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The Eugen Sandow of Bengaluru
KV Iyer was the first person to set up and successfully run a vyayama shaala in Bangalore
Since the time of Kempegowda, Bengaluru is known for its Garadi Mane, the traditional wrestler training centres. Even today there are a few such akhadas in old city where many young men practice this sport, exercise and tone their bodies. Becoming a wrestler is not everyone’s cup of tea. Many young men like to build their body and tone their muscles, both for looks and strength.
Now, all over the city, there are a number of such centres popularly known as gymnasiums, offering varied types of traditional and modern methods of body building. However, during the first half of 20th century there were hardly any such places in the city to shape a sound mind in a sound body. The credit of running such a vyayamashala successfully, goes to KV Iyer. He is remembered even today for exploring a systematic method of physical culture.
A few years ago I met Dr. KV Karna and his wife Vasanta Karna, son and daughter-in-law of KV Iyer, to know of his contribution. Prof. K V Iyer Smarane’ is a memoir brought out by V.Si. Sampada in which the author KG Nadiger gives a vivid picture of K V Iyer’s life, his Vyayamashala and the gymnastic achievements. “Ordinary feet, extraordinary feat” is an apt tribute given to this master of body building by Dr.Veena Bharati in her book of the same title.
Kolar Venkatesh Iyer was born on January 8, 1898 in the village of Devarayasamudra in Kolar district. He lost his mother at the young age. His father came down to Bangalore and started a a small eatery to eke out a livelihood. Iyer could not continue studies after his intermediate due to financial constraints. But he was very much interested in body building.
He learnt the basics of the art of physique from his guru Venkatakrishnaiah. After taking a course of Charles Atlas, who was an Italian-American body builder best remembered as the developer of a body building method and its associated exercise programme, KV Iyer began developing his own system of body building harmoniously, blending the Indian system of Hatha Yoga and Western style of aerobics. His first training centre, Hercules Gymnasium was established in Tipu Sultan’s Palace in Bangalore in 1922.
Once, T P Kailasam, a versatile genius and a household name in Kannada literary circle, came to his class. They had met earlier in another occasion near Kolar. Kailasam explained to him about the salient features of Maxalding system. Maxalding is an exercise system of muscle control using a form of isometrics. Books and pamphlets teaching the system were first published in 1909 and continued until Maxalding ceased to trade in the late 1970s. When Kailasam had gone abroad he had met Eugen Sandow. He also shared his experiences of his meeting Eugen Sandow, a legend of physical culture. He also asked whether K V Iyer had read about Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Play About a Good Woman, a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde. KV Iyer promptly replied that he had no time to read any books other than literature on physical culture. The playwright replied “Oh my! You are only into body-building, what about your brain? The general opinion about physical culture is All brawn and no brain. You should prove to the world that brawn and brain can go together.” This dictum of his well-wisher had a long lasting effect on the young body builder. He changed his thinking, style of functioning and imparting the training to this pupils.
He rented a bigger house in Chamarajapet fifth main which was located right in front or the residence of the well-known Dr. B. Nanjappa, and established a full-fledged gymnasium which later came to be known as K V Iyer’s Vyayamashala.
For young K V Iyer, Eugen Sandow, the German body builder of early nineteenth century, also considered as “Father of Modern Body Building” was the role model. Earlier, the body builders simply displayed their well-developed physique as part of strength demonstration or wrestling matches. But Eugen Sandow was so successful at flexing and posing his physique that audiences were thrilled and enjoyed viewing his “muscle display performances”. He later created several businesses around his fame, and was among the first to market products branded with his name. He was credited with inventing and selling the first exercise equipment for the masses like machined dumbbells, spring pulleys and tension bands. Even his image was sold by the thousands in ‘cabinet cards’ and other prints. He also authored a few books and journals on the subject. Sandow visited India in 1905, at which time he was already a cultural hero and had the most influence on modern yoga as exercise.
KV Iyer too, like his role model, presented the sequence of yoga asanas in Surya Namaskara, as a practical, modern, stretching exercise rather than as something only spiritual. He toured India doing lecture-demonstrations, accompanied by the yoga guru Seetharaman Sundaram.
Like Sandow, he vigorously promoted himself, appearing in magazines such as Health and Strength and The Superman. He wrote several books on physical culture including Perfect Physique, Muscle Cult, Physique and Figure, Suya Namasakar and Chemical Changes in Physical Exercise.
To be continued….
Email: sureeshmoona@gmail.com
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment / by Suresh Moona / July 24th, 2020
Karnataka’s first plasma bank launched
So far, only 10 donors have come forward to donate plasma, which is given to critical Covid patients.
Bengaluru :
To combat the surge in Covid-19 cases, the state government, in association with the Covid India Campaign and HCG Hospital in Bengaluru, on Tuesday launched the state’s first plasma bank, COPE (Covid Plasma Endeavour). It was inaugurated at HCG Hospital by Deputy Chief Minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan and MP Tejasvi Surya.
So far, only 10 donors have come forward to donate plasma, which is given to critical Covid patients. An online registry too was opened a few days ago to help patients place their requests. Till now, five of the eight patients who were administered plasma have recovered. The three others who died were very critical. The country has only four to five plasma banks, and the first was launched in New Delhi earlier this month.
Dr Vishal Rao, Regional Director, Head & Neck Surgical Oncology, HCG Global, said, “We need to strengthen our fight against the virus. Plasma therapy has shown encouraging results in clinical trial settings, especially in critical Covid patients. We need more people who have recovered from the infection to donate plasma so that we can save innocent lives.”
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Karnataka / by Express News Service / July 22nd, 2020
A first for the Siddi community
Shantaram Budna Siddi nominated to Legislative Council
Shantaram Budna Siddi was waiting at the post office in his village of Hitlalli, sending a memorandum to the State government requesting for grant of land for a hostel for tribal students, when his phone rang.
The call from the Vidhana Soudha in Bengaluru was to tell him that he had been made a MLC. “I did not understand it fully. I thought someone may be playing a prank. I went home for lunch. It was then that my wife and I started getting calls continuously, congratulating me for the nomination,’’ he told The Hindu.
Mr. Siddi, who lives in his modest home on the outskirts of the forest in Hitlalli village of Yallapur in Uttara Kannada district, has become the first person from the Siddhi tribal community to be nominated to the Karnataka Legislative Council. He is among the five persons nominated by the State government to the Council on Wednesday.
The soft-spoken community organiser had this to say about his nomination: “Till now, I could do whatever little I could to help the people and drop the rest if I could not. No one would question me. But now, people across the State will be watching me closely. If I am given a list of 10 tasks, I will have to complete all of them, my responsibilities have increased”.
He further said: “I am no politician. I have spent all my life in social service. But today’s nomination has made me step into the field of politics. I don’t know how it will be ”.
He has also been working as a volunteer and state unit secretary of the Vanavasi Kalyan Prakalpa, a tribal welfare initiative of the RSS. He was introduced to the VKP when Prakash Kamat, a vibhag pracharak of the RSS and VKP in-charge, met him at a friend’s house. Mr Siddi was working as a farm labourer, despite being a graduate.
Mr. Kamat asked him to work as a full-time worker of the VKP for a honorarium. He accepted the offer and began a career in social service. “I could have got a government job based on my degree. But once I began working here, I liked it,” he said.
Over the last 32 years, Mr. Siddi has been touring the State, organising tribal communities, helping them get government facilities, get access to higher education and jobs. He says his focus would be the all-round development of tribal communities, especially forest-dwelling groups like Siddis.
Mr. Siddi was the first graduate from his community to pass out of Karnataka University in 1988. He served as a member of the Western Ghats task force of the State government in 2008-2009. He has also been involved in the Vruksha-Laksha NGO working for afforestation and environment awareness.
His wife Susheela runs a petty shop. Their elder daughter has completed her degree and his son is still in high school.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Karnataka / by Rishikesh Bahadur Desai / Belagavi – July 22nd, 2020
Here’s why TweenCraft is taking the meme Internet corner by storm
This India-made animation app is easy to use and has struck a chord with netizens during the lockdown
The lockdown made almost everyone turn to their smartphones for entertainment. That, in turn, made a lot of content creators try out Indian-made TweenCraft, which has gone viral for its use of basic animation and voice modulation enabling users to create short dialogue-driven comic animation — most of which are memes.
Using TweenCraft, one can create animation story with basic learning about the edit features. Moreover it becomes a platform to create personal stories to share on social media. Stories can be created from scratch or simply picked from any story shared created earlier and re-edited to create a new one. The app allows editing rigs (bones) of the characters for performance of specific actions.
Mostly popular as forwards on WhatsApp and reposts on Instagram, TweenCraft’s most-discussed animation series are the ones that involve a mother’s sarcastic comments on exam results, lockdown preparation and bragging of boyfriends. Regional clips do well.
Bengaluru-based duo of KalpKriti Inc, Soni Sahu and Dinesh Sen has been working on this app over the last four years. Soni says, “Our story is as crazy as the TweenCraft app. We quit our jobs at Intel four-and-a-half years ago. Since then we are working full-time to build this app.” Working without any funding, the two says they have been “following a Buddhist monk’s lifestyle.”
“We are getting some business now,” explains Dinesh, “The last four months have been pretty good for us, giving us the much-needed morale boost. We grew from 300 daily active users to 15,000 without a marketing budget.”
With so many apps available, the duo was not sure about the response for the product. “We are satisfied with the outcome. People are loving it,” says Soni. “Creating the app on a limited budget was also a challenge. We were not in a position to hire experts. We did most of the coding and hired interns and freelancers to help us,” explains Dinesh, adding that the app started to gain traction around February 2020.
Reaching the masses
“During February 2020 we used to get around 200 new downloads every day. The magic of numbers actually started happening in May during the lockdown, when RJ Praveen (RedFM) tried our app. In a day our views jumped to 3,87,386 with 17,000 likes,” recalls Soni. The app, which used to get about 2,000 downloads a day in April saw over 6,000 downloads daily in May. The team says the app is currently free, but they plan to have some in-app ads for revenue. TweenCraft also have had businesses contact them to create ads.
TweenCraft user Mridusmita Chakraborty, a copywriter with a FM radio channel, says she chanced upon the comic animations while randomly scrolling through YouTube. Mridusmita, a Mass Communications student in Guwahati, Assam, specialising in Animation, instantly liked the comics. She says “I scrolled through the various videos but couldn’t find anything in Assamese. As a copy writer, I have a lot of thoughts and scripts which I can’t really use for radio. I downloaded [TweenCraft] and tried a few.”
Mridusmita adds, “I wrote about a conversation between a girl and her boyfriend. It got me a good number of likes and shares. The comments mostly said they relate to the mindless conversations and the girl’s thought blurbs. The sarcastic mother giving the girl a roasting about her exam results or the show she is watching is also popular. In Assam, Matric results are a big thing. Friends and family actually keep a track of those who appeared for the exams and do not miss making calls to enquire about results on D-Day.”
Most TweenCraft users love to portray family drama through the app — from kitchen conversations to arguments between parents or the discussions of where to eat out. Namrata Kumari and her sister, who both use the app to portray their conversations with their dad about their spending habits, have earned many laughs. “The app is easy to use if you are creative in your dialogues,” says Namrata. “All we do is repeat what our dad says about going shopping or making online purchases. There are many who relate to our content and also offer suggestions on what we could feature.” Those unfamiliar with how to create their own videos can check out tutorial videos on the TweenCraft Desi channel on YouTube.
TweenCraft is available to Android users via the Play Store.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Sci-Tech> Tech / by Prabalika M Borah / Hyderabad – July 13th, 2020
Zoom to set up new tech centre in Bengaluru after it sees 6700% growth; hiring across various verticals to begin soon
Zoom will also expand its existent Mumbai office, to almost triple its size, an official statement said.
Popular video conferencing app, Zoom which counts tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Jio as its rivals, will soon set up its first tech centre in Bengaluru to aid India and global operations, Velchamy Sankarlingam, President of Product and Engineering for Zoom said.
The video conferencing platform will immediately begin hiring DevOps engineers, IT, Security, and Business Operations for its Bengaluru tech centre the video conferencing service saw a 6700 per cent growth in the country from January to April, 2020 during the COVID pandemic.
“Paid user base has increased by 4 times in India from January-April,” Sankarlingam added.
Zoom will also expand its existent Mumbai office, to almost triple its size, an official statement said. California headquartered firm has also data centres in Mumbai and Hyderabad. Without revealing the current employee strength, Zoom has in India, the company’s top management said that all the employees will continue to work from home.
“India is a strategically important country for Zoom and we expect to see continued growth and investment here. We are proud to provide our services for free to over 2,300 educational institutions in India during the COVID-19 pandemic, and look forward to continuing to work with the people and government of India hand-in-hand,” Eric S. Yuan, CEO of Zoom said.
“We plan to hire key employees for the technology center over the next few years, pulling from India’s highly-educated engineering talent pool. This facility will play a critical role in Zoom’s continued growth,” he added.
Zoom to focus on safety/ privacy issues in India
Delving on the security concerns raised by Indian government and activist groups while using Zoom app, the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), Aparna Bawa said that the platform is working to ensure end-to-end encryption for all its users in India and that following the advisories issued by MHA and cybersecurity regulator, Computer Emergency Response Team of India( CERT_ on May 29, Zoom has enhanced its security features. “ We are providing the ‘control your own data routing’ features wherein all our paid customers have the option to completely safeguard the data.”
CERT had earlier pointed out that meeting apps like Zoom, Microsoft Team, Cisco Webex are vulnerable to cyber attacks which may allow criminals to have an easy acess to sensitive information shared on these platforms.
Zoom’s top executives said that the advisories are a routine feature in a COVID pandemic environment where work from home has become a norm and hence the governments are advising on enhanced security features.
Founded in 2011, in San Jose, California, Zoom has been able to scale up its services to overseas markets besides US. The company’s Q1 revenues for the quarter ended April 30, 2020 saw a growth by 169% at $328.2 million and the number of daily active users jumped to 300 million in April from 10 million in January.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Business / by Bismah Malik / Express News Service / July 21st, 2020
Megalithic antiques said to date back to 1,000 BC discovered near Kollur
A team of archaeologists led by T. Murugeshi recently discovered a menhir, a cupule, a well cut in round shape in hard laterite, and pottery of the megalithic period on the foothills of Mookasura Betta, near Kollur, in Udupi district.
Prof. Murugeshi, an associate professor of Ancient History and Archaeology with Mulki Sundar Ram Shetty Memorial College, Shirva, in Udupi district, said the exploration site where the menhir (a tall upright stone of the kind erected in the prehistoric era) was discovered was very close to Kollur Mookambika Temple. In a statement, he said the menhir was similar to the ones discovered in the adjacent Malnad region.
He said Mookasura Betta has a fort-like structure constructed using undressed stones. Locals call it “Mookasurana Kote”. According to Indian mythology, Mookasura was a demon king who was killed by Devi in Kollur to restore dharma, and hence came the name Mookambika.
The menhir found at Mookasura Betta was about 2.1 metres tall, 55 cm thick, 65 cm wide at the bottom, and 55 cm at the top. It was lying on the ground and originally seemed to be oriented towards the east. About 40 such menhirs were reported by researchers at several places, namely Baise, Nilskar, and Heragal in the adjacent Hosanagar taluk of Shivamogga district, Prof. Murugeshi recalled.
Quoting former director of State Archaeology A. Sundara, Prof. Murugeshi said the name Baise was a vernacular version of the Sanskrit word Mahisha. Dr. Sundara had dated the megalithic menhir culture of Nilskar, Baise and Hergal to c. 1200-1000 B.C., he said, adding that the discoveries at Kollur too could be dated back to 1000 B.C. or much earlier. Prof. Murugeshi has already reported menhirs at Kurkal, Adkadakatte, and Buddhanajeddu of Udupi district. The menhir found at Kollur could be from the beginning of the megalithic culture, he added.
Menhirs were locally known as Anekallu, Dibbanadakallu, Nilskallu, Barbiniyarakallu, etc. Prof. Murugeshi thanked Muralidhara Hegde, Ramesh Anagalli, U.B. Chandr Guddemane, Raghavendra Aithal, Janardhana Achari, and Bhaskari Nuksal of Kollur for their help in the exploration.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Karnataka / by Special Correspondent / Mangaluru – July 19th, 2020
Eminent scholar U.P. Upadhyaya passes away near Udupi
His book – The Tulu Lexicon, comprising six volumes, was a major contribution to the linguistics
Noted scholar and the Chief Editor of monumental linguistic work, The Tulu Lexicon, Uliyar Padmanabha Upadhyaya, passed away near Udupi on Friday night. He was 88 and is survived by a son and a daughter.
Sources said that he passed away at a hospital in Manipal at about 11:30 p.m. on July 17.
His wife Susheela who was also an eminent Tulu scholar and who had compiled The Tulu Lexicon with him had passed away on January 14, 2014 at the age of 77 years.
Mr. Upadhyaya was born in a priestly scholar family on April 10, 1932 at Uliyar in Majur Village near Kaup in Udupi district. His father, Sitaram Upadhyaya was a reputed scholar in the court of the Raja of Travancore.
The Tulu Lexicon, with six volumes, was a major contribution to the linguistics by the Upadhyaya couple. Its first volume was published in 1988 and the last volume in 1997. The Lexicon has been published by Rashtrakavi Govinda Pai Samshodana Kendra at Udupi.
Playwright K. Mahalinga Bhat, Associate Professor in Kannada, St. Aloysius Evening College, Mangaluru told The Hindu that his Tulu lexicon project was a major work in Indian languages. The couple had followed the dictionary science and methodology in compiling it and it is of international standard.
The Upadhyayas did serious research work in linguistics and folk culture and produced a number of books-some of them jointly, some individually and some in collaboration with others, he said.
Some of the significant books and articles of Mr. Upadhyaya included Nanjanagudu Kannada (Vokkaliga Dialect), Coorg Kannada, Kuruba – A Dravidian Language, Kannada – A Phonetic Language, Malayalam Language and Literature (with Ms. Susheela), Effect of Bilingualism on Bidar Kannada, Coimbatore Tamil, Kannada as Spoken by Different Population Groups in Mysore City, Dravidian and Negro African: Ethno Linguistic Study (with Ms. Susheela), Conversational Kannada, Coastal Karnataka and Bhuta Worship: Aspects of a Ritualistic Theatre (with Ms. Susheela).
He had acquired three Post Graduate (MA) degrees in Sanskrit, Kannada and Linguistics from Madras, Kerala and Pune Universities, Vidwan in Hindi and PhD in Linguistics from the Pune University for his thesis titled “A Comparative Study of Kannada Dialects”. He had command over Hindi, Kannada, Tulu, Malayalam, Tamil, English, French and Olof, the language of Senegal in Africa.
He was a visiting Professor at the Universities of London and Paris.
Noted critic Muralidhar Upadhya Hiriyadkka said that in addition to Tulu, the couple had made significant contribution to folklore research.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> States> Karnataka / by Special Correspondent / Mangaluru – July 18th, 2020
CM launches purifier for airborne viruses
The product uses metal nano particles with coated reusable membranes and liquid nanofluids.
Bengaluru :
A city-based start-up, incubated by Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Nutan Labs has developed Nano Corona Air Purifier Cum Steriliser which purifies indoor air by killing Covid-19 virus and other pollutants. CM BS Yediyurappa, while launching the product at his home office ‘Krishna’, said: “This kind of technology will be useful to help combat the virus. In a first, we are using nano-material in liquid form for absorption of pollutant gases and pathogens.”
The product uses metal nano particles with coated reusable membranes and liquid nanofluids. “In the first stage of nano filtration, we have coated noble metal nanoparticles of 10-20 nanometre each on sandwiched membranes or non-woven fibres. The nanoparticles eliminate the virus by disrupting the outer coating and damaging the genetic material (of 30-140 nanometre each) and ruptures it,” said Nuthan H S, CEO, Nutan Labs.
Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences & Research permitted the start-up to conduct real-time studies with COVID19 positive patients at the hospital’s isolation wards . It is claimed that the instrument purifies, sterilises and recirculates clean and sterile air in a rapid way without using much energy. Recently ‘Nutan Labs ‘ got the ‘Elevate Call 2 Award’ by Start-up Karnataka, Dept of IT- BT, Science and technology, Government of Karnataka.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Bengaluru / by Express News Service / July 18th, 2020