Sunday, February 28, 2010

CE and the Imp

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Vinod was one of the brightest I taught at IIT KGP. He was also one of the shyest (with me). But I got to know that he was as rowdy as they come in their Halls of Residence. And was one of a crowd of hundred odd ‘Hall-Tempo’ kids involved in one of those Inter-Hall things that happen every decade or so. And ‘awarded’ due punishments like Fines, Library Assistance, Social Service. He swept all the Medals and Prizes of his batch. But, as per rules of the Standing Disciplinary Committee, he would get his Degrees alright but forfeit all his Medals and Prizes as collateral exemplary punishment. Sad!

He left for his Graduate Studies in one of the most sought-after US Universities much before the KGP Convocation could be held. As usual, there was one of those ‘last-minute-strictly-one-off-not-to-be-quoted-as-precedent’ wholesale pardons, and he did get his prizes after all. As the Departmental UG Chairman, it was my pleasure to break the good news to him by e-mail. He was happy, more for his dad than himself.

A good 2 years later, I got an e-mail from Vinod stating that he got his Degree Certificate Register-Posted to his dad’s address at Mughalsarai but not the prizes. Apparently, these have to be collected in person from IIT KGP by someone to whom he mails an Authorization Letter. He waited till his dad, Vianyjee, could get a transfer as Chief Engineer to the sprawling Railway Workshop at KGP. And wrote to me to please help his dad collect the things, mentioning that his dad was shyer than him.

One night I duly got a phone call from Vinayjee profusely apologizing and seeking my help. Apparently this was what happened that day:

Vianyjee parked his Staff Car near the Canteen instead of the Portico and walked up the daunting steps laid by Nehrujee as proudly proclaimed by the inlaid Foundation Stone. He was too shy to flash his Visiting Card and seek help from the Reception, and so toured all possible Sections (except perhaps the Cash and the Recruitment). At the end of two futile hours of merry-go-round, it occurred to him to try the Physics Office. Our courteous and efficient Didi told him where exactly to go and which AR to meet. By the time he reached the labyrinthine sanctum sanctorum, it was Lunch Hour, and was deserted but for a lean and thin gentleman poring over king-size Drawing Sheets spread before him. Vinayjee felt too shy to disturb him and returned to his Railway Workshop CE Office empty-handed.

He didn’t know that for him it was the proverbial ‘slip between the cup and the lip’: the gentleman he backed away from was none other than Tapan-da who has all Students’ Roll Numbers, Names, Halls of Residences, Degrees, Prizes and Medals for his Breakfast, Lunch and Tea. Tapan-da would have sorted out his problem in 2 minutes.

Anyway, I told him to come next day sharp at noon, call me from the Security Entry Gate, park his Staff Car right in the Portico where he would find me waiting. I also promised him that all Medals and Prizes of Vinod would be in his hands in 10 minutes flat.

Next day, I made one of those many trips to Tapan-da and got everything readied to be delivered to Vinayjee by the AR (UG). Vinayjee found me chatting up the Security Guard who clicked his boots and fell to Attention as soon as he saw the Railway Workshop Staff Car, which off-loaded an embarrassed Vinayjee. I took Vinayjee to the relevant AR’s cubicle and, as promised, he got all the shining Medals, gorgeous Certificates and glorious Checks of his son in 10 minutes.

As we were about to take leave, the ‘Imp of the Perverse’ (vide Edgar Ellen Poe) descended on me, and I blurted out that Vinayjee happened to be the newly posted CE of the Railway Workshop. The AR at once stood up, asked us to be re-seated and ordered chai & biscuits. Vinayjee’s face fell; and I excused myself saying that I had a Lecture Class. I don’t know what happened later; but I guess Vianyjee was held up for quite a while and had a grand see-off.

The thousand fly-wheels of the Railway Workshop are forever humming; and most folks at KGP have axes to grind. That was possibly why Vinayjee was trying to visit IIT incognito. …..Sorry, Vinayjee!
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Friday, February 26, 2010

Shake a Leg!

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There is a piquant news item on the Front Page of today’s Deccan Chronicle. I can’t resist quoting it verbatim:

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Typist hurls slipper at judge in Kurnool
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“A woman typist hurled her slipper at a judge in a Kurnool court on Thursday, alleging that he had been mentally harassing her for several months. The incident occurred at the court of the district fourth additional magistrate, Mr. M. Shanmugam. The judge suspended the typist, Ms Radhikarani. The police said that judge had complained that Ms Radhikarani had been shaking her legs restlessly and this had irritated him. She threw her footwear on his stomach after he scolded her and asked her not to shake her legs.”
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On reading this, several thoughts crossed my mind:

First: ‘Girls will be Girls!’ (I know because I am the only brother of six naughty sisters, and was admitted to a girl’s Free Elementary School as guide and escort for them).

Next: Unlike the case of the shoe-flinging Iraqi & Punjabi Journalists vs. Bush & Chidambaram respectively, Radhikarani’s action seems to be ‘spontaneous’ and ‘un-premeditated’.

Next: Is ‘shaking a leg’ a cognizable offence, tort, misdemeanor or mere Contempt of the Court?

Next: Why stomach? ‘That’ seems ‘below the belt’. I guess she aimed either too low or too high.

Next: I never knew that there are as many as four District Additional Magistrates in Kurnool. Maybe it was just a case of Shanmugam feeling ‘stuffy’.

Then again: My mother, as long as half a century ago, used to severely rebuke any sister of mine who indulged in this ‘disgusting practice’ and nipped it in its bud. Radhikarani’s case may just be one of lack of maternal guidance, nothing more. A stitch in time could have saved her being ripped nine times and more.

I had only one brush with the Judiciary: For reasons too complicated to dwell on here, a whole lot of us dozen parents had to file (false) affidavits that our children didn’t attend any recognized school, but were coached at home privately. A bachelor friend of mine (a chain-smoker to boot) volunteered to accompany us to the Midnapore Court. While we were all busy filing our things, he sat calmly smoking in the Court Hall. Suddenly there was a hush and there was shouting from the ‘Bench’: ‘Hey you!’; and everyone looked at my friend, who promptly turned back to see if there was anyone doing mischief. The ‘Court’ then roared: ‘Don’t you know that you can’t smoke in My Court?’ My friend immediately stubbed his fag beneath his shoes and came to attention. ‘I could have hauled you for Contempt of the Court; but since you appear to be ignorant and sorry, I am letting you off with a warning!’

There was this girl in my B Tech class who was more of a tomboy and preferred to sit on the back bench alone. She had a habit of chewing gum relentlessly, which I didn’t mind. But when she started blowing football-sized bubbles, I took umbrage. I had my way of treating such cases, which I learned from Bertie Wooster in the reverse. When he landed in a soup of Jeeves’s making, being forced to make an extempore speech to a bunch of naughty school-girls, they planned to collectively stare at him out of his wits. I used to ratchet up my Lecture to a crescendo and stop suddenly and stare at the girl when she was just in the act of blowing her next bubble. Everyone in the Class, waking or sleeping, would look back; and the girl would blush pink.

Judges should learn from Teachers!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Rasoi Lal’s Welfare State

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At 21, I joined IIT KGP as a junior faculty on May 1, 1965. I was allotted a Single Room in the B. C. Roy Hall. Within a few hours, there was a discreet knock on my door. And there was a young lad my age. From then on, practically every Saturday, there would be the same discreet knock till I left KGP on October 26, 2005 upon retirement at 62 from a divinely spacious Qrs. B-140. I was by then a grey-haired eminence with a son just out of IIT; and he was a completely bald grandpa.

The lad Rasoi Lal came from an extended family of about 200 KGP Dhobis from Bihar, all settled in their spacious Dhobi Ghat. They all had sweet names like Chaman Lal, Mithai Lal, Mothi Lal et al. Rasoi Lal was reticent, boy and man. He would enter, bend down on his knees, deliver and receive clothes, and go away. By and by, we grew on each other and would miss very much when we didn’t meet on a weekend.

Once I asked him why a certain Bapujee of Congress was elected repeatedly from their Ward in the Left Bastion of West Bengal. He replied that everyone there regarded Bapujee as their own father. Bapujee would visit the Dhobi Ghat once a month without fail, take his seat on a charpai and call up Rasoi Lal to listen to and address their problems like Ration Cards (very precious in W. Bengal). I asked Rasoi why he alone would be asked to represent his vast community. Rasoi replied shyly that he was the only Dhobi who didn’t smoke or drink, and could just about read and write.

After a decade, Rasoi told me that he got his son Swapan (the Lal thing has been discarded) admitted to the Railway School. I asked him how he could manage such a feat (the reputed School was reserved for kids of Railway Employees). He replied that Bapujee helped.

After another decade, Rasoi said he would no more be taking new customers, because he got a job in the Railways as a Khalasi. I looked askance, knowing that he didn’t have the mandatory schooling. He smiled and replied that Bapujee helped. Then on, often when I visited the Railway Station, he would locate me with a long smiling hooked iron rod in his hands. He would declare proudly that his job was to inspect the Brakes, hinting that thousands of lives depended on his alertness and efficiency.

After another decade, he declared that Swapan got a job in the Railways as a Clerk of sorts. He smiled once again and said that Bapujee helped. Besides, Swapan was working as an odd-jobs youngster in the Qrs of the Big Boss of the sprawling Railway Workshop.

Very soon, Swapan got married to Guddi, an M.A. in Hindi. We were invited to the fabulous wedding where Rasoi was the proud Big Dad. By then the Rasoi Lal family had their ‘own’ home in the Dhobi Ghat, built on thrift and good habits. Guddi got a job as a Hindi Teacher in the Railway School. I need not have asked….. Bapujee was still the MLA.

By the time I left KGP, Rasoi, Swapan and Guddi purchased land and built their home-sweet-home in the ‘posh’ Chota Tengra area (I was still renting the Qrs). I asked Rasoi how many years he had left before he retired. He replied 10 more years. I was aghast. He would be 72 by then, like me. I winked at him and asked if it was due to Bapujee. He bent his head down and smiled.

Rasoi was there the day my truck left our Qrs, loaded with all the goods I had acquired in 40 years. He was unusually sad, moody and doleful. He threatened he wouldn’t let the truck leave till I gave away my first ramshackle cot as a memento. I was touched; and hugged him: did I smell something at that close distance? I was pained beyond grief.

A couple of years later, my son got married and wanted to show off IIT KGP where he grew up to his brand new wife. He told me he booked their tickets by Second AC in the Falaknuma Superfast Express. I put my foot down and insisted they fly. I had a frightful Vision of a sozzled and faltering Rasoi Lal trying hard to find the Brakes with his rusted iron rod.

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Wednesday, February 24, 2010

On Boredom

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“All men are bores except when we want them” …….Oliver Wendell Holmes (circa 1850)

Holmes classifies the word ‘bore’ as a ‘flash’ word. Flash word is not the same as slang or jargon. It is a well-known word used in a new context to pithily describe a ‘syndrome’ (viz. a set of concurrent things, as emotions or actions that usually form an identifiable pattern….Webster).

College students have ever been the casual inventors of flash words. During the last decade, ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ were two famous flash words: “He is cool”; “She is hot”. I used to pin down my students and ask them what they precisely meant by ‘cool’ and ‘hot’. They would hum and haw but they do seem to understand what they mean. Surprisingly, the two antonyms can mean the same thing: The same ‘guy’ and ‘doll’ could look ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ to another set of ‘dumb-heads’. Obviously the two words don’t refer to their body temperatures.

One criterion for a ‘flash’ word is that it should have just one syllable; college students are too lazy to be polysyllabic ‘weirdos’. Look out for synonyms (or antonyms) of ‘bore’. The word is just matchless and so survived a century and half.

I first met this word in my University days. Most teachers were bores. And most lectures were boring. So were most subjects. So were most ‘unfriends” (a brand new web-jargon used to describe people you have just dropped from your circle of ‘friends’).

I guess there are two sets of ‘professionals’ who are never bored. Their hobbies match their jobs and they are all-consuming.

Politicians: They may have their ups and downs, but they never give up. Other professionals may have an age-bar and retirement but not them. I am sure Vajpayeejee must still be enjoying if not playing his brand of politics. Kasu Brhmananada Reddy was a renowned CM of AP and later the HM at the Center. During these spells he was simply unapproachable to common men like Professors of IIT KGP. But my friend tells me that, in the interval, he met KBR waiting in the lounge of the Delhi Airport desolately all alone. The two shared tea and jokes. Politicians simply bide their time and are never bored.

Investors: I mean the small-time ones who play the stock-market as a compulsive hobby. They too may have their ups and downs but they are forever dreaming of their Big Swoop. There was a student at IIT KGP who was facing a Placement Interview with a Finance Company. He was not one of those charmers or achievers. After a lukewarm Q & A session on academics, he was asked about his hobbies. He replied he had only one: playing the stock market spending hours reading between the lines of the Daily Economic Times. He was asked jokingly how much money he made. He replied: ‘A cool 2.5 lakhs’. Everyone was taken aback, before he clarified he didn’t have a single penny to invest, but that didn’t prevent him from playing mental ‘games’ as if he did have the money. And he brought out his ‘portfolio’ and graphs of the swings of his ‘buys’ and ‘sells’ during the past month. He was grabbed then and there with a whopping salary.

Fortunately, I was never ‘bored’ during my life so far. My trick was simple: I was and am a loner. I have far too many interests to get bored. My University never had an Attendance Rule. So, I used to cut those classes which threatened to bore me. And IIT KGP never forced me to teach subjects which bored me. And, there was no Attendance Rule for Senate Meetings. Indeed most Directors preferred the Senate Attendance be as thin as they could manage.

And, at home, I resist going to movies, preferring to read their reviews. TV threatens to be a bore, but I got used to pay no attention to it. My son is a music-buff, but with some practice I learned how to survive it. Folks like me tend to be bores; but that is none of ‘my’ problems. My wife knows how to switch off!

Sorry if I bored you; but who asked you to read this?

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Monday, February 22, 2010

Oh! To Die Gracefully

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Dear Friend:

It is always going to be tough losing one's parents. But it is worse seeing them suffer hopelessly at an advanced age, and being unable to help.

Dropping this mortal coil gracefully is a blessing. There is a beautiful simile in Mrityunjaya Mantra: "Like the ripe cucumber slipping from its stem".

Ashwathama, enraged by the deceitful killing of his father, kills all the progeny of Draupadi. Everyone awaits the curse Draupadi would fling on Ashwathama: "May Death cheat you forever!".

It is said that to this day he wanders hither and thither unable to discard his rotted body.

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Monday, February 23, 2009

Humanity's secret longing:
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Some love Vanity
Others prefer Sanity
But at heart
...At last
We all value Dignity.

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Posted by G P Sastry (gps1943@yahoo.com) at 11:02 PM

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Roll Call

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“My name is gps; what’s yours?”


“Jogia, sir”


“Why?”


Jogia would look at me quizzically like Alice in Wonderland. 


I ask: “What does ‘Jogia’ mean?”


She would look flustered; but relieved that I didn’t launch straightaway into intricate questions on Spacetime Software in her Lab Viva.

It could be Aniket, Ayan, Ila or Ira.

Names of my Bengali students fascinated me. There is no rule that names should have contexts and meanings. But I suppose the name-giver had something at the back of his mind while inflicting it on his offspring. And, this is not always divulged unless demanded.

My Bengali friends used to ask me what the G in my name stands for. I had to admit it means ‘Horse’. And they would chuckle and ask me “Why?” I had to retort: “Why not? The horse is a noble and handsome animal (ask M. F. Hussain)”. It could be worse….many of my friends in my school Down South were stuck with Elephant, Tiger, Fox, and all possible birds and beasts save Donkey and Dog (unfair to these two creatures; we Hindus revere all created beings as our Gods or at least their vehicles).

Legend has it that one of my ancestor Pundits presided over the Aswameth Yaga (Horse Sacrifice) of the King of our Simhapuri (Lion City!) and was gifted a miniature golden horse as a memento thereof. This story is however disputed by my maternal cousins who used to say that my forefathers were uncouth stable boys of the King.

I had a lot of trouble form-filling my full expanded name which runs into 23 characters (including 2 spaces). I asked my father if it couldn’t have been simplified. He replied that he did simplify it; the full name as bestowed on poor me in my Baptism Ceremony (written with a golden ring on white rice in a silver plate) was G. V. S. V. S. K. P. Sastry (all deities on both sides of the family propitiated).

Jogia tells me that she had trouble with her surname Bandyopadhyay at Atlanta. She asked to be called just JB. Our students always knew us as ‘gps, db, sdm, hnb’ et al, because that is how they saw our names first in their Time Tables.

There was one Punjabi (Multani) student in our Physics Department at IIT Kharagpur. His name was spelled ‘Kapeeleshwar Krishana’. He owed his weird spelling to Numerology. He was at Princeton while his Degree Certificate was written up at KGP. He visited us with his parents as my guests when he came to collect his Degree two years later. He proudly exhibited his Degree to his father, who looked at it and tossed it aside saying, “This is not my son’s Degree”: it was spelled ‘Kapileswar Krishna’
(a more sensible spelling). KK had to get a corrected version paying Rs. 200, suffering a further delay of two months.

I often wondered how the 100 Kauravas of the Mahabharat were named. I could get to know all their names (and that of their lone girl sibling) when I saw a photo of chubby identical quintuplets in our Newspaper with the caption that their young mother at Etah (U. P.) had four more kids earlier, all doing fine; which led me to the following light verse (with no ill-will):



Naming Game in Etah




Naming them's easy in Etah: 


Yudhistir, Arjun, Bhim et al
One is Karn of Kunti a la
The girl's name is Dussala
The rest two boy and man:
Duryodhan and Dusshasan
98 more to come.........................
Dussahan, Dussalan, and all welcome!




For the 96 fresh arrivals, please look up:


http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_100_kauravas_names



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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

A Flood of Childhood Memories

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We were then living in Muthukur, a seaside village 12 miles from the District HQ, Nellore, during 1952-57. I studied from Second Form to SSLC in the Village High School ‘head-mastered’ by my father. My father used to visit Nellore routinely once a month on official work. I used to watch out and squeeze into the Front Seat of the KVR Bus reserved for him.

Nellore’s fascination for me was my Uncle’s house. It had an awe and aura for a village bumpkin like me. First, the hustle and bustle of a ‘proper’ town. Then the exotic ‘current’: toggle the switch; and the lamp glows! (They had a marvelous ‘hanging’ lamp in the Hall which could be lowered or raised by a weighted pulley).

But the main attraction was Bhanu Moorthy, my cousin an year or so older to me. He studied in the posh Missionary CAM School (with a Museum housing stuffed pigeons!). He was so different from me. I was used to the rough and tumble of village rustic kids spending their entire leisure on outdoor games and sports. There was no day I didn’t have a bruise on the elbows or knee caps, nor escaped sound thrashing from my father for some mischief or other. Moorthy was different. He was a gentleman: a budding poet with literary interests, reciting long poems from Manu Charitram. The games we played were different and sedentary: ‘Monopoly’ (where I heard ecstatic names like Chembur, Andheri and Boriville); Chess with wooden pieces like Raju, Rani, Sakatam, Ashwam with weird moves. But the cake goes to the bound volumes of Chandamama: its glossy paper, wonderful stories and serials that ran for years, adorned with cute colored sketches. Bhanu Moorthy, even at that tender age, was a ‘film critic’ for the local newspaper. He was paid with two tickets for himself and a friend of his on the opening Matinee Show. I was often the parasite. We had no pucca Cinema Hall in Muthukur (only a touring tent; well that is grist for another story!). And ‘Mayaa Bazaar’ watched in the brand new Shesh Mahal (with trailers: Laurel & Hardy) is an unforgettable experience.

I was overawed by Unclejee. He was tall, lanky, spectacled and forever busy ringed by a swarm of buzzing ‘client-bees’ in his Office Room. Once I ventured to peep into his Office when no one was there. I hastily retreated, subdued by the hundreds of fat bound volumes of Law on revolving shelves. I felt that anyone who read and mastered these forbidding tomes be better avoided; which I scrupulously did.

But one evening, he visited our home in Muthukur. After dinner he called me aside and asked me what my favorite subjects were. I replied; English and Science (naturally; my father taught those two subjects and he was the best teacher in the District). Unclejee then asked me to fetch my English Text Book and point to my best prose piece. That was Rip Van Winkle; to this day. He then took my Viva (the first ever I faced with folded hands); and then he gave a sweet unforgettable cuddle. Then again he attended my Upanayanm function and taught me how to shorten my knee-length sacred thread with a retractable ‘Peapod’, the running trick-knot that I taught my son recently. One night Bhanu Moorthy complained to me that Unclejee rebuked him: ‘Vakra Buddhi Vedhava’. He didn’t mind the scolding, but objected to the mixing of chaste Sanskrit and colloquial Lingo.

Auntiejee ruled the household like a Queen. She fondly looked after the gastronomic needs of the 20-odd daily ‘lunchers’ of her extended family and guests. For me the attractions were exotic stuff which Muthukur Village Market didn’t boast: Carrots, Cabbage, Beetroot, Noolkol and such ‘English’ vegetables. I distinctly remember the thin rings of pink carrots soaked in sour buttermilk, dressed with fried Mustard seeds. And the long snow-white Bitter-gourd deep-fried with stuffed Dhaniya Masala, and fastened with easy-knotted Banana Fiber.

One afternoon when I was alone in their upstairs room reading Chandamama, she called me ‘quickly’ to the terrace (by her side) and pointed to the passing brand-new arrival in Nellore: the Cycle-Rickshaw.

O Tempora, O Mores!
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Mock Fights

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Mock Fights


A childhood friend visits a newly-weds’ tiny home, with a bedroll in his armpit, as an unbidden guest. He gets a warm welcome and shows no signs of quitting even after a week.

The shy couple hatch a plan: In the wee hours of the next morning the husband would beat up his wife who will cry loud and hoarse. The plan works wonders. The guest in the next room packs up his bedroll and quietly leaves without as much as a bye-bye.

The couple rejoice: husband boasting how wonderfully he pretended to beat his wife, and wife boasting how wonderfully she acted crying buckets.

And then the guest returns with his bedroll, he boasting how wonderfully he pretended to go away! (Story from ‘Chandamama’ circa 1955)

When I was a kid, we rented a house in our small town Down South. There was no power, the weather was always warm, and everyone slept out in the open. None of our family could sleep the first few nights: a loud and terrific family row would break out on opposite sides of the lane and would go on till daybreak, enacted by four families at either end of it. By and by we learned that the two ends of the lane housed resident traders; and this was their charming way of keeping awake by turns to hold marauding thieves at bay.

Our Faculty Hostel in the 1960s had a suave Manager, and an ebullient Bearer who went slightly ‘high’ from time to time. Whenever the Bearer was tipsy in the Dining Room, the Manager was summoned. He would barge in and scold the Bearer in lamentable curses, and the Bearer would retort cheekily. The Manager would then push the Bearer out and threaten to sack him on the spot; upon which, kindly freshers would plead with the Manager to show mercy on the Bearer and let him off with a stern warning. The Drama would be staged at regular intervals. The older residents were wiser and hardly intervened. The show between the two chums would go on; And on, much like Laurel & Hardy.

And then there was this young Lecturer. Within weeks of joining, he sailed forth and deliberately picked up needless quarrels with the Heads of all Service Sections. The day after his tantrum, he would go back and apologize in public handsomely, citing language barrier, culture divide, home sickness, and food habits; and charm them all with tall tales, jokes, free cigarettes and palmistry. In the couple of years of his short stay he got things done which we never could in a decade; and got a fond farewell.

My matchless Ph. D. guide, a world-renowned wizard in Theoretical Physics, but a novice in worldly affairs, somehow convinced himself that I could neither speak nor follow Bengali. So, he always spoke to me in chaste English. But his wife knew that I could not only follow but also blabber in Bengali with a ghastly southern accent.

This confusion often led to distress when I was in their Drawing Room working with him. Suddenly some personal domestic query would float across his mind and he would summon his wife and seek clarification. She would politely postpone the answer despite his repeated avowals that I knew no Bengali. I would then excuse myself and go out for a smoke and a cup of tea before returning.

A few days before they left the Campus for good upon his retirement, I happened to enter their Drawing Room to report the outcome of an errand that he entrusted to me. And found him and his wife in the midst of a heated debate about their mode of travel to Calcutta. I tried to excuse myself but he insisted that I sit still.

At one point he suggested to her in Bengali that all members of their family could travel to Cal in the truck they hired for transport of their luggage, for togetherness, and safety of the luggage. That was the last straw: Mrs Professor so lost her sublime cool that I was quivering in fear. A few long moments after she retreated haughtily into her Bedroom, he summarized and translated to me their discussion, with a straight face in one brief and naughty sentence:

"There seems to be some hitch with my plans of travel".

Friday, February 5, 2010

Deadly Mores

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Deadly Mores

It was the first death I was witness to, willy-nilly. Early 1950s.

Four of us siblings (between 5 and 12) were invited to our cousin’s village for a rollicking holiday. Instead of a roaring welcome, we were greeted by a deathly silence. An old woman of the family was apparently in her last moments. She was laid on a raised stone ‘theen’ in the Hall common enough those days. And was ringed by half a dozen of her close relatives. We kids struggled to peep.

Her eldest son was holding a brass tumbler of ‘tusli-water’ and dropping small gentle sips into her lowly-moaning throat. The ordeal continued and her throes were sad to watch. Suddenly one of her daughters took away the brass tumbler, went inside, and in a few minutes, brought it back.

With the next sip, the old lady was released from her agony and passed into peace. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief; and we kids were bundled into a rickshaw and shunted to a neighbor’s village where all of us picnicked for days on end.

Much later I came to know the secret ‘therapy’: The lady who took away the tumbler, it seems, dropped a silver rupee coin into the water, shook the tumbler, picked the coin back and returned the tumbler to the son. The silvered-sip did the trick. The coin perhaps was cremated along with the old lady. Apparently the old lady was much attached to her silver.

Another very fair and thin and comely old widow I saw those days was always sitting on the stone ‘theen’ abutting their rented house and was rolling beads of prayer. I never saw her enter the house and was very curious.

Recently my mother told me that the interest on the ‘property’ left to her by her childless husband was just enough for one meal a day; and she used to insist that she eat only at night before she returned to her ‘theen’. And the reason why she didn’t enter the house except for ablutions and food was that it was a rented house and a lot of trouble would be there for the household if she happened to pass away at an ‘inauspicious’ moment.

My good wealthy bachelor friend well-known for his humor sold his house in the heart of the town and shifted to a bungalow he specially built near the Cremation Ground.

I asked him why.

He smiled and replied: ‘Just a gentle push’…..

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Smoking & Browsing

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Somerset Maugham said (I think in 'Summing Up'): "Those who don't talk should smoke".

Satyajit Ray's heroes (like Uttam Kumar in 'Nayak') were inveterate smokers. He was asked why so? Ray replied (I think in 'Our Films; Their Films'): "Mine are not action heroes; so I didn't know what to do with their hands".

Since by nature I prefer listening (and thinking ;-)) to speaking, I used to silently smoke in Tea Joints like the Harry's or the Faculty Hostel's lounges, sitting alone.

Now that I quit smoking long back, I had a problem in Hyderabad what to do with my hands waiting for Tea in the Dhabhas here.

The problem got solved when an year ago, my son installed Internet on my mobile phone.

Instead of smoking I browse the Web on my mobile sitting alone in Tea Stalls.

The addiction is unbelievable. Yesterday, my mobile stopped accessing the Net any which way; and my son is away in the Netherlands. I had to take an auto paying Rs. 100=00 to visit the Airtel main office in Begumpet. The problem was sorted out for free in 5 minutes: 'Remove the SIM card, wait a minute, and reinsert. Whoosh, Abracadebra!'.

I thanked the youthful ma'am who served me out of turn in view of my Senior Citizenship, and returned to my Tea Joint.

Within minutes I got this message on my mobile:

"Please let us know if you are satisfied with our service by Shaheen Sultana, by answering 'yes' or 'no' on our toll free number 567"

Wow!