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The thoughts and prayers of all IIT Bombay alumni are with the people of Mumbai following the brazen attack by terrorists. Nandan Nilekani ('78) termed it as a "great tragedy ... it is a part of challenge we have to deal with ... we will bounce back."

News@IITB - December 2008

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News from IIT Bombay - Dec 2008

Alumni in the news ...

• The American India Foundation is buoyed by the wave of Indians who came to the United States to seek education ... people like Al Kapoor (BTech '89 ME) of Weston, founder and president of the Boston investment firm Millennium Ventures Group. "Basically, they gave me a world-class education for very little," he said.
• Politics is not the last resort but the ultimate destination for a group of professionals, including IITians, who have launched Bharat Punarnirman Dal. "Our party is based on the ideology of equal opportunity and nationalism," said Ajit Shukla (DD '02 ME).
• Emerging Indian companies in the cleantech sector couldn't have asked for better times ... one of the early entrants in the Indian cleantech space was Pune-headquartered Praj Industries, which began in 1984 by offering technology, design and machinery to turn molasses into alcohol for biofuels. "We had started as a technology company and the term cleantech was yet to be coined,” says Praj’s chairman Pramod Chaudhari (BTech '71 ME).
• Intel's latest processor, the i7, was partly developed on technologies developed in India, and a global team led by an Indian gave the finishing touches. Kaizad R Mistry (BTech '84 EE) manages development of Intel's 45nm logic technology. Mistry is VP of the Technology and Manufacturing Group, and Director of Logic Technology Integration.
• Yogen Dalal (BTech '72 EE), Managing Director of Mayfield Fund, talks about the magic of Silicon Valley, in a LiveMint interview.
• The RockeTalk mobile social networking application will be pre-loaded on mobile phone models available through LG retailers in India. RockeTalk was founded in 2005 by Rajiv Kumar, an IIT Mumbai alumnus and founder of Bluetooth software company WIDCOMM.

• Three IITB alums - Ravi Venkatesan, Samir Gulve and Ganesh Natarajan - are amongst the awardees for "India's Most Influential Technology Leaders" for 2008.

• Integrated Device Technology (IDT) announced that Umesh Padval (BTech '80 ChE) has been appointed to the company's Board of Directors.

• At the heart of the advanced engineering team that shapes new design solutions for Mercedes Benz, Bharat Balasubramanian (BTech '73 ME) is VP of EE, IT and processes at Daimler AG in Stuttgart.

• The Pankhudi Foundation in Bangalore works with towards the education and health of street children and children living in slums. Pankhudi was founded in April 2005 by Shahzad Wakeel, who had then just passed out of IIT Mumbai. The foundation started as an Orkut community comprising young professionals with day jobs who were keen to contribute to society’s well-being.

Expressing grave concern over the brazen terror attacks in Mumbai, Nandan Nilekani (BTech '78 EE) termed it as the "very great tragedy ... it is a part of challenge we have to deal with, we will bounce back."

College festivals are beginning to feel the pinch of recession, but student organisers are keeping their chins up, and devising innovative ways of raising funds. Even the biggest college festival in Asia, IIT Powai's Mood Indigo 08, has been beset with sponsorship problems. And although they have managed to collect Rs1.2 crore - after four months of hard work - their stories echo those of the KC collegians.

While the 1983 batch of IIT Bombay is getting ready to catch up with old friends in December, the former students have also decided to give back to their alma mater by helping the institute attract and retain world-class faculty through their legacy project. The aim of the project, titled Gurudakshina, is to enhance the institute’s brand and strengthen programmes related to faculty. Registrations are on for the Silver Jubilee Reunion of the batch, which is scheduled to be held on Dec 27 and 28.

"Opening eight IITs at one go is definitely going to affect the brand that IIT is," said Professor Ashok Mishra, National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) president and former director, IIT Bombay. Professor Mishra said IITs have always been an elite brand. Increasing the number of these institutes might provide education, it will dilute its brand value. "The Government should have not rushed while taking such a decision. The established institutes are already facing a crunch of good teachers." said Professor Mishra.

Concerned over a possible erosion in its brand name, scores of alumni of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) criticised the government for bringing in student reservation for other backward classes and forcing a faculty quota. They demanded a greater autonomy for these institutes of excellence. In a special alumni meeting on 'Sustaining IIT Brand' at IIT Delhi, the former students said that minimum government interference in the institute affairs, no quota in faculty selection and a certain 'benchmark' in selecting students is a must for IITs.

Nandan Nilekani's 380-page book, his imagination of India's past, present and future, debuts in New Delhi on November 24. The Penguin book, Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century, will examine the central ideas that have shaped modern India offering original perspective on her past, present and future. The first-time author will be on a six-city tour to promote the book, the US release of which will be in early 2009.

The renowned Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) may soon have doctors, historians and policy makers at its campus just like several universities in the United States. A Committee, headed by educationist Yash Pal, Chairman of the XIth Five-Year Plan Committee met the heads of all the IITs on Friday, to discuss how the premier tech schools can upgrade their character and enlarge their scope like the American universities.

In a first by IIT Bombay, the institute is all set to initiate 'start-up jobs' as part of its final placements this year, which will enable both third-year and final-year students to participate in the recruitment drive. The National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) start-up job initiative is the country’s first campus-recruiting programme for start-ups.

The Robotics Institutes (TRI) is a venture by a group of IIT Bombay alumni. In order to acquaint students with the basics of robotics before the competition, TRI/ThinkLABS conducted free robotic workshops called Fundae sessions in various places in Mumbai in September and October which saw participation of over 500 students from around 75 schools. ThinkLABS is one of the companies incubated by IIT Bombay’s Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE).

It is an ambitious vision: all villages in the country, connected to the world via technology. Village knowledge centres (VKCs) -- a dream that former President A P J Abdul Kalam shared with IIT alumni -- are gaining steam. The Ittamadu VKC was a pilot project set up in 2005. The computers and library were provided by IIT Bombay alumni. "To set up more VKCs, we need money'' says Srikanth Rao, treasurer of the IIT Bombay Alumni Association, Bangalore chapter.

Jagmohan Mundhra's (BTech EE '68) "Shoot On Sight" lives up to the intensity that its title reflects, and works as a wake-up call for those sound asleep in their belief that terrorism is not anywhere close to their home. Directed by Jagmohan Mundhra, the film stars actors par excellence Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Gulshan Grover ... the plot is based on the aftermath of the infamous 7/7 bombings in London and the killing of Jean Charles De Menezes on the London Underground.

The deadline for IIT Bombay's "10 Great Ideas" event has been extended until December 31st.

The Legacy Project gift from the Class of 1980 has translated into a garden named "Kshitij Udyan" located behind the Convocation Hall. "Kshitij" was inaugurated on September 9th by Prof. MGK Menon.

The Centre is thinking of inducting a former IIT student into the engineering schools’ highest decision-making body. The move will enable the alumni to play a formal role in charting out the institutes’ future policies as members of the IIT Council, top government officials said. The Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry has accepted in principle a proposal to nominate a member of the Pan IIT Alumni Association to the IIT Council, sources said.

IIT Bombay is trying to build public transportation systems which are three times as energy efficient as compared to those today. Urban transport planning and creating an 'urban scenario simulator model' will use real census data, actual traffic data and other accurate inputs to model the response of a city to various interventions through infrastructure building.

60,000 students, 500 colleges, over 120 events, 4 days, 4 nights, 100 hours of Mayhem!! This is what describes Mood Indigo 2008 (MI'08) - the annual cultural festival of IIT Bombay. While the institute celebrates its golden jubilee year of foundation, Mood Indigo '08 promises to be the cherry on the pie. Mood Indigo, or Mood-I, as it is fondly called, will be organized from 20th December to 23rd December, 2008. The quality and quantity of effort put behind Mood-I justifies its title, "The Baap of all College Festivals".

Alumni in the news ...

• NY Post - With financial markets in disarray, the timely publication of "The Venturesome Economy" by Columbia University professor Amar Bhidé (BTech ´77 ChE), reassures us that we can survive even this latest crisis.

• At the Dataquest Awards 2008, the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Dr D. B. Phatak (MTech '72 EE), Chair Professor, Subharao M Nilekani and Head of IIT Bombay-based Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology (KReSIT).

• ADC announced the appointment of Dr. Krish Prabhu (MSc '75 Phys), to the company's Board of Directors ... he most recently served as chief executive officer of Tellabs, Inc.

• "Sixty-eight Pages" is a film that makes an effort to address minority issues and their status as HIV positive ... Sridhar Rangayan, a graduate of IIT Mumbai has directed and scripted several award winning films.

• China Solar PV, a multi product solar company, announced the appointment of Mr. B. Veerraju Chaudary as its new Chief Technology and Operating Officer (CTO & COO). He has been trained in solar photovoltaic system design and engineering from the renowned Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai.

• Network Solutions announced the appointment of Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy as Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO). Dr. Priyadarshy received his Ph.D. from IIT Powai.

• Graziadio Business Report (GBR) has appointed five new members to its editorial review board ... Bhimaraya A. Metri (PhD '02 RelEngg), Dean, Management Development Institute received his Ph.D. from IIT Bombay.

• In 2004, Vardan Kabra (DD '02 MetE/MatSc) turned his back on an offer by multinational P&G to pursue his dream of starting Fountainhead School. He represents a new generation of young MBAs who are giving up seven figure salaries for the kick of being an entrepreneur.

As a Kerala state player, George Koshy (MTech '72 ME) used to shoot the ball into the basket during his college days. Today, as a rocket scientist with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the tall, 58-year-old M.Tech from IIT Bombay is the project director for Chandrayaan-1, India's maiden unmanned moon mission, and on his broad shoulders rests the venture's success. For Koshy, Chandrayaan will be his third major space mission. He was mission director when ISRO launched an Israeli satellite in a stripped down version of PSLV in January and played a similar role when the space agency sent up a cluster of 10 satellites in April.

In the IIT joint entrance examination of 2008, students could join IIT Kharagpur despite scoring no more than 5% in physics. For the second year running, the reduction of subject cutoffs to single digits under a procedure introduced in 2007 has allowed less meritorious candidates to slip into IITs even in the general category. This flies in the face of the seemingly reassuring statistics put out by IIT-Roorkee on its website in August stating that in the 2008 JEE conducted by it, the marks obtained by the last admitted candidate in the general category were 63 out of 162 in maths (39%), 72 in physics (44%) and 45 in chemistry (28%).

IIT-Bombay will be setting up a demonstration solar thermal power plant in collaboration with industry that will also act as a testing facility. It is intended to be a high-visibility, national impact research programme. But IIT-B needs Rs 50 crore for the project and there is no indication yet where the funds will come for this fledgling initiative.

With Lehman going bust, campus placements will never be the same again ... some of the 20 students from IIT Bombay who joined Lehman Brothers in the last two to three years are also in touch with faculty members. The placement committee at the Powai college has been inundated with offers from other companies with openings, wanting to hire these students.

Two of India’s top academic institutions have finally made it into league of the top 200 universities in the world. The annual rankings are produced by the prestigious Times Higher Education-QS and this year The Indian Institutes of Technology Delhi and Bombay have managed to get into the top 200. IIT Delhi has made the most staggering leap in the entire league table by jumping from its position last year at 307 to 154, making it the top academic institution in India. IIT Bombay also made a massive jump to rank 174 from 269 last year.

Graduates across IIT campuses pull out their smartest tux when Goldman Sachs visits them. This year, however, the investment giant seems to have decided to give the tech colleges a miss in its annual campus recruitment drive. IIT Bombay, for instance, has received a polite note from this banking and securities firm; it states there will be no opening this year. The investment major recruits about five students from the Powai college each year and offers them an average annual salary of Rs 10 lakh.

Censorship. That is what directors of the IITs are currently fighting after the Union Human Resource Development ministry decided to edit out their opinion against faculty reservation. Access to the minutes of the high-level meeting of the standing committee of the IIT council (SCIC), through a right to information query, reveals that the opinion of the seven directors was cleverly masked by the HRD ministry. The minutes have left out one of the most crucial points aired by the IIT chiefs - that they were totally against the introduction of reservation in the recruitment policy for faculty members.

Known more for its nerve-wracking competitions and off-beat workshops, IITB Techfest, one of the largest technology festivals, this year will have a unique competition called 'Prayaas' which is aimed at getting real-time implementable solutions to some of the persistent problems of the society by using the student resource. Prayaas will attempt to use the participants’ innovative ideas through stage-wise evaluation and guidance, which can be put to use for day-to-day lives.

Students queued up in large numbers outside IIT Bombay for a blood donation camp as part of the institute's cultural festival Mood Indigo, which will be held from December 20 to 23. The festival's stamp this year is "RETRO: Reborn to Rock''. Ishank Gupta, core group member of the festival, said, "Through the blood donation campaign, called Khoon Chala, we want to tell the world that the youth is capable of rocking and reaching out to the country. On day one, we had over 450 IITians donating blood."

The economic slowdown in the United States might hit the recruitment of IITians this placement season. Though students on IIT’s Powai campus are worried about losing out on some of the popular US companies for jobs, professors are positive about retaining most of the companies from their prestigious recruiter’s list. Some of the professors, however, feel that the slowdown in finance companies will encourage more students to go for core technical jobs, which is a positive outcome.

Research and innovation in the area of biosciences and bioengineering at IIT Bombay is all set to get a major fillip, thanks to the Wadhwani Research Centre in Biosciences and Bioengineering (WRCBB) which is soon to be established at the institute. IIT-B signed a memorandum of understanding(MoU) with the Wadhwani Foundation to initiate the set up of WRCBB on Wednesday. Romesh Wadhwani, founder of the Foundation and an IIT-B alumnus of the class (electrical engineering) of 1969, said, "I hope that my gift of $5 million will be a catalyst for accelerating IIT-B’s progress in becoming a world class centre for research and innovation, so that in time it can be viewed as the best worldwide." It was during the IIT-B Golden Jubilee conference 2008 at New York in July that Wadhwani had announced his gift of $5 million to his alma mater.

Alumni in the news ...

• Research and Markets has announced "India's Best Equity Analysts-2008" ... Nilesh Jasani (BTech '91 EE / PGDM '93 MBA), Credit Suisse ... the IIT Bombay and IIM Calcutta graduate is happy to be back in India.  
• The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers is being felt rather strongly by the Indian Institutes of Technology. Nishikant Dhanuka, a student of IIT-Mumbai, who is also the placement nominee from the students’ side said: "Last year, four of our seniors joined Lehman. But we haven’t heard from them till now. Other previous batches’ seniors have been asked to look for new opportunities."
• Indian Express "Hot Seat" Interview ... "Being from an entrepreneurial family, Samir Gulve, MD, Avaya India, and VP, Avaya Global Communication Solutions (GCS) division, has always been fortunate in getting inspiration and motivation at the right time."
• ... the "brain drain" seems to be reversing: According to placement figures at IIM Bangalore, 75% of this year's graduating class opted for jobs in India. Pradeep Shekhawat graduated from IIT Bombay and is just finishing his MBA at IIM-B. After graduating, he does not want to go back to the U.S., at least for the time being.
• Mnemonics, a memory tool that helps people by giving associations of words, has been there from the ancient Greece but the idea of a dictionary only for mnemonics is broached for the first time by: Amit Aggarwal, an IIT Mumbai pass out. Mnemonicdictionary.com uses mnemonics to revolutionise the way we learn and remember new words wherein the content is contributed by users.
• Battery Ventures announced promotions on its investment team ... Ramneek Gupta has been promoted to Partner, and is moving to open the firm's Bombay, India office.
• SecondSpace, Inc., an online marketplace for second homes and recreational retreats, has appointed Satbir Khanuja (BTech '89 MetE/MatSc) as the company's president and chief executive officer (CEO).

... the return of the native. In a clear reversal of the brain drain syndrome, highly qualified Indians who have studied and worked abroad are coming back home to be part of their country's education system and knowledge pool. Prof Supratik Chakraborty of IIT Bombay was happy to find out that he would be able to do the same kind of work in India that he had planned to do abroad after doing his PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford.

The Center for Excellence in Nanoelectronics (CEN) at IIT Bombay is doing advanced work in NAND Flash, molecular switch with DNA interconnects and disposable organic sensors with on-chip electronics. "Scaling of NAND Flash to smaller cell sizes is critical to advancing storage densities and bringing out more portable electronic devices," said Prof Souvik Mahapatra, a faculty member working at the center.

The government will table an amendment to the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961, to make the new IITs eligible to award degrees to students. The new IITs, started this year, are operating as societies at present. To be an institute with power to award degrees, the names of the new IITs have to be incorporated into the existing Act. Six new IITs have been started in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Orissa, Punjab and Gujarat from this year. Academic activities in these institutes are either run by mentor IITs or in temporary campuses.

For IIT aspirants, there's a word of advice from the horse's mouth: "Do not compromise on reasoning. For, relying on readymade formulas without knowing the reasons makes it more of a game of luck." IIT Bombay's Prof K D Joshi, who has been associated with setting of maths questions for JEE for the last twenty years, wants the aspirants to know the subjects thoroughly instead of focussing on problems only.

Nexus India Capital announced an investment in SEDEMAC Mechatronics, a company providing energy efficiency solutions for the automotive and renewable energy markets. SEDEMAC is founded by Prof. Shashikanth Suryanarayanan, a high-energy, entrepreneurial professor from IIT Bombay who obtained his PhD at University of California, Berkeley. The company was incubated at SINE – IIT Bombay's on-campus incubator. SEDEMAC has developed electronic control modules, which increase the fuel efficiency and reduce emissions of small engines.

India has made major scientific and technological contribution to the new atom smasher also called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which went live at the experimental facility near Geneva in Switzerland. Towards the scientific side, two Indian teams are participating in different experiments. Each of these collaborations is huge with 1000-2000 scientists from 125-150 top class institutions from 20-30 countries participating. Each full detector costs around $400-500 million to build and the R&D and fabrication takes around a decade. Prof. Raghav Verma of Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai representing Indian scientists has carried an Indian flag, IIT sources said.

Risk. A scary word, especially in these scary economic times. Yet there is an elite band of super-successful global entrepreneurs and change makers who have always thrived on this four-letter word, battling uncertain times and uncharted waters to set up world class companies, challenge old worlds and create new ones. Meet Bharat Desai, Chairman and CEO of Syntel ... then there’s Ramesh Vangal, an intrepid serial entrepreneur from New York ... Kasim Mookhtiar had earlier pioneered diabetes and obesity programs at Bristol-Myers Squibb in the United States. These are just some of the thousands who form the U.S. alumni of IIT Bombay, which recently celebrated its 50th golden jubilee anniversary in New York. The roster of these Bombay boys reads like a Who’s Who of the business world, and includes Nandan M. Nilekani, Co-Chairman of Infosys Technologies, Jairam Ramesh, India’s Minister of State for Commerce and Power, as well as Victor Menezes, the recently retired Vice Chairman of Citigroup Inc.

Air India Corporate Magazine and Khabar ... "The Bombay Boys" ... It’s the Private Power Club of today’s global warriors … It is one of the most exclusive clubs in the world, a secret society of the truly brainy, a gurukulum of the wise. Nandan M. Nilekani, Co-Chairman of Infosys Technologies, and Bharat Desai, Chairman of Syntel, are members. So is Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of State for Commerce and Power, and Victor Menezes, the recently retired Vice Chairman of Citigroup Inc. They, along with a select band of global samurais, belong to the Order of IIT– Bombay, one of the most prestigious educational institutions in India and one which is fast becoming an internationally recognized brand. This year the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay celebrates its 50th anniversary. Tellingly, the occasion is being marked not only in India but in the US too.

For RTI activist Shailesh Gandhi (BTech '69 CivE) who has been in forefront of taking up several public causes and fighting against a corrupt establishment this new posting is going to be a real challenge. Ever since the news that he has been selected for the post of the Central Information Commissioner, Delhi came out, his phone has not stopped ringing-right from ordinary citizens who had taken his guidance for filing RTI queries to civic activists called up to congratulate him. "My philosophy and ideals will not undergo any change. Infact , if the system try to co-opt me, I may call it quits as I am only responsible to the people of this country ,'' Gandhi says. The 61-year-old former IIT alumnus, who was awarded the Nani Palkhiwala award for civil liberties this year, had used the RTI act effectively for better governance and accountability in public life.

At the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) Teachers’ Day celebrations, professors and students listened with rapt attention as chairman and chief mentor officer, Infosys Technologies Ltd, NR Narayana Murthy fondly reminisced his teachers and advised students and others on the role teachers could play in putting students at par with other great nations.

India's multi-billion IT sector would continue to fare well despite a slowdown in the US economy, Infosys Chief Mentor N R Narayana Murthy said on Friday. Murthy was Chief Guest at a function at the IIT Bombay. He also released "Monastery, Sanctuary, Laboratory - 50 years of IIT Bombay", a book on the institution's five decades of existence. IIT Bombay is celebrating the golden jubilee of its foundation this year.

Students of IIT-Bombay will soon be swaying to the tunes of tabla and sitar maestro, Pandit Nayan Ghosh. This will be subsequent to the initiative taken by the authorities of the institute, who are planning to start courses on appreciation of classical music, and also to restore their seven-year-old gurukul, Dhrupad Sansar. Manjul Bhargava, the youngest professor at Princeton University in US, an adjunct professor at IIT-Bombay and also an avid tabla player, has decided to revive the music programme on the university campus by roping in Ghosh. "We are also planning to start a formal course in music appreciation with the humanities cell from the next semester itself. It is for the first time that the IITians will get to do a course in music appreciation."

The government has replaced an officer who blew the whistle on the Narendra Modi government with a civil society nominee as one of the four new information commissioners under the RTI Act. Bowing to pressure from L K Advani, who is part of the selection committee in his capacity as leader of the opposition in Lok Sabha, the government put RTI activist Shailesh Gandhi (BTech '69 CivE) in place of former IPS officer R B Shreekumar who had blown the whistle on the Modi government in the context of the Gujarat riots. The most controversial appointment is however of personnel secretary Satyananda Mishra, who heads the very department that administers RTI.

Finance Secretary Duvvuri Subbarao will take over as the new governor of the Reserve Bank of India on 5 September when the current governor Y V Reddy's term expires. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur and a 1972 batch officer of the Indian Administrative Service belonging to the Andhra cadre, Subbarao was secretary to Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council. An alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a Humphrey Fellow, Subbarao also holds a doctorate from Andhra University.

TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Mumbai announced the launch of their new Special Interest Group (SIG) focused on building a Clean Technology ecosystem in India. The SIG is sponsored by Nexus India Capital, India’s leading venture capital fund with offices in Menlo Park and Mumbai. The CleanTech SIG aims to bring together entrepreneurs, industry, academia, consultants, investors and policy makers in the areas of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, Water Management and Recycling, and Sustainable Agriculture. Given the need for affordable and mass deployable energy and water solutions, this is an apt time to create a platform which energizes all the stakeholders and involves them in finding solutions for problems resulting from green house gas emissions, a depleting water table and a wide mismatch between energy supply and demand.

IIT Bombay scientists have developed an inexpensive web-enabled device that can enable doctors to remotely measure lung function in patients with asthma and other disorders, and to quickly instigate medical attention in an emergency. Vivek Agarwal, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, and his student N. C. S. Ramachandran’s system is an easy to operate spirometer that can be quickly hooked up to an internet connection through built-in web and data encryption software.

A year ago, when IIT-B came up with innovative ideas to turn the Ganpati festival into an environment-friendly event, the BMC accepted them. It has, however, done nothing to implement them. The ideas are too "radical' ' for Mumbaikars, said a BMC official. "They are untouchable concepts though they are truly environment friendly.'' Making idols from Powai lake sediments, reusing the same idol for five years and crushing the idols to use the material for bricks and tiles are a few of the "untouchable' ' ideas. Mayor Shubha Raul, who has been pushing for a green Ganesh festival, says the mandals are not ready to accept the changes though they can bring about a revolution. "The beaches are so polluted that one cannot step into the water. Yet we don't mind immersing our Ganesh idols there," she says.

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