On things that Move the Mind
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Problems and questions accumulated across five years of a PhD in granular materials, geophysical fluid dynamics, and continuum mechanics — a reference for curious minds.
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What happens to an air parcel if you displace it without letting it exchange heat with its surroundings? On the three ingredients behind atmospheric stability.
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Back to writing after a long time, freshly settled in a new country. On the laws that describe what a material knows about itself — from Hooke's law to Einstein's field equations.
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Continuum mechanics breaks down for granular materials. DEM rescues us by going back to basics: F = ma, one grain at a time, for millions of grains simultaneously.
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On a trip through Spiti's barren mountains, the landslides told a physics story: bigger rocks downslope, fine grains left behind. The Brazil Nut Effect in the Himalayas.
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Fluid mechanics gave me my lowest grade as an undergraduate and then became the subject of seven years of research. On the breadth of systems that journey covered, from hypersonic nozzles to stellar interiors.
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Written after submitting the thesis. Five years of a PhD — the research trajectory, the rock bottoms, and what I actually learnt from it all.
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The Fluid Dynamics of Sustainability and the Environment summer school in Paris — lectures, experiments, barbecues, and a boat party on the Seine.
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A curated list of resources for those of us who are doing a PhD for reasons somewhat short of pure brilliance. Pre-departure notes to self.
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From Aerospace Engineering to Astrophysics. On the taboos of changing fields, the application process, and why it is not as impossible as people say.
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A list of opportunities in India and abroad for undergraduates wanting to build research experience, plus notes on the cold email.
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Harman and I took a Flix bus to Chatham at 3am, got a flat tyre at km 5, got stopped by the police at km 10, and biked to Niagara in three days.
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Five days of lectures on climate surprises — warm and cold, past and future — by someone who manages to make optimism feel rigorous.
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How a cold email to a sitar player I found online led to the most homely corner of my life in Toronto.
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On Bhartiya Shastriya Sangeet, the Chowdhury House music conference in Kolkata, and what it means to hear Dr. N. Rajam play at 86.
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A farewell to Hall 11 at IIT Kanpur — the campus dogs, the architecture, and the terraces with smacking views.
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The trek almost didn't happen. Passports were speed-posted across four cities, a flight carried one to Cochin by mistake, and the border gates closed at 5pm.
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The planet crosses a stretch / as inconsequential as the rest. On what it means to celebrate an arbitrary orbit.
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A long poem in Bengali — on old friendships, growing up, the questions we ask only in writing, and what remains after everything changes.
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A childhood love of trains, a forest, two elephants whispering, and the thing that looks like freedom but isn't.
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A clam's-eye view of the ocean, the oil beneath it, and the industry that knows where one ends but not what its own future costs.
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The door is always left unlatched. The game of Wait, played from both sides.
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A conversation across lightyears, a shared invention, and what happens when they finally destroy the Communicator.
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