Avanija Sundaramurti

A few of my favourite things: Books & Publishing, Being 'Social', Movies, Laughing, Being Snarky, Food, Politics, Design & Travel

[Whitepilled India @Ind_Whitepill]

I am also guilty of looking at infrastructure for the steel and glam.

But reality is every infra also touches the lives of so many Indians.

This video is from a new Mumbai Metro line.

Listen to this common Indian.

[Yash Bhardwaj @ybhrdwj]

I made a website that plays bangers from indian barbershops

before you became fancy and started visiting salons. you once went to a 'saloon'. ₹20 haircuts. simple hairstyles with music that could fix your soul.

https://t.co/j3E8VfwiUU

[Avanija Sundaramurti @Avanija]

@FurlencoSupport I keep getting messages that my delivery needs to be rescheduled and when I reschedule nothing gets delivered and then I get another message saying it cannot be delivered and I need to reschedule. What is going on?? There is no way to reach you. No one is helping

[planet clarke 🌱 @planetclarke]

Being 10 years old and making your debut in epigenetic trauma research all because you noticed your caterpillars still loved you after becoming butterflies is so profound and poetic and impressive. I love children and their incredible hearts and minds!!!!!!

[Kirubakaran Rajendran @kirubaakaran]

The moment you land in Chennai Airport, you will experience a Safari ride which even Masai Mara won’t give you.

Once you Land, Find your Bags, then Find the buggy stand. Join the queue. Wait. Watch others also wait. Buggy arrives. Buggy takes you on a scenic tour of the entire airport campus. Finally drops you at the taxi counter.

Then you realise, you have to take an elevator to get your Ola/Uber. Now find the elevator. Elevator fits exactly 4 people and your luggage does not count. Wait for the next one. Reach the taxi stand. Join another queue.

This whole journey will be longer than your actual flight duration.

If India ever ranks its worst airports, Chennai does not just top the list.

Chennai is the list.

[Aakanksha🇮🇳 @Charu_on_X_x]

I don't think I have ever heard Rajesh khanna speaking English before.

What a great clip. And that accent. Totally charming. ❤

[Henry Shevlin @dioscuri]

I used to love a web tool called StumbleUpon. Added a button to your browser that would take you to random blogs and websites. Found so much fascinating stuff that way, and it was the antithesis of today’s winner-take-most centralised web.

[Tom Harris 🇬🇧 @MrTCHarris]

My son set me this.

[Varun Guru @iamvarunguru]

Three 16 year old Indian students can remove microplastics from water using tamarind seeds.

And they've received a $12,500 grant from The Earth Prize to develop this solution.

How did they do it?

Tamarind seeds have something called polysaccharide - which is a sticky compound that can natural polymer. Kinda like a plant-based glue.

This glue when mixed with water can pull out microplastics and clump them together.

And these kids are using the same principle to develop their product called "Plas-Stick" - which is just this power made from waste tamarind seeds.

Now, "Plas-Stick" is still in its developmental stage and there is a lot that needs to be done before it can be scaled.

But if they pull this off - we could have a simple, biodegradable and scalable solution to purify water for billions of people in the world.

And that's something.

Kudos to Vivaan Chhawchharia, Ariana Agarwal, and Avyana Mehta.

P.S. Video and Picture taken from @TheEarthPrize

[Addison Zeller @amhcrane87]

Granta's response is truly breathtakingly insane

[Shiv Aroor @ShivAroor]

Sweetest moment when Vaiko’s house-helps met CM Vijay yesterday. ♥️🥹

[🎥: @polimernews]

[Joseph Fasano @Joseph_Fasano_]

The best thing my students ever gave me. One semester I thought they were just *really* focused on taking notes. Turns out they were compiling a book of all the slightly unhinged things I'd said. It's 152 pages long.

[Rahul Sanghi @RahulSanghi1]

For the last three years, a startup in Bangalore has been obsessed with a pursuit that typically invites raised eyebrows, naked skepticism, and accusations of stealing from sci-fi:

@dognosis is training dogs to detect cancer.

And until you've spent time at their facility - a former pomegranate farm in the outskirts of Bangalore - perhaps skepticism is the rational response.

But Dognosis isn't betting on some pie-in-the-sky idea or some charming novelty act, they're betting on evolution.

@akadogluk and @Itamar_Bitan based their company on the fact that the dog's nose - a product of fifteen millennia of co-evolution with humans - can detect the faint chemical trace of cancer in your breath at a resolution that our machines, algorithms, and laboratory tests have never come close to matching.

We've known this fact for decades. We've consistently failed to do anything meaningful with that knowledge.

The missing link has been figuring out what the dog's nose knows, and applying it in a standardised, scalable, and clinically validated way.

Dognosis is building this missing piece of the equation i.e. the translation layer that allows the dog's nose to speak a language medicine can understand, enabling us to harness an ancient biological intelligence and plug it into our modern medical infrastructure.

Maybe you've read the paragraphs above and retained your skepticism. That's fair. But this past Friday, the Journal of Clinical Oncology - the world's most influential cancer journal - opted to make life much harder for the skeptics.

On Friday, the JCO published Dognosis' landmark study on breath-based multi-cancer detection - the largest of its kind ever conducted - showing that a team of trained dogs, equipped with sensors and AI, could detect multiple cancers from breath alone at 90%+ accuracy - including at Stage I, when it matters most - for $2 a test.

According to Akash, it proved "that everything we’ve known about the dogs is true".

Needless to say, it's a genuine milestone for Indian healthcare, health-tech, deep-tech, and, uh, dog-tech, that deserves far more attention than it's gotten so far.

To help change that, we were lucky to have Akash stop by the Tigerfeathers editorial desk this past week to unpack the Dognosis journey - helping us understand what they're building, how they're doing it, why it matters, and what comes next.

From where we're sitting, Dognosis is an n-of-1 Indian startup with an n-of-1 story that everyone in the Indian tech ecosystem should be aware of. If you've been intrigued by what you've read so far and you're keen to go deeper, dive into our piece here👇

https://t.co/limlGrgxJ1

[The Kaipullai @thekaipullai]

I started watching the movie "Thaai Kizhavi" on Hotstar the other day, which is set in the heart of Tamil Nadu, I encountered a very unfamiliar name for a character.

The character's name was "Pennycuick"

Now in a land where language is an emotional topic where people sever relations, friendships and even give their lives for Tamil, a Scottish first name for a Tamil guy seems a little out of place.

Some may even call it a blasphemy.

How an odd Scottish Surname, whose origins lay in the town town of Penicuick near Edinburgh, became a symbol of pride and honour, 8000 kms away on the other side of the globe in Southern Tamil Nadu, is an amazing story.

It is a story that also tells you the real meaning and purpose of life. It makes you understand that all the worldly things like power, prestige, position and money that we crave for, is just a mirage that we are chasing.

The real glory lies someplace else.

And it starts with one man. John Pennycuick (1841 - 1911)

John Pennycuick was born in Pune in the year 1841, as the fourth son of Brigadier John Pennycuick, a soldier in the British army.

However at the age of 8, a great tragedy befell him and his family.

In 1849, in the second Anglo Sikh War, his father and his elder brother Alexander, were killed in action fighting the Sikhs in the battle of Chillianwala.

When a kid sees his father and brother killed by the natives they are supposed the rule, the normal course of action is to grow up into a into a rabid Indian hating racist white man, who would have spent the rest of his life cursing India.

But John Pennycuick was a better man than that. He wanted to do something that would leave a legacy behind him.

And luckily for Tamil Nadu, he did.

If you have ever seen a physical map of India, you will see a contiguous mountain range that separates Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

These are called the Western Ghats.

Now the Western Ghats, despite all their beauty and splendor, have one small problem.

If you had been attentive in your sixth standard geography class, you would have known that Kerala receives most of its rain from what we call the South West Monsoon winds, which flow in from the Arabian sea.

Most of the lush, beautiful, God's own country poster type greenery, is because of the abundant rainfall provided by these winds.

Unfortunately, despite being in close proximity to Kerala, Tamil Nadu gets almost zero benefit from them because of these imposing ghats

The problem is acute especially in the districts of Theni, Madurai, Dindigul and Ramnad.

In Geography, we call it the Rain Shadow region.

In the mid 19th Century, the British recognized this problem.

They understood that their rapidly growing cities of Cumbum, Theni, Madurai, Ramnad etc, could not be supplied by the miniscule waters of the Vaigai River. They needed to do something drastic, to avoid a catastrophe.

Their solution was the River Periyar in today's Kerala.

They thought, if they could divert that river with a dam and a tunnel, and make those waters flow into the River Vaigai, the entire area from Theni to Ramnad could be transformed from an arid wasteland to an agricultural heaven.

They even finalized a site at the confluence of the River Mullai and Periyar. They called it, the Mullaiperiyar dam.

Unfortunately, this was not a computer game where two clicks and one prompt could build a structure that would divert the water.

This was real life.

And in the 1800s, real life was infinitely more difficult what it is today.

The first proposal for this dam came from the Maharaja of Ramnad in 1789. Realizing the cost of the dam would be greater than the total value of his kingdom, he gave up

Then the British tried their luck in 1850. But when the first teams saw the malarial swamp and the pestilential land that they had to live in, they turned around faster than Pakistanis in front of an Indian army battalion.

Between 1860 to 1882, four different proposals were sent for the construction of this dam, but each time it was rejected citing impracticality, affordability, lunacy and sometimes, all the three.

Then came a Certain John Pennycuick.

Serving as an officer in the Public Works department, in 1887 he landed in this desolate area to take charge of building the dam.

First problem he faced was the access to the site. The entire dam needed 80,000 tons of limestone and motorable roads, cranes and automobiles were at least 40 years away.

So he built a ropeway and then used bullock carts to transfer the limestone to the dam site.

Then there was the issue of diseases, especially Malaria.

He stumbled across a local arrack that ostensibly prevented it.

Pennycuick issued them to all the labourers working on the dam. They were high, happy and malaria free.

Slowly, the dam started taking shape.

But then the biggest issue was the River Periyar itself.

It realized that someone was trying to control it. So it started rebelling. It blew away all the coffer dams that were trying to restrain it.

And when this flooding happened once to often, the British guys decided that it was time to cut their losses and run. They stopped funding for the Mullaiperiyar dam.

But Pennycuick was not the one to stop at trifling issues like stopping of funds.

He sold his wife's jewelry and personally funded the rest of the dam.

And finally in 1895, the dam and the tunnel needed for diversion, was ready.

Through the 173 feet dam, 3000 ft above sea level, and a 1.5 km tunnel cut thru the mountains of western ghats, 3000 cusecs of water finally flowed into Vaigai.

The water problem of Theni, Madurai and Ramnad, was finally solved.

Today the Mullaiperiyar dam, irrigates more than 2 lakh acres of farmland. More than 50 lakh people directly depend on it, either for agriculture or drinking water.

The districts of Theni, Madurai, Dindigul, Sivaganga and Ramnad, have transformed from arid regions with frequent draughts to agricultural hotspots.

In the last 125 years it has benefitted. directly or indirectly. more than 100 million people. It has made Theni, Madurai and Ramnad the cities that they are today.

One dam, built by the vision and perseverance of one man, 131 years later, is still benefitting generation after generation

John Pennycuick could have taken the easier path in life. He could have gone back to Britain and lived a lavish comfortable life. He could have hated us Indians for killing his father and brother. He could have been a bitter man for the rest of his life.

But he didn't.

He decided to do benefit the land that he didn't even belong to. He wanted to alleviate the lives of people who were not even from his actual country. He wanted to bring succour and happiness to a lot that probably hated him.

He built the dam despite knowing he would neither be recognized for it, nor benefit from it financially.

He helped very same set of people who were responsible for the deaths of his father and brother.

What he did, transcended race, religion, caste and identity. It towers above stuff like region and language

Today Pennycuick isn't just a name in Theni district. It is a matter or pride and honour. Their bus stand is named the John Pennycuick bus stand. People, as shown in the movie, are named Pennycuick.

There have been thousands of rich men in Theni and Madurai after Pennycuick. There have been hundreds of leaders, politicians and officers who have trod on that land.

But none inspire the following and regard that Pennycuick has, 115 years after his death.

John Pennycuick proves to all of us, that you can earn money, buy cars, build houses, go to Universities abroad and float thermacol sheets on rivers, but respect and legacy, is the ultimate currency.

Because in 2026, you don't remember the MP / MLA of Madurai / Theni. You don't remember their Ivy league degrees. You don't remember their family legacy. You don't remember their mansions and money.

They are all forgotten in the sands of time.

But you have and will always remember, John Pennycuick.

P:S: Today, we talk about North India / South India, Hindi / Tamil etc. Sometimes I wonder what would Pennycuick from heaven feel about all of this.

P:P:S: Once when someone asked why Pennycuick was doing this idiotic stuff, he said ""I am going to be only once in this earthly world, hence I need to do some good deeds here. This deed should not be prorogue nor ignored since I am not going to be here again"

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

Can we PLEASE normalize putting summaries on the back of books again instead of reviews? I just genuinely want to know what the book is about before picking it up.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

If you're under 53 years old, you have never once been alive while a human was farther than 250 miles from Earth. Tonight, four astronauts are heading 252,000 miles out. That's a thousand times farther than any person has gone in your lifetime.

The 250-mile ceiling is where the International Space Station floats. Every astronaut since December 1972 has been stuck in that zone. Spacewalks, science experiments, cool photos from orbit, sure. But nobody left the neighborhood.

The last crew to go farther was Apollo 17. December 1972. Nixon was president. The internet didn't exist. Cell phones were 11 years away. The youngest member of that crew is now 90 years old.

The farthest any human has ever been from Earth is 248,655 miles. The Apollo 13 crew set that number in 1970, and they didn't mean to. Their oxygen tank blew up, and the emergency route home took them farther out than anyone before or since. Tonight's crew will break that record on purpose.

And the crew itself. Victor Glover becomes the first Black astronaut to leave Earth's neighborhood. Christina Koch becomes the first woman. Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian fighter pilot, becomes the first non-American to do so. When they come home, they'll slam into the atmosphere at 25,000 mph, faster than any human has ever traveled.

The Moon's south pole has ice. Water ice, sitting in craters so deep that sunlight hasn't hit them in billions of years. A 2024 NASA study found way more of it than anyone expected. You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which gives you rocket fuel, breathable air, and drinking water, all made on the Moon instead of hauled up from Earth. George Sowers at Colorado School of Mines calculated that Moon-made fuel could shave $12 billion off a single trip to Mars. The Moon is a gas station on the road to Mars.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced last week a $20 billion plan to build a permanent base at the South Pole over the next seven years, with landings every six months. China is developing its own lunar lander and spacesuit, aiming for a crewed landing by 2030. The Artemis program has burned through $93 billion so far, and the first actual surface landing is penciled in for 2028. There's a real question of who gets there first this time around.

Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon in December 1972 as part of Apollo 17. He's 90. Asked about it this week, he sounded pretty relaxed. "Mars is attainable," he said. "We're humans. That's what we've always done."

[The Ashram @theashramCH]

Sunday Storytime:

The Ghost at Nathu La.

Let us begin with the fact of the boots of a soldier… the boots of Sepoy Harbhajan Singh.

Every morning, at the shrine between Jeep La and Nathu La at somewhere above 14,000 feet on the Sikkim-Tibet border, where the air is the colour of nothing and the cold comes in off the Tibetan plateau like a debt collector who has been waiting a long time, a soldier polishes a dead man’s boots.

He polishes them to the standard the Indian Army requires of its living. He sets them beside the bed where the dead man’s sheets are turned back with military precision. He presses the dead man’s uniform and hangs it from its hook. He steps back, perhaps he salutes, perhaps he doesn’t … the gesture is between him and whatever it is he believes is in that room…and then he goes on with the rest of his day.

By evening, the boots are muddy.

By morning, the sheets are crumpled.

[..]

Now. You can believe what you like about this. You can call it mass delusion or institutional mythology or the psychological infrastructure of an army that needs its dead to mean something more than the cold arithmetic of death.

You would not be wrong. But you would not be entirely right either. Because the question that interests me is not whether Baba Harbhajan Singh is or isn’t present in that shrine.

The question that interests me is what it costs a man to do what those soldiers do … to make that bed, to polish those boots, to tend the living quarters of the dead and to mean it.

To do it NOT out of habit… NOT out of orders, but out of the specific and undefendable conviction that the man is there…that the man is listening and that the man will know if the boots are not properly done.

[..]

That costs something. To believe that deeply at that altitude…in that cold … with the Chinese two hundred meters away across a wire that has moved several times in living memory…that… that, my friend is not superstition.

That is a form of courage that the secular West has almost entirely lost the language to describe.

[..]

Sepoy Harbhajan Singh was 22 years old when the glacier stream took him on October 4, 1968, near Nathu La Pass, Sikkim. He was escorting a mule column.

This was one month after the Battle of Nathu La, in which 88 Indian soldiers and 340 Chinese soldiers died in four days of fighting so brutal .. and so pointless that both governments spent the next thirty years pretending it had never happened.

Harbhajan Singh survived the battle, but he did not survive the stream.

He was twenty two years old. Think about what 22 means. It means the body is at its absolute maximum…the lungs are deep, the legs are strong, the mind is sharp with the particular sharp clarity of a young man who has not yet had enough time to start making compromises.

It also probably means he had not yet been married or if he had been married, the marriage was still new enough to still be a kind of astonishment.

It probably means his mother was probably still living. It means there were things he intended to do.

He fell into the stream.

The cold at that altitude does not allow for any negotiation. The cold at 14,000 feet in October is not the cold of a difficult winter morning in NYC.

It is the cold of a place that does not particularly care whether you live or die…it is the cold that has watched ten thousand years of men crossing its passes and has developed no opinion on the subject whatsoever.

He drowned.

This is where the army’s story should end. Casualty report filed. Effects sent home. File closed.

But, my friends…instead, he began to appear in his comrades’ dreams.

Contd 👇🏼

[Jordan Lyall @JordanLyall]

Andy Weir announced a new novel with "no details yet"

Brother we already know: regular guy gets stuck somewhere impossible, MacGyvers his way out with real science, makes us laugh while we ugly cry, and we all finish it at 3am on a Tuesday.

Take my money.

[teen vampire, aged 40 @witchesflight]

“Larger and healthier dogs formed a protective perimeter around a german shepherd that was severely injured and struggling to walk” I’m going to DIE