Odia classes

This is my Odia class test page.

This is a sample Odia text page for the NVS Class.

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Testing the Windows Live Writer

I just shifted to Windows 7 Professional a few days back. I was trying to use the Windows Mail feature which I found unavailable on this new OS. They instead were offering this Windows Live Mail service. So, just of curiosity, I had downloaded it. Along came several other services. The Live Writer being one among them. Let’s see how it functions. This post is written on my WordPress blog using this writer software.

 

This is a picture from the Hostel Nite dance DJ taking place in our hostel last year.

 

Demonstration and Gherao of the JNU Administration in 2009

This is a video of a student demonstration and gherao that took place last year at JNU administrative block against the fee hike and other issues of the university. This video was also uploaded directly from the writer service. Great, I just uploaded the video from my computer to this writer software which directly uploaded this video to my Youtube page using my account details. Let’s see how this work.

 

And, wow! This great. It took me less than ten minutes to do all this. Including the upload time taken by the Youtube server thruogh my computer which was downloading my mails from gmail.

The Loss of a Language Family: Death of Boa Sr.

This is to condole the sad demise of Boa Sr. who breathed her last yesternight (26th Jan, 2010) at Port Blair.

Boa Sr. was the oldest and the most prolific of the Great Andamanese people of the Andaman Islands. Her death brings a silent catastrophe to the community which lost a heritage that is equal to identity. The deaths of Nao Jr. last year was the loss of the window from that community to the other world. The loss of Boa Sr. is the loss the house itself. What remains now is only the ruins in a shape and size that cannot even tell of the edifice that was there once.

Boa Sr. was almost the last link of the Great Andamanese language family. Out of a total of ten languages, Boa Sr. knew two languges, namely Bo and Jeru, and was familiar with some more languages of the family.

Boa Sr. died at an age of about 85 years. When we met her she seemed fine for her age. She had saved herself from the Tsunami of 2005 by climbing a tree all by herself in Strait Island. She was also the only member in the tribe who did not have anybody in her family surviving. Her mother, To, was a Bo, and father, Renge, was a Jeru. She was married to Nao Sr., a Jeru, at an early age. She did not have any children and her husband Nao Sr. also left her more than a decade ago. Her parents’, as well as her own marriage only testifies further a point made by her that in earlier times marriages used to take place between different language communities, i.e. different tribes. A preference for the same could easily be seen in most of the earlier matrimonial alliances. For example, out of six most senior members of the tribe, which we have recognized as having four different family lineages, four have had mixed parents.

She was the most proficient of the surviving Great Andamanese speakers and retained a vast repertoire of songs and narratives. Many of her songs had such strong influence of Bo that most of the other speakers of Great Andamanese today are unable to derive much meaning from them.
She was presumably the richest surviving member of the Great Andamanese tribe in terms of linguistic-reservoir. Her love for life was quite evident when she used to say that she would love to stay in Port Blair. For a society which was not acquainted even with a barter system, it was interesting to observe that she understood the value of modern currency. Among the things she would often ask for are scissors, blades, and different biscuits. It used to be a treat to watch her when she bursted into laughter upon things she would herself say. Our predecessors would have very much been like her!

It can be said that she was a person who had lived about five to ten thousand years of human history and seen and experienced the different stages of it within a life span. Her loss is not just the loss of the Great Andamanese community, it is a loss of several disciplines of studies put together, including anthropology, linguistics, history, psychology, and biology.

As the world moves for greater ‘development’ and ‘education’ percolates deeper into the veins of the untouched areas of humanity, let us pray that it will be well for all. To me, Boa Sr. epitomized a totality of humanity in all its hues and with a richness that is not to be found anywhere else.

Let’s pray for the peace of the great departed soul of Boa Sr. Amen!

My Hindi Poetry

The followings are some of my Hindi poetry I wrote way back in 2000 during my graduation days.

छप्पर का छेद

छप्पर के एक छेद से
आती अस्ताचल सूरज की
गोल मटोल सी एक किरण
एक प्रकाश का ठप्पा
सारी दुनिया जैसे उसमें समायी है
देखो वो बादल जा रहे हैं
पीछे चिडिया जा रही हैं
आंख मिचौनी का खेल चल रहा है
अभी बादल था अभी गायब हो गया
कुछ देर के लिए
सुन-सान, विरान हो गई दुनिया
फिर कुछ पंछी आए, पीछे बादल आए
दोनो साथ मिलकर खेले
और दुनिया फिर से रंग-बिरंगी
ठप्पा वह उपर उठ रहा
शायद दुनिया भी साथ है
खेल वह अब भी चल रहा
बादल पंछी अब भी छुआ-छुई का आनंद ले रहे
बेखबर अपनी दुनिया के उपर उठने से
देखते देखते ओझल हो गया वह ठप्पा
वह दुनिया न रही, न वह बादल, न पंछी

बैठा इंतजार कर रहा एक
शायद कल भी वो दुनिया
इसी जगह फिर से आए

४ जनवरी, २०००

मत करो मजबूर

कल तो जाना ही है
फिर क्यूं भागूं
दुनिया के पीछे-आगे
बस बैठे रहो
चाहिए क्या
वही तीन वस्तु ना?
तीन क्यों, बस एक ही
दो तो तुमने ख़ुद बना डाला
मूर्खतावश
कहो तुम सभ्यता उसे
ओ दुनियावालो, मूर्खों
रहने दो मुझे असभ्य
मत करो मुझे मजबूर
कबाड़ों के ढ़ेर जुटाने पर
मैं राजा बनना चाहता हूं
दास नहीं, तुम्हारी तरह
मुझे चाहिए शांति
क्या मिलेगी?
तुम्हारी इस समाज व्यवस्था में
क्यूं पढ़ूं मैं तुम्हारी
ज्ञान की वह पोथी
सिखाते हो जिसमें गुर तुम
कबाड़ जुटाने का
मत करो मजबूर, मत करो मजबूर
मुझे तुम
कबाड़ जुटाने पर, जीवन को ढोने पर
मत करो मजबूर।

१६ जून, २०००

दुनिया का आकार

जीवन के अंतिम पड़ाव पर हूं मैं
सुना था, दुनिया के आकार के बारे में
सुना था, दुनिया छोटी होती जा रही है
सत्य था वो।
एक गांव, एक क्षेत्र, एक देश एक दुनिया
वही लोग, वही जीव, वही पौधे
एक घर है मेरा
आंखे खुली तो छ्प्पर का एक छेद मैने देखा था
आज जब बंद होने को है
वही मेरी आंखों के सामने है
आंख के खुलने और बंद होने के बीच
घूमती है मेरी दुनिया।

जुलाई, २०००

चीज क्या है?

कुछ कुलबुला रहा था
बुरी तरह
खोज की
इधर उधर
हर तरफ से
छान कर
खींछ कर
लाया उसे
सामने अपने किया
फिर उठाकर हाथ में
देखने उसको लगा।
चीज क्या है?
देख तो
कहीं मैं यही तो नहीं।

जुलाई, २०००

मानव

जब जन्मा था तब मैं एक था।
बड़े होने के साथ मेरे टुकड़े होते गए
या शायद मैने खुद को टुकड़े-टुकड़े कर डाला।
हरेक दुनिया अपने मे एक था।
आश्चर्य ! फिर भी सब एक साथ जुड़े थे।
जहां भी जाता था सब साथ चलते थे।
सभी की अपनी आकांक्षाएं थीं।
सभी मुझसे और ज्यादा मांग रहे थे।
इतना ही नहीं,
इन सबों के बीच लड़ाई भी होती थी
और इन सबों की लड़ाई में मैं मारा गया।
आज भी मैं उन सबों को लड़ते हुए चुपचाप देखता रहा हूं
वह आत्मा, वह शरीर, वे ज्ञानेन्द्रियां, वे कर्मेंन्द्रियां
काश! सब एक हो मुझे पुनरूज्जिवित करतीं।

अगस्त, २०००

चार शेर सपनों के

सुनता रहूं मैं बात दिल की भी, न सिर्फ मेरे दिमाग रहें।
मैं तुम्हें समझूं, तुम मुझे समझो, अकेले न हम ग़मसाज़ रहें।

न मैं मैं रहूं, न तुम तुम रहो, सिर्फ अब हम हम रहें।
मिलकर चलें अब हम सभी, बाकी न कोई ग़म रहें।

लुत्फ लें हम उन सभी, ग़म का जो आए सामने।
जिंदगी के सारे ग़म का, करके सर कलम रहें।

हम भी बेटे तुम भी बेटे एक ही आदम के हैं।
बेहतर हो के अब हम सभी, अपने घर में साथ रहे।

१३ अगस्त, २०००

वह हंसता है

तुम रोते हो? वह हंसता है।
तुम्हें गुस्सा है? वह हंसता है।
तुम खुश हो? वह हंसता है।
तुम्हें ग़म है? वह हंसता है।
तुम अमीर हो? वह हंसता है।
तुम ग़रीब हो? वह हंसता है।
तुम विद्वान हो? वह हंसता है।
तुम मूर्ख हो? वह हंसता है।
तुम चालाक हो? वह हंसता है।
तुम कौन हो? वह हंसता है।
तुम जो भी हो। वह हंसता है।
तुम हंसते हो? देखो वह पागल है।
हां-हां पागल है। वह तो पागल है।
वह तो पागल है।
वह तो पागल है।
है?

२५ नवंबर, २०००

Photo Album

1. The Beach in the Prot Blair (28, Jan’06)

Great Andamanese Verb Analyzer

Welcome to the Andamans and its indigenous people…

We will help you go to the sediments of the human history and tell you how and what they know. Through their language…

You are on a page which will lead you to the Great Andamanese Verb Analyzer, a verb analyzer for one of the least spoken languages of the world.

Besides it also contains other kinds of information on the people of Great Andamanese, the work done and going on in this area, as well as many links on this topic.

But before this, let me introduce you to the main thing why I am here. The whole idea of appearing on the web comes from the dissertation I wrote. It was titled “Developing a Computational Framework for the Verb Morphology of Great Andamanese”.

The name of the technology developed has been given as Great Andamanese Verb Analyzer or GAVA for short. It analyzes the verb phrase from a given text in Great Andamanese. The nature of the technology developed is that of a knowledge system which can also function as an aid to machine translation and other NLP applications. In other words, it can be at the levels of a product, a technology and as a sub-system. The program is an online Java/JSP application running on Tomcat-Apache webserver. It has a JSP front end and text files as back-end. It can be hosted on any platform and can be viewed as HTML. The input and output is in IPA UTF-8 (refer to the Appendix I).

This program has been developed as a web application using Java/JSP on Apache Tomcat platform. As the language does not have any script, IPA characters provided by Lucida Sans Unicode font have been used. Any Unicode font supporting IPA can be used to view and input the texts. However the technology is fully portable from one system to another as only text files for database has been used and the tools used are platform independent.

The program is highly scalable and can be easily extended to work as text processor and tagger for Great Andamanese or languages with structural similarities.  Most of the documentation for the program part has been completed. Testing of the software is currently undergoing and we are getting more than 90% results. An appendix (IV) to this effect has also been attached showing the result of the most frequent verb phrases in the basic sentence list.

My Research Papers

Here are my research papers presented read at conferences and  seminars

Morphological Analyzer for Great Andamanese Verbs: Implementing a Concatenative Template

This paper was presented by me at LRIL-2007, C-DAC, Mumbai.  March 26-28, 2007. 

Syllable Structure of Great Andamanese

This paper was presented in a Two day National Seminar on Perspective in Linguistics, at kashmir University, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. November 8-9, 2006

Natural Language Processing

My dissertation in M. Phil. (Master of Philosophy) was titled as Developing a Computational Framework for the Verb Morphiology of Great Andamanese. This also needed the implementation of an algorithm that analyzed the verbal constructions in the GA text written in IPA (Unicode fonts).  The tool was named as the Great Andamanese Verb Analyzer or GAVA for short. This is a web based program that can accessed and tested on the web. This is featured on the following url : http://www.sanskrit.jnu.ac.in/andamanese The following link will give you the dissertation in PDF format as submitted to the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in July, 2006. M. Phil. Dissertation

My M. A. Dissertation

My M.A. Dissertation was based on a field work done in Shillong and in Jowai town of Meghalaya, a province in India. This was on the language spoken by the Jaintia people of the Jaintia Hills. The language is usually known to the outsiders as Jaintia however, the real name of the language is Pnar. It is also said that Pnar is a dialect of Khasi, the major and dominant language of the province. Khasi is spoken in Shillong and other neighbouring areas of the Khasi Hills.

The field work occurred in March-April, 2004. A team of 7 students went to elicit the linguistic on various topics. My topic was word order in the language. The dissertation was completed by May, 2004. The following link will give you the whole of the dissertation submitted to the Jawharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in partial fulfillment of the degree of Masters in Linguistics.

Click on the following link to access the dissertation:

word-order-in-pnar.pdf 

Student Activism

Student activism is one of most talked about feature of JNU. The institute has a name associated with the terms like communism, socialism and leftism. Since the start, it is the idea of communism that has propelled the students of this institute.

The students of this university are of different backgrounds, hailing from all the parts of the country. This university also characterizes the society of ‘he third world’ countries and thier psyche.

There are several student organisations active in the university campus. While the left parties rule the roost, there is always a strong opposition given by the right wingers. The main stream Indian political parties are not of much influence on the students of this campus. In recent years, there has been a change in the political equations in the student community. New political organisations have come up with strong campaigns.