Sunday, July 5, 2020
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
Uzhudu uNdu vaazhvaaray vaazhvaar
The science behind the ability to grow plants
Ranjani Govind
Bengaluru, April 27, 2020 14:42 IST
Updated: April 28, 2020 17:12 IST
Agri-scientist and entomologist Rajendra Hegde gives a step-by-step guide to urban gardening
With people staying home during the lock-down, now is the right time to indulge in some gardening. And it is perfectly alright if you don't have rolling fields of mustard to nurture your green thumb. Your terrace is fine too. Agricultural scientists Vishwanath Kudur and Rajendra Hegde say if you follow the science of growing plants, you will be a successful urban farmer.
Kudur and Hegde conduct workshops on terrace gardening. As these sessions have been suspended, due to COVID-19, Hegde answers questions on social media and conducts online sessions.
The science behind the ability to grow plants
Hegde, born in Honnavara into a farming family, holds a doctorate in Agricultural Entomology from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad. He spent 15 years working with farmers to help them grow crops by adopting the right strategies to manage pests. As programme coordinator at the resource NGO, Agriculture Man Ecology Foundation (AMEF), he has trained dryland farmers in sustainable practices.
"When I met Vishwanath in 2004, he was already propagating terrace gardening. We conducted national seminars to propagate sustainability by growing crops in containers," says Hegde, who also worked for the organic farming wing of Vittal Mallya Scientific Research Foundation. He co-founded the BRICS LLP in 2015 to re-think and build on pest management practices for urban foodscapes.
Vishwanath started Garden City Farmers to promote organic terrace gardening in 2011. Hegde is one of the founder trustees. "In a place like Bengaluru if people can have healthy gardens, it is a boon. After a while people get disappointed as they don't know how to manage pests that attack their plants. One need not kill insects, they have to be managed. Just like human beings, plants too need good health to ward off insect attacks.
During the lock-down, Hegde's phone and mail are inundated with questions on how to start a healthy garden. "These are the basics people need to know about the overall management of plant health."
The science behind the ability to grow plants
Seeds
For healthy, well-yielding plants, seeds have to be big, pest free and viable, Hegde says. "There is nothing called organic seeds. Seeds are seeds or planting material, and there is nothing organic or inorganic about it. The idea behind urban gardening is to promote native or local types that have evolved in the local environment. Crops grown like this are better than hybrids, which need different conditions to thrive. One needs to source seeds locally through gardeners or suppliers of native seeds only for the first time. Then one can learn to produce and collect viable seeds by leaving the first fruit to mature on the plant. Remove the seeds and dry them in the shade for about a week. Select big seeds and store them in a paper cover or bottle in a cool place and they will last for a year.
Seedlings and germination
Small, medium and big seeds have to be handled differently. Leafy greens, such as amaranthus, coriander, spinach, methi and mustard have small seeds and can be sown in rows with narrow spacing. Bushy vegetables such as tomato, brinjal, chilli, capsicum, cabbage, cauliflower, khol-khol have medium size seeds. They are raised in nurseries in trays, coffee cups or milk covers in a soft growing medium and transplanted. Bhindi, ridge gourd, bitter gourd, cucumber, beans have big seeds and should be planted singly (seed dibbling). They can be transplanted or directly raised.
Containers
"Containers are not as important as what goes into them," says Hegde. You have to choose the size depending on what you are growing. Milk covers, broken buckets, wheat, rice, cement or jute bags can be made containers. Pots in mud, coconut coir and jute fibre can also be used. UV-stabilised grow bags are the latest additions in the market.
For bushy crops such as tomato, brinjal and chilli, a one cubic feet container will do.
For creepers/climbers/vines, such as ridge/bitter/snake/ash or bottle gourd, cucumber, chow chow, a 1.5x1.5x1.5 foot holder is fine. For perennial crops such as curry leaves, lime, sapota, guava, hibiscus or jasmine, a 2x2x2 foot container is a minimum requirement.
Growing medium
This would be made of three parts compost and one part soil. The compost should be a mix of 40 % manure (cow or horse dung, goat or sheep pellets) 40 % vermi compost or earth worms; five % plant cakes (neem, hongamia, mustard or groundnut); 10 % cocopeat/leaf powder; four percent rock phosphate (available in agri-input or garden shops or nurseries) and one percent bio-fertilisers/humic acid granules for organic supplements of primary and secondary nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous potassium calcium, magnesium and sulphur. Manure can be replaced with homemade wet-waste compost.
Placing the pots
Direct sunlight is more important for nearly 50 kinds of food crops. Dispersed light from the sides is good enough for many crops such as leafy greens of any kind, including lettuce. "When you distribute the pots prudently, it is another step in the right direction and requires perfect planning."
Soil-less medium
While soil-less mediums can be used, they do not supply all the required amino acids. This is the difference between safe food (surakshita aahara) and functional food (poushtika aahara).
A workshop on pest management on urban foodscapes will be on Facebook live on May 2 at 11 am and a workshop on sustainable agriculture on May 3. For more information and queries, mail Rajendra Hegde on rajendranhegde@gmail.com
Ranjani Govind
Bengaluru, April 27, 2020 14:42 IST
Updated: April 28, 2020 17:12 IST
Agri-scientist and entomologist Rajendra Hegde gives a step-by-step guide to urban gardening
With people staying home during the lock-down, now is the right time to indulge in some gardening. And it is perfectly alright if you don't have rolling fields of mustard to nurture your green thumb. Your terrace is fine too. Agricultural scientists Vishwanath Kudur and Rajendra Hegde say if you follow the science of growing plants, you will be a successful urban farmer.
Kudur and Hegde conduct workshops on terrace gardening. As these sessions have been suspended, due to COVID-19, Hegde answers questions on social media and conducts online sessions.
The science behind the ability to grow plants
Hegde, born in Honnavara into a farming family, holds a doctorate in Agricultural Entomology from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad. He spent 15 years working with farmers to help them grow crops by adopting the right strategies to manage pests. As programme coordinator at the resource NGO, Agriculture Man Ecology Foundation (AMEF), he has trained dryland farmers in sustainable practices.
"When I met Vishwanath in 2004, he was already propagating terrace gardening. We conducted national seminars to propagate sustainability by growing crops in containers," says Hegde, who also worked for the organic farming wing of Vittal Mallya Scientific Research Foundation. He co-founded the BRICS LLP in 2015 to re-think and build on pest management practices for urban foodscapes.
Vishwanath started Garden City Farmers to promote organic terrace gardening in 2011. Hegde is one of the founder trustees. "In a place like Bengaluru if people can have healthy gardens, it is a boon. After a while people get disappointed as they don't know how to manage pests that attack their plants. One need not kill insects, they have to be managed. Just like human beings, plants too need good health to ward off insect attacks.
During the lock-down, Hegde's phone and mail are inundated with questions on how to start a healthy garden. "These are the basics people need to know about the overall management of plant health."
The science behind the ability to grow plants
Seeds
For healthy, well-yielding plants, seeds have to be big, pest free and viable, Hegde says. "There is nothing called organic seeds. Seeds are seeds or planting material, and there is nothing organic or inorganic about it. The idea behind urban gardening is to promote native or local types that have evolved in the local environment. Crops grown like this are better than hybrids, which need different conditions to thrive. One needs to source seeds locally through gardeners or suppliers of native seeds only for the first time. Then one can learn to produce and collect viable seeds by leaving the first fruit to mature on the plant. Remove the seeds and dry them in the shade for about a week. Select big seeds and store them in a paper cover or bottle in a cool place and they will last for a year.
Seedlings and germination
Small, medium and big seeds have to be handled differently. Leafy greens, such as amaranthus, coriander, spinach, methi and mustard have small seeds and can be sown in rows with narrow spacing. Bushy vegetables such as tomato, brinjal, chilli, capsicum, cabbage, cauliflower, khol-khol have medium size seeds. They are raised in nurseries in trays, coffee cups or milk covers in a soft growing medium and transplanted. Bhindi, ridge gourd, bitter gourd, cucumber, beans have big seeds and should be planted singly (seed dibbling). They can be transplanted or directly raised.
Containers
"Containers are not as important as what goes into them," says Hegde. You have to choose the size depending on what you are growing. Milk covers, broken buckets, wheat, rice, cement or jute bags can be made containers. Pots in mud, coconut coir and jute fibre can also be used. UV-stabilised grow bags are the latest additions in the market.
For bushy crops such as tomato, brinjal and chilli, a one cubic feet container will do.
For creepers/climbers/vines, such as ridge/bitter/snake/ash or bottle gourd, cucumber, chow chow, a 1.5x1.5x1.5 foot holder is fine. For perennial crops such as curry leaves, lime, sapota, guava, hibiscus or jasmine, a 2x2x2 foot container is a minimum requirement.
Growing medium
This would be made of three parts compost and one part soil. The compost should be a mix of 40 % manure (cow or horse dung, goat or sheep pellets) 40 % vermi compost or earth worms; five % plant cakes (neem, hongamia, mustard or groundnut); 10 % cocopeat/leaf powder; four percent rock phosphate (available in agri-input or garden shops or nurseries) and one percent bio-fertilisers/humic acid granules for organic supplements of primary and secondary nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous potassium calcium, magnesium and sulphur. Manure can be replaced with homemade wet-waste compost.
Placing the pots
Direct sunlight is more important for nearly 50 kinds of food crops. Dispersed light from the sides is good enough for many crops such as leafy greens of any kind, including lettuce. "When you distribute the pots prudently, it is another step in the right direction and requires perfect planning."
Soil-less medium
While soil-less mediums can be used, they do not supply all the required amino acids. This is the difference between safe food (surakshita aahara) and functional food (poushtika aahara).
A workshop on pest management on urban foodscapes will be on Facebook live on May 2 at 11 am and a workshop on sustainable agriculture on May 3. For more information and queries, mail Rajendra Hegde on rajendranhegde@gmail.com
Saturday, February 8, 2020
Be Modern and Use Sanskrit to Decolonize Your Mind: Oscar Pujol
Be Modern and Use Sanskrit to Decolonize Your Mind: Oscar Pujol
Aparna Sridhar February 2, 2020
Oscar Pujol is a Catalan Indologist. He spent 17 years at BHU, Varanasi, taught Spanish there and obtained a Ph.D. in Sanskrit. He has written numerous papers on many aspects of Sanskrit language and philosophy. Amongst his many contributions to India and Sanskrit is a Sanskrit-Catalan dictionary containing around 64,000 entries, which took him around 12 years to complete. After having worked as Director of Education Programmes at Casa Asia, Barcelona, he is now setting up Instituto Cervantes at New Delhi.
Oscar Pujol with the King and Queen of Spain
I read that you found a copy of the Gita in a hotel room and liked the 3rd chapter. Why did the chapter appeal to you?
What really appealed me about that chapter was the concept of Karmayoga. I always felt uneasy with the idea that you have to be a renouncer to reach nirvana. External renunciation is not enough. You can nominally renounce everything, go to the forest and still be plagued by all kind of desires. The idea that what really matters is inner renunciation, and not the outward and perhaps superficial, renunciation of external action, is very powerful. The Gita says that not by merely renouncing action one is able to transcend all action, because even when we are motionless, sitting, activity continues to take place inside us, especially in the form of mental processes. This is a very deep insight that shows the subtleness of the Gita.
You have compiled a dictionary of Sanskrit. Is it Spanish to Sanskrit and Sanskrit to Spanish? How did you select the words? Was it based on usage?
The dictionary is Sanskrit to Spanish and it has more than 64,000 words. The selection was made according to use and frequency, taking into special consideration the Vedas, the Upanishads, Itihasa-purana, Kavya, the philosophical systems like Nyaya, Vedanta, Yoga, Sankhya, some Tantra and Buddhism too. The dictionary has encyclopaedic articles about Mythology, Philosophy, Grammar and Yoga for the general reader and not only for the student of Sanskrit.
You have traced the influence of some words in Sanskrit on some Western languages. How did you conduct that research?
Well, actually I took this information from the two etymological Sanskrit dictionaries of Manfred Mayrhofer, the great German scholar. If you want to known the relation of Sanskrit to other world languages, not only Western, but also to Indian languages like Tamil, these two dictionaries are a must.
The real novelty of my dictionary is to put side by side two kinds of etymologies: the comparative one of Western Philology, as recorded by Mayrhofer, and the Indian one belonging to the Paninian tradition of grammar. It is the first time that this is done.
What are your plans in the near future now that you have moved to Delhi?
If time permits, I would love to publish a new English translation of the Yogasutra along with a commentary. The edition will include a word to word translation into English to help the reader to relate the English terms to the original Sanskrit. The aim is to help Yoga teachers and practitioners to get more familiar with the Sanskrit language and to understand, at the source, the import of the sutras.
Every single job application or academic application today while asking for languages known mentions French and Spanish. Never Sanskrit. How do you think we can change that? Make Sanskrit both ancient and modern?
Well, I gave in a recent article in Swarajya magazine a list of recommendations to that effect. The most important thing is to understand that Sanskrit is still relevant to the modern world. It has many things to say in fields like Aesthetics, Psychology, Linguistics, Hermeneutics, Political Sciences, Medicine, Consciousness Studies and of course yoga and meditation. Take for instance the whole phenomena of mindfulness and how it is used in hospitals and at the workplace. The original concept comes from Sanskrit and its daughter language, Pali. Sanskrit gave birth to such important ideas as non-violence (ahimsa) and compassion (karuna). Sanskrit is a wonderful tool to liberate our mind from the two of the most pressing problems of the modern world: addiction and depression. Sanskrit is an analytical and a holistic language. It is both argumentative and sacred. It is good for singing and reciting. Be modern and use Sanskrit to decolonize your mind.
Moreover if you speak an Indian language, there are now methods to learn Sanskrit in an easy and pleasant way. Indian people, irrespective of their religion or ideology, should be very proud of having such a national treasure. It is a paradox that many foreigners feel attracted to it, while many people in India still consider it as dead language and an oppressing one, representing a backward way of life.
Who are the people from Spain who are interested in learning Sanskrit? Are there many?
We should speak not only of Spain, but include all the Spanish speaking countries. Sanskrit is taught in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, etc. Traditionally the interest for Sanskrit in the West was confined to the Academia. Now there is a much broader interest related to yoga, meditation and Indian philosophy.
In absolute terms, perhaps, the number of people is not so big, but what is relevant is that Sanskrit is cultivated by small groups of people all over the world.
Certainly there are big challenges on how to make Sanskrit more accessible to Spanish speaking people. There is a lack of teaching materials and we need to devise better methods to teach Sanskrit to make it easier and more palatable. The publication of the Sanskrit-Spanish dictionary is one step in that direction. Sanskrit is taught at several universities and also privately.
Many Indian musicians are travelling to Spain and jamming with Spanish musicians. Do you find similarities in our music?
Yes, there is a connection because of the gipsy roots of Flamenco music. Gipsies came from India and both Flamenco and Shastriya Sangit are modal forms of music, where the compositions are centred on a set of notes of a particular scale giving the distinctive flavour of a raga. It is said that some Indian ragas, such as Bhairavi, are also used in Flamenco. Some forms of jazz are also modal and that's why jazz combines very well both with Flamenco and Indian music.
LIVING IN INDIA
What was the most memorable part of living and learning in Varanasi?
Well for me the most memorable part was to have the privilege of learning Sanskrit with the pundits. In the morning I attended my classes at the Banaras Hindu University and in the evening I sat at the feet of my masters and learnt in a more traditional way. I had two outstanding teachers: Vagish Shastri and Shri Narayan Mishra. The difference between the western method and the traditional Indian one is that in the West knowledge is accumulated, while in India it is interiorized and made part of oneself. In the modern West knowledge is performative, in India transformative.
Besides, at least at that time, Banaras had a very vibrant cultural scene. There were lots of concerts and performances, seminars and conferences. Of course it was all about Indian culture, but that was the reason why we were in Banaras. We did not go there to attend a Western classical music concert or an exhibition of impressionist French painters.
Was it difficult bringing up your child in Varanasi?
Not at all, my son Vasant was born in Banaras on Vasant Panchami and he spent the first 12 years of his life there. On the contrary, he was very sad, when we had to go back to Barcelona. In the beginning he missed his Banarsi life and friends. In the course of time he adjusted very well to the life in the West and now he feels at ease both in India and in Europe. He was a bilingual speaker of Hindi and Catalan and after he learnt Spanish and English.
What does your wife find most appealing about Bharatanatyam?
Well, she always says that it is an integral form of art. You have sangit, you have sahitya, you have dramatic performance and you have dance. It is a body, mind and soul experience. When you dance you have to attend simultaneously to the motion of the feet, the hands, the arms, the eyes, the eyebrows and convey rasa through your facial movements. It is sacred beauty in movement.
Aparna Sridhar
Aparna Sridhar February 2, 2020
Oscar Pujol is a Catalan Indologist. He spent 17 years at BHU, Varanasi, taught Spanish there and obtained a Ph.D. in Sanskrit. He has written numerous papers on many aspects of Sanskrit language and philosophy. Amongst his many contributions to India and Sanskrit is a Sanskrit-Catalan dictionary containing around 64,000 entries, which took him around 12 years to complete. After having worked as Director of Education Programmes at Casa Asia, Barcelona, he is now setting up Instituto Cervantes at New Delhi.
Oscar Pujol with the King and Queen of Spain
I read that you found a copy of the Gita in a hotel room and liked the 3rd chapter. Why did the chapter appeal to you?
What really appealed me about that chapter was the concept of Karmayoga. I always felt uneasy with the idea that you have to be a renouncer to reach nirvana. External renunciation is not enough. You can nominally renounce everything, go to the forest and still be plagued by all kind of desires. The idea that what really matters is inner renunciation, and not the outward and perhaps superficial, renunciation of external action, is very powerful. The Gita says that not by merely renouncing action one is able to transcend all action, because even when we are motionless, sitting, activity continues to take place inside us, especially in the form of mental processes. This is a very deep insight that shows the subtleness of the Gita.
You have compiled a dictionary of Sanskrit. Is it Spanish to Sanskrit and Sanskrit to Spanish? How did you select the words? Was it based on usage?
The dictionary is Sanskrit to Spanish and it has more than 64,000 words. The selection was made according to use and frequency, taking into special consideration the Vedas, the Upanishads, Itihasa-purana, Kavya, the philosophical systems like Nyaya, Vedanta, Yoga, Sankhya, some Tantra and Buddhism too. The dictionary has encyclopaedic articles about Mythology, Philosophy, Grammar and Yoga for the general reader and not only for the student of Sanskrit.
You have traced the influence of some words in Sanskrit on some Western languages. How did you conduct that research?
Well, actually I took this information from the two etymological Sanskrit dictionaries of Manfred Mayrhofer, the great German scholar. If you want to known the relation of Sanskrit to other world languages, not only Western, but also to Indian languages like Tamil, these two dictionaries are a must.
The real novelty of my dictionary is to put side by side two kinds of etymologies: the comparative one of Western Philology, as recorded by Mayrhofer, and the Indian one belonging to the Paninian tradition of grammar. It is the first time that this is done.
What are your plans in the near future now that you have moved to Delhi?
If time permits, I would love to publish a new English translation of the Yogasutra along with a commentary. The edition will include a word to word translation into English to help the reader to relate the English terms to the original Sanskrit. The aim is to help Yoga teachers and practitioners to get more familiar with the Sanskrit language and to understand, at the source, the import of the sutras.
Every single job application or academic application today while asking for languages known mentions French and Spanish. Never Sanskrit. How do you think we can change that? Make Sanskrit both ancient and modern?
Well, I gave in a recent article in Swarajya magazine a list of recommendations to that effect. The most important thing is to understand that Sanskrit is still relevant to the modern world. It has many things to say in fields like Aesthetics, Psychology, Linguistics, Hermeneutics, Political Sciences, Medicine, Consciousness Studies and of course yoga and meditation. Take for instance the whole phenomena of mindfulness and how it is used in hospitals and at the workplace. The original concept comes from Sanskrit and its daughter language, Pali. Sanskrit gave birth to such important ideas as non-violence (ahimsa) and compassion (karuna). Sanskrit is a wonderful tool to liberate our mind from the two of the most pressing problems of the modern world: addiction and depression. Sanskrit is an analytical and a holistic language. It is both argumentative and sacred. It is good for singing and reciting. Be modern and use Sanskrit to decolonize your mind.
Moreover if you speak an Indian language, there are now methods to learn Sanskrit in an easy and pleasant way. Indian people, irrespective of their religion or ideology, should be very proud of having such a national treasure. It is a paradox that many foreigners feel attracted to it, while many people in India still consider it as dead language and an oppressing one, representing a backward way of life.
Who are the people from Spain who are interested in learning Sanskrit? Are there many?
We should speak not only of Spain, but include all the Spanish speaking countries. Sanskrit is taught in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, etc. Traditionally the interest for Sanskrit in the West was confined to the Academia. Now there is a much broader interest related to yoga, meditation and Indian philosophy.
In absolute terms, perhaps, the number of people is not so big, but what is relevant is that Sanskrit is cultivated by small groups of people all over the world.
Certainly there are big challenges on how to make Sanskrit more accessible to Spanish speaking people. There is a lack of teaching materials and we need to devise better methods to teach Sanskrit to make it easier and more palatable. The publication of the Sanskrit-Spanish dictionary is one step in that direction. Sanskrit is taught at several universities and also privately.
Many Indian musicians are travelling to Spain and jamming with Spanish musicians. Do you find similarities in our music?
Yes, there is a connection because of the gipsy roots of Flamenco music. Gipsies came from India and both Flamenco and Shastriya Sangit are modal forms of music, where the compositions are centred on a set of notes of a particular scale giving the distinctive flavour of a raga. It is said that some Indian ragas, such as Bhairavi, are also used in Flamenco. Some forms of jazz are also modal and that's why jazz combines very well both with Flamenco and Indian music.
LIVING IN INDIA
What was the most memorable part of living and learning in Varanasi?
Well for me the most memorable part was to have the privilege of learning Sanskrit with the pundits. In the morning I attended my classes at the Banaras Hindu University and in the evening I sat at the feet of my masters and learnt in a more traditional way. I had two outstanding teachers: Vagish Shastri and Shri Narayan Mishra. The difference between the western method and the traditional Indian one is that in the West knowledge is accumulated, while in India it is interiorized and made part of oneself. In the modern West knowledge is performative, in India transformative.
Besides, at least at that time, Banaras had a very vibrant cultural scene. There were lots of concerts and performances, seminars and conferences. Of course it was all about Indian culture, but that was the reason why we were in Banaras. We did not go there to attend a Western classical music concert or an exhibition of impressionist French painters.
Was it difficult bringing up your child in Varanasi?
Not at all, my son Vasant was born in Banaras on Vasant Panchami and he spent the first 12 years of his life there. On the contrary, he was very sad, when we had to go back to Barcelona. In the beginning he missed his Banarsi life and friends. In the course of time he adjusted very well to the life in the West and now he feels at ease both in India and in Europe. He was a bilingual speaker of Hindi and Catalan and after he learnt Spanish and English.
What does your wife find most appealing about Bharatanatyam?
Well, she always says that it is an integral form of art. You have sangit, you have sahitya, you have dramatic performance and you have dance. It is a body, mind and soul experience. When you dance you have to attend simultaneously to the motion of the feet, the hands, the arms, the eyes, the eyebrows and convey rasa through your facial movements. It is sacred beauty in movement.
Aparna Sridhar
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