SUPER SCIENCE FIESTA AT GOA SCIENCE CENTRE… Doing the inaugural honors on February 28, 2023 are CSIR-NIO’s Prof Sunil Kumar Singh, Satish Nayak & Vilas Chaudhary and scientist Susanta Kumar Jena of NPCI.
More children should visit the lovely and well-maintained Goa Science Centre complex at Miramar beach in capital city Panaji! It has undergone a transformation with all kinds of physics, chemistry and biology woven into a science park which also sports some magnificent trees….
THE older I get the more I learn that we are living in such interesting times today! The good, bad and ugly intermingle with some surprising pop-up observations and makes one feel that perhaps there’s hope for our killer civilization one of these days, one of these days He Ram, Inshallah, Sweet Jesus (funny or not funny I’ve taken to this like a duck to water or so to speak even if I think we can dispense with religious PFTDs … but they continue to make the maximum money. Even the government of the day is into it.
But this week I want to write about National Science Day on February 28 and the science and technology fiesta going on at the Goa Science Centre at Miramar beach in capital city Panaji from Feb 25 to 28…quite a few events were on but the Goa Science Centre was the place to be naturally where there was a three-day line-up talks, workshops, exhibitions and some of the science of life stuff was very enthralling even for poor old cynical me. The visiting school children here when I visited were having a rocking time out at the techno park created so ingeniously with all the demo creations put up amidst groves of some magnificent trees (as you will see in photo essay elsewhere here)…one can really swing and rock it out at this techno park offering so much education and insight into what makes life go around in our increasingly mod con times.
Actually, I saw on the schedule someone posted me on WhatsApp about a talk on “Nuclear Power Clean, Green and Safe” by a Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd by senior manager (HR, Corporate Communication) Susanta Kumar Jena …I wanted to listen in (I mean if one of these days there is a nuclear war unleashed by Vladimir Putin of Russia on Ukraine we’re all going to be affected)…in fact after the talk in Q/A session I asked how one could best protect oneself if there’s nuclear war in the air? He said “Keep iodine tablets handy and save your thyroid first! In Ukraine everyone carries iodine tablets and there’s already a shortage of them…”
I had rather a shocking exchange with him afterwards which left me like shell-shocked a bit. We in Goa and India are so busy with a non-stop roll out of festivals and celebrations that it’s like we don’t want to know and don’t want to care even if a nuclear war fall-out arrives to impact us, no matter where it happens in the world. According to Susanta Kumar Jena if it happens in Europe it is so far away it will impact us little for much of it will get dissipated in the upper skies in neighbouring areas…meaning they will more!
But despite the seriousness of some fanatic lunatic up there in Russia or USA pressing the nuclear button – and in the US of A currently there’s a hue and cry, Americans don’t want a nuclear war and are sick and tire of the warmongering politics of their American oligarchs in politics, cheered on by the mainstream media houses and their dons. Despite the sort of Damocle’s sword of nuclear warfare hanging over Ukraine out in Europe with China taking a ringside interest in all this, Susanta Kumar Jena says we should not fear nuclear power.
In fact there is nothing so save as harnessing nuclear power for most of our energy needs. Nuclear plants have safety technology in place and if there’s an incident nothing can come out, because some of the safety systems happen automatically. They are built to withstand even tsunami and other events, but built-in safety valves are mostly proof against any untoward tragedy…100 % it is not a nuclear plant tragedy but a human hand which will trigger a nuclear war if at all. So relax. He agreed that our civilisation and world is poised at a very critical crossroads when we have to decide collectively how much radiation technology we want in our lives and in the air not only we breathe in but all life on earth.
Any survival of life on earth encompasses all life on earth and Mother Earth is finite, it can tolerate only so much from the most dangerous species – we, the people, who are far too arrogant and greedy for our own good or the good of the good earth…all that, you get the picture, my dears. One of these days take your children if you have any out to the Goa Science Centre at Miramar beach and check out the mechanics of the pulleys which help lift loads, the swinging pendulams, how to make music on the zylophone (very intriguing, couldn’t resist joining the kids here to see if I could make some music in my life using a hammer, better called mallet)! I trust both the children of greater gods and lesser gods get to go out for a day to have some fun learning at the Goa Science Centre…in fact, I think it should be open to the public freely on all days between certain timings. It’s a public-funded science centre, mustn’t behave like a private-funded science centre.
TO MOVE on if you‘re looking for someone to cater a meal or a party or even a tiffin for you – I am forever looking for one – you might want to think of this long lost friend of mine who’s just come back into my life! She is Susan Vaz, an incomparable caterer and restaurateur. She runs the Café & Restaurant Menorah in Old Goa, serving Goan, Indian and Chinese food. Though she confesses corona virus pandemic and lockdowns the food business has pretty much boiled down to take-away orders.
I made friends with Susan and her sister when they were running the Kala Academy canteen many years ago, and did a good job of it too. Then changeovers happened and she was on her own, but she’s been in the food business for so long that she’s a professional now and despite the ups and downs of life (with a Nigerian hubby and a son from him) she works hard doing catering packages for party food, wedding food, buffet food, corporate food, yacht and cruise food, canteens services for the factories and industries…etcetera.
Meeting her after a long time I asked, Susan you cook Nigerian food? And she said, Yes! What’s Nigerian food? Smiled, “Mostly pounded yam…and fufu?” Fufu? It’s beloved African staple made out of cassava, yams, maize, plantain, wheat, corn, semolina, rice, sweet potatoes or oatmeal…eaten boiled, steamed, fried, mashed, floured and turned into something more exotic! There’s also jollof rice but that’s a luxury and lots of soups, stews, meat is gastronomy eaten without any waste residues or so I am told. Beef, Goat, lamb, chicken, turkey – some green thrown in like jungle spinach, pumpkin leaves or jute leaves. Jute leaves?
Susan cooks some Nigerian food, but rarely now. If I want to try she will cook for me if I go visit her! Make fufu or foofoo balls for me…I will eat them laced with chilli sauce with lots of lemon in it, I told her. All this is to say if you’re looking for a caterer par excellence look up Susan Vaz! I’m thinking I must catch up with Nigerian food one of these days courtesy Susan and ask her a few more questions…one of these days I’m going to check out Susan’s Café & Restaurant Menorah and its menu.
ON that note it’s avjo, selamat datang, poiteverem, au revoir, arrivedecci, hasta la vista and vachun yeta here for now!
—Mme Butterfly