for inquiry, curiosity, and experiment? What sustained a culture of research that still animates it today? As we move away from laboratories and into lived life, we arrive at In your Words. Here, the rational cadence of the scientific city softens. Stories and poems unfurl around kitchens and lakesides, crowded roads, and quiet balconies. They summon the memories of those who left, those who arrived, and those who hover between belonging and estrangement. How does Bengaluru appear from the window of a bus, or in the pause between traffic lights? Does a city that rarely stops make room for tenderness, for rootedness? When one feels unmoored, where does one turn? This section becomes a creative commons—an invitation for all who have been touched by the city, and who in turn have shaped it simply by living within it. We don’t just encounter the city through words but also photographs. The city continues to move in the stillness of the frames present in the section: Through your Eyes. They evoke an affective response in the viewer, an invitation to inhabit the city anew. Reminiscent and evocative, the lens picks up a singular relationship with the city—architectural, natural, inhabited, or otherwise—and zooms in to invite the spectator to witness the city again. The frames invite the spectator to remake their relationship with the city. In many ways, this Reader is a gathering—of the people for whom Sci560 was
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created, and of those who brought it into being. It is a collective portrait of a city, its present inseparably bound to a deep, rich lineage of scientific curiosity, engineering craft, and technological imagination. If this Reader offers a portrait of Bengaluru, it is necessarily an unfinished one. Perhaps the invitation, then, is to keep looking, asking, and listening—to recognise that the story of science in Bengaluru is still being written, by all those who live, work, wonder, and imagine here. Shambhawi Vikram Senior Editorial and Publications Associate, Science Gallery Bengaluru Sarasi Ganguly Editorial and Publications Associate, Science Gallery Bengaluru
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06
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Sci560 Reader 2026 / 179
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Many thanks are due to several individuals who have made possible this first iteration of our annual Reader. The Sci560 Reader is an amalgamation of the many voices that crafted and took forward the spirit of our exhibition-season, Sci560. Thanks are due to the Mentors, Abhishek Annica, Jayapriya Vasudevan, and Sameer Raichur who anchored the In your Words and Through your Eyes programmes respectively, and created space for young adults to explore their creativity through varied formats. Thanks are due to the entire team at Science Gallery for their work on the exhibition-season. Special thanks to Devika Pradeep, Danny Jeyaraj, Gayatri Manu, Jagath V, Jahnavi Phalkey, Sarasi Ganguly, Shambhawi Vikram, Shubhani S, and Srinidhi Sairamakrishnan for their work on actualising this Reader. A big thank you to the contributors— Annapurni Subramaniam, Jahnavi Phalkey, K. VijayRaghavan, Rajesh Gopakumar, Sanjeev Jain, Shashi Thutupalli, Shobhana Narasimhan, Venu Madhav Govindu— for sharing their object of scientific curiosity with us. We are delighted to publish the work of the participants of In your Words— Anandita Balsavar, Aizaz, Ananya Mehta, Ankita Sardarjoshi, Cynthia, Danisha S, Garima, Isha Kadam, Jane Caryn, Shyamsunder Buddh. Finally, thanks to the photographers who allowed us to look at the city through their lenses—Amogh M Aradhya, Christopher Bapticia, Cow aka Kaushik, Fahad, Hritika Shah, Kumar Guru, Rutvik, Satya Sampath.
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BIOGRAPHIES Sci560 Reader 2026 / 183
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Annapurni Subramaniam is the current director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. She has more than three decades of research experience on star clusters, stellar populations, galaxies, and ultraviolet astronomy. She was also the calibration scientist for the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) on board AstroSat, India’s first multi-wavelength space observatory. Jahnavi Phalkey is the Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru. She is a historian of science and technology, with research spanning the twentieth century history of science, public history, public policy and public engagement. K. VijayRaghavan is DAE-Homi Bhaba professor, and former director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences. His research interests are in the field of developmental biology, genetics, and neurogenetics. He is a Fellow of the Indian Science Academies and was conferred the Padma Shri in 2013. Rajesh Gopakumar is a faculty at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTS), Bangalore. His research interests in theoretical physics lie at the intersection of quantum field theory and string theory. He has won several awards, and was the elected fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in 2015. Sanjeev Jain is a clinician and teacher, currently a Senior Professor at the Department of Psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore. His research spans the genetic correlates of psychiatry and neurological diseases. His work includes the genetics of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s disease and Huntington’s disease. Shashi Thutupalli is presently affiliated with the Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines at the National Centre for Biological Sciences. He earned his PhD in Physics, specializing in active matter. His research particularly delves into the interplay between eco-evolutionary processes and emergent mechanics. Shobhana Narasimhan is currently a faculty at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research. Her area of research in computational nanoscience. She is an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. Venu Madhav Govindu is an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He is a computer vision researcher with a primary interest in geometry. He currently leads a research group is focussed on the efficient and accurate large-scale 3D reconstruction using RGB and depth images.
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ABOUT THE MENTORS Abhishek Anicca is a writer, poet, and performer. He identifies as a person with disability and chronic illness. His research is focussed on disability and gender, especially on the relationship between disability, masculinity, and sexuality. He is the founder of Dislang, an online magazine that publishes narratives by disabled and chronically ill people. Jayapriya Vasudevan has worked in publishing in one form or another for several decades. She is the founder of Jacaranda Literary Agency and represents a wide range of books, looking at both fiction and non-fiction. Women’s stories and works in translation and inclusion form a major part of her focus. Sameer Raichur is an independent photographer based in Bengaluru, and a member of Diversify Photo and Native Agency. A former corporate lawyer, he graduated with distinction from the Hallmark Institute of Photography, USA. His work explores themes of nostalgia, masculinity, and memory. He is particularly interested in portraiture, and documentary photography.
ABOUT THE WRITERS Aizaz is a postgraduate student of English creative writing. He has been drawn to writing since childhood, recently exploring short stories and working towards becoming a novelist. Anandita Balsavar is a Bangalore-born, Delhi-raised student, currently pursuing an MA in English. Her writings often explore her relationship with Bengaluru, as a city often described as having changed beyond recognition. Ananya Mehta completed her undergraduate degree in English and Political Science. She has published on platforms like The Bombay Literary Magazine, The Hindu and The Open Dosa, writing about girls, fruits, language, birds, and BMTC. Ankita Sardarjoshi is a poet with an MFA in Creative Writing. She writes about beauty, damage, domestic rot, desire, and place. With a background in dramatic arts, her central focus includes experimenting with poetry, theatre and language. Cynthia works at St. Joseph’s University, with a deep love for reading. She is especially interested in fanfiction and poetry. Danisha S is a space engineer who dabbles in poetry. Her writings aim to infuse a fresh perspective to the everyday mundane. She designs space missions at work, and spends her time volunteering at non-profits.
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Garima is a fifth-year student of English studies, interested in the area of urban studies. Apart from academics, she enjoys reading fiction, occasionally writing poetry, and translating. Isha Kadam is a reader, writer, and engineer. Her work has been published in the Gourmand World Cookbook 2024 Award winning anthology “Memories on a plate”. She creates and consumes work that explores the human condition. Jane Caryn is a recent graduate of Journalism, Psychology, and English. As a writer, she publishes on Medium and has previously published on the online youth journal Pulse. She is also interested in city, literature, and ecology. Shyamsunder Buddh is an ecology and evolution researcher, interested in poetry and literature since high school. He has spent his childhood in parts of India, Trinidad and Tobago, and Sudan and is currently based out of Bengaluru.
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHERS Amogh M Aradhya is a multidisciplinary professional with experience in software, hardware prototyping, and media art. With a background in engineering and software development, he has worked on projects involving IoT, networking, and design. He is also passionate about community building and exploring creative fields like music and light design. Christopher Bapticia, a Bengaluru-based writer, photographer, and filmmaker from Coimbatore, began writing at eight and later directed school plays. Published twice on Baradwaj Rangan’s blog, he debuted his short film Bluff at Avyay ’24, winning second place. Influenced by Tamil cinema, he creates layered, melancholic, subtext-rich narratives. Cow aka Kaushik, is a self-taught filmmaker and photographer based in Bengaluru. Fahad is a curious learner and visual storyteller exploring the intersections of art, entrepreneurship, and social change. At Project DEFY, he designs learning spaces that foster experimentation and self-directed growth. Through photography, filmmaking, and collaborative community work, he seeks to learn, reflect, and remain connected to what genuinely moves him. Hritika Shah is a food stylist and photographer born and raised in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. She documents different cultures and takes inspiration by exploring food and hospitality. Her archive of photos is named “teabag” referring to a bag full of tea from around the cities in the form of photos.
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Kumar Guru, a 20-year-old aspiring photographer and videographer, captures quiet, overlooked moments. Beginning with an iPhone, he now pursues photography as a lifelong practice of presence, observation, and everyday beauty. Rutvik, an architecture graduate, has worked extensively across western port towns, the forests of Kishkinda, the valleys of Malwa, and cities shaped by unified development laws, all in pursuit of envisioning thoughtful and context-driven development. Satya Sampath is a Master’s student in Retail Experience Design at NID Bangalore with a background in architecture. His work explores everyday urban life through space and photography, focusing on themes such as identity, resilience, and informal culture. He aims to tell honest, grounded stories rooted in observation and lived experience.
ABOUT THE TEAM Danny Jeyaraj is the Junior Programmes Associate at Science Gallery Bengaluru. He holds a Master’s in Development, and is interested in labour, migration, gender, and social justice. He has a passion for running discussion forums and reading circles, at the intersection of research. Devika Pradeep is the Programmes Associate at Science Gallery Bengaluru, where she oversees end-to-end execution of programmes. She holds a Master’s in Development, and is passionate about culture, heritage, and geopolitics. Gayatri Manu is the Programmes Manager at Science Gallery Bengaluru. She is a Bengaluru-based writer working at the intersection of art, science, and technology. She was a 2024 CISA Fellow (Khoj x Goethe Institute), and her exhibitions have been shown at various places. Jagath V is the Senior Programmes Associate at Science Gallery Bengaluru, where he curates public programmes at the intersection of science and art. A biologist by training, he has an interest in research, science engagement and writing. Jahnavi Phalkey is the Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru. She is a historian of science and technology, with research spanning the twentieth century history of science, public history, public policy and public engagement. Sarasi Ganguly is the Editorial and Publications Associate at Science Gallery Bengaluru. She holds a Master’s in South Asian Studies, specialising in Cultural Diplomacy. She is particularly interested in history and culture, museums, and art history.
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Shambhawi Vikram is the Senior Editorial and Publications Associate at Science Gallery Bengaluru. She is a researcher and social scientist, with interests in Critical Theory, Literary Theory, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her work brings together interdisciplinary research, editorial practice, and public-facing forms of knowledge-making. Shubhani S is the Senior Design Associate at Science Gallery Bengaluru. She is a researcher and curator with a PhD in Heritage Studies. Her practice brings together curatorial activision, environmental art in the Indian context, and archival research. Srinidhi Sairamakrishnan is the Design Associate at Science Gallery Bengaluru with a Bachelor’s degree in Human-Centered Design. Her practice brings together systems thinking, user empathy, and visual storytelling to create thoughtful and engaging design experiences. Her work focuses on developing design solutions that balance clarity, functionality, and ease of use.
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07 ABOUT SCIENCE GALLERY BENGALURU Sci560 Reader 2026 / 191
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Science Gallery Bengaluru (SGB) is a not-for-profit public institution dedicated to research-based engagement with young adults at the intersection of science, engineering, art, and design. Its unique model fosters proactive public involvement through dynamic research festivals anchored by interdisciplinary exhibitions and programmes. SGB is established with the founding support of the Government of Karnataka and three establishment patrons—Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Rohini Nilekani, and Sudha and Kris Gopalakrishnan. SGB works with three academic partners: the Indian Institute of Science, the National Centre for Biological Sciences, and the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences. Our mission is to ‘bring science back into culture’ through: •
Empowering Young Adults with our Mentorship Initiative that encourages non-evaluative, self-motivated, hands-on learning. We provide exposure to research practices and nurture future research pioneers and active citizens.
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Open Research at our Public Lab Complex that encourages open-ended experiments through collaborations for young adults and experts. We provide access to research tools and outcomes outside institutional walls to catalyse antidisciplinary thinking and intergenerational co-inquiry.
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Shaping Culture with our Public Engagement and Community Initiatives that contribute to build a society with critical appreciation for the rigour of science, an ability to ask good questions, and participate in better informed public debates.
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