Ramanujan’s application

This is a fascimile of S. Ramanujan’s application for a clerk’s job. Dated February 9, 1912, it was addressed to the Chief Accountant, Madras Port Trust.

The precious documents pertaining of Ramanujan were transferred to the National Archives by the Madras Port Trust where the celebrated mathematician worked as an accounts clerk earning a monthly salary of Rs. 25.

In his 32 years of life, Srinivasa Ramanujan, ‘the greatest mathematician of the century’, achieved the distinction of being a Fellow of the Royal Society of England and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

R. Soundararajan
1/46, Sivasakti Nagar, Nagapattinam

Wanted: A Pied Piper on the Marina

I walk on the Marina on the well-paved road meant for pedestrians who want to go for long walks. It is a recent habit. The road is beautifully laid out, straight in long stretches and gently curving at other points relieving the monotony. The architects have done a splendid job.

I reach there a little before the sun sets. The sea is green and light and dark blue in some places and the few clouds above it are in shades of orange and pink. It is a glorious sight and, since the sea is on the east coast, I don’t face the sun directly. The cool breeze keeps blowing all the time. As the sun sets, traffic lights on the road come up, a circle of emerald green, breathtakingly beautiful. There is no other city in the whole of India I would rather be in than Chennai because of this wondrous gift of Nature to us.

BUT

The well-paved road meant for pedestrians is strewn with plastic covers which are blown by the wind from wherever they were thrown. You have to avoid cowdung patches (mercifully not fresh, otherwise you could skid on them). As you walk, a plastic cover might just get wrapped around your foot or fly into your face. People eat chips, groundnuts and fried stuff and throw the plastic covers as soon as they finish eating. Dustbins kept at several places are ignored. Coffee you can have with milk or black – but you can also throw the plastic cup where you want. On one side of the walk, grass struggles to grow on what perhaps was meant to be flower beds. Big holes in the ground reveal that rats are having a merry time multiplying in hordes with all the leftover food strewn around. If one rat can produce 75 rats a year, the number of rats living on the Marina is mindboggling. If a Pied Piper could be found to entice them to follow him to the sea, what a sea of rats there would be following him!

It is not the poor who dirty the place, but it is we, the middle class, who come there to enjoy the breeze and the ambience. And make a picnic out of any outing. The poor have no money to buy coffee, sundal and groundnuts.

I am too old to try to do something about this. Will the readers of Madras Musings?

– Radha Padmanabhan

Managing waste

Your article on ‘Waste Management’ (MM, January 16th) really reflects the anguish of people. Rules are there, but there’s no implementation. Though these rules are part of the agreement with the cleaning companies, they do not follow them. Perhaps the following can help.

We have Municipal Solid Waste Management Rules 2000, which came into force in October 2000. We have Supreme Court orders, we have huge funds allotments. We purchase lorries and machinery, we build garbage dumping yards in some-one’s backyards, we engage companies simply to collect and dump tonnes of our waste accumulations, but we don’t address the real basic problems.

1. We should ban the manufacture of plastic carry bags, etc. More than 20 per cent of our municipal waste consists of these plastic carry bags, cups, plates, etc. We all know the harmful effects of plastic carry bags. Everyone, from common man to people in power, says that plastic carry bags should be banned. You cannot ban their use unless you ban their manufacture. You can ask such production units to manufacture other plastic products by encouraging them with finance and technical knowhow. This will largely reduce the evils of plastic waste, save costs of handling and transportation of such waste, and solve 50 per cent of our waste problem.

2. We should encourage household composting, community composting and institutional composting. Give property tax rebates to such houses. Engage waste-pickers for source segregation and community composting works and maintain collection centres from where recyclable waste, such as plastic, paper, glass, iron etc. can be collected. This will decentralise the solid waste management, and will ensure pucca segregation and more reclaiming of recyclable waste and more revenue. This will also reduce the heavy transportation of waste together, and help reduce transportation expense.

3. Industrial, chemical and hospital waste etc. should not be mixed with municipal waste but should be transported separately and filled in a landfill scientifically and systematically. E-waste should be treated separately. You can retrieve a lot of recyclable materials from this. It is more important that we dispose of the remaining portion of e-waste in a safe landfill.

4. Building waste mostly consists of concrete, brick, mortar, wood, steel etc. Concrete, mortar and bricks can be ground and used as fine aggregate to meet fresh concrete needs. This will reduce the usage of sand, a natural resource. We should suitably encourage industries which can process these building wastes.

V. Kuppan
President, Kanchipuram
District Exnora

Preventing the mess

I thought I should share this with the readers. My mother was quite annoyed with garbage all over the street. Instead of complaining about it she decided to do something about it. She said that at least we will not contribute to this garbage menace. Therefore:

1 . We collect all vegetable kitchen-waste, pooja flowers and leftover food, if any, and put them in the pit dug in a corner of the ground (we live in a flat but there is a small open space where we can dig a pit).

2. All the used paper and paper packing material are kept in a plastic bag and given to the old paper collection shop once a week. Whatever money he gives is collected and at the end of the year notebooks are bought for our maid’s children.

3. All plastic covers and bottles and glass bottles are disposed of at the old things buying shop once a week.

4. The water from the kitchen sink is collected and poured into the rainwater harvesting area and so the water gets back into the ground.

5. Of course, we all carry cloth bags with us. We do not use plastic carry bags; so our house is almost garbage-free.

My mother is happy, we don’t contribute to the mess on the streets.

Mrs. P.V. Rao
3, 22nd Cross Road, Chennai 90

Herculean task

In MM, February 1st, there was mention of the ‘Ugly Indian’ group operating in Bangalore in near total anonymity. Quite unlike Chennai’s Exnora.

Be that as it may, cleaning Bangalore is one thing; cleaning Chennai is quite another. The fabled strong man Hercules may have cleaned the Augean stables but would most certainly be out of his depth if he is asked to tackle the noisome Cooum.

C.G. Prasad
9, C.S. Mudali Street
Kondithope, Chennai 600 079

Both correct

As a Sanskrit student and as a person taking an interest in Hindu temples, I feel both Kalas and Khalsa are correct and both represent transliterational variations of the Sanskrit term Kalasam, a dome (normally seen over temples), a part of the structure under reference.

N. Dharmeshwaran
Plot 456, II Link Road
Sadashiv Nagar, Chennai 600 091

Erratum

The Vijayaraghavan & Ganesh book on snakes (MM, February 16th) is priced at Rs. 65/- (Rupees sixty five) and NOT Rs. 650 as printed. (EDITOR: The error is regretted.)