Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Money Matters

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Money matters. Or does it really? I suppose it does one way or the other. Those who don’t have it are a worried lot. So are those who have it in excess.

It is like the Dilli ka Ladoo. It is so famous for its taste that those who haven’t tasted it feel deprived and ashamed. It is so rich in ghee, sugar and dal that those who eat it suffer from stomach pangs. Yet I suppose stomach pangs are passing, so eating is the better option.

So with Money. Poverty is more degrading than riches, unless it is self-imposed. There are those who prefer to go without Money. These are the saints and savants. Poverty, like abstinence, is a virtue for them. They cater to their minimal physical needs by begging, literally or metaphorically. I guess the advantage of this is that you don’t have to pay Income Tax, and also avoid undesirable people like Insurance Agents (nice altruistic folks otherwise).

In the Vedas, Money is frankly extolled (there was less hypocrisy those golden days). Shree Suktam (literally: ‘Good words for Wealth’) says: “Money is Fire Power, Money is Wind Power, Money is Solar Power, Money is Wisdom Power, Money is Vital Power, Money is Brain Power….”. Also, in the Upanishads, King Janaka of Videha, who had enough Money but desired Knowledge (these are supposed to be antidotes to one another) offers his Guru Yagnyavalkya: “I give you a thousand!” At first I didn’t get ‘thousand what’? Then I gathered he was giving away a thousand Holy Cows! No wonder the Gangetic Valley is known as the Cow-Belt and Laloo Krishna its Milkman. Also, right now there is curfew and what not here in Hyderabad over matters concerning cows.

But I digress, as Aniket says. The real question is: “How much money is just about right to have?” This question is more a Personal One than a Universal One. Those who tried to give a Universal Answer and enforce it on others didn’t succeed. Typically the Soviet Regime, misunderstanding Marx, decided that Government Houses and Ration Cards should be ok for its citizens. It worked for a while before Ration Cards and Government Houses came in a variety of color schemes.

Money means many things to many. Ultimately it is supposed to measure Happiness (another weird word; there is supposed to be a GHP, Gross Happiness Product for every Nation: Bhutan, of all countries, leading currently).

Should there be a GHP for every individual, easily measurable at home, with an instrument like a digital BP apparatus? If any Company tries to design one, I suggest that the 100% Marker corresponding to the Maximum Happiness Index should be set by calibrating it on my 3-month-old granddaughter, Ishani, after she had her sleep, bath and mother’s milk. She just CROWS!!! (Just before her vaccination prick!)

When in 1965 I joined IIT KGP as an Associate Lecturer (Permanent), someone told me (I didn’t read the fine-print in the 5-page document which I had to sign…..I was in a hurry to join lest they decide to withdraw their Offer Letter) that they offered Pension to me and, after my death, to my would-be wife. Then and there I decided to burn both ends of the candle. I never regretted it fully to this day. I hate Money in the Bank. It should flow like running water. Stagnant Money, like stagnant water, breeds all kinds of diseases.

The other day I suddenly found a lakh and a half Rupees in my Pension Account. I thought there must be some mistake. But they told me that it is a genuine entry for the Arrears of the 6th Pay Commission. At once my wife and I decided to stimulate the moribund Indian Economy by spending the entire sum on ‘Travel and Living’. A few thousand Rupees were still lying around. So I decided to compile a couple of dozen blog pieces of mine accumulating over 3 years and get them printed at my own expense (stimulating the Printing Industry) in the form of a booklet. Aniket wrote a wise Foreword. My wife asked me: “To whom will you send them?” I said to my many relatives and friends. She said: “What is the use, most of them never read nor even acknowledge?”

I replied they will serve as my Life Certificates.

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Sunday, March 28, 2010

Wonderful!!!

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I find that ‘wonderful’ is the most debased word in the English language.

I am no linguist, but it seems to me the ultimate buzz-word: a ‘thought-substitute’.

When an American says “Wonderful”, with one or more exclamation marks following it, I have found that he (she) means:

“I don’t have the time or inclination to look into it, but I don’t want to hurt you; I wish to be polite, agreeable, and keep you in good humor, for I ‘guess’ you will be useful and profitable to me by and by”.

See, how much punch a good buzz-word can pack into it.

I learned this by my ‘wonderful’ experience of collaborating with an MIT don over 25 years. When he discovered that what I had to say was turning out to be really useful and profitable to him, he stopped using “wonderful” and replaced it by thoughtful words like: “incisive, original, beautiful, ugly, shoddy, plain wrong, or bullshit” as the case maybe (another buzz-phrase).

I am pained at this dilution of a really keen expression. All of us recall the ‘wonders’ our childhood filled us with: the first circus, train journey, movie, zoo, seashore, comet and the first surge of unfamiliar hormones. But age is no bar for experiencing the wonders that surround us. The day we stop sensing the wonders of this world, we cease enjoying Life.

The dozen or so ‘Suktas’ of the Vedas are the first known expressions of ‘wonderment’. To the rishis who composed them Nature around them appears simply wonderful: the trees, the forest, the streams, the sunrise and sunset, the clouds, the moon, the stars, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the animals; each of which so filled them with wonder that they personified them into gods and worshipped them, invoked them, feared them and composed marvelous hymns at them.

Much like the Thanksgiving of the early Pilgrim Fathers of America (who however decimated their Red Indian Natives, who were no less wonderful by themselves).

The debasement of this word is not new. More than 80 years ago, Thurber rebels against it. I quote:

“Wonderful place you have here”, said the man from the newspaper. He stood with his host on a rise of ground from where down a slope to the right, they could see a dead garden, killed by winter, and, off to the left, spare, grim trees stalking the ghost of a brook.

“Everybody says that,” said George Lockhorn……”I say that you and the others are, by God, debasing the word wonderful. This bleak prospect is no more wonderful than a frozen shirt. Even in full summer it is no more wonderful than an unfrozen shirt….I have known only a few wonderful things in my fifty eight years: the body of a woman, the works of a watch, the verses of Keats, the structure of the hyacinth and the devotion of the dog…”

Each of us have our own list. Or should make one before it is too late.

To me the brain of Feynman, as I know it from his writings, is one of the most wonderful things. For he wrote this wonderful stanza:

“I wonder why, I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!”

A true teaser on ourselves and the world we happen to live in.

There is another buzz-word; this invented by an American genius: “OK”

About this great word, another time!
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Friday, March 26, 2010

To Choose or Not to Choose

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People can roughly be divided into two broad groups: ‘Pro-Choice’ and ‘No-Choice’. There are several subgroups in both and much overlap and incursions and borderline cases.

1980: Gole Bazaar, Kharagpur. Just then the toothbrush-market was opening up. A dhoti-clad Marwari gentleman asks the Fancy-Shop owner: “Ek toothbrush dedo!” “Boliye: Colgate, Forhans or Binaca?” “Colgate dedo” “Hard, Soft ya Medium” A 1-minute ponder and: “Woh brand dedo jisme koi phalthoo choice nahi hai!”

He is the typical No-Choice man.

“Would you like cream or lemon in your tea, Mr. Feynman” “I’ll have both, thank you”. And that led to the “Heh-heh-heh-heh” and the title of the bestseller: “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!” Feynman also was fed up with the daily question in the restaurant: “What would you like to have for your dessert?” I think he settled for the same damn pudding everyday, wasting precious time pondering a couple of days.

The Marwari trader and the Nobel-winning Feynman are not goats when it comes to things they are particular about.

A friend of mine dragged me to at least a dozen shops in Calcutta in search of a suitable pocket transistor (all of them creaked and croaked), but was willing to marry any girl she and his parents agreed upon; which means that some people love to be choosy about their trivial hobbies, but would like to leave life-and-death choices to others.

Parkinson, I remember, quoted Minutes of a Board Meeting where there was a one-hour debate on whether to repair or rebuild a cycle shed that cost a few hundred dollars, but the decision was made in minutes when it came to a half-a-million dollar purchase of a power plant about which none but an EXPERT was deemed to have knowledge!

My wife loves to spend a half-hour choosing a sari in a shop, while I go for a cup of tea and a long walk; but on my return to the shop she would happily settle for a totally different (but a much costlier brand) sari I choose for her in 2-minutes.

I don’t recall choosing the womb that ejected me here on Earth, nor the name I was dumped on, nor my career, nor my wife and apartment (my sisters chose both for me), nor the IIT that gave me my fun job (I just applied as a lark and picnic with one of my friends), but I was hell of a choosy chap when it came to choosing my Ph D guide (the one and only SDM).

We are now trespassing on the vexed philosophical question: Destiny or Freewill? The short answer is that every choice we make out of our Freewill appears to be predetermined by our Destiny; so why bother!

To my third-hand knowledge, the first ‘arranged’ marriage I know of in our family was that of my grandmother, circa 1880. They were living in a sea-side village with a grand Shiv temple dating back to 1400s (with Krishna Devaraya’s inscriptions). Her father was the village pundit-cum-postmaster. One morning when she was 4 and building sand castles with her playmates, her mother dragged her home and dressed her up in a blouse and skirt and presented her to the father of my grandfather who approved her fair skin, good looks and erudition (she could recite her entire textbook blindfold) on condition that she drops out from school till her marriage 2 years later (when she would be 6). A fortnight on, the school master came to my great-grandfather begging that she be allowed to come to school just for ONE day to impress the Inspector of Schools so that his job is renewed for the next year.

I don’t like the ghastly dictum that ‘all cats are gray in the dark’, but can’t resist quoting our Maupassant’s Bartender (with the proviso that what is meat for the goose is meat for the gander): "To be brief, we reached his house and I took a look at its mistress. A beautiful woman she certainly was not. Anyone can see her, for there she is. I said to myself: 'I am disappointed, but never mind, she will be of value; handsome or ugly, it is all the same, is it not, monsieur le president?'
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Depressing Suggestions

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It is well-known that well-meaning people en masse can often be irritating. This is especially true when friends and relatives visit patients and liberally give free uncalled for suggestions as to why, how, when, what to do, what not to eat and so on and so forth.

There should be a Law against it.

Birbal once tells Akbar that the trouble with the health of his kingdom is that everybody in it is a Doctor. Akbar*** asks him to prove it. Next day Birbal lies down in front of Akbar’s watchful Palace on a charpai groaning and yelling. Every passerby solicitously asks Birbal what is wrong with him; and invariably gives free advice to drink Tulsi water or chew betel leaves or eat goat’s testicles etc.

One can put up with these materia pseudo medica for corporeal afflictions. But when it comes to maladies of that inscrutable elusive thing called ‘mind’, all limits are crossed; because few understand these things but don’t admit their ignorance, nor keep shut, nor mind their business, all in the spirit of helpfulness.

I write from my experience. Soon after my retirement I was laid down by a severe bout of Clinical Depression. Fortunately, I knew something about it, having seen close friends sink into that valley and getting out of it by proper medication. I wouldn’t recommend you browse them, but if you wish to be perverse, here are the links:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/world-mental-health-day.html

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/gpss-depression-one-liners-for-wise-and.html


I now come to the various fruitless, bootless, and bootable unsolicited suggestions I received from my near and dear:

1. Play Caroms
2. Listen to Classical Music
3. Go to Ravidra Bharati Auditorium
4. Visit Libraries
5. Go for long walks along the (stinking) Tank Bund
6. Try Yoga
7. Try Art of Living
8. Visit Temples, in particular, Sai Baba and Balajee
9. Do Puja if you can, or let others do it on your behalf
10. Consider people who are worse off
11. Consider your parents’ agony (‘here’ or ‘elsewhere’)
12. Consider your wife’s agony (she was watching Zee Soaps)
13. Just CONSIDER!
14. Avoid sleep during daytime
15. Avoid morbid thoughts
16. Read Chandamama
17. Read Readers Digest (of all things)
18. Try change of place, like visiting Goa
19. Visit astrologers, palmists, bhooth, praet & kapalik cranks
20. Read Gita (not Gita Govinda!)

I was too preoccupied with my own struggles to say anything to them openly but said only one thing to each of them sotto voce: “Go to Hell!”

I got cured overnight miraculously by an emergency change of drug (Olanzipine), thanks to Dr. G. Prasad Rao!
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*** Birbal once tells Akbar that sometimes apology could be worse than the affront. Akbar, the Goat, promptly asks him to prove it. That evening when Akbar was smelling a rose in his Mughal Gardens, Birbal quietly pinches his bum from behind. Akbar turns around and gets wild; whereupon Birbal apologizes saying: “I thought it was the Queen!”

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Monday, March 22, 2010

Fish ‘n’ Chips

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Last couple of days fish have been swimming into my blog.

Born into an Orthodox South Indian Brahmin family, and growing up in a sea-side village in the early 1950s, I was shocked one day to learn that people could be eating things other than rice, sabji, sambar and curd. I had a large number of friendly Muslim school-mates. I was drawn to them because they were very sportive types, excelling in outdoor Games and Sports. They used to quickly drop out from school to take up their family callings like tailoring, soda-water bottling, beedi-rolling, and, as I learned to my dismay, dressing and vending mutton. They used to invite me to their homes teasing me that they would feed me Biryani, Khurma, and Royyala Pulusu (prawn-sambar). The lingo they used was a fascinating mix of Urdu and Telugu (much sweeter than the Hyderabadi “kaiko? Aaathoom, Jaathoom”). And, to frighten me out of my wits, they would vividly describe their male brethren’s ‘Upanayanam’ Function (Sunthi or Circumcision Ceremony). Whenever my mother lost her bucket that slips from her hands and drops into the deep open–pulley-well, she would plead with me to fetch my 10-year-old friend Karim to dive into the well and retrieve it for her with the bait of an anna (1/16 of a silver rupee coin).

When at 21, I joined IIT KGP as an Associate Lecturer, I discovered to my dismay that Bengali Brahmins are fond of eating fish, which they deliciously allude to as Jalo-Pushpo (‘aquaflower’ like cauliflower). I had to hunt in vain for vegetarian food: no sambar, no curd, no tamarind or mango pickle, and no coffee! There was sweet curd (mishti dohi) though, but by then I discovered that sweets and sweethearts leave a bitter taste after they are done with. As I was a reluctant bachelor, my Bengali married friends used to take pity on me and invite me to their homes once in a while for grub. In particular, Mrs DB, an elegant English MA from JU, used to invite me for a loochi-khitchiri-pulaav party on condition that at the end I would mix dahi with rice and eat it with my dripping hands: she would then call her 5-year old daughter to run and watch me as if they were visiting a zoo for free.

I had this other Bengali friend in our Faculty Hostel who was engaged to get married soon to another MA from JU. Like me he was also a village-kid, shy and timid. He told me one night that his fiancée would be traveling to Puri on an excursion trip along with a few of her friends by Puri Express and asked him to come to the KGP station to meet them. The train was scheduled to arrive at 2 AM at KGP and leave at 2.40 AM. He asked me to wake him up because he was a lark and not an owl like me. When at 1.30 AM I banged his door, he came out rubbing his eyes in his pajamas. I reminded him of his scheduled visit to the Railway Station. He kept mum for a good 2 minutes and said he wouldn’t go. I scolded him and threatened that his marriage bells wouldn’t be ringing sweet. He blurted that he was too scared to go on his push-bike alone pedaling 5 km on a deserted night. I then offered to escort him on my own antique machine. He summoned up the needed courage and both of us were there by 2.10 AM. The Announcement was blaring that the Puri Express was on time and standing on Platform Number 5 (Murphy’s Law again!). I told him to dump his bike with me and run, and I would be there after depositing our cycles in the Cycle Shed. As I dawdled on to the Platform, I was stunned to watch that our hero was being literally mobbed by a bogie-full of at least 40 JU girls. As the train was just about to steam out of KGP, his fiancée asked him to introduce his escort to her; and I just put my nose in before the train tooted away.

On our way back to the Faculty Hostel my friend was a pristinely chastened man and was wondering aloud repeatedly what Fate would have scorched him had he snoozed off that balmy starry summer night.

His fiancée insisted that I would be their First Guest soon after their marriage. And said that for all the trouble I took that night saving her from ignominy, she would feed me FISH! Despite all my vehement protestations, I had to settle for a ‘fish cutlet’ which, my friend assured me, didn’t have bones and would be more cutlet than fish.

That was the first and last fish dish I ate; but it was always a visual pleasure watching Bhadramahilas devour a bony toothsome Hilsa clean!


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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Sex of a hilsa fish

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A serious comment on the blog: 'Sold Women Bold Women' by Wanderlust has this false start:

"Sir, I am unaware of a process that decides the sex of the Hilsa fish".

I am reminded of a stale Hindi joke:

Q: "How do you determine the sex of a pigeon?"

A: "Throw a few grain. Agar chugta hai tho male hai; chugthi hai tho female".

It is better than this English one:

Q: "How do you determine the sex of a chromosome?"

A: "Pull down her genes!"

There is no 'man-woman conflict' at all in my view. To mimic the renowned mathematician David Hilbert vis-a-vis Mathematicians and Physicists:

"They deal in different things; live in different spaces".

By and large, women serve Nature's Purpose willy-nilly. Men are purposeless and almost disposable.

When I said this to my spirited student Arundhuti, she offered every sulking man a designer womb implant: She must know since she is at Stanford doing serious research on this Bio-Physics thing; and is a doting mother of two cutest sons...Bless her!

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Sold Women Bold Women

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Women are all over the News making Headlines nowadays. They have crashed all ceilings – glass, concrete, real and false. To think that just a century back most ‘advanced democracies’ didn’t give their women voting rights! Everyday these days there is an updated list of ‘Most Powerful Women on Earth’, with many Indian women on the top 5 or 10. And whatever our many Yadavs say or do, women are bound to break the male chauvinistic swine ceilings of our Legislatures and the Parliament. Men used to refer to their wives jokingly as ‘Home Ministers’. We now have in AP an iron-willed Lady Home Minister for real. And Didi will surely be gunning for the HM’s Portfolio next.

Yesterday’s DC carried this great news item: A newly married woman was taken to Bombay on the pretext of honeymoon by her hubby, left in a friend’s home, deserted. The friend appeared before her and claimed that she was sold to him for Rs 40,000. The lady had a secret cell phone on her person and was rescued duly by her friends and Police. There, there! Empowerment of Women by Technology!

I was curious about the figure of 40,000; not a very round sum, so lots of haggling must have gone on before the Deal was closed. This at once reminded me of the most atrociously funny story: ‘A Sale’, by Maupassant. Can’t resist narrating it:

18th century France: A woman appears in Court to depose on charges of ‘attempted murder’ by her husband and his friend. One night the two come home punch drunk when she was shelling beans. Her husband offers her 100 sous to drag an empty barrel and fill it up to its brim with water, which she gladly does. Then another 100 sous to strip to her bra, panties and stockings, which she does (one whole franc for ‘nothing’ must have been irresistible). The two chums then lift her bodily and drown her full and whole, and release her; upon which, scared out of her wits she runs and fetches the Police who find the two ‘full’ men in an uproarious brawl.

The husband is a pig-breeder and his friend a bartender. The husband badly wanted 1000 francs ‘by Thursday’ and his friend, a widower, badly needed a wife. The husband offers his wife for sale and his friend readily agrees to buy. The pig-breeder quotes a price of 2000 francs per cubic meter but settles for 1500. To measure the precise ‘volume’ of his wife the pig-breeder employs the ‘Method of Displacement of Water’: They just have to drown her in a barrel-full of water, and measure the water that runs away. The bartender wonders how they would measure the volume of the water that ‘runs away’. The pig-breeder answers: “Simple! Just take her out and refill the barrel with water and count how many pails it takes to do that”.

Everything goes swimmingly; only they can’t agree on the precise count of pails that had gone in while they filled up the barrel, both being ‘tight’. And no possible way of repeating the ‘measurement’! Then the woman arrives with the Police.

The story ends beautifully:

“At the end of an hour the Jury returned a verdict of acquittal for the defendants, with some severe strictures on the dignity of marriage, and establishing the precise limitations of business transactions.

Brument went home to the domestic roof accompanied by his wife.

Cornu went back to his business”.

Being a student of Physics, I was glad that the sozzled pig-breeder didn’t offer to ‘weigh’ his wife when she was in water: Archimedes says that objects could lose their weight while floating or immersed in water.

Prof MSS at IIT KGP used to pose this teaser to newly joined Faculty, in the Departmental Tea Club, especially if he (or she) happened to be a Theoretical Physics Ph D; by way of ‘Orientation’:

“Where and ‘How’ does its ‘lost weight’ go when a Hilsa fish is lying laidback in its river?”

Draupadis Please! Your Fishy Call!


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Thursday, March 18, 2010

Whist-ling!

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Today Aniket sent me the following story about the Clever Dog:

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In a park people come across a man playing chess against a dog.

They are astonished and say: "What a clever dog!"

But the man protests: "No, no, he isn't that clever. I'm leading by three games to one!"

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This recalled my own feeble attempts at card games. During the late 1960s when I was the eternal singleton in the Faculty Club at IIT KGP, there was this craze for Contract Bridge. Everyone wanted to play it and impress everyone else with their skill and profound knowledge in this ‘intellectual’ pursuit. No one was playing for money; they were playing for ‘fame’ in that closed campus. Everyone was rating the others by their prowess at Bridge. Director SRSG played it with our wizard Prof RGC as his partner in the Director’s Bungalow; got constantly rebuked, and thereby denied RGC his last promotion, it was accused. Books by Culbertson and Goren were selling like hot cakes and every other chap used to browse them religiously. Craze and fashion know no bounds!

I was ever repelled by mind games like Bridge and Chess: Ever ready for outdoor games, but not sedentary ones. Better read a Jeeves story or gather wool after sweating it out in the open. I was the perennial runner-up in Badminton and Table Tennis. My guide SDM too shared this aversion to Bridge and Chess. He told me he would rather play with Elliptic Functions or invent a new CG Formula.

As it happened, there was always a 3-some looking for the Fourth Man. They would rope me in, and when I protested I can’t, they would start teaching me. And thrust Culbertson in my hands. I found the book rather diverting. I mastered ‘card values’ and ‘bidding’ but couldn’t ‘play’. The problem was that I could never memorize which card went down and guess which else would be where (I could ‘finesse’ though!).

The three would toss and decide who would draw me as his (or her) partner; and try their best to make me ‘dummy’. This would go on till a ‘regular’ wizard materialized, when I would be kicked out much to the delight of all, mostly me. The trouble with Bridge is its mortal post-mortem. Unending arguments would follow as to who goofed, and there would be bad blood, especially when married couple play as partners. There should be a Law against it. (Joke: “Who is that chap tickling my ankle? Stop it now; unless it is my husband, in which case it is: 3-No-Trumps”)

One evening when I was coolly reading my Oliver Wendell Holmes alone in the Club Library, there was this commotion and Prof RSN, the Club Secretary ran in and dragged me to the Main Hall. Apparently, a game of Whist (or its variant) was scheduled. That required 20 players (5 X 4), playing on 5 tables. As usual the 20th chap didn’t turn up and the thing was held up. I was persuaded to stand by. The players would shuffle partners continually after every Deal so that everyone would get me as his (her) partner once by the time the damn thing was through. And each player would get a consolidated score which would decide the First, Second and the Third Prize. It went like swell and everyone had a roaring time, trying to make me the eternal ‘dummy’. And I retired to the Library after an hour or so and reverted to my Holmes. The Prize Distribution was going on and there was a cry for “GPS, where is he?”

I was dragged back to the Main Hall. RSN asked everyone to clap and amidst much cheering I was awarded a Special ‘Guest’ Prize (A Rs. 10 Note from RSN’s pocket) for making the Event possible and getting a Perfect Score of ‘ZERO’.

I asked RSN to sign the 10 Rupee Note, and preserved it for a long time, till I needed it desperately for a packet of Wills Filter.
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Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Woolgathering

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Woolgathering is the precise opposite of Meditation. In Meditation one is supposed to try and ‘focus’ one’s mind (such as it is) on a single thought, fighting all other thoughts that forever are trying to crowd out the single chosen thought. The process is an extremely tiring one, at least in the initial ‘novice’ stages. By and by the thing is supposed to get easy: as easy as breathing, they claim. The result is: ‘strength of mind’. Depending on the intended ‘purpose’ of Meditation, one can use the fortified mind for Peace or Prosperity (The two are known to be mutually exclusive: sublime Peace is the result of renunciation of all Prosperity….Shiva-Parvati vs Laxmi-Vishnu).

Books and tomes have been written on Meditation. In fact the genre is now one of the ‘bestselling’. All you have to do is to Google for ‘Meditation’ and do a clever ‘copy-paste’ job from the 27,100,000 sites; and you have a book on your hands ready for marketing. On Woolgathering you are on your own. Very little has been written on the subject. It is not popular or fashionable. The ‘activity’ (or rather the ‘passivity’) is condemned and ridiculed as useless and wasteful of time as well as energy (it needs no ‘energies’ however).

Woolgathering is not the same as Daydreaming. In Daydreaming the Dreamer has one or more ‘wish-fulfillment’ purposes. In Woolgathering there is no wish to fulfill. The perfect example of a Daydreamer is Thurber’s Walter Mitty. He has a ‘Secret Life’. The Woolgatherer has no secret life..…indeed he has no secrets to conceal, nor much of a ‘life’ either, so to speak.

Few of us are capable of Meditation or Daydreaming. Meditation requires a ‘Drive’ and Daydreaming requires a ‘Driver’. Both are purposeful, willy-nilly. Only a few can aspire to reach the heights of Meditation or Daydreaming. The former become Yogis and the latter Artists. But all of us are eligible for Woolgathering. Only we should have the time, place and inclination. Meditation is an artificial activity. Daydreaming is unnatural. Woolgathering on the other hand is the most natural state of the mind. I have watched many birds and animals at rest and at peace with themselves when their physical needs are for the moment met. A Woolgatherer is like a cow chewing her cud. Or a pigeon on the window sill. Ruminating.

Meditation is nowadays a profoundly ‘social and cultural’ fashion accessory. Woolgathering is an unsocial activity. A confirmed Woolgatherer is not in a hurry to mix with people. However it doesn’t mean he is a recluse hermit. He is like any of us; jobbing, marrying, procreating. But he is never ‘bored’. Left to himself, he would gladly sit down (or more likely lie down) and gather wool. But he wouldn’t knit the gathered wool into a sweater or glove. He just gathers.

While the hallmark of Meditation is ‘focus’, Woolgathering is all ‘diffuse’. If Meditation is like lifting the mind with its bootstraps, Woolgathering is letting the mind in its ‘free fall’. While Meditation is like setting the mind on ‘fire’, Woolgathering is like ‘quenching’ or ‘cooling’ the fiery mind.

Woolgathering requires a ‘born lazy’ attitude. None with any ‘Ambition’ would gather any worthwhile wool. Woolgathering is essentially a male activity. I haven’t seen women gather wool of any color or kind. Women are wired differently. They don’t like a restful mind. They are scared. And that is why they go forth and select (‘Natural Selection’ of Darwin), marry, and invite trouble for themselves and all.

I have seen a gentleman drive his Maruti from Prem Bazaar with his pet poodle; and both alighting and occupying a cement bench in Harry’s. The dog would sit quietly on his lap. Tikka would supply unending cups of Tea and Cigarettes for the gentleman and ‘samose’ for the poodle. Both would sit by themselves for a couple of hours and drive away.

He is the perfect Woolgatherer. How do I know? I would be doing the same thing on the stone bench opposite his and go through the same routine, sans the poodle. We had known each other for decades. But neither of us for a moment entertained the mere thought of invading our privacies by even sidelong glances. That would be Sacrilege!
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Saturday, March 6, 2010

Ask Dr GP

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Dear Dr GP: Ours is an arranged marriage, now one week old. My husband loves and adores me and is devoted. But he has this embarrassing habit of ogling comely girls on the street and keeps turning his head when we walk together.
Dr GP: This is as old as Adam & Eve, psychologically speaking. It is known as “Lock-in-Radar Fixation”. This is a passing phase lasting another 60 years. Oliver Wendell Holmes says that Nature expects every man to love every woman but marry only one (at a time).

Dear Dr GP: During courtship, my wife used to hang on to my every joke and laugh uproariously. But after marriage one week back, she runs to the kitchen, bathroom or even neighbor’s house whenever I start telling her a joke.
Dr GP: This is known as “Post-Marital Humor-Withdrawal”. She now feels her husband himself is a big joke. Try telling chuglies about your sisters to regain her attention.

Dear Dr GP: Our 12-year old son insists on barging into our Drawing Room whenever we have new visitors and keeps chattering endlessly. We have tried everything but beating and failed.
Dr GP: This is known as the “Dennis Attention Deficiency”. Just wait one more year till he enters his teens. You will then be complaining that he has to be dragged by ropes and chains.

Dear Dr GP: My husband has been recently promoted and posted to the Traffic Department. Since then he wakes up at the dead of the night, retrieves his whistle from his Uniform and starts whistling in his sleep. It is thoroughly embarrassing.
Dr GP: We call this: “Punjagutta Police Psychosis”. Keep a Rs 50 Note and a Challan book under his pillow. He will soon be ok.

Dear Dr GP: During our courtship my boy-friend was cheerful and charming till he met my mother the other day. Since then he has turned gloomy.
Dr GP: This is known as “Mom-in-law Genetic Depression”. Try your father on him. He will recover sensing that what your father has endured, he too can, if he tries hard enough.

Dear Dr GP: We have been married for a month. My husband daily brings about 50 roses every evening in spite of my telling him not to waste money.
Dr GP: We call this the “Higgins-Eliza Syndrome”. Make hay while the Sun shines. In another month he will be returning late night from his Software job and dumping his sweaty banian in your lap and growl: “Food!”

Dear Dr GP: I live with my charming husband and my wonderful mother-in-law since our one-week old marriage. But every night I have this eerie feeling that my mother-in-law is ever watching me throughout the night. I tried locking our bedroom but to no avail.
Dr GP: This is known as the “Power-Transfer Oedipus Complex”. Try locking HER bedroom.

Dear Dr GP: When she was in her St. Agnes Convent my daughter was writing chaste English. But after shifting to KV, she is mixing a lot of Hindi words.
Dr. GP: This is known as the “Shobhaa De Linguistic Modeling”. Congratulations, your daughter is poised on the threshold of a lucrative career of web-journalism.

Dear Dr GP: My wife keeps watching the Saas-Bahu serials on Zee TV. I am afraid she will be stressed out and depressed.
Dr GP: This is known as: “Smriti-Apashruti”. They wouldn’t be running for years if your fears were well-founded. She is just preventing you from switching over to Baywatch.

Acknowledgment: I reread the monograph: ‘Is Sex Necessary’ by Thurber and White last night.
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Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Physics of Sex

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One Engineering student at IIT KGP told me on their Hall Day that they have a ‘funny’ notion of their Physics Profs’ approach to Sex.

I asked him: “What the devil do you mean?”

“We guess they think of it as any other Lab Experiment starting with Aim, Apparatus, Schematic/Circuit Diagram, Procedure, Results, Analysis, Precautions & Viva Questions”

I assured him that they are absolutely wrong and we have much more ‘fun’ than his Engineering Profs who only know the Mechanics and Hydraulics of Sex.

The original bacterium must have had a lot of ‘fun’ splitting itself into two identical twins (otherwise why should it go to the trouble?). The daughters may quarrel who is the younger, but they know that they have devoured their mother in the process.

I hear a lot of debate about Sex Education these days. It is an oxymoron (two opposites juxtaposed). I mean, if you concentrate on the Education part of it, Sex vanishes; and vice versa.

At the end of a promised North India tour for my parents, after visiting Gaya, Varanasi, Sangam, I had to take them to Puri, Konark and Bhubaneswar. My wife said she would join this leg with our 3-year-old son. Those days OTDC was the only safe thing in Orissa, but it required ‘pull’ to get its services. My good friend Prof BKM, who comes from the Royal Family of Orissa (you can guess what the M stands for) was willing to help provided I ‘sincerely’ answered one question he puts to everyone at the end of the tour. I said ok.

By the time we reached Konark, it was midday, the Tourist Bus Driver gave only half an hour, my wife declined to get off the bus saying she had had enough of temple-hopping (she is a medico and so had all the wrong kind of Sex Education dissecting corpses of both sexes and assisting Deliveries), my father insisted he wouldn’t remove his sweater in the boiling Sun God (my mother told me later that he keeps his money in his shirt pocket), my deviant son who insisted he would walk on the busy Dalhousie Square (before it became the dingy BBD Bagh) refused to get off my head on the spacious beaches of Orissa; and so it was a all a heck of a punishment for me.

At the end of it BKM fired his favorite Viva Question: “What is the MESSAGE of the millennial Konark Temple?” My reply was: “Straight Sex is a BORE!”

Prof STA told me one day during the boring JEE Script Evaluation that I should go and request Prof RGC to narrate his favorite joke about the Memsaheb & the Sardarjee. I asked him if it was bawdy enough for me. He assured me it was. But, I said, RGC is a fair and balding Bhadralok with three beautiful grown-up daughters who were all our students. He replied it didn’t matter. But he insisted I keep staring at his fair face before he delivers his punch line. I asked why. “RGC himself would blush pink; and it would be a sight to see”. I said ok and went over to RGC and asked him to tell his joke with the bait of my share of free Rosogollas. RGC (who had a pleasing stammer) agreed:

“This Memsaheb who was touring India with an English-Hindi Dictionary asks this Sardarjee neighbor in the Sleeper Compartment: ‘Daya karke pecchhab karneki jagah dikhaiye’. RGC blushed before his Sardarjee did and said: ‘Pahle thoo dikhaa!’.”

He volunteered with this extra literary joke: “A Shakespeariana Theater Company came up with this Ad: ‘Six famous Shakespeare plays tomorrow!: 1. Wet; 2. Dry; 3. Aborted; 4. Three Inches; 5. Six Inches; 6. Nine Inches’. Decode them”. I pretended I couldn’t. Once again the same purple BLUSH and his stammer: “1. Midsummer Night’s Dream; 2. Twelfth Night; 3. Love’s Labor’s Lost; 4. Much Ado about Nothing; 5. As You Like It. 6. Taming the Shrew”

Come on Engg Profs!
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Letter to Aniket

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I do LIVE, don't I, at 67, having the TIME of my life (it is close to 2 AM now), composing prose at a sizzling pace? Scherbakova, the Russian lady, suddenly crossed my thoughts apropos of 'Expertise' today; and made my day.

Here is the lowdown: Everyone was wondering why a novice in English was posted by the USSR to teach at such a prestigious place like IIT KGP. It turned out that the USSR also sent 4 of their Powder Metallurgists to install a new Russian Machine in the Dept of Metallurgy under an Exchange Program. They were all great guys...smoking, mixing, clubbing, and drinking with us here (the beneficiaries). But they were Academics, trying maybe to play truant. They needed a smooth and motherly figure to look after them and see that they don't stray from the straight and narrow Lane; and report if they show any tendency for mischief, so that their kith and kin can be 'civilized' there.

And 'My Fair Russian Lady' filled the bill to a tee.

This was the prevalent, but unbloggable rumor. I do a lot of suppressing the TRUTH (and don't stick to Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth) in my blogs (did you watch 'The Great Train Robbery'?...I didn't watch the movie 'My Cousin Vinny' but looked up Wikipedia after you mentioned it), so that the end result is graceful enough and I don't run into needless trouble.
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Tuesday, March 2, 2010

My Fair Russian Lady

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1970, IIT KGP: I was then a more or less confirmed chain-smoking bachelor living in the Faculty Hostel. Aged 27, thin to the bones, fed up with the routine hostel food, but nowhere to go foraging. Long evenings spent on the wrought iron lawn-bench, pondering life and death, reading tremendously readable but gloomy books like ‘Crime and Punishment’. (Maugham says in his ‘Summing Up’ that he owes his lucid prose style to years spent studying Dostoevsky)

One fine evening we had a Visitor. A huge lady towering over all the inmates of our asylum, extremely fair, baring her plump legs to the knees, clad in colorful cotton printed gowns, freckled face, fiftyish. She was settled in the Guest Suite (so-called). We came to know that she was the new Russian Teacher, Madam Scherbakova.

She saw that I was the most available person ever on the lawn (others were more ‘professional’ and busy). After a couple of days, she came over to the lawn and seated her 200-pound self beside me on the creaking bench. She started gesticulating wildly and lisping English-sounding words in ‘chaste’ Russian. I figured out that she wanted my name, profession and ‘introduction’. After some dumb charade, I guessed she was checking if I was any good in English. Apparently she was pleased with my ‘proficiency’.

She made me know that she couldn’t speak or read a single word of English, but opted for IIT KGP as a Russian Teacher for Research Scholars who had taken Russian as their ‘Foreign Language Requirement’. She armed herself with the famous Russian-English Primer by Nina Potapova, but knew only the Russian part of it; and desperately wanted to learn the English. Obviously she needed urgent help and was asking me if I could ‘tutor’ her the English part of it before each class of hers. I said I would try.

But there was a catch: I had to accompany her to her class room and help her ‘on-site’ wherever she gets stuck. This part of the bargain I was reluctant to bite, but she tempted me she would make me an expert in spoken Russian in 3 months (a la Eliza Doolittle). I already had my quota of German and I said no, thank you. But she wasn’t one to take no from anyone. Next evening at 5 PM she ferreted me out and dragged me to her Russian Class; my arms and legs flailing the air: a most diverting sight to my colleagues and students in that drab campus.

From then on it was I who used to hound her. The reason was simple: I never could imagine there could be such a fantastic Language Teacher. She would distribute copies of Potapova (at a price) among the students and start ‘teaching’. The first lesson was some common word: ‘onion’. She would utter in her musical tone the Russian word for it and I had to get up and blurt the English word. She would give a disarming smile and repeat ‘onion’, ‘onion’, ‘onion’ 3 times with a victorious flourish. This would go on for a few minutes but by then she would forget the day’s lesson completely in her enthusiasm, and utter a completely new and strange word which was not part of our agreed terms for the day. She would look at me pleadingly and I would fail her completely. But she was not one to be daunted: she would quickly draw it on the blackboard in 2 seconds; and everyone would shout: ‘lizard’. It was a sight to see her beaming face. She would go on: ‘lizard’, lizard’, ‘lizard’ till the whole class approved her English pronunciation. Everyone was mighty pleased and the attendance grew by leaps and bounds. I didn’t learn much Russian, but learned a cardinal principle of teaching: “If you have the will to learn from your students, the Class Room would be great fun”.

Time for her to leave: the entire Faculty Hostel where she became the most popular Visitor threw her a grand Farewell Party. We decided that each of us her admirers would file past her by the Dining Table and present her with one rose each. She was overwhelmed at the unexpected gesture. Tears swelling in her eyes. We then asked her to make a short speech in Pure English. She blushed and gamely tried and we would hoot whenever she slipped into Russian. And we all laughed and laughed, she joining us most sportingly.

And she was bent on giving me (her English Coach) a one-on-one party in her ‘suite’. She came to know that I was vegetarian, teetotaler, virgin. She was aghast: such beasts were unheard of in Russia. And decided to promptly rectify the first two damaging qualifiers. She dragged me to her suite and made me eat ‘pilmony’ specially prepared by her. Pilmony, I gathered, was her favorite Russian snack made of ground beef dipped in wheat flour and ‘boiled’! I had to down the damn thing with ounces of Pure Undiluted Vodka, Made in Russia (with predictable consequences).
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