Renesa | Spring Edition 2021

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Renesa - Spring Edition 2021

Editorial The previous year left everyone in a rather troubled and disconnected state. How did we survive it? Well, the credit of safeguarding our sanity goes to entities we often consider mundane: our routines, hobbies, families, friends, and surprisingly, our education. The people we’ve forged irreplaceable connections with over the past few years became our life support systems during these difficult times.

The Spring Edition of 2021, based on the theme of ‘Connections’, is Renesa’s attempt at embodying that feeling. With it, we seek to take you on a scintillating journey where we traverse uncharted territories and discover more than what meets the eye. Through a lavish collection of written pieces, this edition brings to light the spectacular ways in which seemingly unrelated things link up. From absurd conspiracy theories to the murky waters of job-seeking in the 21st century, from physics to art and music, and from multitasking to data privacy, let us take you through the entire spectrum of prose. Through this magazine, discover stories that leave you slack-jawed — the wonder of cinematic universes, the story of gleaming hunks of metal in Cuba, and the epic tale of the Martian Milonavirus.

As per tradition, this edition also hosts articles about technology, where countless breakthroughs are being made today, deepening the symbiotic relationship between humans and technology. If the literature geek in you is craving a good read, flip right to the ‘Reviews’ section, where you’ll discover two breathtaking novels.

Anime fans fret not, as this section also houses a review of a brilliant horror-thriller anime.

To celebrate the talents of the student community of our college, we are starting a new segment, one that’s been long overdue. The ‘SVNIT Wall’ is a collection of written pieces as well as artworks and photographs sent by our readers at SVNIT. Our hearts go out to the first-year juniors who missed their introductory year of college and were unable to immerse themselves in the rich SVNIT culture. Now, what if COVID hadn’t happened and this past year was perfect? What would an ideal year at SVNIT look like? We’ve got that covered with a pleasant surprise at the center of the magazine. You’ll find a detailed calendar depicting the moments that make our college life at SVNIT special. We present this calendar as a symbol of hope for the beautiful memories waiting to be made on campus in the coming semesters.

This magazine wouldn’t have come to fruition without the help of our faculty advisors, who were supportive of our creative liberties, our incredibly talented batch of writers who never fail to amaze us with their innovative ideas and perseverance, and our designers who brought their creative flair and infused life into these pages. We would also like to thank Convex and Akriti for aiding us in implementing the ‘The SVNIT Wall’ segment in this issue. Lastly, we would like to thank all you readers for your constant readership, unwavering support, and undying interest.

Saptarishi Pandey Chief Editor

Sumant S. Dangi Chief Editor

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Table of Contents Messages from Faculty

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Theme Articles Part-1

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Tunes of Terror and Joy Why Is There Only One Chronicles of Online Job-Seeking Multitasking, A Myth?

Tongue-Tied: How Languages Affect Thoughts The Curious Case of Cuba and Classic Cars

‘Tech’ Articles

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The Data Scandal Capacitivo - The Future of Smart Homes Immersion Virtual Traffic Lights: Redefining Transportation

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Theme Articles Part-2

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Milonavirus 32 Bush Did 9/11 36 The Starry Night: A Controlled Accident?

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Review Articles

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A Pleasure and a Calling The Legend of Kvothe Kingkiller Yakusoku no Neverland

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SVNIT Wall

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Our Unseen Connections With Nature There’s Always A Tomorrow Hyperconnectivity The Lost Melody Artworks Exhibit Photographs Exhibit

COVER PAGE DESIGN BY

Sahil Pathan

46 47 48 50 52 54

Chemical

B.Tech. III

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Renesa - Spring Edition 2021

Messages from Faculty “Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.” - Bruce Garrabrandt In more ways than one, this quote by artist-turned-author Bruce Garrabrandt embodies the philosophy and the spirit of Renesa.

For well over a decade, Renesa has connected the student body and served as a platform for the SVNIT community to share their thoughts, express their opinions, and showcase their creativity. Even though we reside in an institute of technology, it does not mean that we have to restrict ourselves to only a few fields. I am glad to see that along with academic studies and other college activities, many students regularly indulge in activities where they can express themselves openly, develop their talents, and expand their intellectual horizons. Even in difficult circumstances, our students have shown that they can persevere and create extraordinary work.

For the members of Renesa, this manifests itself in the form of writing and designing. These writings often consist of intricately woven stories and well-researched articles that present readers with new perspectives on many ordinary ideas and topics. The detailed illustrations made from scratch by the designers instil life into these pieces and depict the ideas in new ways.

As Faculty Advisor of Renesa, I am extremely proud that the students of our institute have taken the responsibility of providing an open platform to the college upon themselves.

They have proven that even during trying times, creativity and innovation can never be shut down. The fundamental abilities that exist in every one of us will shine bright even on the darkest days. I hope this magazine will rekindle that inner writer or inner artist inside you and inspire you to create new things and think of new ideas. As the theme is “Connections”, I hope that through this magazine, you relive the memories of your college life, discover new ways of thinking, and appreciate the irreplaceable connections you’ve made with people in college.

Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to all the readers of Renesa. The college magazine caters to every student and faculty member of SVNIT, making them the sole reason for its existence. This magazine would be incomplete without you, the readers. So, I thank you again from the bottom of my heart for sparing your time to enjoy reading this magazine and for supporting the team of Renesa.

Dr. Vipul Kheraj Faculty Advisor Renesa

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Right now, we see ourselves collectively facing this pandemic, a situation for which we had no experience and little preparation.

And, at this time, when the whole world is battling against it, Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat has added another feather to its cap by providing our students a stage to bring out their creative thoughts and expression.

This institute has been nurturing young minds of the nation for the last 60 years, celebrating Diamond Jubilee with the belief that “The heart of education is the education of heart.”

2020, a year of global recession, showed its dark side as well as opportunistic face to the economy and the environment. Frontline workers worked hard by giving their best services during this pandemic situation by providing medical facilities. Local restaurants and shops prepared, collected, and delivered food to healthcare workers. I personally extend a “thank you” to them for their dedication.

For you all, we have worked hard to bring up exhilarating flashbacks of the institution, its history, and achievements during these many years. We have for you, from the students, a wide range of poetry, riddles, paintings, and some informative and inspirational articles.

The magazine is with the theme “Connections” and I hope it will help you to express your thoughts beyond academics.

Happy reading!

Dr. Amrut Mulay Co-Chairman Renesa

It is a great pleasure to know that our students’ club is going to publish the online version of the college magazine, the Renesa - 2021 Spring Edition. This magazine will express the talent of the students of SVNIT Surat in multidimensional thoughts. This year is important in two aspects — firstly, almost all the students are away from the campus for about one year due to the worldwide pandemic of COVID-19, and secondly, SVNIT is celebrating its Diamond Jubilee this year. Due to the pandemic, students are away from their normal classrooms, away from their friends, and sitting all the time in front of a laptop, tablet, or mobile for online classes and exams. In this hard time, Renesa has provided students a platform to focus their skills in writing. Our institute is celebrating Diamond Jubilee this year and several events are being organized. The current edition of the magazine will add some flavour to the Diamond Jubilee celebration. Being the Co-Chairman of Renesa, I wish all the best for this publication.

Dr. A. K. Jana Co-Chairman Renesa

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Tunes of Terror and Joy WRITTEN BY Supal Padmashali Akshita Gupta

ILLUSTRATED BY Mechanical

B.Tech. II

ECE

B.Tech. II

Dev Jariwala

Comps

B.Tech. II

Theme Articles Part-1

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“Various testimonials have been made where it was revealed that the CIA has used metal and country music as torture methods.”

Has music ever been your salvation?

It is for most people. It’s more than just beats, jingles, and lyrics; it holds a very different and personal meaning for everyone. Leo Tolstoy, however, tries to articulate this meaning for us in simple words, “Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music, I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have…”. This description seems pretty accurate, doesn’t it? But what if I ask you if music has ever felt like punishment, like suffering? Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead might nod at this.

In an episode called ‘The Cell,’ Daryl is exposed to an upbeat song, “Easy Street,” while being imprisoned in a tiny cell and fed dog food sandwiches. This is a classic example of music torture — music being paired with sleep and food deprivation. The song used is a pop song about life on an easy street, drinking champagne, being out in the sun, and all other happy and bright things. After being subjected to such a song on repeat and feeling humiliated and defeated, the prisoner capitulates to the mockery.

If you are still not convinced, let it be known that the US Army has put this theory into practice numerous times. It has made perfectly sane people scream, smash their heads against walls, and even surrender to the troops. This was the case for the repressive Panamanian General Manuel Noriega, who had holed himself inside the Vatican embassy

in Panama City. Reportedly, the US Army blasted rock hits of “Guns N’ Roses” and “The Door” for three days in front of his shelter until he surrendered. It gets infuriating when you are unable to turn down the volume or switch channels at your will. Being exposed to a song for hours or days non-stop does sound irking.

This technique is very shrewdly used by the CIA to break down prisoners.

Various testimonials have been given where it was revealed that the CIA uses metal and country music as torture methods. These genres may not be popular among listeners, but this is the very reason why they’re chosen. What makes this music more annoying to detainees is that it’s foreign to them; this helps in making them surrender easily.

Popular songs used by the CIA for this process include the Sesame Street theme song, “Dream No More”

by Metallica, pop hits of Britney Spears, and even Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady.” Mohamed, a man detained in Guantanamo Bay, said, “My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb...There was loud music, Eminem’s Slim Shady and Dr. Dre for 20 days...”.

In contrast to music being used as an intrusive measure for torture, there have been numerous studies that ascertain the fact that music is therapeutic. Music is used in therapy for dementia patients.

Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia cause progressive memory loss. People even forget the names of their loved ones and places, but the part of the brain that stores the musical memories

remains relatively undamaged. When subjected to familiar melodies, their semantic memories are triggered and produce pleasurable responses which, in turn, improve their cognitive functions.

Numerous challenges of autism were also found to be eased by music. By stimulating the whole brain instead of just one hemisphere, music has been known to help with cognitive skills and unsociability.

Just singing along to the lyrics while sitting in small groups has assisted people with the autistic spectrum to do better in social environments.

A more common form of music therapy is when you listen to tunes with 60 beats per minute. This helps the brain release ‘alpha brainwaves’ (8-14 Hz) which indicate that you’re conscious but relaxed. If the beats per minute are any lower, you have the perfect recipe for falling asleep. Delta brainwaves (0.5-5 Hz) are present during dreamless sleep (the ideal sleep if you will). When induced in a relaxing mood, these brainwaves will put you to sleep in less than an hour.

However, people’s reactions to music depend on how they were first exposed to it. The same chords may strike different emotions in different people under different circumstances. It all comes down to how you connect with music, or more profoundly, it’s all about how your gray-matter responds to it.

Even the most strident music could have the same effect as a warm hug on someone and you wouldn’t realise it, but your go-to anthem may have been someone’s torture weapon.

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Why Is There Only One MCU? WRITTEN BY Karthik Sunil

ILLUSTRATED BY Mechanical

B.Tech. II

Dev Jariwala

Comps

B.Tech. II

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Violence, chaos, & unpredictability.

These three words can easily describe any of Quentin Tarantino’s works. He has carefully crafted his movies in a way that pays homage to his previous works in subtle ways, thereby creating a loose, joint universe, nicknamed the ‘Tarantinoverse’. Quentin confirmed the existence of such a universe in 2016, setting off avid fans to find connections between classics like Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood (2019).

Although Quentin wasn’t the first one to bring different movies under one umbrella, he definitely isn’t the last. Marvel, on the other hand, stepped it up a notch; they saw potential (more importantly money) in creating a deeply connected storyline that told a gigantic story over the course of several movies.

Marvel’s Iron Man (2008) had unpredictable success.

The blockbuster starring Robert Downey Jr. saved the studio from bankruptcy and was the sole reason they didn’t shut down. Later additions of Thor (2011), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and The Incredible Hulk (2008) finally led to the recordbreaking The Avengers (2012) that shook the movie industry and left moviegoers begging for more.

The unprecedented success of The Avengers (2012) and the announcement of a future phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe signaled other producers to jump on the shared universe train. Thus, the DCEU, MonsterVerse, Dark Universe, King Arthur Universe, and many more were born. Despite studios pouring millions of dollars into making them, you’ve probably never heard of some of these universes. That’s because most of these MCU copycats could never really take off. If Marvel could do it, why couldn’t Universal Pictures or Warner Bros?

Marvel’s immense success with the MCU came because they weren’t forcing a connected universe like the others. All the installments were great standalone movies that could

be enjoyed regardless of whether you watched the previous movies or not. The movies happened to have enough untied strings through which they could all be connected.

However, Warner Bros. and other studios desperately tried to hop on the trend, creating unimaginative boring movies that could only bring hardcore fans to the theaters. The Dark Universe aimed at reviving classic monster movies like Dracula but was immediately shut down with the shameful failure of The Mummy (2017) reboot. Legendary Entertainment’s attempt to blend in started with the Godzilla (2014) reboot and still looks flaky. The MonsterVerse feels more like the studio’s hopeless attempt at merging two different universes that have nothing in common other than gigantic destructive creatures. Maybe the upcoming Godzilla vs Kong (2021) crossover can sway the audience and keep the MonsterVerse alive; only time will tell. With these examples, the real question remains: is all this money and time spent on shared universes worth it?

Even though the idea of shared universes seems exciting — promising devoted viewers more content in the future and rewarding them for sticking around for so long — the general audience doesn’t buy it (with the exception being the MCU). The fraction of the audience that actually cares about movies that are connected to each other is comparatively small. The majority of audiences are simply not that invested in deep stories with interlacing plotlines. When a company sets out on this mammoth task, it can only truly cater to a small audience that won’t help them pay the bills, eventually causing them to prematurely shut down. The King Arthur Universe is a prime example.

Moviegoers were excited when Guy Ritchie, the genius behind The Man from U.N.C.L.E (2015), took the helm for King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017). The movie was meant

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to kickstart the connected universe which dealt with British legends from Camelot such as King Arthur, Merlin, and Lancelot. Although the movie was not complete trash, it could not gain enough momentum to complete British film producer Lionel Wigram’s dream of an epic movie universe depicting medieval Britain. Not even Guy’s signature fight scenes in slow motion and multiple parallel cuts could save the flick from getting an embarrassing 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. The King Arthur shared universe was immediately scrapped, closing the doors on six movies that were waiting to spring up after the first’s success. It’s safe to say that Marvel was fortunate with its right timing and audience and it’s unlikely that another studio can do the same.

All things considered, it’s for the better that the shared universe fad is coming to a halt; sometimes people just want to sit back and enjoy a flick without thinking too much about it. Renowned filmmaker Martin Scorcese stated in an interview that Marvel movies are ‘not cinema’ and they’re more like theme parks. He commented that franchise films have no risk in them; giving the audience what they want using market-researched data is a sure-fire way to succeed. This obviously doesn’t mean these films are inherently bad, they’re just not what cinema used to be: novel independent movies that give you a different experience each time.

Now, they’re repetitive and more or less follow a general pattern that has served the industry well for so many years now. But, there can be room for two. Perhaps, the newer generations don’t mind shared universes as much as the others.

The right balance between the two can ably cater to the contentthirsty who love extended lores and the ones that just want to get their mind off work.

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Chronicles of Online Job-Seeking WRITTEN BY Shivansh Shandilya

ILLUSTRATED BY Civil

B.Tech. III

Himanshu Laddhad Mechanical B.Tech. II

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“Our parents got off easy.”

If you’re looking for a job in 2021, there’s a very healthy chance that you are using one of those fancy job search portals like LinkedIn and Glassdoor. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, consider yourself already replaced by emotionally repressed, ultra-competitive, dataguzzling analysts and full-stack developers. Amidst the pandemic, with jobs disappearing faster than the speed of light and companies laying off or shutting down, it seems that the future of jobs isn’t as secure as it was just a few decades ago. Our parents got off easy.

For those versed in the language of online professional networking, the whole thing started way back in an era known for starting all the best things — the 90s. When the infamous ‘dot-com bubble’ was just starting to fill up and expand, a certain pioneer company called NetStart Inc. became the first movers. They began operations in 1994, selling software to companies for listing job openings on their websites and managing the incoming emails that were generated. You can imagine the scale of the impact the bubble created based on the fact that they secured an investment north of 9 million dollars in the subsequent years and started calling themselves CareerBuilder just because they could.

In the mid-90s, several newspapers came together and decided they wanted to list their classifieds online. They called it CareerPath. com. By the late 90s, companies like Jobsonline.com and Hotjobs. com became the frontrunners in this fiercely competitive environment, encouraging more and more companies to jump on the bandwagon and continue the trend of smushing two words together.

This was followed by several mergers, acquisitions, and failed acquisition strategies. Needless to say, the whole thing crescendoed

to a point where most Americans figured that Internet-based companies are the future and invested heavily and blindly into it because their neighbors and their dogs were all about inflation-proof futures. Unfortunately, the bubble burst, and 1 out of 2 companies shut down and all those bozos lost money. Thankfully, this event taught them a lesson, and the Americans never made the same mistake ever again. And then decided to buy houses.

As of now, there are way too many recruitment sites to keep track of.

While some of them, like Indeed and Monster, are accepted as the bestin-class, most of the other search engines have carved their niche, providing wide-ranging features but known for specifics. For example, if the pandemic has made you lazier and you have now fallen in love with the idea of working from home, you might want to consider FlexJobs. If you want employer insights before moving into a different industry or taking up a new job elsewhere, you could join Glassdoor. Scouted is targeted at fresh college graduates, while Snagajob takes away the cake for people looking for hourly jobs.

India’s very own Naukri.com helps find jobs based on different criteria — brands, domains, categories, and locations. In short — different strokes for different folks.

These search engines work on the concept of “two-sided platformmediated networks”, in which one side is called ‘The Money Side’, and the other is called ‘The Subsidy Side’. But what does this jargony mumbo-jumbo really mean? Typically, recruiters are the ones expected to bear the brunt of financing the engine’s operations, while job-seekers are the beneficiaries of the subsidy.

The search engine itself acts as a medium between the two sides.

In addition to the conventional concept of the two-sided network,

the search engine might also charge a fee to job-seekers for unlocking premium features of the website. If they’re looking for more sources of revenue to expand their operations, these engines might consider going public too.

Since most people now prefer using their smartphones for pretty much everything, job search too has been delegated to apps. Now, instead of firing up your PC and feeling oh-soimportant, you could just casually DM a potential recruiter on LinkedIn and connect directly. With the increase in ease and convenience, competition too has become fierce.

According to statista.com, as of September 30, 2020, the Japanese job portal Recruit Holdings (which acquired the American companies Indeed & Glassdoor) has a market cap of $65,037 million, followed by Australia’s SEEK at $5,369 million, and the Chinese portal 51job with $5,238 million. The subsequent listings are nowhere close to these numbers, but the tables can turn any time.

The key to continue prospering in this sector is to be flexible and open to change. There’s always the possibility of some new, upand-coming engine disrupting the job-seeking landscape and taking center-stage while the incumbents are caught sleeping on the wheel.

So, if looking for a job seems daunting, all you need to do is breathe. And learn to code. All the cool kids are coding. If coding feels out of your league, you could consider becoming a writer or a musician. The key really is adaptability. Heck, that’s what these professional networking sites have to do on a constant basis, and on a much grander scale, or face the music.

And remember, if nothing else works out, you could always be a social media influencer.

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Multitasking, A Myth?

WRITTEN BY Aneesha Sengupta

ILLUSTRATED BY Mechanical

B.Tech. II

Rutvi Shah

Civil

B.Tech. II

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“An infographic on OnlineCollege.org states that 98% of people who try to multitask actually impair their productivity more than helping it.”

“If you can multitask Mr. Bean-style, count your blessings for being one of his brethren.”

Do you turn down the music when you drift off the GPS route? Do you suddenly pause mid-sentence during basketball when it’s time to shoot a hoop? Any such decision you subconsciously take comes from the following mind-boggling fact — your brain knows that it cannot completely focus on more than one activity at a time, compromising on no less than one of the activities.

Yet, most of us love to multitask (mostly because it gives us a false sense of achieving a lot and counterfeit contentment).

output in that duration compared to a bulb that has been flickering on and off every two seconds. Similarly, a person concentrating on one task for a reasonably long duration can produce better results than someone who has divided attention into multiple tasks. An infographic on OnlineCollege.org states that 98% of people who try to multitask actually impair their productivity more than helping it. However, if you can multitask Mr. Bean-style, count your blessings for being one of his brethren.

Whereas, in reality, multitasking is merely rapid switching between tasks rather than what we perceive it as — parallel processing and response. You might proclaim that you are fully capable of talking while cycling, or texting while walking, and declare your expertise in multitasking. However, if you look more closely, they are completely dissimilar tasks where at least one of the two requires little to no attention; hence, these acts performed simultaneously do not resemble multitasking in any manner.

The chief reason behind this weakened productivity is “attention residue”, which implies that having multiple tasks and obligations on our mind splits and redirects our attention in a way that reduces overall performance. So clearly, employing cognitive resources in a scattered manner is not the ideal way to use them. One cannot afford much attention residue because attention and time are both limited resources.

Imagine a light bulb that has been turned on for a whole minute. This bulb would have a greater net

Don’t get mistaken, there’s more than just loss of productivity to it — another severe repercussion of ‘multitasking’ is cognitive loss.

A study at the University of London found that participants who

multitasked during cognitive tasks experienced IQ score declines similar to what they’d expect if they had smoked marijuana or stayed up all night. To put it into perspective, allow me to explain what marijuana does to you. It interferes profoundly with memory and with our ability to concentrate on several things at once, effectively impairing our attention span. In his book, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin argues that the cognitive losses from multitasking are even greater than the cognitive losses from pot smoking.

The solution to this grave issue is systematic cataloguing — enlisting assignments and commitments, planning, and executing them one after the other. Refraining from ‘multitasking’ (and, of course, marijuana too) is a piece of advice one should take seriously. It is certainly more fulfilling to move on to a project after having completed the previous one. Now, if you were grooving to music while reading this article, think again: you definitely took pauses to appreciate the lyrics.

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Tongue-Tied: How

Languages Affect Thoughts WRITTEN BY Saptarishi Pandey

ILLUSTRATED BY Mechanical

B.Tech. IV

Sakshi Hirani

Maths

M.Sc. II

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“Can language affect the way we fundamentally think?”

Arrival is a science fiction movie about the advent of an alien species on Earth. However, unlike other sci-fi flicks, Arrival doesn’t show a hostile takeover of mankind by aliens in motherships with guns blazing (typically starting from New York). Its attention to the concept of language brings a unique flair to the story. One of the major topics discussed in the movie is the idea of language affecting the way we think.

Languages have a lot in common with one another, like the fact that they help in communication and in building communities.

However, each comes with its own set of nuances. The Hindi-English bilinguals out there must have noticed how we give genders to objects in languages like Hindi and French — “Woh gaadi neeli hai”, while in English, we keep things neutral — “That car is blue”. Similarly, languages also vary in syntax. In English, one may say ‘a green shirt’ while in Spanish it’d be “una camisa verde”, literally translating into “a shirt green”. But these differences seem trivial, so let’s come back to the question put forward in the movie Arrival — can language affect the way we fundamentally think?

This concept is called linguistic relativity: the idea that the language you speak influences what and how

you think. Although it fell out of public interest in the 1960s due to the lack of substantial evidence, lately, the research has resuscitated the idea that language truly does affect the way we perceive the world around us.

In 2011, Caitlin M. Fausey and Lera Boroditsky went on to explore this idea in their publication Who dunnit?

Cross-linguistic differences in eyewitness memory. They conducted 2 studies amongst groups of monolingual native English and Spanish-speaking communities.

They asked whether the linguistic biases of the two communities would cause the groups to perceive events differently. The first study consisted of two sets of videos that showed events where a man would interact with an object.

The first set of videos showed intentional versions of events and the second showed accidental versions. Participants were then asked to describe the event. In the intentional events, both Spanish and English speakers could easily remember the subject equally.

But, when it came to accidental events, there was a considerable gap; English speakers could recall the subject more accurately. The research attributed this disparity to the fact that English and Spanish were spoken differently and that the language caused the variation in recollection amongst the two

groups. In the English language, the doer must be mentioned in the sentence, for example, “He breaks the pencil.” However, in Spanish, the subject is generally encoded directly into the verb, so the phrase “rompe el lapiz”, which translates to “breaks the pencil”, is acceptable. In the same way, English speakers are more likely to say, “He popped the balloon”, while Spanish speakers might say, “The balloon popped”.

Seeing the results during the interview, the researchers found that the language affected the internal description formed by the participants, i.e., “speakers of different languages remember different things about the same events.” This could be detrimental during a court case where an eyewitness could recall something completely different because of their native language, without intentionally lying.

In Greek, there are two shades of blue: the lighter “ghalazio” and the darker “ble”. Native Greek speakers perceive this as two distinct colours, just the way native English speakers would differentiate green and blue. One could argue that English speakers notice the difference between the shades of blue but just don’t mention it as the Greeks do.

In 2009, Guillaume Thierry wanted to put that argument to the test. In a

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“ You’re likely to remember your friend’s room as the same as yours, just mirrored, while that might not be the case for your friend.”

study called Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on preattentive color perception, his team placed electrodes in the scalps of his participants, both native English and Greek speakers.

Both the groups were shown a series of squares and circles in succession. The participants were then asked to press a button every time they saw a square to retain their conscious focus away from the colour shade of the shapes. The participants weren’t told that the squares and circles were of varying shades of blue. The researchers observed that native Greek speakers had spikes in brain activity when the colours were different, showing that they unconsciously recognised the “ghalazio” and “ble” shades. English speakers did not have a similar spike in brain activity, which confirmed that they didn’t inherently differentiate the two shades of blue. A similar study was conducted by Lera Boroditsky in 2007, with the Russian distinction of light “goluboy” and dark “siniy” blue.

But does this disparity in perception of events only occur across different languages? Not quite. In 1974, Elizabeth F. Loftus and John C. Palmer experimented with subjects by showing them films of automobile accidents. When asked about

the speed of the cars when they “smashed” each other, the subjects estimated higher values of speed than when asked about the speed when the cars “bumped” each other.

A week later, the subjects were retested and asked, “Did you see any broken glass?” The group that received the “smashed” question was more likely to say yes, although there was no broken glass in the original footage. This reaffirms that the word used in their first question caused a different recollection.

The “Guugu Yimithirr” is the language of the Guugu Yimithirr people of Australia. Their aboriginal language has something unique that others don’t. In most languages, we refer to things in space with respect to ourselves. We say “The building is behind me” or “The car is on my left”.

We might even say “The canteen is in front of the classroom complex”.

These are called egocentric coordinates; they work by keeping us in the center and using the leftright and front-back axes. Guugu Yimithirr, on the other hand, is a highly spatially conscious language.

It’s not uncommon for someone speaking in Guugu Yimithirr to say “The cake is on the north edge of the western table” or “Could you please make space for me by moving southwards?” when someone in the line isn’t giving them enough social distance. The cardinal coordinate

system of the Guugu Yimithirr allows them to have a leg up over us HindiEnglish speakers. While we tend to ignore changes in directions and orientations, the mind of a native Guugu Yimithirr speaker has a much better grasp of orientation. In the same way, it is likely that speakers of English and those of Guugu Yimithirr would recall the same places differently. Say, for example, you’re in a hotel room and your friend, a native Guugu Yimithirr speaker is in an identical room opposite to you. You’re likely to remember your friend’s room as the same as yours, just mirrored, while that might not be the case for your friend. They would register the two rooms as distinctly different, where the bed in their room was on the north end of the room, while the bed in yours was on the southern end.

If colours, events, and even places can be perceived differently due to the language structure, can time also be perceived differently if an alien language was structured in favour of it? Probably not, but that’s what makes it science fiction. Yet, if there’s one thing to take away from this, it’s that the next time (perhaps while traveling in a post-pandemic world) you come across people of different cultures, just imagine how the world they see is different, how more or less colourful it is, based on the language they speak.

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The Curious Case of Cuba and Classic Cars WRITTEN BY Akshita Gupta

ILLUSTRATED BY ECE

B.Tech. II

Anusree Anilkumar

Electrical

B.Tech. II

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“You see Chevrolets, Fords, Pontiacs, Buicks, Dodges, Plymouths, and Studebakers roaming around as if you’ve accidentally stepped back into the 50s.”

You’ve won the lottery and you’re going to Cuba — a tiny Caribbean island known for cigars, communism, balmy beaches, exotic dances, and colourful colonial cities. When you land there, you immediately notice something. There is an abundance of well-preserved classic cars on the island’s streets. They just keep driving by!

Cuba is probably the only place in the world where you can see all the classic American cars from the 1950s and 1960s still motoring around on the streets like any other modern vehicle. The distinct shapes, eye-catching colours, and the distinguishable sounds of the roaring engines bestow contrast to the bustling urban streets of the country.

You see Chevrolets, Fords, Pontiacs, Buicks, Dodges, Plymouths, and Studebakers roaming around as if you’ve accidentally stepped back into the 50s. The surprising fact, however, is that Cubans use these big old classic cars as a form of collective public transport. Tourists can easily rent the car of their choice for a wonderful tour around the city of Havana. This is why the country is often described as an ‘open-air classic car museum’ and is indeed a haven for old car fanatics.

You think to yourself, “how did a small island nation in the Caribbean with a feeble economy become a hub for classic car buffs?” In other

countries, they are collectors’ items and are definitely not used as taxis or local transport. These ‘Yank Tanks’ — a slang used to refer to the classic American cars — date back to pre-revolution Cuba and are the centerpiece of this island’s postcard.

Prior to the Cuban Revolution, Cuba was one of the most successful and prosperous Latin countries, but the income disparity among various population segments was enormous. Cuba had an agro-based economy mainly fuelled by sugar exports to the US and never had a car-manufacturing industry of its own. From the onset of the 20th century, Cuba’s primary source of cars and parts was the United States. By 1919, Cuba became the largest importer of American cars in the Caribbean region. Many car manufacturing companies of the States started using the island as their testing market.

After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the country witnessed many changes in its law and order, which directly impacted the automotive industry. As international relations between the US and the newly formed communist Cuban government deteriorated, old friends became foes. Fidel Castro embraced this by famously declaring, “We need tractors, not Cadillacs!” and placed an embargo on the US and foreign imports. This meant that no American cars were

imported for many decades and subsequently, there were no parts available to make repairs on the damaged vehicles either.

Yet, even all these limitations weren’t enough to stop the Cuban people from finding new and innovative ways to keep their cherished machines on the move.

The mechanics found ingenious ways of resuscitating their cars, like swapping the ’57 Chevys burnt V8 engines with Soviet diesel engines or with the newer Hyundai engines.

They took parts from other available vehicles, sometimes even boat engines, carved them so that they would fit the requirements, and creatively repaired their cars. The shiny and bright exteriors of these cars give absolutely no indication of all the behind-the-scenes magic that the mechanics performed on them.

These classic cars are not just a mode of transport for the Cubans; they’re treated as family heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation. With every passing year, these big old cars uphold an everchallenging proposition for Cubans to keep them functional. The Cuban Revolution and many subsequent changes in the island’s leadership have affected the automobile industry tremendously, but these classic cars are still an integral part of Cuban life and are symbols of the perseverance of the Cubans.

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The Data Scandal WRITTEN BY Yukta Malik

ILLUSTRATED BY Chemical

B.Tech. IV

Abhinav Pandey

Tech Articles

Mechanical

B.Tech. II

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“All this recorded data helps these sites in suggesting content that will keep us hooked.”

Are you also one of those people who switched to Signal or Telegram after Whatsapp made headlines with its new and controversial privacy policy? Your answer can or cannot be affirmative. Either way, data safety should be one of your concerns. While there have been a lot of instances where companies were found using and selling personal data, the most disturbing question is: why are there no definite laws against such activities? It could be one of two things — either the government doesn’t care about the abuse of data or selling of data isn’t a total disaster. Before we try to reach any conclusion, we need to understand the algorithm that directly or indirectly connects our devices to several big firms earning loads of profits.

The term ‘big data’, which literally means a big collection of data, seems straightforward until data science adds the spice. The utilization of big data through powerful tools of data analysis, data mining, and predictive modelling, is the oil on which several corporations run and make enormous profits.

When we use sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, and Amazon, we get continuously monitored by various background software or trackers which record our activities and store the details.

Some of these trackers have the ability to record everything we do on a website, even the movements of our mouse pointers. All this recorded data helps these sites in suggesting content that will keep us hooked. So, when we mindlessly scroll through our social media feeds, we are unknowingly selling our personal data and preferences to tech giants.

Every site we visit only retains some potentially beneficial information; the rest goes to data brokers —

hungry sites looking for any data that they can scavenge. These data brokers compile information from online sources such as medical records, vehicle purchases, shopping lists, and marriage licenses, without any permissions.

While apps like Instagram and Facebook review your posts for any abusive content, these broker sites look for more intricate details like image quality, locations, and even clothes and makeup in your selfies.

All this information is fed into machine learning algorithms that segregate the different profiles into similar groups of people and store them under tags like age groups, gender, food preferences, interests in fashion, sports, and travel. This makes it easier for the person who purchases this data because now, they just look for the tag that will have the maximum number of interested audiences.

For example, a store like Adidas will send its product recommendations to people who belong to a particular age group and have an interest in fashion and sports. This is called database marketing.

This seems fine when it’s restricted to product recommendations and ads. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Our data is also monitored by loan providers, insurance companies, job providers, and even universities to make sure their clients do not have a conflicting history. The digital footprint of their consumers allows these associations to deploy algorithms to get a better picture of them and take calculated risks. Hence, a loan provider might actually be tracking your social media before deciding to grant you one.

Feeling betrayed by the internet?

Well, it might seem like a big privacy nightmare, but don’t throw your

phone out the window just yet.

We still haven’t looked at the pros.

Everything we share on the net also contributes to useful research about human behaviour. This research helps artificial intelligence to progress, and today, there isn’t a single sector that does not benefit from artificial intelligence — health, business, law, and education are notable examples. Thanks to AI, companies are able to understand the needs of their customers and cater to them in better ways.

Progress of technology and big firms in a country eventually provides economic gains and hence, a government will never allow complete restriction on the selling of data.

Thus, database marketing can’t be declared a scandal, but it isn’t totally fair to use public data without their knowledge either. Tech companies need to acknowledge regulations for personal data collection.

Revealing what part of consumers’ data is being used or shared and analyzing it in ethical ways could be a solution. On the other hand, we consumers need to be more aware of the means through which our data can be compromised. Reviewing privacy settings for every app, setting strong passwords, updating software regularly, using network firewalls, antivirus, and malware software are a few ways to maintain cyber hygiene. Our smartphones, laptops, smart speakers, and other electronic devices are data mines waiting to be dug up. These devices can leak our information and hence, we need to be cautious about what we share. So, next time you ask random questions to your Alexa, just remember there could be someone miles away, silently analyzing your behaviour, forming opinions about you, and selling you out, literally.

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Capacitivo - The Future of Smart Homes WRITTEN BY Om Desai

ILLUSTRATED BY Chemistry

M.Sc. II

Himanshu Laddhad

Mechanical

B.Tech. II

Renesa - Spring Edition 2021 AI and informatics, along with robotics, have changed our lives, our workspaces, and every other activity we indulge in. Interestingly, we humans have also started relying on them to a great extent, whether it’s inside or outside our homes.

With technologies like Alexa and Google Home, AI is connecting with humans and making our everyday lives easier. While we’re on the subject of AI inside our homes being so interactive and humans being entirely dependent on them in the near future, let’s take a closer look at an incredible invention — researchers at Dartmouth College and Microsoft have developed an amazing piece of technology that can change the future of smart homes.

Imagine this. You’re about to leave your house for the airport to begin your long-awaited world tour.

You’ve just closed the door when your phone suddenly chimes. You check the notification: “Passport left on the table”. You breathe a sigh of relief as a terrible disaster has just been averted. No, I’m not talking about some fancy app or an intelligent passport-case, but a far smarter technology — ‘Capacitivo’.

This odd-sounding piece of tech is a smart tablecloth, designed for the comfort and convenience of its user. It can recognize whatever is kept on it, from a small piece of paper to your credit card. This is the future of smart homes.

So, how is it possible to convert a regular tablecloth into a smart one? How does it sense and give feedback? Well, it uses a combination of a capacitive electrode grid, machine learning, and AI. The design prototype features a grid of diamond-shaped electrodes made from conductive fabric attached to a cotton sheet.

The size of the electrodes and the distance between them are designed to maximize the sensing area and sensitivity.

Consider you’ve kept something on the fabric, let’s say, a pen. When we keep things on it, the shifts in electrical charges due to different construction and properties of different objects are sensed by the smart fabric. It also identifies the type of material, its texture, size, shape, and other details of the object placed on it. For the prototype, Microsoft used a 12 × 12 grid of electrodes attached to the conductive fabric, tested different objects, and achieved a stunning accuracy of 94.5%.

This includes testing various kinds of objects, ranging from a glass of water to a small lipstick. The fabric isn’t limited to recognizing what is kept on it; it also provides other details as feedback. For instance, when an empty glass was kept during the testing phase, it displayed “glass”. Now, when cold and hot water were poured one after another, the smart fabric recognized them as “cold” and “hot” water instead of just “water”.

Similarly, it correctly identified 12 different types of fluids poured in the glass, in minimum time. Apart from this, the fabric can recognize fruits, plants, keys, empty bowls, and vegetables; the list goes on.

Beyond this, the fabric has another interesting application. It can be configured with Alexa or Google Home (or some future AI-based products). So, let’s say you have bread, mayonnaise, cheese, and boiled eggs kept on the fabric and it is connected to some virtuallyassisted AI. The fabric and AI will work together and suggest a dish you can make from those ingredients, along with its recipe. Cooking just got a whole lot simpler, didn’t it?

With this unique design and excellent precision, Capacitivo has the potential to change the way people connect and interact with AI and technology. Researchers have also stated that their new technology relies on the “implicit

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input” technique, in which the smart fabric does not require any action from the object it is sensing. This increases the ability of the fabric to identify a greater variety of things — even non-metallic objects and paper-based products.

Although this “smart fabric” is fascinating, it has certain limitations. One major issue is the inability to identify metallic objects and other square-shaped objects that have similar appearances or properties. However, research is going on to overcome these issues and make the technology better for the future.

Researchers have been continuously working to make the fabric more interactive. While doing so, they demonstrated how it can be connected to our workstations and mobile phones. They installed an application on the computer, programmed to give feedback to the PC from the smart fabric. Then, a plant was kept on the fabric for a few days. Whenever the fabric recognized that the plant was getting dry and needed water, a notification popped up, reminding the user to water the plant. Similarly, if a credit card is placed on the fabric while doing a net-banking transaction, it automatically fills the card details on your PC. Although you still need to fill out the CVV on your own (keeping the privacy of your transaction in mind), the potential that Capacitivo offers is infinite.

In a future world with flying cars in every garage and quantum computers in every pocket, this fabric might find its way into our everyday life and entirely change the way we connect with the digital half of our world. This would potentially transform the kitchens of our smart homes and will offer an interactive experience.

Undoubtedly, this fabric is a perfect example of the scintillating feats that human intelligence can accomplish.

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Immersion WRITTEN BY Haider Sultan Tanmay Dadhania

ILLUSTRATED BY ECE

B.Tech. IV

Comps

B.Tech. II

Fahad Khatuda

Mechanical

B.Tech. II

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“Modern technology is pushing us into a virtual reality experience that further diminishes the line between reality and gaming.”

2020 has not been kind to anyone.

But if there’s one industry that has enjoyed great success, it’s the gaming industry. Trapped before the monotonous scenery of quarantine life, people turned to gaming to get an immersive dive into a world other than our own, and the industry definitely delivered innovative technologies.

With the console season on the horizon, all eyes were locked on the few lucky people who had gotten their hands on the new consoles early. Now, you would normally expect people to be clamoring about the latest improved graphics and the highly diminished loading times. Yet, surprisingly, the gadget that blew everyone away was the PS5 controller.

The new haptic feedback system and the adaptive trigger resistance are a welcome change from the same rehashed controllers. They lend different in-game scenarios a new depth of ‘immersion’ that we haven’t felt before. As Mike Epstein from IGN noted while playing the new Spiderman game, the haptic feedback he felt while riding the subway was eerily similar to his own experience of riding the lines for several years. Each movement of the subway gave off a natural and unique sense of feedback.

The resistive triggers are a revolutionary step in the progression for First-Person Shooters. Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War went above and beyond with its PS5 version by giving each gun a different feel — with the left trigger reflecting the weight of the weapon and the right trigger emulating the shock as the rounds flew out the barrel. Treyarch was even able to recreate the vibrations felt from the chop of the helicopter.

While most competitive multiplayer players will turn these features off, this highlights the immeasurable potential for the future.

With the new system, the sky’s the limit for developers to experiment with different kinds of feedback.

If the first generation of games on the PS5 were able to give us technological marvels like Miles Morales, then we should really be getting excited for what’s coming down the line.

For PC gamers, on the other hand, ‘Ray Tracing’ by Nvidia has been a God-sent tool. It accurately emulates the path of light as it traverses the scene, reflects from objects, gets blocked by objects, or passes through them, ultimately producing the final color of a pixel. The difference between the graphical quality when the feature is turned off and when it’s turned on is truly astounding. This is the holy grail for graphical fidelity at this point and it’s here to stay.

With the new, complicated system, the demand for more graphical power has also increased, but fret not, the people at Nvidia also have that figured out. Deep learning super sampling (DLSS) is used to upscale low-resolution pixels into higher resolution by using pre-trained neural networks. This way, the AI does all the hard work while greatly reducing the power of graphical computation required.

Drastic improvements in virtual reality hardware have taken the whole feel of immersion to a new level. With omnidirectional treadmills being used for movements and in-game traveling, improved visors with superior visual quality, and fragrance kits that are preprogrammed to give us a sense of smell, modern technology is pushing us into a virtual reality experience that further diminishes the line between reality and gaming.

In the future, you might have a more hands-on experience at the Vanilla Unicorn with bodysuits and whatnot.

But is this the direction we want gaming to head in? There might be a point in the future when, in an attempt to further evolve our sense of immersion, we end up sacrificing the magic that makes gaming special. In the end, it’s never a single aspect of a game that makes it enjoyable; it’s the whole experience behind it.

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Virtual Traffic Lights:

Redefining Transportation WRITTEN BY Om Desai

ILLUSTRATED BY Chemistry

M.Sc. II

Rutvi Shah

Civil

B.Tech. II

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“What if I told you that stopping at traffic signals can be eliminated completely and that you can cruise through the streets effortlessly?”

It’s late in the morning. You need to reach your office quickly as there’s an important meeting scheduled on your calendar. You’ve just left and only gotten two blocks away from home when you find yourself in a familiar position — stuck at the red light, helpless and impatient.

The clock is ticking, the engine is running, traffic is growing, and you’re just sitting behind the wheel, begging for the light to turn green.

Well, it turns out that you missed the meeting and another promising day at work turned sour.

Hold on! What if I told you that stopping at traffic signals can be eliminated completely and that you can cruise through the streets effortlessly? Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania have developed a technology dubbed “Virtual Traffic Lights” (VTL).

With this robust system, traffic management at intersections can be made easy, safe, and efficient.

Real-time adaptability using vehicleto-vehicle (V2V) communication reduces traffic congestion and avoids accidents occurring at critical intersections.

This V2V communication uses various algorithms, including Internet of Things (IoT) principles, to connect gadgets simultaneously to both humans and autonomous vehicles. V2V operates using the concept of “Leader and its followers’’. For this, a small unit called a ‘Dedicated Short-Range Communications’ (DSRC) transceiver

is fitted into vehicles, which integrates them into a cohesive management system. Using this on-board unit, each vehicle approaching the intersection communicates with other vehicles and analyses different parameters of the surroundings — latitude, longitude, the trajectory of other cars, speeds, and so on. After considering all of this, vehicles elect a “leader”.

The leader (the vehicle farthest from the middle of the intersection) decides the movement of other cars for a stipulated amount of time. The leader then decides which direction is a green light and which direction is a red light. If the leader wants to proceed straight without turning, then it actuates a red light for other cars that want to merge on the same path. At the same time, it gives a green signal to those cars making a turn and proceeding in a different direction. This way, traffic keeps on rolling smoothly and vehicles don’t need to stop at the signal unnecessarily. After the leader’s time is up (say 30 seconds), another car in the perpendicular flow becomes the leader and does the exact same thing. Thus, leadership is continuously handed over and orders are followed in a synchronized manner.

The on-board DSRC unit constantly feeds information to the driver, gives alerts when needed, and provides a seamless driving experience. Along with a GPS

system, this unit can be configured with the center-screen of the car, allowing voice signals to be transmitted through it. In the future, this can also be done with phone alerts or smartwatches. This realtime system allows drivers to make controlled decisions and improves overall traffic management. For the time being, the systems are focused more on how drivers react to the given information; the machine is not given full control.

However, in the coming years, when autonomous vehicles will ply on the roads, VTLs will complement them, allowing even smoother rides. While radar, sensors, and computers provide live feeds to autonomous vehicles, VTL can take the burden from the lidar system by providing clear vision to computers in difficult environmental conditions.

The idea of computers taking over our transport systems demonstrates how capable technology is of proving useful in all aspects of life. With technologies like VTL and self-driving cars, the idea of entire roadways being overlooked by a centralized computer system doesn’t seem too far-fetched. The development of VTL is a testament to the reliability of science and technology, which continuously strive to make life better. If used properly, the day when we realize our dream of accident-less roads and death-less journeys is just around the corner.

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Milonavirus WRITTEN BY

ILLUSTRATED BY

Supal Padmashali

Mechanical

B.Tech. II

Tanmay Dadhania

Comps

B.Tech. II

Chinmay Bhagat

ECE

B.Tech. II

Theme Articles Part-2

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“The symptoms included insomnia, decreased appetite, and an overwhelming feeling of self-doubt, hopelessness, or worthlessness.”

When humans settled on the Red Planet last year, they came in one giant wave. Back on Earth, a merciless virus was sweeping across the globe, spreading faster than a drop of ink in water. The planet was in tatters. As hospitals overflowed and the death toll skyrocketed, a secret cult of techsavvy people decided to turn to their supreme leader for assistance.

One day, while puffing out clouds on the couch, an eccentric billionaire named Melon Tusk received a call from his terrified followers, begging him to put “Operation: Red Escape” into action. Tusk thought for a minute and gave his approval for the plan. The time had come to move his fellow species off-world (to prevent their extinction). Tusk demanded it and his planetary transit team delivered (they had to deliver, or they would be executed). The first SpaceY rocket launched from Cape Bananaville, Florida, and set off on its 7-month journey to the Earth’s celestial neighbour.

When these 537 Tusk-worshipping humans from Earth landed on Mars in late 2020, they were relieved beyond words. Not only had they survived 7 months cooped up in a giant metal canister, but they had also evaded one of the worst pandemics in human history. The future was bright.

As expected from a civilisation

mostly formed by astronauts, the Martians became a highly intelligent species and, within a decade, built a society that would look like a scifi paradise to Earthlings. By mining natural resources from nearby asteroids and Martian mines, the colonists developed impressive infrastructure and even had functional airports. Despite the fact that most of their buildings and vehicles consisted of Earth-tech, the technological advancements they made in just 9 years were stunning. The Red Planet dwellers created their own economic systems (mostly just using LitCoin), their own judicial and political structures, and established a firm set of laws within their holy Constitution. The landing site of the first colonist SpaceY ship was declared a National Heritage Site and soon became the most popular (and only) tourist spot on the planet. The Martians were well on their way to prosperity and nothing could stop them.

Fast forward to the year 2420. With Melon Tusk as their god, civilization on Mars had now become the most advanced establishment in the universe. You see, in the early days of Mars, moving from one bubble of area to another was an extremely risky and difficult task. So, Martians generally avoided going outside unless it was absolutely necessary.

As someone wise once said, “Old habits die hard, especially when

those habits belonged to your founding fathers.” The Martians never got rid of this habit of avoiding movement despite technological advancements that later allowed them to move around with ease.

The Martians became a civilization that spent most of their lives without ever socializing or interacting with their fellow beings. With the need for physical presence and proximity mostly eliminated by the use of holograms, they further embraced this isolated indoor lifestyle and automated almost all jobs that require travelling. They were so advanced that they developed an app and a machine to exchange bodily fluids to procreate. With the most cutting-edge technology at their disposal, life on Mars seemed to be the best. Well, this wouldn’t be an interesting story if some excretion hadn’t hit the fan.

The comfortable lives of the Martians were rudely interrupted when they were hit by a mysterious epidemic that they couldn’t fully understand. The mystery-disease wasn’t very deadly but its spread was uncontrollable. The symptoms included insomnia, decreased appetite, and an overwhelming feeling of self-doubt, hopelessness, or worthlessness. With their newfound stupidity, the Martians couldn’t, for the life of them, figure out what was going on.

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“Being forced to ask the Earth for help was truly humiliating for the Martians.”

Since everybody was already staying away from each other, the nature of the epidemic continued to remain a mystery. Finally, after months of frustration and denial, the MCDC (Martian Centre for Disease Control) reluctantly sent blood samples from suffering Martian patients to the low-lives down on Earth. Why “reluctantly”, you ask? Well, the dynamic between the two celestial bodies was a complicated one. As Mars had pulled ahead of Earth on technological terms, it was usually the Martians that bailed Earth out of trouble. Being forced to ask the Earth for help was truly humiliating for the Martians. On top of that, the people of Earth were still salty about the events that took place 400 years ago. When the Earth was suffering due to the First Great Pandemic in 2020, a group of 537 worshippers of Melon Tusk had escaped to the Red Planet, not caring one bit about the millions of people suffering on Earth.

The worst part was that these Tuskworshippers had been planning to escape to Mars for over a decade!

Yet, they kept their spaceships and all other useful technologies hidden from the rest of the world.

No rational being in the galaxy would forgive the selfishness that the first Martian colonists displayed while saving their own asses.

Without even analysing the blood samples, the Earthlings figured out what the Martians were suffering from. Earthlings, being the naughty bunch that they are, sent the Martians only a single word reply:

“Milonavirus.” Martian scientists, with all their pride, ruled out the option of contacting Earth and asking for clarification. Instead, they let their inflated egos consume them and simply pretended that they knew everything about this virus. They promised normalcy by delivering the fictitious vaccine as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Blueddit was popping off.

Their threads were being swarmed with new theories about the origins of the whole thing. One of the Blueditters even rediscovered a few long-lost words. ‘Protesting’ and ‘Rioting’ soon started trending on all Martian social media platforms.

Conspiracies started brewing and circulating uncontrollably, arguably even faster than the disease. The common Martian public was soon convinced that the vaccine was in very short supply and that only the uber-rich were going to get it.

The alarms at the MCDC went off when the world-beloved and breathtaking Reanu Keeves went chasing after his pit bull down the street. Dogs are naturally outgoing, and Martian dogs were no exception. Reanu’s dog sprinted outside when the door was open for a few extra seconds, and Reanu chased after him, only to get arrested for breaking quarantine regulations. Reanu’s arrest was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Millions poured out into the streets for the first time in Martian history

in opposition to the government’s inadequacy during these dire times. Some “patriotic” souls took advantage of the chaos and tried to stage a coup at the Martian Capitol, attempting to overturn the recent election that brought Tusk’s greatgreat-great-great-great grandson into power.

It was then that the viciouslyrioting Martians noticed that all their symptoms had miraculously disappeared and they were completely normal again. Only then were the geniuses at the MCDC able to crack the Earthian Code and inform the public about the truth behind the “Milonavirus”.

After the Martians had taken seclusion to whole new levels, their very human bodies gave off an extreme allergic reaction to all the loneliness. All that was required for them to revert back to normal was to increase physical interaction with other human beings. And that’s exactly what they did. Daily gatherings and community events with adequate amounts of socializing were made compulsory by law and the terror of the “Milonavirus” was soon eradicated.

The Martians were happy and their planet was prosperous once again.

This would all be forgotten to the sands of time if it weren’t for the event that followed — The Great Population Boom of 2421.

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Bush Did 9/11 WRITTEN BY Tanmay Dadhania Karthik Sunil

ILLUSTRATED BY Comps

B.Tech. II

Mechanical

B.Tech. II

Mukul Raj

Maths

M.Sc II

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“Our brain can only handle so much; it has to do some dirty work in order to comprehend the ridiculous nature of reality.”

When you hear the word “MKUltra”, what comes to mind? It sounds like a 90s anime that used to air on Cartoon Network back in the day. However, the reality is far more sinister.

MKUltra was the code name for a bunch of mind control experiments that the US government carried out back in the 1960s. For a long time, this was regarded as a conspiracy theory — at least until the New York Times came out with an exposé that blew the lid off the whole operation.

Now it doesn’t mean that all the conspiracies floating around back then turned out to be true. Just look at what people believe today; from anti-vaxxers to people claiming 5G towers cause COVID-19, there are people who will believe anything and everything. Yet, despite the negative stigma attached to them, why are conspiracies so popular today?

On the most fundamental level, it comes down to our ability to make sensible correlations and causations. Let’s picture a scenario where our cavemen ancestors were out hunting and heard a twig break.

The groups who couldn’t figure out that a predator was sneaking up on them never came back from their hunt. Evolution has no feelings, it simply favours the fittest. Forming stable, accurate, and predictable models of our environment was crucial in the early days. However, this can backfire and lead us to make connections when there are none.

Putting aside evolution, social and psychological factors also play a major role here. Anxiety causes people to overthink, leading them to connect random, unrelated events and ideas. People with lower levels

of analytical thinking and lower educational levels often fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect — a type of cognitive bias indicating that people overestimate their abilities and competence levels.

The need to stand out from the ‘sheep’ entraps us in a labyrinth of lies. The desire to be seen as the messiah forces us to have a radical outlook on everything which is often coupled with illogical arguments lacking evidence. Furthermore, we tend to readily accept claims when they fall in line with our pre-existing beliefs and ideologies (also known as the confirmation bias). It’s almost impossible to stay unbiased all the time, so naturally, it becomes harder to filter out the data that gets constantly thrown at us. Let’s look at an example where our bias can significantly alter our perception of a particular situation.

On 14 November, 2004, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, Commander David Fravor was directed to investigate certain blips that the radar system had been picking up for the past two weeks. Upon reaching the specified location, he claims to have seen a tic-tac-shaped aircraft violently moving over a submerged object in the ocean. The aircraft was changing direction and speed at rates inconceivable to him with the technology of that time. He decided to lower his altitude to get a better look at the object, only for the aircraft to start gaining altitude. As the two were moving in a circle to change their altitude, the aircraft suddenly went supersonic and vanished into the horizon without a trace. The aircraft did not produce

a sonic boom.

A fighter jet equipped with a highly advanced camera was later deployed to chase after another one of these blips. The captured footage was initially published by the New York Times in 2017 and then later declassified by the Pentagon in late April 2020. The footage itself is unremarkable, but it does clearly show a tic-tac-shaped object zipping through the skies.

Drawing a conclusion based on the evidence provided in this case is rather difficult. Alien enthusiasts will leap at this opportunity to prove that higher beings are visiting us right now. The anarchists will clamor at the government, claiming that they are the ones behind it, and the professional skeptics will immediately chalk up the incident as some natural phenomenon. Is it a conspiracy theory to suggest any of those conclusions? Maybe.

But only treating them as possible outcomes suits us better in our quest of objectively understanding the ‘extraordinary’ incident.

In the end, all of us are subject to some sort of bias that we can’t escape. Our brain can only handle so much; it has to do some dirty work in order to comprehend the ridiculous nature of reality. But, like all things in life, striking a balance is critical.

Knowing that you are a separate entity from the opinions you hold is a nice place to start. However, even after all this, if you ever find yourself deep inside a conspiratorial rabbit hole, remember the words of the great Michael Jordan, “Stop it, get some help”.

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The Starry Night:

A Controlled Accident?

WRITTEN BY Foram Fanasia

ILLUSTRATED BY Physics

M.Sc. III

Sakshi Hirani

Maths

M.Sc. II

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“The Starry Night is not only an artistic masterpiece with intricate details but also a subject of interest for many physicists.”

You’re in New York at the Museum of Modern Art. You’ve been staring at the same painting for 15 minutes now. The swirling colors and the magnificent brush strokes have left you bewitched. However, a sneaking suspicion dawns upon you that there is more to this painting than what meets the eye. This piece is none other than Vincent van Gogh’s renowned painting, The Starry Night. The Starry Night is not only an artistic masterpiece with intricate details but also a subject of interest for many physicists as it unravels one of the greatest mysteries in fluid mechanics — turbulence.

Although there is no clear, physical understanding of turbulence, its existence is undeniable. Turbulent flow is especially important because it prevails in almost all fluids. This phenomenon exists due to irregular and chaotic changes in fluids, ultimately resulting in the formation of eddies. While many artists tried, only Van Gogh succeeded in painting these eddy patterns distinctly — way ahead of his time.

A Russian mathematician, Kolmogorov, proposed the concept

of eddy cascades (interactions between the eddies by energy transfer), which he used to come up with a scaling that measured the flow of energies between the eddies in a turbulent fluid. The patterns in The Starry Night were very close to this scaling.

In 2004, through images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists found that eddies of a star, approximately 20,000 lightyears away from us, were similar to the swirling clouds and stars in patterns of The Starry Night. That is when attention to this unforeseen connection between physics and art was drawn. In 1889, Van Gogh painted the essence of turbulence with high realism, as explained by physicist Aragon and his team, who studied this painting and plotted the swirls. When scientists digitized his work and examined it pixel by pixel, the striking resemblance with fluid turbulence was eventually confirmed.

But how was Van Gogh successful in painting turbulence with such accuracy? The answer lies in his painting technique. The sky is

painted wet on wet with confident brush strokes and is perfectly balanced. It portrays a lively night sky, in contrast to what our naked eyes see. He blends the colors of the same luminance to motion which leads to the flickering effect of the stars and also prevents the contrasting colors from intermixing.

The elements of this painting are distinct in their arrangement, which makes it mathematically coherent.

The tall cypresses correct the horizontal of town, and the falling mountain range appraises the entire picture diagonally.

During his psychotic episodes in the Saint-Paul de Mausole asylum, Van Gogh painted 150 pieces, many of which used swirling patterns, intense colors, and bright palettes; Starry Night was amongst these brilliant pieces of artwork. His physical genius was no serendipity for he attempted this masterpiece almost 21 times and left the world, especially the physicists, in awe.

Undoubtedly, Vincent van Gogh was one of the most prominent artists to ever walk on earth. His undying curiosity in nature, and the thorough execution of it, is what allied art and science in The Starry Night.

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A Pleasure and a Calling WRITTEN BY Malvika Nath

ILLUSTRATED BY Mechanical

B.Tech. III

Fahad Khatuda

Review Articles

Mechanical

B.Tech. II

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“In a world where people strive to stand out in their talents, Mr. Heming rejoices in his inconspicuousness…”

“For every house that he’s sold (and he’s sold many), Mr. Heming keeps an extra set of keys for himself.”

Ever had a sneaking suspicion that you were being watched? You have no solid evidence to confirm your suspicions, but it seems as if the walls have grown ears, and hidden eyes scrutinize your every move.

Maybe it’s all in your head; maybe your mind is playing tricks on you.

But what if it isn’t?

A Pleasure and a Calling is a suspense thriller about a rather successful (yet remarkably unmemorable) real estate agent named Mr. Heming. He has tailored himself in a certain fashion to be as forgettable as possible, whilst selling his clients the perfect homes they desire. In a world where people strive to stand out in their talents, Mr. Heming rejoices in his inconspicuousness; it provides him ample opportunities to indulge in his favourite pastime — watching people. And if you pique his interest, he watches even more closely.

The premise of this book lies upon one creepy little detail. Turns out, for every house that he’s sold (and he’s sold many), Mr. Heming keeps an extra set of keys for himself.

He checks up on the homeowners from time to time when they’re not

around. This compulsive need to inject himself into the private lives of his clients and keep abreast with their habits highlights his desire to form and maintain connections with them — as unrequited as they might be. Used to being invisible, trouble starts when his anonymity is compromised, setting off a riveting chain of events.

Delving into the mind of an antihero, an unreliable narrator who considers himself the physical embodiment of karma, is skillfully handled by the author, Phil Hogan.

It is intriguing to see Mr. Heming’s logical reasoning as he justifies his progressively sinister actions; in his mind, he thinks he’s doing the right thing. Hogan has done an exceptional job in creating a character so unlikeable. Yet, he gets readers so invested in Mr. Heming that we root for him to get away with crimes that would normally have us reaching for our phones to call the police (or get a restraining order) — a layered character who evokes equal parts condemnation and sympathy.

enough substance to sustain the momentum. Flashbacks to his childhood help the reader understand, if not agree, with his unhinged obsession of connecting with people on the most personal level. The only downside is the pace of the book, which happens to be quite slow, but that is a matter of personal preference; if you don’t mind a slow build into the plot, then this book will definitely work for you.

Personally, I enjoyed the mixture of petty humour and sinisterness besieging the story. The prolixity of certain scenes, however, did have me skimming through a couple of pages.

Overall, A Pleasure and a Calling is a chilling read which may leave you paranoid about being watched.

There are times where you will be grinning, only to be rendered slackjawed in the very next scene. Either way, if you’re a thriller junkie, or simply looking for a book out of your comfort zone, this would be a solid choice. Just make sure you read it with the lights on.

The storyline is character-driven, rather than plot-driven, which works because Heming has

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The Legend of Kvothe Kingkiller WRITTEN BY Sumant S. Dangi

ILLUSTRATED BY Chemical

B.Tech. III

Mukul Raj

Maths

M.Sc. II

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“I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.

You may have heard of me. - Kvothe” “What’s in a name?” you might ask. In our not-so-magical universe, names are just a collection of arbitrary letters decided by our parents — labels for the world to use. What if I told you that names aren’t as ordinary as you think? What if I told you that knowing the true name of a person, object, or force of nature could grant you complete dominion over it? Would you believe me?

Well, it may be a longshot in our world, but in a faraway, mystical land known as Temerant, names hold unlimited power. In this extraordinary world, you can make mountains crumble into dust, command humans to do your bidding, compel the clouds to weep, and even make the wind itself howl and seethe with rage. Sounds interesting? Let’s hop right in and discover the magnificence of this new universe.

In the world of Patrick Rothfuss’s epic fantasy novel, The Name of the Wind, even ordinary mortals like you can become wielders of these magical abilities. To attain them, however, you must work hard and master the academic disciplines of Sympathy, Sygaldry, Alchemy, and Naming; only then will you earn the title of an ‘Arcanist’ (a wizard in Temerant).

Soon after its release, Rothfuss’s novel became a best-selling worldwide phenomenon that rocked the literary world. The fact that The Name of the Wind (along with its sequel) has sold over 10 million copies worldwide to date is a testament to its popularity and quality. Rothfuss has meticulously built a fictional universe replete with fleshed-out characters

and compelling backstories. At the same time, Rothfuss has successfully maintained a fixed set of rules governing magic and its use by providing a logical, scientific perspective and a complex arrangement of magical boundaries and limits. In this extraordinary world, the common public uses technology whose origins trace back to Arcanists. High-quality glass, clean light sources, modernized waterworks, and several other everyday products have been developed by Arcanists or Arcanist students at the University (a renowned center of learning for aspiring wizards and scholars).

The novel’s narrative perspective lends it a unique and refreshing flavour.

Constantly switching between the first-person protagonist point of view and the omniscient third-person narrative, Rothfuss’s book takes readers on an alluring voyage through both the past and the present. It first reveals Kvothe’s compelling backstory. After killing a famous king and instigating a war, Kvothe becomes a fugitive.

An unrivaled swordsman, magician, and musician, legends of Kvothe’s exploits rapidly spread through Temerant. He goes into hiding, assumes a new identity, and lives as an ordinary innkeeper named “Kote” at the Waystone Inn. When Kote rescues a traveling scribe named Chronicler from spider-like monsters, Chronicler recognizes him and asks to record his life’s story. The entire novel is Day 1 of Kvothe recounting the legendary tale of his life to Chronicler. In some sections of the book, we’re pulled back into the present as Kvothe himself continues the story, while

the omniscient narrator takes over in others. This approach from Rothfuss lends a fresh perspective to the novel, resulting in a more believable, personal, and immersive story for the readers.

The endless spine-tingling twists and turns in the book leave readers craving for the next chapter.

Rothfuss leaves no stone unturned in strategically revealing captivating stories about Kvothe’s origin, childhood, struggles, life at the University, the mystical realm of the Faeries, and encounters with evil antagonists such as the Chandrian.

As a reader, you’ll be rendered speechless and bask in the glory of Kvothe’s greatness. As you virtually walk alongside Kvothe, you’ll face utter devastation as his family is murdered, feel burning rage when people wrong him, and passionately cheer him on in his heroic victories.

The Name of the Wind is genuinely character-driven and instead of merely inserting characters into the plot and telling a story for the sake of it, Patrick Rothfuss takes the less-opted approach of focusing on character development. If you’re looking for a book that will get you addicted, then this masterpiece from Rothfuss is just what the doctor ordered. Settle down in a cozy corner of your home, light up the fireplace if you have one, and allow Rothfuss to tug at your heartstrings through his vivid and exquisite storytelling. Sit down and discover the epic journey of how a talented young boy transformed over the years into the infamous Kvothe Kingkiller.

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Yakusoku no Neverland WRITTEN BY Shreyansh Saurabh

ILLUSTRATED BY Comps

B.Tech. II

Anusree Anilkumar

Electrical

B.Tech. II

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“The reality, however, isn’t as rosy as it seems.”

If you go around browsing the anime catalog, you’ll notice a few tremendously under-explored genres. One prominent feature in this list is ‘horror’. Although this genre has been highly sought-after in the film industry, acquiring a base of patrons for itself, it hasn’t quite made its mark in the anime industry. The genre does boast the likes of Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Elfen Lied. However, its productivity has gradually died down as the Shounen writers have shifted more towards fantasies and thrillers, since large proportions of the audience seem to be connecting to the characters on an emotional level in those series, like Deku in MHA and Goku in the Dragon Ball series. Even when a few anime shows tried to inculcate a touch of ‘horror factor’ in the story, their only go-to element was the usage of grim music to create a heavy atmosphere. The same scenario continued until the fall of 2019 when Yakusoku no Neverland arrived on the scene. The anime tackles the notion that the fusion of horror and animation can’t result in a worthy end product.

The story starts at Grace Field house, where orphans live fulfilling lives together with everything they could ask for — hearty food, excellent education, and a loving caretaker whom they call ‘Mama’.

They treat each other like family and their lives seem to be nothing short of paradise. The premise of the orphanage is that the children are raised in a great environment with excellent amenities and are adopted by families before they turn 12. The reality, however, isn’t as rosy as it seems. The three protagonists, Emma, Norman, and Ray, stumble across an unexpected event and soon realize that the orphanage is just a ruse. In reality, it’s a farm

where children are raised as crops for demons to devour. At 12, the children are considered to be of the highest quality. Now, they must plan an escape to get everyone out of the farm and make it into the society outside. However, they are faced with an almost insurmountable hurdle as the caretaker, Isabella, instantly catches on to the fact that the protagonists are no longer in the dark about the farm and foils even the tiniest steps of resilience quite conveniently.

A horror-thriller wouldn’t be competent if it didn’t draw the viewers into its world and make them anxious about the mysteries and secrets held deep within.

Yakusoku no Neverland delivers an ace in this regard as it gets viewers completely hooked from the very first episode. What makes this anime great is the omnipresence of the sinister atmosphere, embedded within each storytelling device that it has access to. The fluidity of the animation is exquisite and can be easily compared to the likes of the ‘Genos-Saitama spar’ in One Punch Man and the monstrous ‘HinataKageyama quick’ in ‘Haikyu!!’. The editing, in particular, frequently takes advantage of jarring cuts to elicit truly unnerving responses and provide jump-scares to keep the viewers on edge. The characters have been fleshed out remarkably, especially the antagonists, striking fear into viewers just through their devious plans and smug facial expressions. The story also shifts seamlessly from horror to thriller and then to a good old-fashioned breakout, especially since the entire series is condensed into a single location.

Another X factor of the anime is the deftness in which it unfolds the entire plot. The story becomes

much more intense and appealing as it reveals only bits and pieces of the schema at a time, adding new layers to the existing mystery as the plot thickens with every episode. There are a plethora of well-employed visual techniques that add an air of tension. The anime has numerous classic tension-building shots like the first-person point of view of walking through dimly-lit hallways, each convincing the viewer of an upcoming jump-scare. That’s how effectively the atmosphere has been filled with creepy presence.

The horror comes in with an accentuated sense of dread, with a camera that’s always kept a fair distance from the characters, as if the viewers were spying from a dark corner, lingering just a hint too long to evoke suspicion.

The anime does fall a wee-bit short in a few aspects. The horror factor is dampened substantially in the latter half of the season and the anime shifts more towards the thriller side. The upcoming plot twists have been made quite apparent in the entire series by stretching the screen-time of grim music and heavy atmosphere a tad too much.

The complexities of 11-year-old kids have also been exaggerated on some occasions, for example, when a character builds a device to disable trackers with mere scraps.

Overall, the show uses a perfect blend of thrills, tension, and fabulous characters to keep us excited for what is to come. The wonderful animation, use of emotion and action, as well as the story itself, make Yakusoku no Neverland an excellent tale. I highly recommend that you switch tabs now, grab some snacks, and dive right away into this amazing horror-thriller.

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SVNIT Wall Articles, photographs, and paintings by members of SVNIT

Our Unseen Connections With Nature Guest Piece WRITTEN BY Aditya Gheewala

ILLUSTRATED BY Comps

B.Tech. IV

Abhinav Pandey

When I was in a state of no-mind, free from the subconscious mind’s romping, untangled from the seemingly complex afflictions of the past and the upcoming, When I was in the present, cautiously blinking, I queried the reason behind all the agony and the loathing, only to discern, how futile they are.

In those moments of silence and solace, feeling the zest of nature, when I really felt my heartbeat, that’s when I realized, I am living.

Then, syncing in with the ethereal beauty of nature, as the petrichor pervaded my body, the more vehemently I felt it, the more it apprised me of euphoria; showing me glimpses of its unseen utopia.

The peace, the happiness, the contentment that I was searching for, upon witnessing I perceived, the nature, has it all galore.

Mechanical

B.Tech. II

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There’s Always A Tomorrow Guest Piece WRITTEN BY

ILLUSTRATED BY

Krishna Shreeram

Comps

B.Tech. I

Fahad Khatuda

Mechanical

B.Tech. II

Morning Waking up to the sunlight Wanting to make things right Our inner demons we fight

Don’t let the past hold you back Start fresh, start new Because you have grown Learned from mistakes And the people you have known Going through the lazy afternoon Waiting to see the moon This is the time between morning and night This is the time when the sun shines As bright as white Before you know, it’s night Another day gone to make things right But this is not the end You can still make amends Have the courage to dare To withstand the bloody glare

Have a safe flight through the silent night It will test your will and your might Reflect upon your thoughts Don’t just keep them on the shelf Don’t get caught up in the knots God is the Santa to your elf Sleep through the pain But don’t let it up your brain Don’t let it send chills through your spine It’s a phase, it will pass by Like the time you were nine Today might not be your day, your reign But don’t let your efforts go in vain Because there is always a tomorrow To make it rain.

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Hyperconnectivity Guest Piece WRITTEN BY Puneet Singh

ILLUSTRATED BY Comps

B.Tech. II

Abhinav Pandey

Mechanical

B.Tech. II

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“The lockdown helped in pulverizing the publicenemy-number-one of digitization — human attitudes.”

“The central fact of the age we live in is that every country, every market, every medium of communication, every natural resource is connected.”

- Simon Anholt, The Good Country The first COVID death in the La Rioja province of Argentina occurred on 31 March 2020. The reason for highlighting this is that the La Rioja province is the antipode (the point on the exact opposite side of the planet) of the location where the virus first emerged — just a few months earlier in Wuhan, Hubei. No doubt, this instance makes one think of how interconnected we are in our extensively globalized world; the hazards in an obscure wet market, twelve thousand miles away, can kill you!

We are moving into an era where the maxim, “Connectivity is destiny” is driving the adage “Geography is destiny” obsolete. The butterfly effect, the idea that flaps of a butterfly’s wing at one place can spur a tornado at another, is more relevant now than ever, thanks to global transportation, telecommunications, and inevitably, the Internet.

When the physical highways all around the world were closed down due to the pandemic, the information superhighways rose to the occasion and kept the world

hustling. I reckon that they did much more than that. The lockdown helped in pulverizing the publicenemy-number-one of digitization — human attitudes. Most of us were reluctant to be tech-savvy — while some did not like to share credit card information online, doctors’ appointments via video chat sounded bizarre to many.

Businesses were no different; every business was forced to go digital.

Numerous tech-giants have now made work-from-home a permanent option for their employees. Remote learning, virtual socializing, and online shopping have become the norm rather than being an option.

It is funny to imagine how different this pandemic would have been if it occurred, say, in the 90s, when the Internet was merely in its infant stage — Lectures on All India Radio (AIR)? Maybe.

Amidst the lockdown, cyber connectivity did not let people down — although there were some bumps on the information superhighway.

These bumps have indicated the areas where more work is required to make cyberspace a more efficient and reliable platform. The two major ones, I believe, are:

Cybersecurity: The more connected Internet creeps into the real world, the more lethal cyber attacks can be. I recently came across an article about a

security flaw in an internet-enabled male chastity device that allowed hackers to access the gadget remotely and permanently lock in wearers. The “Internet of Things” has thus also become the “Internet of Threats.”

Internet Censorship: The web was envisioned to be an ungoverned stateless medium of information.

This course is unfeasible, thanks to shady people doing shady business on the Internet, thus twisting the government’s arm to intervene.

However, that doesn’t warrant preemptive content restrictions from private trading (like Robinhood’s recent action against Redditors).

By 2030, everyone in the world is likely to have mobile phones and access to the internet. With such an extent of hyper-connectivity, the collective action of common people would have remarkable consequences. This reminds us of the recent infamous ‘David vs Goliath’ feat of Redditors against Wall Street, where r/wallstreetbets raised the stock price of GameStop overnight.

“All you need is an internet connection, a laptop, and an adequate motivation to be part of today’s global economy.”

- Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.

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The Lost Melody Guest Piece WRITTEN BY Pranjali Aditi

ILLUSTRATED BY Civil

Staring at the blue sky, I get lost in the patterns of heaven. Isn’t it amazing how we humans find the reflection of our deepest desires in everything we see? It is funny and scary at the same time because now I can see guitar notes floating in the sky. As I sigh deeply, the connection buried in my chest starts singing again.

Getting away from the window, I enter the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. I need to complete my college assignment tonight. I can’t afford to sleep away my pain again. As the drops of liquid dive into my cup, I stare at the red ceramic and freeze. Sometimes all you need is a pinch of silence to freshen up the scars of the past. I guess that is what happens to me, for in the next moment, I’m taken back in time: I was packing my room after my 10th boards, hiding away the childhood I lived with the hopes of unpacking those cardboard boxes after fulfilling my dreams. I stared at the comic books I collected and the video games I played. “Just for 2 years,” a voice rang in my ears, and I turned to look at the scariest thing I had to do that night. I had to break my own heart and the pain was excruciating.

Taking a deep breath, I imagined the future that I could achieve with that one sacrifice. I just have to get a great IIT and then I am free to do anything.

Just 2 years. Not a big deal, right?

With heavy steps, I walked towards it. I picked up its case from the side

B.Tech. I

Aneesha Sengupta

and put it on the bed.

“I will miss you,” I stared at my companion in my lowest days and my brightest parties and the wet tears kissed my skin. I couldn’t bother to wipe them up and the motto of having a bright future rang in my ears. Slowly and painfully, I put the guitar in the case and closed it. My fingers trembled and my heart ached. I felt as if I was packing away my heart and cutting the connection for two years. All I wanted was to fulfil my dream of being an IITian.

Just 2 years and everything will be alright…

I let out a humourless chuckle and stare at the floor. What a fool I was!

I gave it my all and it gave me what?

A long, depressing lockdown? I sacrificed everything and yet I got…

Exhaling slowly, I close my eyes and do what my mom suggested. Think positive. At least my JEE Main wasn’t ruined and at least I’m in a good college now. I need to focus ahead.

I chant it like a mantra and feel the heartache fading away. I’m happy here but I don’t know why I feel like something is missing.

I sigh, but fortunately, my coffee maker starts ringing and I successfully dodge the claws of despair. I shake my head and think about the assignments due tomorrow. Ah, I have a lot to do.

I pick up my coffee mug and go inside my room. Putting it on the table, I pull my chair but as I’m about to sit, my eyes fall on the guitar case

Mechanical

B.Tech. II

lying in the corner. For a moment, my breath stops, as it does every time I see the case. I stare at it and the pain in my chest reminds me of what I lost because of my stupidity.

My fingers curl into a fist and with a sigh, I tear my gaze away and open my notebook. I better focus on the things at hand. As the ink starts flowing and decorating the blank white page, my mind takes me on a tour.

I had tried playing the guitar again during the lockdown but I couldn’t feel the same anymore. I felt like I had lost my melody and all I

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played was noise. I tried it for days, practised from the beginning again but nothing worked. The melody was lost and I was the culprit.

“Aah!” I pull my hair and bang my head on the table. If offline college doesn’t begin soon, I am going to die overthinking. Accepting that I wasn’t in the mood to study, I take the mask and the sanitiser and leave the room.

“Ma, I am going for a walk,” I tell her and leave.

With my hands in my hoodie’s pockets, I look around and notice the changes post lockdown. The streets are busy and people are travelling.

The only addition is the masks on their faces and the distance they try keeping among themselves. On the outside, it is almost normal, but in our hearts, we know what the year 2020 has robbed us of.

I tear my gaze from the busy streets and enter the garden. There are children playing badminton, a group of adults discussing something animatedly, and pets strolling happily. Everything seems as usual but when my eyes fall on a little girl sitting alone on the bench, a genuine smile crawls to my lips. I walk over to her and hear the broken melodies she’s trying to create.

“Hey,” I greet her. She looks up at me, tearing her gaze from the strings. The guitar looks too big for her but the tension in her eyebrows indicates that the little lady is serious about her business.

“Are you going to classes somewhere?” I ask her, when I notice an older woman approaching us.

She looks like the young girl. It feels like she just smiled at me so I smile back, but then I remember the mask and hope that she could feel it too.

“She went to classes before the lockdown but now she isn’t going anywhere,” her mother tells me.

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“The teacher who used to teach her left town. And she rejects the other ones.” she responds. “She says they don’t play as good as her old teacher.”

I don’t know what gets into me but I take out my sanitiser, use it, and ask the girl for her guitar.

“May I?” I ask, and she hands me the guitar reluctantly. Taking a deep breath, I begin playing with my eyes closed.

It has been so long and I’m scared that I sound bad, but I finish the song nevertheless. It’s been a while since I felt good playing it and I’ve really missed that vibration in my heart. I open my eyes and find myself surrounded by people. Am I about to get beaten up?

“Wow! You play so well!” an uncle exclaims, and everyone joins in.

“Thank you,” I reply. Wow, did I really play that good?

A big smile creeps up on my face and I turn to look at the girl. She scoots closer to me and holds my hand.

“Will you teach me? Please?”

I see the spark and hope in her eyes and in that moment, the lost melody in my heart is regained. The connection I had lost is back and new ones have just been formed.

“Yeah, but you have to pay me with chocolates,” I reply with a cheeky grin, and the devil of despair is now lost.

During 2020, when the COVID warriors fought for our safety, we were fighting our own battles.

Mental health is important too. All of us have sacrificed something while preparing for JEE and I want to encourage you all to reestablish the connections you lost and perhaps, go a step further — make some new ones in college.

“Why? Her classes aren’t open yet?”

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Artworks Exhibit in collaboration with Akriti

Paresh Kharva U17ME099 Mechanical B.Tech. IV Happiness

Ritu Sharma U20EE105 Electrical B.Tech. I A boat is nothing without water and man, without his dreams

Sanskriti Pal U18ME027 Mechanical B.Tech. III

Sauparnika Nair I20MA021 Maths M.Sc. I The Connection between Life and the Universe

Zen - Communication is merely an exchange of information, but connection is an exchange of our souls

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Shreyash Kadam U18CO113 Comps B.Tech. III The Incorruptible Connection

Freya Parekh U20EC040 ECE B.Tech. I Some things in 2020 worth making a connection for

Isha Solanki I20PH018 Physics M.Sc. I Mother’s Love

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Photographs Exhibit in collaboration with Convex

Shikhar Priyadarshi Chemical B.Tech. IV

Aditya Sreenivas

Mechanical

B.Tech. III

Naitik Patil

Comps

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Haider Sultan

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Renesa - Spring Edition 2021

Renesa - Spring Edition 2021

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Sakshi Hirani

Nishant Singh

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Editors Foram Fanasia

Shivansh Shandilya

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Tanmay Dadhania

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Akshita Gupta

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Malvika Nath

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