Monday, May 31, 2010

My India 6 - 1950-55

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One morning in Nellore, about 1953, I was stunned by the loud whisper of an uncle of mine: "Waterbury Compound has vanished into the Black Market".

I still recall the feverish impact of this statement on my young imagination, although I didn't care to know what that Compound was and why it did that vanishing trick. The very existence of such a frightening place as the 'Black Market' gripped me for days on end.

Now I know that 'Black Market' is a necessary adjunct of Nehru's SPS (Socialistic Pattern of the Society).

But before going into this colorful Variant Market, let me enumerate the prevailing Market Forces in oue somnolent Village Life around 1953. I think it is safe to define Market Forces as the interaction between us, the Consumer Family, and the various Producers of Goods and Services in our Village:

First the Service Sector:

Typical early morning of the Pongal vacation. Pleasantly cold with that urge for an extra ten minutes of snooze.

I am woken up rudely by my mother: The servant maid, Lingi, a tribal girl of about 25 hasn't yet truned up. There seems to be a guest or two expected by the noon and it would be a bad start for the day if Mother had to do the dishes and washing herself, instead of looking after the bonus cooking for the honored guest.

I am ordered to go to Lingi's tribal hamlet nearby and fetch her. I get up cursing and take what turns out to be an exhilarating morning walk of ten minutes (everything in the Village is ten minutes or less away).

I approach her closed hut and bawl: "Lingi, Lingi!"

There is a stir and a tiff, and I hear her: "Get along Babu, I'll be right behind you in a minute".

I walk back and on my way am stopped by a friend who was waiting to show off his new Top. He claims his uncle bought it for him from Madras.

Now, everything that looks new is supposed to be bought from Madras, even though it is stolen from Nellore's own Santhapet Bazaar. As Oliver Wendell Holmes would have said, for us Village bumpkins, the very Axis of the Earth passes through Madras. (All my father, as HM, had to do to rivet the diluting attention of his Staff in his Meetings would be to start; "When I was in my Final Year at the Madras Christian College.." and everyone, in particular the Telugu Pundit and the Hindi Visharada, would stop gabbing).

Anyway, the Top really looks novel, being somewhat prolate than the usual oblate design. I mean, not the usual fat and squat variety but the lean and mean one. He winds up the thread, flings it into the air and catches it on his palm. It looks colorful, but nothing new except the noise it and its owner make. One has to see how it withstands the 'ring' on the ground. Rings in our Village can be quite cruel especially to city-slick tops made for 'show and tell' but not 'stand and stick' of the rural variety. Attempts will be made to pierce it full and whole by half a dozen home-made Tops all raring to have a go at it. But, style apart, strength will last: the more the number of holes it takes, the really tough ones get nastier and nastier when their turn comes; like the seasoned heavy-weights in their ring.

That is the 'Top Market' of our Village.

By the time I reach home thoughtfully, my mother is upset that I came back alone without her favorite Lingi.

I then have to go on a second run.

This time, the tiff turns a brawl and eventually Lingi emerges, her face in mild ruins, and follows me at a brisk pace.

I envisage a brawl, this time between Lingi and my mother; but none of that sort: Lingi coyly whines: "What can I do, that 'Brute' refused to let go of me".

The two 'ladies' smirk knowingly; while I am left in a lurch. My imagination soars. I was only seven or eight then, but I have always guessed the 'Facts of Life'.

I am no Salvador Dali to brag that I knew them from my sojourn in the womb; or even earlier, to go one up on him; but I am reasonably certain that every Village kid has a rough idea from his age 4 or so; "It is blowing in the wind".

I would call this the Slave Market of our Village.

In a few minutes, the milk-vendor lady arrives with her brass pot (no aluminum vessels yet) and dip-dip cans of several sizes. Mother asks me to take two paavs extra for the day. She readily obliges and makes her marks on the wall. Now, this lady doesn't know how to keep a count of the number of paavs that she supplies us in the month, nor trust us to keep it. She has a 'system' of her own. She has a tin of 'khatthha' (a fast-colored paste like lime mixed with turmeric or something) and makes the appropriate number of notches on our wall. At the end of the month she will count the number but rely on my father to do the 'computing', of which she has no idea. It is enough for her conscience if the month's measures are ok. Like I am happy when I get my 'Income' right to the Rupee; the rest I leave it to my Income Tax Consultant and write the check as he deems it fit. I don't care for the mysterious calculations of tax liabilities, surtaxes, fines, deductions etc...that all comes under 'Higher Mathematics' for me and RKN.

Just before she leaves, she will ask for a glass of water surreptitiously to slake her thirst (not of the throat, but of that pouch of cash she has hidden in her sari's knotted end). When she thinks I am not looking, she would decant that glass of water in her milk-pot to more or less make up for the extra paavs she poured in my vessel.

I would like to call this the 'White Market' of our Village.

Then comes the 'Vegetable Auntie' with her huge basket on her head.

My mother (busy preparing 'extra delicacies' like payas) asks me to take one snake gourd, one paav of lady fingers and three bundles of saag.

The lady tries to cheat me thinking I am an urchin, and tries to palm off the shortest and bitterest snake gourd, brittlest lady fingers and stuff.

Then I give it to her: I fetch my Father and she would be scared that the whole street would know that she was trying to cheat a lambkin; and she would plead guilty and give whatever Father chooses at a 'cut-rate' hoping to fight another day.

I would call this the 'Green Market' of our Village.

But, Black market, no!!!

...............To be continued tomorrow...................




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Sunday, May 30, 2010

My India 5 - 1950-55

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Before this thing degenerates once again into utter rambling, let me recall the whole 'Point' of this Series: "To recount the 'Progress' made by Me and My Free India during the past 60 years step by blessed step".

I am as entitled to do this as any other street-corner Joe.

Moreover, like it or not, I did 'progress' as I said yesterday from a 'lower middle class' rural urchin to a 'mildly middle class' city-slick pensioner on my way.

And I do identify myself with Free India, in the sense that neither of us ever invaded any other country except in physical or intellectual self-defense, and had never any intention of abandoning it. Indeed I loved my country so deeply that I declined to even visit any other country......not that I had many 'invitations'.

To start with, our Family's morning ablutions as they progressed from 1950 to 1955:

1950: In my village, all cooking and heating was done on charcoal-fire and occasionally firewood. So, there was never any dearth of coal-ash. This was neatly preserved in tins. Every morning, the females of the family would 'drop' a little of this ash on their left-palm (if they are right-handed), push the right fore-finger into the ash mound, and brush away their teeth till they shone like jewels.

My father was rather fastidious about his teeth; indeed he died at 80 with all his 32 teeth intact and strong without any cavities, never having visited any Dentist (let's not talk of my teeth or even worse, my son's). There were stacks of neem sticks available in the Village Market, but he wanted fresh ones. So, he would wake me up at daybreak and we two would go on our morning walk to the Village Pond. When we reached our street-end- neem tree, he would give me a leg-up and I would climb like a monkey and crawl like a squirrel and break a rather juicy branch and drop down (dropping down is easier than getting up, some Physics there!) on the sand below. He would then pull out his pocket-knife (he always wore a shirt sans banian and had a pen and a pen-knife in his shirt pocket; I do have always a pen in my shirt pocket, mostly for the use of borrowers in queues who are too shy to return it; but my son has neither pen nor even pockets on his shirts: he borrows pens from senior citizens and brings them home, I mean the pens). Father would then cut out two sticks, shave them and chew their ends and give one to me and one to himself. Then the fun starts; I making faces and he cheering me on to stick with it till the juice turned sweetish; then I would refuse to give it up till he pulls it out from my mouth, and throws the two worn-out sticks into the Pond before commencing the next bit of necessary ablutions.

1953; By now, the 'Monkey-Brand Black Tooth Powder' pouches are available in our Village Market. The entire family took it easy and would pierce a hole in one corner of the pouch and use it for brushing. The ingredients looked like the same coal-ash, a little grainy to get a grip on the teeth, with salt added to spice up our mornings.

1955: Father used to buy and fetch from Nellore 'Colgate Tooth Powder' in tins with caps revealing hexagonal hole-fills which can be pierced with safety pins (for which women-folks' help is needed). The powder was too soft and too white as an advertisement to how our teeth would eventually shine. Just sprinkle it on one palm and get going. But to me it was too soft after the neem sticks and the Monkey Powder and the foam used to stick to the innards of teeth and tongue. I could foresee that this gimmick would next lead to a Paste of the same Brand. The principle is the same: once it is let out you could never push it back, whether Powder from its hole or Paste from its neck: 'irreversible' flow of visco-elastic fluids.

We now come to bathing our beauties:

1950: There was a Well in our courtyard, with a pulley, and a bucket to which a coconut-fiber- rope was tied. My father would work the pulley and get the bucket of water out. All the kids present from 2 to 7, would stand as naked as the very Heavens in a queue on strict first-come-first-served basis. My mother would stand with an excuse for a 'towel'. There was a tin with 'powdered' home-made dal, admixed with a variety of dried and ground leaves like Tulsi, neem, lemon etc, whose 'formula' was a family secret. This would be rubbed by my father onto our tender bodies and my elder sister would do the rest.

1953: The first 'bar-soap' arrived in the Village Market, sans smell, sans froth, and sans anything but that it would dissolve in well-water leaving a bubbly foam. Everyday, my father would cut just the required 'piece' of soap with his pen-knife and the drill would otherwise be the same, except now there was a ramshackle tin 'wall' around part of our well; and the girls would have a slip of 'knicker' to cover their shames, but I was FREE.

1955: Rexona and Lux soaps would be ordered and fetched by my father from Nellore. There was now a 'bathroom' with a hint of a roof and a 'steel' bucket into which father would pour well-water and mother would haul the bucket into the 'bathroom', and we each were left alone. I had an aversion to early morning baths, so I took advantage of the 'secrecy' by repeatedly howling and throwing water from the bucket with the mug with its holes onto the tin walls of the enclosure, and coming out with just a few droplets on the face and arms. And, my father would then pour one more bucket onto my head in front of all, as a 'punishment' for dereliction of duty. I don't know about my sisters; we never discussed this private affair in public. The Rexona soap would last forever, however.

Lunch and Dinner:

1950: Mother would mix boiled rice with sabjees and dal etc and we would all gather around her and she would 'pass' morsels around till we quit.

1953: Leaf-plates, made of dried sal leaves stuck together with broomsticks would serve as plates for each of us. Mother would serve the items on each plate, father would shape them into morsels with ghee as the lubricant and we would gobble them up amidst stories told by father to divert out attention from the inevitable excesses of mother's cooking: the 'dishes' were made to order for father who loved a bit of chilly and salt, but no amount of ghee could kill their pungency.

1955: We each had 'iron' plates with 'ceramic plating', with floral designs. And we were able to fend for ourselves. But, the ceramic plating would soon peel off in bits and pieces here and there. No problem: we never had 'iron deficiency' nor anemia.

Father used to eat in the 'Silver' plate (with a Gold flower at its center) that he got as part of his dowry, and mother would use the same after father's belly was full, as part of the family tradition: one valid reason why my mother revolted and turned later into the Family Feminist.

Another decade to pass till we got 'Ever-Silver' plates: a 'hyperbole' for 'stainless steel'; I am told that its inventor threw this vexed product of his innumerable experiments in the night into the gutter as not the 'Gold' he wanted, but next morning he found it as silvery as ever and took a patent on it.

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As I said, I identify myself as part and parcel of Free India. One may say that I am an observant particle of sugar on the periphery of the sugar 'ball' that is Free India.

As it rolls, so do I, along with it.

Now this image is very relevant in this sense:

Ants, a hundred of them, find the sugar ball and crowd around it with the noble intention of rolling it towards their destination, viz. their anthill. All of them surround it. They roughly know where to go and the 'least path' to it. But, by a quirk of Nature, ants can only 'push' but not 'pull'. That is how their anatomy is. So, they gather round it and each one of them pushes with all its might and determination, which are proverbial. The ball wouldn't naturally move a bit, by virtue of the 'polygon law of equal forces' or whatever. Then they would instinctively redistribute themselves by trial and error to so push that the 'Resultant' of their 'pushes' roughly does the job.

India is the sugar ball.

Politicians are the ants.

Their destination is their common good, not necessarily the good of the aam admi.


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Saturday, May 29, 2010

My India 4 - 1950-55

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Yes, we were talking about the 'Socialistic Pattern of Society (SPS)' unveiled by Nehrujee at the Avadi Congress in 1953.

This more or less remained intact for the next 40 years till it was replaced by the 'Casteist Pattern of Society (CPS)'.

Let me talk about the Principal Features of the SPS, as I have seen them first-hand:

(1) Unlike the two other contemporary contenders, viz. the 'Capitalist' and the 'Communist' Patterns of Society, SPS froze the Class Structure.

The Poor remained poor, the Rich remained rich and the Middle Class remained profoundly middle class for the next 40 years. This contributed a sort of Stability to the Society much like that of an underground gutter with no inflows or outflows.

To take an example of which I am the sole authority, I was Lower Middle Class in 1953 and remained so till 1993, when I moved from the collapsing C1-97 Qrs to the airy B-140, about the Best Apartment at IIT KGP. The ones who retired from an A type were Upper Middle Class. There was none, not even the Director, who could then claim to belong to the 'Rich and Affluent': no Govt Servant can be deemed to be so, since corruption on such a scale dawned only later on (Harshad Mehta was still Practicing and not yet Perfect).

I was reminded of this last year when my friend and contemporary, retired and settled in Hyderabad like myself, rang me up and asked for some tips on how to fill up an online Registration Form for a Matrimonial.Com for his son (I went through this futile exercise 3 years ago and so a sort of Authority on the subject). There was a drop-down Menu with clickable categories: 'Middle Class', 'Upper Middle Class', and 'Rich & Affluent' (others don't bother please!).

He said he knew he qualified for Upper Middle Class at KGP but was in doubt about the situation in Hyderabad. I listed the following demanding criteria for clicking the 'Upper Middle Class' @ Hyderabad:

You should be living in your own 2-story-ed Bungalow in either Banjara Hills or Jubilee Hills or equivalent (consult me for further clarifications). It won't do if you live even in a 1-Crore Flat. You should not be a Pensioner (or if one, you should have given away your entire Pension for Charities or the Balajee Temple at Tirumala). You should not be taking up a 'Job of Profit' (you may be an Honorary Consultant or better doing 'Social Service' or whatever). Your wife should have at least 2 Kg of gold ornaments (not bought but inherited). All your kids must be living in either NY or SF or in the worst case LA; none of your relatives, even distant, should claim to be living in Alabama. All your kith and kin must be Green-Card Holders or on their way. You and your wife should be living in your Bungalow (when not in ICCU), you in your 'Study' on the First Floor and your Mrs downstairs entertaining her 'Rich and/or Famous' Guests to which Class she wants to upgrade herself (much like the Indian Railways Passengers nowadays). You should own a Dalmatian and your Mrs a Poodle (Alsatians are for the vulgar Middle Class).

I don't know if he heeded my advice.

(2) All new Industries, heavy as well as light, will be owned by the Government and/or their Cronies like the Birlas, Tatas, Dalmiyas, Bajajs, Patnaiks, Krishnamacharies et al.

This meant that India for the next so many decades will see only Ambassador and Fiat Cars, Lambretta and Vespa/Bajaj scooters, Tata, Bedford, Leyland (pronounced Loyland charmingly) etc Trucks on her roads.

This also meant that if you book one of these vehicles, your grandkid would take possession of it unless you paid a Premium or Dollars. In any case, it is a Hobson's choice, and you wouldn't be able to afford any since the Lease-Purchase System with easy EMIs was still unknown.

I became rather uppish when my cute son was born and paid a whopping Rs 600/- for his Bajaj Chetak Scooter and lost the entire amount because the Agency which took my money vanished overnight from Gole Bazaar.

There were no new Highways or even old motorable ones, so it was better that I didn't get one, in retrospect.

(3) All new jobs would be Government Jobs. This meant that after you get your Degree, you register your name in a Local Govt Employment Exchange which, if they like you, will give you a 4-digit Serial Number. You wait and wait till you enter middle-age, and till then hang on to 'temporary' private hire-fire jobs, not necessarily 'tenure track'. You can of course join as a Teacher without assured pay and subject to ousting in Summers; they will consider it a 'service' to you, since you can claim to have 'earned' Teaching Experience. You can't expect to do 'Private Tuition', since students would prefer to go their 'Permanent School Teachers' outside their 'working hours' for obvious reasons.

You may like to go abroad if you are well-off, but your Passport would take a couple of years, give or take a year, unless you have the right 'contacts'.

Even if you pass an MBBS Exam, you can't hope to get a low-paying start-up job in a Govt Hospital, since you have to clear a Public Service Commission Exam or Interview, in which rare case, you will be posted in a Rural Health Center, where you have to hunt for home and hearth. But, you will get enormous 'experience' since you will be about the only Doctor in the Catchment Area serving an entire community. Adventurous though, and very nice experience. One famous Private Practioner advised every aspiring Doctor to join a Govt Hospital by hook or crook, serve it well, make your name, resign after 3 years, and open a 'Clinic' just by its side. You will be sure to draw every patient sick of waiting for a 'bed' in the Govt Hospital nearby.

If you happen to be a successful Engineering Graduate, you can aspire to become a Junior Engineer if you have the right contacts, and then you will be lurching about in a WW II 4-wheel-left-hand-drive JEEP, if you don't mind braking your spine at one or two places.

I recall a Group Photo of a few of my Engineering batchmates with the legend: "Fate Posted them as JEs". It had also a motto inscribed, misquoting a well-known Sanskrit aphorism: "Surveyor Janah Sukhino Bhavantu" .

Actually it wasn't all that bad: we were young and hopeful. There was HOPE in the air (that last beetle of our Pandora's Box), for sure.

Anyway, most of us are still around with good enough pensions and very 'Middle Class'.


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Friday, May 28, 2010

My India 3 - 1950-55

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Socialism was in the air. Very much.

The first time I heard this buzz-word was in my Class IX Social Studies from our Teacher: SST.

To this day I recall his face, features and rather 'lost' expression.

It is my thesis that after 5 or 6 decades, we remember our teachers by their wild expressions and one or two lessons that stuck (Aniket and Vineet just a decade or two later told me that they remember me by 'Thomas Precession' and 'Soldering' respectively).

Well, our SST was a troubled soul: he was hounded by the DEO Office at our District HQ, Nellore and the HM (my father) at our School in Muthukur where he was posted for a couple of years.

It was this way: SST had his own house and family and perhaps Missionary-School-going kids at the town Nellore. But, for some reason or the other he was 'transferred' to our village Muthukur 12 miles away.

He preferred to commute between the two. But there was a GO (Government Order) which said that teachers posted to villages should live there. He didn't bother to do that.

Those days, Bus Services were in Private hands and not 'Nationalized' as of now when every driver, conductor and cleaner is a Govt Employee who needn't bother about anything but running the buses on time, maybe.

But, the KVR Bros who monopolized the fleet had only one thing in their minds: the Bus Staff should fetch a certain minimum amount at the end of the day, period.

So they were run along the lines of the seven-seater-autos of Hyderabad; they won't start unless a minimum of seven were 'seated'.

With the result that our SST missed the Assembly on most days and Classes every other day. The HM would naturally be upset and throw the Rule Book at him. He would promise to be more punctual henceforth and that was that.

Meanwhile, there were two 'clerks' at the DEO's Office at Nellore. One would periodically ask the HM to implement the Rule (citing the violators) and the other listening to their Appeals (a neat division of labor). As the HM issues 'charge memos' and the SST visits the DEO Office periodically with 'explanations', both the clerks would be 'pleased' for a month, after which the game starts again.

Either Sherlock Holmes or Perry Mason or both sai: "Once you start yielding to blackmail, the end would be cold-blooded murder".

Anyway, before it came to that, our SST managed to get himself transferred back to Nellore, for a while at least.

But while he was at our School, all of us had a field day. To make up for the missed portions before the Exams, he would announce 'weekly extra Classes' on every coming Sunday and promise to come to School by the 12 noon Bus.

We knew the routine, so, we would gather at the sandy Bus Stand and play 'kabaid-kabadi-kabadi' till the bus leisurely arrived at 3 PM. And then he would 'shepherd' us all to our Class Room. I am exaggerating a bit; there was no room like: 'House No 54, a roof and a bamboo door'. We just had a thatched shed, with no door. And no lock or watchman. And some desks, and the rest would sit gladly on the sand floor.

But once he was in, he was a fantastic teacher and I guess our School repeatedly topped in the SS Paper in the entire District.

I remember 3 of his lessons with great joy:

(1) Multi-Purpose Projects

(2) Montague-Chelmsford Reforms

(3) Socialistic Pattern of Society

On Multi-Puopsoe Projects, he was eloquent about Nehru as the architect of Modern India and Bhakra-Nangal Dam as the Temple of Modern India.

He would dictate all the 'Multi' Purposes about it: like Power Generation, Irrigation, Fish-Mongering etc. And would insist that we mention TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) if we wished to score that extra mark, which makes or breaks the rankings.

But he would be annoyed if anyone asked what was Bhakra or Nangal about it, with the quiet remark that such meaningless questions are out of syllabus as they are not in the 'officially prescribed' text book.

Regarding reforms of all kinds he would dictate Tables, but would end up with his favorite bete noire Jinnah, who apparently said; "Laughing we got Pakistan, fighting we'll get Hindustan". Every lesson of his on India's Independence would end with this attributed quote of Jinnah, which would twist his face with impotent rage. Our SST would now be hundred or more, but I would like to assure him: "Not yet, but they DO try".

His most passionate lesson was of course the 'Socialistic Pattern of Society'. He wanted justice for the aam admi like himself who was needlessly troubled by the 'system', perhaps.

Now, this lesson was hastily pushed into our new Edition of the Approved Text Book, soon after Nehru unveiled this as an Instrument of his State Policy at the Avadi Congress, by an super-enthusiastic Babu.

With the blessed result that he didn't have time to translate it into Telugu. Small mercies descend from great ambitions.

I always abhorred the Telugu translations of our Science Books. Even at that tender age, I could see that English would soon be the Ultimate Leveler after 'Death'. But our Chemistry authors were blind in their enthusiasm for their Mother Tongue: Hydrogen would be 'Udajani'. Nitrogen would be 'Nathrajani' . Oxygen would be 'Amlajani'. They would go so far as Carbon Dioxide as the repulsive: 'Karbanadwiamlajanidamu' . But they luckily wrung their hands and gave up when it came to 'Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloro-Ethane', and just rendered it: DDT, thanks.

Now, this DDT was all over our lives. We ate it, drank it, and breathed it. For, the rice and vegetable fields were 'sprayed' with this Universal Pesticide, wells and water bodies were 'chlorinated' with this Insecticide, and the air we breathed was 'fumigated' with this 'Disinfectant'. All our lives were touched by this 'miracle' invention, that gave a Nobel for its inventor. American surpluses of WW II were dumped on our Muthukur with a vengeance.

A decade later, the first 'environmental awareness campaigns' took birth and it was claimed that DDT was the root cause of all cancers, except maybe tobacco, but not yet.....the Tobacco Companies then and now are more resistant than DDT. And it just disappeared. I miss it badly.

But it was replaced by vocal environmental 'bodies' which hound meek Narendro of our Sardar Sarovar Dam, not allowing him to raise an inch of its height for the betterment of the Gujerati aam admi of R K Laxman (who is remembered before every 'General Election' by every Party); a strong group of gray eminences, failed authors and aging film-stars.

The boot has come squarely on the other leg in 60 years; Circus Buffoons and Circular Buffaloes are not allowed to fart for fear of Global Warming to which their Green-House Methane enormously contributes, threatening drowning of coastal villages from Calcutta to Madras, via Muthukur.

I think the thin dividing line between sanity and otherwise is just a 'sense of proportion'.




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Thursday, May 27, 2010

My India 2 - 1950-55

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Today's DC has two big pictures staring at its readers:

1. Jawaharlal Nehru (it is his 46th Death Anniversary today).

2. Narayana Coaching Center, claiming that 6 of the 7 Toppers out of the first 10 (including the All India First) in IIT JEE belong to it.

Sam Weller would have cracked:

"One is a Champion of Heavy Industries and the other Light Industries".

I had a ring-side view of the First General Election of Free India (1952). Nehru was all over the place; and the IIT KGP he founded for my exclusive benefit was a nascent fledgling then. Narayana and his soft-power-sector were yet to be born.

My father, as the ponderous HM of a venerable District Board School, was posted as the Presiding Officer (PO) in one of the neighboring villages; and I tagged along as a spectator quark. I was 9 then.

The Government took care of the 'food and drink' needs of the APO and the 4 POs. But my father, being an orthodox vegetarian Brahmin, was taken care of by the Telugu Pundit there (as expected, the Polling Booths were housed in the Board School there).

I had the best of both.

The APO was a smart guy and almost took over the routine functions of my father (except in arbitrating contested voters by the Polling Agents). He was so smart that he outsourced the 'indelible inking' of the voters' finger nails to the eager son of the PO, meaning myself. (Remember Tom Sawyer?)

Everyone had a fine time because it was the first exercise of its kind in Free India. Nehru and our other founding fathers had the wisdom to grant Universal adult franchise outright to everyone, including illiterates and women (compare our Siamese-Twin Pakistan's record: she had and perhaps still has a limited suffrage when its 'guided' democracy bobs up fitfully now and then).

My father of course was hidebound and was of the private view that only male graduates should be eligible to vote. My mother was piqued at this: she was neither male nor graduate. But she insisted on voting and often to the Opposition Communist Candidate unlike my father's Congress pedigree. My mother, who is 88 today (Buddha Purnima happens to be her Birthday) has always been the Leading Feminist of My Free India Family, with her six daughters, whom she got highly-educated in co-ed schools against her father's will. Of course her views on the Right of Free Speech for her even-more-highly-educated daughter-in-law are somewhat 'odd-handed' (to coin a new phrase for my favorite English Language). But then again, you can't have it both ways, as Sam Weller would have said of cheese and fleas.

Anyway, there I was, supervising the First General Election of our District. Congressmen used to boast that any lamp-post given a Congress ticket and a photo of Nehru's in the pamphlets would be sure to win.

But it was no cake walk, not at least in Andhra. This region, which is now Capitalist to the core (even the local Maoists have migrated to Bengal and such upcountry regions), was a bedrock of the CPI (there was no CPM then). Names such as P Sundaraih, M Basavapunnaiah were household words. I recall Andhra had the First Recognized Opposition Party (minumum 50 MLAs) once. The Razakar Movement against the Nizam of my Hyderabad which was crushed by that other Patel (not the Jasu of the cracking cricket pitch against foundering Australia) was the first Armed Communist Movement in Free Inda, led by B T Ranadive, who was thereupon disgraced.

We on the streets were flung sumptuous pamphlets by the CPI with its symbol, 'Hammer and Sickle', in equal numbers with the 'Bullock Pair yoked to Plough' of the Congress.

[Aside: Just after the Prague Spring Revolt by Czechs against the Soviet Rule (which was crushed for a decade or so), a Czech Hammer Thrower was congratulated warmly by his US counterparts. He spat on his hands and growled; "Just give me the Sickle and see how far I can throw That!"]

A very another day I was running on our High Road on a hot Sunday afternoon to resume my marble-play after a short Time-Out for drinking water. We were then all clad in khaki knickers but no upper garment to speak of...the hot and humid weather made any banian a crazy 'fashion statement'. Indeed in Kerala, men never wore any upper garment and women had just an excuse to cover their needless shames.

My wild run was halted by a couple of tribal Belles (all of them were extremely well-endowed), waiting for just such a tiny but smart tot under the Neem Tree.

I was somewhat sweetly but abruptly cajoled aside, and an open Inland Letter was pushed into my hands. They bade me read it out to them aloud with the bribe of a whopping Anna Coin.

As I read it out in its unbridled Telugu, I was blushing even at that tender age, while the girls were just giggling their heads off. They had the right attitude to a Hot Love Letter. For them the four-letter word, 'Love', was condensed to the three-letter word 'fun', whereas to folks such as us brought up on genteel poetry by Tennyson (of all poets) Love meant Tenderness, Romance, Valor and Sacrifice all rolled into one confusing Mess.

I could see from the writing that it was ghost-written at the other end by a kid like mine for a tribal 'Bull', perhaps with a fees of 2 Annas (writing always commands more respect and money than mere reading. One is an art while the other just a craft).

Anyway, I did hope that the girls could make their 'tryst', which Nehru failed to do with his Free India and perhaps other Freedoms he craved.

I pocketed my Anna, because, it meant 8 glass golies or 40 chalk ones (which were not played with but mere countable 'tokens' of victory or defeat).

I guess that was the first and last time my literacy won me 'hard' cash. Rest was currency, checks and now plastic cash.

60 years down our Freedom, illiteracy is no longer a handicap in our 'Affairs' of the Heart. Every belle, tribal or global, in Hyderabad has a smart cell phone down her bosom and can chat for hours together and make appointments in a jiffy without waiting for the Postman (Dakia Dak laya) and the 'literate' whizkid.

Indeed, 'unbridled' literacy is itself a handicap now, especially when you are 'full' and unable to talk coherently, and tend to 'text' messages thereby leave a bitter trail in some Server or the other to bring you shaming down like a sack of coal somewhat inconveniently.

We, literate Tigers, that get trapped in our own e-Woods!


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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

My India 1 - 1950-55

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It just happens that Free India and I grew up together, more or less, and are now in our sweet Sixties.

We both have been through much; both ways....agony and ecstasy.

But tragedy is in the realm of the 'personal'; at the 'Universal' level, the whole scheme, if any, is but a farce. The latest joke I read about the Universe was in DC where its Science Reporter seriously commented that CERN is about to 'trap' the 'God Particle'. Maybe God Himself!

As I was saying, we both had been through much. If we leave aside bitterness as non-productive, our story is on the verge of the ludicrous.

That is how I want this series to be; let us see.

One of the most diverting and unseemly sights I saw during my Schooling (1950-55) was that of a cock-fight. The thing was illegal even then; so we had to go to a remote corner to witness this event amidst adults who I could see were going stark mad for no apparent reason. I didn't then know that 'money' was to change hands.

In retrospect, whenever I now think of Indo-Pak Events, (cricket or war), I recall that one and only cock-fight I ever saw.

The two most important things in this early part of my life were: 'school and play'. Nothing else much happened in our seaside village. Since there was no 'current', all activities were confined to the daytime. Kerosene was costly and rationed, so the village shut shop by 7.30 P M; except during exams season, when we were woken up at 5 A M and asked to 'study' by the lone 'hurricane' lantern ringed by 4 of us, fighting for light, turning it this way that way to avoid the shadow of the 'vertical columns'.

India became a Republic just then. All this meant for us was an additional holiday for School apart from Gandhi Jayanthi and Independence Day. But the flip-side of this was that we still had to go to School, where my father, the HM, tried hard to hoist the flag, supposed to rain down rose petals; but somehow or other it never worked smoothly, and the SPL (School Pupil Leader) had to sort of climb up and untie the tricky knot physically, much to the embarrassment of the Drill Teacher and amusement for us kids, watched by the HM with a scowl appropriate for the dignity of the occasion.

My father took up the 'reigns' of this School with the mandate to upgrade it from a Middle School to a High School and make it the Best in the District, as a model for others.

But we were shifted from the other school just when the Quarterly Exams were starting. With the result that the 'portions' covered by the two didn't match. The day I was admitted to this new school happened to be the day of our math exam. The Teacher, I remember only had one feature on his face, viz. a Soda-Water-Bottle-thick lenses set in a hard plastic frame. Clearly a short-sighted old man.

The next day, he announced the marks, in descending order. And came to my script the last: a Perfect Zero. He glared through his glasses, looked at my unfamiliar face, thought it was a new wayside bumpkin and started teasing me and showing me up to the others in a most diverting way, reading answer after blessed answer aloud. All the jokes were on me. This was most embarrassing even for an otherwise sportive kid. Then he came to the name on the script and tarried: the surname is unique and matched with the HM's: 'Gurram' (meaning 'Horse'). If it were not the HM's surname, he would have had a 'go' at it too (much horseplay was in his mind). But, he suddenly fell silent and 'dismissed' the Class: 'Gave them Games'.

He then walked me silently to the Assistant HM and pleaded with him to arrange a 'supple' for me in view of my extenuating cicrs. I remember the supple was mush easier, but I don't think I did much better, math being a bugbear for me from then till now.

Talking of math, for the first 3 years of my schooling, every night after the math exam, I was beaten black and blue by my father for getting most of the answers wrong. He seemed a wizard to me because, he could do all the problems in my Question Paper 'mentally' without pencil and paper. And declared that all my answers were wrong, and only 'part-marking' could make me pass. All the questions in those three years were about what RKN called the 'interminable transactions' of 'Profit and Loss', and 'work and men', 'work and time', 'time and speed', and such goofy things which required the ill-fated Rule of Three which sometimes went awry and upside down, very like the nasty 'Markownikoffs Rule' I had to mug up in Organic Chemistry much later, which had to all purposes, more exceptions than the Rule, so what is that Rule for? They would then say it is only a 'Rule' (of thumb) and not a Law, unlike Newton's Law (which they didn't know goes phut under our very noses on our very Earth because it 'spins' awfully and calls for vexed pseudo-forces, with Newton's own Ice-Pail thing which to this day no one ever could resolve in toto).

Any way, in my fourth year, I was expecting the usual 'stick' on the night of my math exam. But when my father had a peek at it, he took a deep breath and let it go, posing as if he was in a hurry to get on with his own 'paper-correction'. I learned by and by that from that year onwards I had only 'algebra' and no more 'arithmetic'. And it turned out that my father had only 'General' math in HIS school days instead of 'Composite Math' and things like Quadratic Equation and much lesser evils were 'devils' for him.

For the next 3 years I breathed free...it turned out that I was a wizard in Algebra. And, later on I taught my father how the vexed 'arithmetic' problems could easily be solved by algebra without recourse to all sorts of 'imagination' which my father claimed I lacked but he had.

But he took one and only one 'Private Class' for me at home in English; and I never looked back.

On fine Sunday morning when he was sipping his coffee and I was about to 'scamp' he ordered me to fetch my pencil and note book, and bade me sit down by his side on the floor. And then he drew some sort of a heavy Table with columns and rows, much like what we would now call a Matrix. And took as simple a word as 'eat' and 'conjugated' it. There were 3 broad Tenses (present, past and future, with two sub-divisions in future for 'shall' and 'will'). And four categories in each; 'Indefinite, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect-Continuous'. And for every entry, there were two 'Voices' (Active and Passive). I don't know... you reckon, it should be about 30 odd inflections in all for the simple 'eat'.

I was just fascinated. Then on, I didn't have to learn any grammar in my school, at least.

When in my second year, our beautiful but not so bright Mam was teaching a lesson, an upstart student pointed out a 'printing mistake' in the text book, where it had an unnecessary extra: 'had' as in 'had had'. Mam duly ordered everyone to scratch out the extra 'had'. I softly objected and gave her my gyan about Perfect Tense of 'have'; and our Mam instantly ordered all students to 'de-scatch' it.

First victory in the English Class Room.

Six years later, an even more beautiful Mam at our University, holding a Class of 120 ogling students lifted her hands poetically Heavenwards dwelling on the Bard, saying "Books in running brooks, Tongues in tress, ahem, Tongues in trees , ahem....". And from the front bench I softly prompted, 'Sermons in stones'. She looked at me thankfully and completed the Bard's lines with a flourish.

But then on, I had her smiling but tough passages for 'Annotation' in public when MY turn came.

Thank you HM for teaching me English, and Algebra that you left scrupulously alone!


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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Points of Inflection

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I wholeheartedly agree with two statements made by RKN:

(1) Everyone should be free to study whatever they want; and should also be free not to be examined at all.

(2) There is nothing like Higher Mathematics...all mathematics is Higher Mathematics.

Long back in my youth I read Karl Marx predicting that after the Proletarian Revolution takes over, the Communist State would eventually 'wither away'.

I see no signs of the Communist States in India, at least, withering away during my lifetime. Not even W B: it is going strong after 40 years, and even 'producing' Maoist 'children'.

They may 'disintegrate' like the Capitalist State of A P; but no, not 'withering away'.

But RKN's wish about Exams withering away has more or less come true. I am told that students of CBSE may not appear for their Class X Public Exam if they wish not to.....a heresy even a couple of years back; moreover, if they do dare appear, they have no right to continue in the same School! Well, small mercies! During my time, every Class, from I to XII had 'public' exams and every student has to pass every Class to be promoted to the next. I have known a reluctant cousin of mine to fail his SSLC Exam a total of 7 times before he gave it up. And another cousin of mine who 'cleared' her Class X at 45. She was already working in that School as a 'Sewing Teacher' and got a 'special consideration'.

Regarding all math being higher math, I am a living and kicking Example. I knew a Classmate of mine who first looked at the series expansion for 'e' and at once fell in love with 'infinite series'.

I, on the other hand, couldn't make out why people should go to the trouble of 'differentiation' several times, till I chanced upon Maxima and Minima of curves; and since then fell in love with Points of Inflection.

People wondered how a non-math chap like me could pull on with the Math Wizard SDM for five long years and survived unscathed.

The reaosn is simple. The PRS Reprint that he gave me to read was titled: 'Cherenkov Radiation in Anisotropic Media'. Now EM Radiation is PHYSICS! Moreover, he straightaway told me that he was jumping frames from the Lab to the Particle and applying Special Relativity. Jumping frames is always 'fun'; and SR was my strong suit; at best it had 'Cartesian Tensors' which any non-math child could handle.

There was a brilliant student in our B Sc at KGP in the late 70s by name SS. He went to Stony Brook right after B Sc and did his Ph D in Particle Physics. He returned to KGP soon after his 'Qualifiers' and met me in our Central Library, and pleaded with me not to recommend anyone to Stony Brook just after B Sc because it was too too tough to cope; which of course he did, and got a wonderful Degree.

Fast forward 25 years: he visited his alma mater for Recruiting IITians for Motorola, Bangalore, where he was VP; and his wife still in Particle Physics (these choices are forced on you if you marry the same 'Physics Gotra' against all Khap!). He offered to take my son in his Firm anytime he chooses (I hope the offer is still on).

Anyway, when he was in his Third Year, he led a delegation of his classmates to me in the Lab, challenging me to 'explain' why a point charge moving uniformly in vacuum does not radiate, 'without math'. I asked him to jump to the Point Charge Frame where it would be at rest, and vacuum still remains the same vacuum (vacuum doesn't MOVE). And, you will agree that a point charge at rest will not radiate, because there is no H field to give the Poynting Vector. And if 10 photons are emitted in one Frame then 10 photons should be emitted in any other Frame, they being particles countable by 'counters'.

The delegation dispersed without mutiny.

SDM was doing the same trick with the Chrenkov Radiation. But now there is a medium and the uniformly moving charge in the medium could radiate. But jumping to the Rest Frame of the point charge, its fields should be static; but the Radiation MUST be going on. Which means that it is the medium that radiates and not the point charge. And it should be so in any Frame including the Lab Frame.

Same with the Smith-Purcell Radiation: it is the grating that radiates and not the charge, because it would come to rest if you jump to its own Frame.

All in all, Relativity and Electrodynamics won me over and I carried on with SDM despite his formidable reputation as a math wizard.

And did get to predict results that could be verified in High Energy Labs.

Coming back to Points of Inflection, I was first charmed by the Magnetic Field produced by the Tangent Galvanometer (now you see the 'connection') Coil carrying steady current. Our hopeless book by Starling asked us to differentiate it twice and set it equal to zero. And, lo and behold, I did that with lots of enthu and did find that it happens at x = r/2. And, my joy knew no bounds, because that was the first time I found an example in my Student Physics Life where the trouble of differentiating TWICE led to a physical result that could be verified in the Lab. This graph used to be drawn and the Point of Inflection determined. and I could get some confidence that Math could be at times useful in Physics.

And, I went on to use this result later at KGP by designing an Experiment in the Second Year Lab with TWO coils in series (Helmholtz Coils) to get a very nice 'uniform' field that could be plotted over a range. Indeed this is the best way of generating uniform weak magnetic fields useful in NQR etc.

Then again in 1980 or so there was an unusually brilliant student by name Tanmoy Bhattachraya (last seen at Los Alomos) in my First Year Optics Course (Later I had him in his 4th year; and he did his Project with DB, if I remember right).

For the first time I decided to teach Fermat's Principle to his batch in my very first Lecture. I wasn't too happy with the treatment in Jenkins & White where they do say that the Optical Path (Time Traveled) could be a minimum, maximum or stationary. But the example given of 'bending' a mirror continuously didn't satisfy me.

Rest assured that if the teacher is not satisfied with a topic he has to teach, there would at least be one student in his Class (at IIT) who is even more dissatisfied.

And after the first Lecture, Tanmoy met me and asked me to find a better example.

That was a challenge, which took me 6 hours to invent. And in the Next Class both me and Tanmoy had a great time.

I never liked to teach Fermat's Principle the way Feynman did it: the 'life-guard' and the 'drowning beauty'. Because I knew that 'least time' is not always followed by the actual ray. And in any case, it would be giving too much of a 'physical' beauty to an essentially 'formal' beauty.

And Jenkins & White's example is misleading as if the shift from minimum to maximum via the Point of Inflection is a feature of the shape of the 'mirror', which was suspect.

The example I cooked up is s 'beauty'; because I still remember it fondly after 30 years. And is not found in any ext book:

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"Take a hemispherical concave mirror with its pole at P. Take an actual ray incident along the axis of the mirror and getting reflected back on itself. Fix the end point of the path at the center C of the mirror. Take any other point A along the axis of the mirror. Take a 'possible' ray ABC where B is the point of incidence of the light on the mirror. You will find that the actual path APC is the minimum, or stationary, or maximum compared to the alternate paths ABC depending on whether A is towards the mirror, at its center C or away from the mirror".

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All it takes is to differentiate twice the 'possible' Optical Path.

Here you have a clear example of the SAME mirror, SAME ray and the SAME final point giving all possible varieties depending on just your CHOICE of the other point!

So much for any silly 'philosophical' implications of Fermat's Principle of LEAST time!

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Monday, May 24, 2010

NLR-KVR Marathon

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As I was saying yesterday, my father was enrolling for B A in the Christian College at Madras around 1930.

Those days, B A commanded the greatest respect as an entry point to the Job Market and therefore the Marriage Market. Get a B A after Inter, and gates are 'open sesame' to the Civil Services, Law, and Teaching (if everything else fails). Most village hospitals were managed by LMPs and GCIMs which were similar to LCEs, LEEs and LMEs in the field of Engineering. They are diplomas after Inter. Few were MBBSs and BEs.

B Sc ranked a poor third. Sciences didn't command anything but a lowly Demonstrator's posts eventually maybe a Lecturer in a backwaters college. They were the last resort of folks who couldn't master English. B A on the other hand could be in Eng Lit, Economics, Politics, Arts (which included Math!). Both the years in B A had lots of English, other than the Main Subject. In Eng Lit it was English through and through. They took the cake. For those who couldn't gatecrash the higher courses, there was a weak B A with a choice of a Science subject as a subsidiary.

My father preferred to do a B A with Physics as a sidekick.

All he had to show for his Christian College pedigree by my time was a huge Group Photo (pass-out parade), an individual Studio Photo with the default gown and hood and a fake rolled Degree Certificate in hand; and a fantastic gilt-edged Bible, Courtesy Missionaries.

I took no interest as a child in the photos but fondled the Holy Bible just for the wonderful feel of its butter-paper pages and the aroma of leather-binding of 3 decades vintage.

By the time I graduated from AU 30 years later, the Bible shrank to pocket-size and was in competition with a Gita doled out by the Gorakhpur Press. The Bible still was better-printed, but I read the Gita, because it was new and the Mini-Bible was a sorry brat to my father's gorgeous bride.

Anyway, my father had to do a B Ed in order to enter the hallowed portals of 'Qualified Teachers' not subject to 'ousting' during the Summer Vacations. He had a choice: English or Physics as his main B Ed subject.

He told me that Physics was his first love, but he was ditched by the Lab Technicians during his B A Final Practical Exams in the Christian College and flunked and had to repeat it.

It was this way: Apparently, he got an easy 'practical', the Tangent Galvanometer, which was his favorite. But, as he quickly settled down to take the 'readings', the Principal's Candidate wanted to 'change' his allotted experiment (foregoing a lousy 5 marks) and he was awarded the Tangent Galvanometer on my father's desk. My father was shooed and asked to shift to a new bench and start the experiment anew. The Principal's candidate had it 'served on a platter' and had to just take the 'readings' on the set-up thing.

And, in his confusion and bitterness, my father forgot to place the Coil in the wretched Magnetic Meridian and every reading went haywire and he had to take a 'Supple'.

This was His Version of the thing and I am only a Reporter.

[Aside: I had the 'Reverse Osmosis Misfortune' in my M Sc Final Year Lab Exam. As I was saying, I got the easiest of experiments: Measurement of the L, C, and R of a Coil by Q-Meter. I was an expert at it and finished the thing in half an hour against the allotted 3 hours (taking a hundred meaningless repetitions). I did tarry for another half an hour but lost patience and wanted to submit and go away. The External Examiner (from Cal) and our own HoD were enraged and felt insulted that it was an affront to the dignity of the Physics Labs in the whole of Eastern India; and took my Viva for ONE HOUR before proceeding to the next laggard but clever chap. I got 100% in the Expt but 30% in the Viva and lost my Rank, Prizes and the lucrative Demonstrator Post; and had to escape to IIT KGP instead of sticking with the Sea-Side Tourist Resort Vizagh for the next half century.]

Loss on both sides.

Coming back to my father's travails, he had to take English in his B Ed which had of course no hazardous Labs. And over the decades he became the Best English Teacher in the District (unofficially). There were never any Best-Teacher awards then or even in my time at IIT Everyone is supposed to be the Best Teacher, since no 'Teaching-Meter' was there to measure Teaching Ability other than Voting by Students; and this was never liked by Senior Teachers (who knows!). IIT KGP tried to institute a Best-Teacher Award several times but had to face a Concrete Wall from the Senators who are the Senior-most Teachers but were 'forced' to do Administration like Wardenships, Committee Chairmen , Profs-In-Charge of B C Roy Hospital etc; and had little time for competing with Ass-Lecturers who didn't have to 'administer'.

Things went on swell for my father and he became duly one of the youngest Head Masters (this was decided by the Confidential Reports (CRs)' of Senior Teachers (the British perfected their 'System' down the line).

One fine morning in 1960 when my father had just about a decade left as HM before retirement the New Minister wanted to 'overhaul' the cobweb-ridden School Education and 'improve' the standards by leaps and bounds to compete with the Best in the World. The Minister might have lost his post the next month (in a 'lively' Democracy these things happen all too often), but not so the 'permanent' IAS Babu who got the file and took up His Master's Voice too seriously.

Now, the IAS chap takes only ONE Exam in their life to join the Steel Framework of the Empire. Then on everything with them goes by THEIR CRs. All they have to do to go up and up and up is to just see that their CRS are in proper order. But when they spit on their palms and try to 'improve' the School Education System, they do a THOROUGH Job.

First, they decide that the existing HMs are a rotten lot because they were recruited under the British Regime and so are suspect under Independent India. And so they administer additional Tests and and Exams to 50-year-old HMs to see if they still are eligible to teach under the new dispensation. And, those whom they deem are not below par, will be asked to undergo 'Short-Term Refresher Courses' of 3-months duration in Summer at various Universities and such Centers of Advanced Learning.

But first they have to 'pass' a Written Test at that age. Those who FAIL the written test will have to forgo all future increments and retire at Rs. 300 pm. But those who 'clear' the Test, undergo the Training, and also 'clear' the Exam at the end of 3 months will go ahead and retire at Rs 500 pm. A frightening margin for HMs like my father who had half a dozen daughters to feed, dress, educate and also provide for their dowry.

My father gave his Eligibility Test for Training in English in 1960.

I was then already in my Second Year at that Blessed University and was keenly watching my father's progress on his Education Front.

After the Prelim-Test I asked him how it went (I had half a mind to take his Viva after his Exam as he used do to me and wield the stick; but let it go...one can't take a vengeful attitude to one's father...after all he did teach you Good English).

My father was always a half-empty chap (with six daughters he ought to be). He said so-so, and expected that he would surely fail, because it was a 'Competitive' Exam since there were only 30 'seats' (chairs) in the AU 'English' Class Room. And he was sure that his sub-sub-juniors would have done better by virtue of their youth, enthu, and 'modern' training.

I was at Kovur that summer with my father enjoying the summer vacation and daily scanning for my father's Results, which were expected to be 'published' in the English Dailies any day.

We used to take the Indian Express but not the Hindu which was 10 paise costlier and so we couldn't afford. My father's Overall Roll Number was 62.

And the dreary morning the Results came in print in the Indian Express, there was 60 followed by 65.

62 was just missing!

I was shocked and just about started crying. Becuase I had to break the awful news to my father.

However, he took it sportingly and crowed; "Didn't I tell you!"

But I was just not convinced since I felt in my bones that my father was the best English HM still.

Yet it was not like a phone call or SMS but HARD Copy!

Anyway, after a couple of hours, my father sent me to the District HQ, Nellore, which was 5 miles away on a Bank Job of the High School, since he didn't trust his AHM (he never trusted anyone with money).

I rented a push-bike from the Corenr Shop at the rate 0f 25 paise an hour and set out on the 5-mile run over the new Road Bridge on the River Pennar on a hot summer day.

After finishing my errand, I thought I would peep in my auntie's place (the Post Master's wife who always fed me vadas).

Parking my bike and rim-locking it in front of their house I entered their Hall to the warmest possible welcome ever. Auntie told me that she was just about asking me to go to the Post Office and ask Uncle to make a 'free 3-minute call' to my father congratulating him on his success in the Test.

I was offended by her jeers and kept mum. She then guessed something was wrong and asked me what was the matter with me. I said my father flunked.

She was aghast and asked father's number. I said 62. She said it was very much there in her newspaper which happened to be the Hindu.

I jumped and scanned it twenty times and lo and behold 62 WAS there sandwiched between 60 and 65.

I grabbed her Hindu and saying nothing, went out, unlocked my push-bike and pedaled furiously.

I would have just about bagged the Olypmic Gold Medal if there was one then.

And fell flat at my father's desk in his HMs's Office.

He was curious and when I broke the news with the evidence of the hard copy of the Hindu, he looked at it unconvinced and argued quite a while that Hindu must be wrong since it was published by the wily Tamilians bent on misleading the Telugus.

And I had to argue that it is possible for the printer to omit a number rather than to insert an extra one (however devilish he is).

He was just not convinced.

I had to then spend Rs 3 of my precious pocket money and give a RPPD (Reply Paid) Telegram to the OE (Officer-in-Charge of Exams) at Hyderabad.

The reply came confirming Hindu and adding that an 'errata' will be released in the Indian Express and thanking me (since I paid for the Reply Telegram charges).

By and by, my father joined me for 3 months at our University for his Refresher Course, came First in that Exam and retired with a Grand Rs 500 Pay and Benefits.

All Printers are Devilish (including my HP).


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Sunday, May 23, 2010

Ulat Puran

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During my Donkey's Years at KGP, I must have toured Victoria Memorial a dozen times; surely more than any Calcutta student of mine did.

July 1, B C Roy's Birthday is the best time to visit V M. Monsoon has just set in, it is drizzling fitfully, but not yet dark and damp, Sun and Cloud playing hide and seek, Greens are as green as they come, the Fat Girl in Stone drenched and dripping deliciously, winding water bodies full to the brim, Bakul trees lining them shedding silver drops on couples huddled beneath; Oh, well, When all the World is not yet too Old, it is the one place as none else.

I am as fascinated as any Saratchandra girl when I happen to pass by a Bakul Tree. There are half a dozen of them lined up in a row across the Director's Bungalow at IIT KGP. The tree's canopy is a perfect hemisphere. It is like a Nature-Made Umbrella, better than any of Pal Brothers. The leaves are just the right size and shape; let's not talk about the tiny tot flowers drenching the road. Their cute shape, color, scent; everything is perfect. Hundreds of poems and songs must have been written and sung in Bengali romancing these trees and flowers

But, as they say, I must not tarry, for, I have promises to keep. It has long ben a passion with me to straight go the interior section of the dark and deep cells of V M to peek at the facsimiles of the letters written by the Bengali Renaissance Greats to the Governors-General and Viceroys of the Empire urging them to let Indian students learn Western Science rather than just preparing them to be their perfect Writers, fed to their teeth in English language and Literature, great though it is.

The White Man discovered his best Place under the Sun in India to root his Empire in.

While he had to 'Kill and Till' to make his Home in the New World, and Pray and Feast on Thanksgiving; in India he had the Granaries all ready for him to 'Loot and Scoot'. A fertile land under cultivation and a civilization a few thousand years older than his.

Just bump off and steal and ship it Home.

Make no mistake, there maybe individual exceptions, but as a policy matter, the Brits had no other business in India than to enrich themselves come what may, by plain and simple looting. Telegraph, Telephone, Railways, Colleges, Universities, Hospitals, Cities, Ports, Mines and Industries were all started to get a permanent grip on the Empire and get it going with as little British Manpower as they could afford.

Unlike the other looters who looted and fled, or looted but settled here, the Brits just looted, shipped, looted, shipped and intended to loot and ship ad infinitum till the land bled as white as their freckled skins.

The Great Men of the Bengali Renaissance realized this. And tried by sweet or sour methods to beat the 'System' the White Man built like a Fortress.

Well, rampant looting goes well only till other thieves get jealous and enter the arena. Then we have Gang Warfare and World Wars till each one emaciates the others till they all fall down like Alice's Pack of Cards.

We then celebrate that we fought for and achieved Independence.

Around the time my father was enrolling himself for B A in the Christian College at Madras (1929) so that he can help run the Wheels of the Empire smoothly, Parashuram wrote one of the Greatest Political Satires ever written.

I didn't know of it till Shyamal gifted me the book of that title translated by Sukanta Choudhuri and Palash Pal, a couple of years ago. I read the other stories once, but 'Ulat Puran' (The Scripture Read Backwards) many many times.

It is a Wonder! In 1929, there was no hint of the mighty British Empire collapsing like dominoes 20 years hence.

And the Empire Striking back a century later.

He satirized the Birth of the European Union half a Century before any Europeans could have dreamed it up. Europe was then disintegrating and getting Balkanized. Everyone fighting everyone else to their heart's content.

As Parashuram predicted, it is the fear of subjugation, economical and political by the Rest of the World that led and is leading to the Loveless Euro Union.

And, as Parashu whimsically wrote, my nephew working for the National Health Service in a modest town in Northern England says that all the Doctors there are expected to follow and speak Gujerati and Punjabi. Not out of Love for the 'East India Company Running Backwards'...but just so they can get their next meal after their Glorious Empire with India as Her Crown Jewel vanished into thin air as their Bard 'predicted' long back:

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Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

*********************************************

And how poignant that this Indian-born Doctor who studied in the Medical College and Hospital set up by the Brits so their Army Personnel can be in fighting shape, should get the 'Officer of the [Defunct] British Empire' from Her Majesty the Queen of Hearts a hundred years later!

How prescient that just as the First British Traders were pleading for trading rights with the Mughal Emperor, Britain's Greatest Poet and Dramatist should foresee the End of their Empire two or three centuries later!

And the way Parashuram ridiculed the tin-pot Indian Slave Kings paying obeisance to the Emperor in His Durbar with strictly limited competing gun-salutes; and Her own shameless mouth-piece The Statesman descended from her so-called Friend of India are just MARVELOUS!

I am sure I will read this Parashuram Piece as and when I get a chance.

The Man is truly 'divine' in the word's verbal meaning: "to discover by intuition or insight"!

Thank you Shyamal!


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Saturday, May 22, 2010

Random Talk Phenomenon (RTP-1)

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With Best Compliments:

A week before I quit KGP, many came to know of the event (GRBR: 'Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish') and were particularly nice to me.

HoD Professor Ghatak did me the rare honor of inviting my wife also to the Official Farewell Party in the HNB (May His Soul Rest in Peace!) Seminar Room. Limericks were composed, laurels handed over, figurines awarded, speeches made, photos and videos taken etc etc.

On top of that, a dozen or so of my younger friends in the Phy Faculty conspired and planned a surprise attack on my Qrs B-140 one evening with a beautiful memento. It is another matter that I had my spies and KK leaked out the date and time to me. So, I bought a dozen 'Thums Up' Bottles and put them in the fridge. And a 1 Kg packet of Pillsbury's Variety Mix bought from Saha Dukan, which my wife turned into about 100 Pakoras hot and ready. It went like a song for 3 full hours. Pratik reminds me when he was here last June that I had also bought 500 gms of Salted Cashew from Harry's, which I forgot. All the snacks and bottles were empty by the time the Party dispersed.

But the Best Compliment I got was from a totally unexpected kid. He was a 'semi' like me and was a Senior Faculty in ME. Let us call him 'R'. He was in his First Year B Tech in 1974 when I was taking one of the Tutorial Groups of his Section. The topper Sidharth Chatterjee (74 EC 001, and the eventual winner of PGM + BCRGM) happened to be in my group. This guy who was a friend of SC started sneaking into my Class although he was in another group. I promptly expelled him.

Fast forward a decade; He joined as a junior Faculty in ME. The first day our paths crossed, he wished me and asked me if I remembered him. Of course I did: as a 'deserter'. Both of us laughed. And then we met occasionally while in and out of the Co-Op Canteen, smiled and split.

The morning of my retirement, I was sitting alone under the famous Mango Tree (equivalent of Maha Bodhi tree in Gaya) on the cement bench and sipping Tea. He happened to be going in with a crowd. He separated from them, came and sat beside me, and after a few words of by-bye, he said: "Professor Sastry, you have kept your dignity for 40 years here".

I smiled a wan ThankQ smile and we split.

Both of us being 'semis', I knew what he meant and cherished his One-Line Farewell Speech. To this day.

***************************************

Physics & Engineering:

Myself (Ph), NPR and JSR (both ME) were more or less batch-mates at our University. NPR was my close friend and we were neighbors in the Faculty Hostel. All three of us belong to the Brahmin community of the caste-ridden AP.

Early 1970: One day, NPR relayed to me a question put to him by JSR: "I am the youngest Ph D in the Institute and the First in ME. I am already on the verge of promotion to the highest Professor Post. I will surely be HoD and Dean in the next few years. I am married and well-to-do. I teach Final Years and I am the Best Teacher at that level.

Your friend gps is still an Associate Lecturer 5 years after joining here. He has not even registered for his Ph D. He has lots of family and financial responsibilities. He only teaches First Years. He smokes all the time.

Yet, why does he look so HAPPY all the time?"

I smiled and declined to reply to such a loaded question.

I can reply now:

JSR spent his 7 years at IIT by then learning only one thing, viz. the newfangled 'Finite Element Method' and applying it to Mechanical Vibrations of all silly kinds of which he became an expert.

I spent all those years reading all books on Physics and learning it my own way from A to Z. And I was teaching virgin minds in the First Year, like Arjun Malhotra who was in my very first Tutorial Group. Rest of the time I was reading my entire collection of P G Wodehouse.

Physics and Wodehouse make an unbeatable combo as far as HAPPINESS goes!.

*****************************************

Buffaloes & Bicycles:

Students of Patel Hall in a body were teasing their go-wala in front of their cycle-shed: "We see 50 buffaloes crossing the road in a herd near your khatal blocking the road at Puri Gate. All of them are dark, fat and have the same bass voice. How do you recognize which one is yours?"

"Saab, I see 350 cycles in your shed, all have two wheels with worn tires, one rusty chain and the same broken seat. How do you recognize which one is yours?"

Don't mind the comparison, but umpteen times, an ex-student of a few decades stops me or mails me with the words: "Sir, I hope you recognize me...I was in the 1983 batch...etc."

Then I assure him or her; and to satisfy them I give their names or at least their fixed position in my Class Room (front or last row) or their batchmates or their quirky habits till they are satisfied. Nowadays, it goes as: "In a random search over the Net I came across your blogspot and got your mail id from there..."

Of course I remember my buffaloes. They belong to ME. I milked them and became rich.

Actually, the thing is simple: It is not that I remember the 1000 odd students I taught. But, the guys or girls who ask me this question do it because they are more or less sure I remember them for one reason or the other.

It is as simple as that.

Only once I failed completely, because I was surprised and taken aback.

While I was taking a blind turn cautiously on my TVS Moped coming out of the Rear Gate of the Main Building one noon around 2000 AD, a fat and bald guy held the handle of my moped firmly, brought me to a halt, and commanded gruffly: "Naamoon, Naamoon!". I was wondering what traffic rule I broke or what offense I gave to this pedestrian. And, as he brought me down, he bent and touched my feet and rebuked me: "How could you forget me sir!". And then I recalled: "Hey, what happened to you? You got so fat and so bald at such a young age". "But, you still remain the same sir, but for a few strands of grey hair and broken teeth".

And we exchanged banter after I told him his co-ordinates as a student of Belur College Lateral Entry Batch 1990, classmates Ms So & So (always remember the batch by its minority community!).

None who wasn't so sure that I would remember them would do that kind of an Assault Pronam to me!

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Thursday, May 20, 2010

Elephant & the Monkey

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JKMSMKJ said...on 'Reverse Osmosis':
-------------------------------------------
The 'crazy' and 'semi-' joke reminds me of this article (blogpost) which argues 'Most Crackpots are Engineers!'! And also a remark by Prof. Likharev in one of our Stat Mech course: "When Engineers try to do Fundamental Physics, the Results are usually Pathetic."

I wonder if you have also come across such people, quacks I mean... :) ;May 20, 2010 6:44 AM
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++======

Frankly, no!

My interactions with Engineers at IIT KGP were minimal.

The fault was entirely mine. Shy and unsocial, all the time sitting alone under the Mango tree at the Co-Op Canteen or under the Neem tree at Harry's, with a cup of tea, woolgathering.

But, Prof. Amalendu Mukherjee (ME) tunneled through my repulsive barrier early on and we had nice discussions whenever we met. He was too good at Physics to dabble in it frivolously. And he was too busy developing 'Bond Graphs' for which he won international fame. He knows Physics like the back of his hand. But that's about it. Somehow he found in me a patient listener (as long as I am not asked to talk!). At Harry's I introduced him to our new recruit, I think, AT: "Meet Amalendu; 'a lion in sheep's clothing'. He can rip anyone apart if they talk wrong Physics fundamentals".

A very learned Professor, interested in the best things of life, like music, arts, philosophy etc. We met briefly this January at KGP and he recalled how I published a Paper with his son, Abhro, when he was in Class XII, a different story!

Professor Swapan Mazumdar of CE was also very knowledgeable of Physics but our interactions were brief but enjoyable.

Professor R. N. Banerjee of IEM was a student of B. Sc (Hons) Physics at IIT KGP, but shifted to ME and then IEM. But he is a turn-coat Engineer, always a Physicist at heart; so he doesn't count!

I had a fruitful interaction with Professors of IEM that led somewhat undeservedly to a paper for me in IJPR, with the present Director, Professor D. Acharya, 20 years ago, when we were all relatively KIDS! Talk of Inter-Disciplinary Research!

************************************************
Composite stage effects in unbalancing of series production systems
Authors: A. Mishra a; D. Acharya a; N. P. Rao a;G. P. Sastry ab
a Department of Industrial Engineering and Management,, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India,
b Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India
International Journal of Production Research, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 1985 , pages 1 - 20
*************************************************

But my problems were with Chemistry.

Now, I respect Chemistry wholeheartedly. Everything started with atoms and molecules. Chemists are down-to-earth. They HAVE to dabble in things that matter. They are practical. They can't take recourse to idealizations like we Physics chaps do. We are happy to get the unphysical 13.6 eV for the ideal Hydrogen atom. They have to get the energy levels of the real Hydrogen Molecule. We give up! No exact solution. They have to take recourse to all sorts of approximations and GET it close to the experimental value. Not easy!

My troubles with Chemistry started with my foray into my son's Class XI Chemistry Book. As expected,they start with the Periodic Table. And at once QM starts in its most difficult form. s,p,d,f, etc and Molecular Orbitals and the like.

But the Indian text books are sloppy.

They get the energy E of the photon emitted by the electron jumping from the first excited state to the ground state of the H atom ok. Then they equate E = mc*2, and get the mass of that photon! When I say photon is massless, they are offended.

I gave up.

But B Tech First Year students read Chemistry before they read Physics. And ask their Chemistry teachers all sorts of funny questions.

Only Prof SR of Chemistry penetrated my Repulsive Barrier and asked two such 'weird QM questions' and I am happy that I could satisfy him at the Harry's.

Q1: "When an electron jumps from a higher Bohr orbit to a lower one, what distance does it cover? In what time? With what speed? Does it exceed the speed of light? Does it not violate Relativity?"

[A perfectly legitimate question flowing from the Bohr Orbit Diagrams, and 'Electron Jumps']

My Answer: "Don't think of the electron as a 'bird' jumping from an upper branch to a lower branch. Think of it as a monkey swinging between the two branches before letting the upper one 'go' and settling on the lower one. It swings with the Bohr Frequency. The monkey is charged with static electricity (like the electron). Its tail acts as an antenna. So, it radiates EM Waves like any antenna. The frequency of the wavelet emitted corresponds to the frequency of the monkey's oscillations. It swings for a time equal to the 'lifetime' of the excited state. The photon emitted has the frequency of the monkey's oscillations. The lifetime of the 'emitted wave packet' (photon) is the same as the lifetime of the swing. The emitted photon wave packet travels with the group velocity of light.

Q2: "What is the example of a 'Particle in a Box' in Chemistry? What happens if the walls of the Box move to and fro?"

My Answer: "Two protons forming a Hydrogen Molecule Ion is the best Chemical example. Protons are the walls. The electron shuttling between the two and bonding them is a 'Particle in the Box'.

In your simple model, the protons are at rest. But in practice they 'vibrate'. This is the model of a 'Particle in a Box with oscillating walls'. You have to solve it using the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation in Molecular Spectroscopy and get the vibration-rotation-electronic level diagrams'

----------------------------------------------------
Apparently Prof SR is pleased. But I WAS more pleased than him. Bravo, Harry's Chai!
----------------------------------------------------

As I told you earlier, we fought with the then Director, Prof. KLC in 1990 or so and won the rights to teach QM to all B Tech Students in their Second Year.

But how?

There were six Sections. And we were six newly promoted Professors, asking for it. So, we had to teach the six Sections.

But our backgrounds and interests were different: Professors: STA (Nuclear Physics),SB (X-Ray Crystallography, AVK: (Spectroscopy), NKM (X-Ray Diffraction), DB (Particle Physics & Group Theory), GPS (General Physician & Surgeon).

We met and decided that we will have only the Mid-Term and End-Term Question Papers and the Tutorial Sheets common.

Otherwise, everyone will teach as they like.

Result: No two sections had the same Lecture Notes. DB wanted to take the most 'talented and interested' section: ECE & CSE; so he can teach all his math tricks. I wanted to take the most rowdy but intelligent section: CH E. Challenging to keep them awake. No math at all as far as possible. Hand-waving pure gul!

Others chose other sections.

It was like the Elephant (QM) and the six blind Professors. One would touch the trunk, the other the ears, the next the tusks, another the tail, last but one the feet, and the junior-most me the teat!

[Readers Digest Joke# 1: Mam trying to teach the KG Class the difference between bipeds and quadrupeds by example: "What is it that the cow has four and I have two?"

Smart kid: "Teat?"

Now that we are on the subject of animals:

Readers Digest Joke# 2: The Selection Committee of the Navy intent on taking the cadet in because of his wonderful Physicals. But the chap is dumb. So, ask the simplest possible question;

Q: "Name two grass-eating animals".

No answer.

Baffled, repeat question; "Can't you name two animals that eat grass?"

"Sorry, but I heard: 'two admirals'"]

--------------------------------------------------

Another example of Dr Dracula:

One noon, Prof VS entered my Room and said he wanted help. Apparently, a 3rd Year stubborn student (AVM) challenged his low-marking for the QM question on Hydrogen atom. I asked VS to show me the script. The question was if an electron in a non-central potential can have its Schrodinger Equation separable. The book answer is: 'No'. AVM said, 'Maybe'. But couldn't give a counter-example.

I asked VS to send AVM to me.

AVM met me that afternoon and agreed with the marking because he couldn't give the needed example.

He left satisfied apparently.

But that set me thinking. Him too.

By next morning, he came and showed that it IS separable in the non-central Electric Dipole Potential. I showed him my own overnight calculation. Both matched.

We agreed to go ahead and solve the Schrodinger Equation for the electron in a dipole potential.

I first tried the classical motion and showed him that a cone exists on which 'closed orbits' are possible. In our next meeting, both of us agreed that all closed orbits have the same Energy: 'Exactly Zero'.

We tackled, with VS, the QM equation. Stuck up with solving the Radial Equation. No solutions by the 'series' method or any other method. DB concured.

Left it at that and AVM went to Princeton.

Two years later while sipping Chai at Harry's, I realized that no solutions SHOULD be there. Reason: 'Bertrand's Theorem'. The 'orbits' have to be unstable. Indeed they are 'knife-edge' orbits.

In a couple of days, the classical Cone emerged from the QM Radial Equations with the help of the Sommerfeld(again!)- Wislon Rules.

Energy exactly zero for all solutions (orbits), but possible dipole moments quantized!

Problem solved in toto, and published:

****************************************************
Bound' states of an electron in the far-field of a polar molecule
Author: G P Sastry , V Srinivas and A V Madhav
Department of Physics and Meteorology, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721 302, India
European Journal of Physics
Volume 17, Number 5, Page: 275, 1996
****************************************************

Just now I saw our paper cited, as a Problem given out to Princeton Students:

----------------------------------------

[PDF]
Motion of a Point Charge near an Electric Dipole 1 Problem 2 Solution
by KT McDonald - Related articles:
[4] G.P. Sastry, V. Srinivas and A.V. Madhav, 'Bound' states of an electron in the far-field of a polar molecule, Eur. J. Phys. 17, 275-278 (1996), ...
www.physics.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/dipole.pdf - Similar

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Long Live Woolgathering at Harry's!

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Now that this blogpost has both Elephants and Monkeys, let me sum it up with another joke told by Abdul Mazeed (of the Three Cheers' Fame):

[Joke # 3: Mr and Mrs Monkey were watching a herd of elephants passing by under their tree.

A beautiful young 'maiden-elephant' stood for a while under the tree.

Mr Monkey at once fell for her beauty and jumped upon her.

And started making Love.

Mrs Monkey got jealous and picked up a huge coconut and flung it on the 'maiden-elephant's head.

It winced.

Mr. Monkey: "Oh, sorry! Did I hurt you?"]


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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Reverse Osmosis

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When teachers were getting negligible pay (unlike today's IIT Profs who, I am told, are wallowing in a Take-Home of Rs 80K p.m. after the Sixth Pay Commission, which I missed by a hair-breadth, retiring in 2005 instead of 2006); Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers and even File-Pushers like IAS Officers used to twit:

"Those who Can't, Teach"

I have an Addendum:

"Those who no longer Teach, Blog"

Because, I find flippant Blogging an Analytic Continuation into the Complex Domain of flippant Teaching, with its plethora of zeros and singularities.

Amalendu, returning from an year at Germany, told me of a Pure Math Prof from Warsaw, who introduced himself, with a twinkle in his eyes: "I am Jarlowski, a Simple Pole".

I would have retorted: "I am gps, an Essential Singularity from KGP".

Prof BKR once told me in an M Sc Grand Viva that there are also what are called: 'Removable Singularities'. I asked him why they had not yet been removed from Phy Dept.

Jokes apart, here is something serious. A few hours after I posted my blog with the piquant title: "Beauty Spot", I received this computer-generated e-mail:

**************************************************
Monday, May 17, 2010 12:34 AM
From: "Sheetal Sharma"
To: gps1943@yahoo.com

Hai,

Welcome to the glamorous world of beauty and fashion. The styles of fashion are changing everyday and to move with it is a necessity in today’s world. Whether you are a student, housewives, ladies, office goers or model we all want to look our best. And believe it or not it is not at all difficult sitting at home with no cost and no parlor fees. With some simple ideas and handy tips this world of fashion and beauty will look your own personal paradise. You can also visit my website at http://beautyfashiononline.com.

Since the styles of fashion are changing everyday i also welcome your overwhelming suggestions over this website.

Lets come together beautify and be a part of glamorous world.

Sheetal

******************************************

I guess I should scan the relevant Page from Sommerfeld's 'Optics' having the Vibration Spiral & Poisson Spot and send it to Sheetal in response to her request for "overwhelming suggestions". Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of Sommerfeld; maybe Aniket can help.

The title of today's blog: 'Reverse Osmosis' may elicit many e-mails from Water Purifying Companies. That would indeed be fun.

Osmosis was surely my favorite topic in Physical Chemistry. I had always wondered how the shriveled, wrinkled, dried brown grapes I fetched from the shop took on a glossy, full, and reddish meaty shape when they floated in my Payas.

And, all that talk about 'semi-permeable membranes' was truly 'potty' ('slightly crazy' in the British slang of our OBE).

[Joke: Talking of 'crazy' and 'semi-':

"My brother has shifted from Chemical Engineering to String Theory. Guess how old is he?"
"Must be 40"
"Arrey, how did you know?"
"Mine shifted from Chemical Engineering to Particle Physics Experiments; and he is only 20, and is the well-known semi-crack of the family"]

'Osmosis' is the well-known migration from Physics to Software, Banking, Biology, Genetics, Finance, Eng Lit, IAS etc...

'Reverse Osmosis' is the Minority Carrier Phenomenon of migration from Engineering to Physics, in our times.

When I joined Physics Department at IIT KGP, there were unfortunately only 2 Branches in which Professors did 'Serious' Research: 'Solid State Physics' and 'X-Rays'. HNB, who inherited the Headship was progressive and recruited SDM in Theoretical Physics and VVR in Experimental Nuclear Physics, along with gps, in whom he found an enthusiastic B Tech Teacher (CLR in a Faculty Meeting: "B Tech Teaching is like cleaning a shit-tank", to which myself and DB added: "Which is necessary for the hygiene of the Physics Dept")

After Dharam Vir & Co made me teach Relativity in Electrodynamics in 1969, there was this exodus from Calcutta to KGP of the best and brightest of its students; Reason: Cal Univ & Presidency College practically shut shop due to Naxalite violence in which many of its students were willy-nilly involved. So, most parents preferred the lesser evil of IIT KGP. And the toppers were wriggled into the top Branch, E & ECE (there was no CSE then) against their wishes, because Physics imbued the unwanted spirit of 'Progressive Revolutionaries' of the Feynman Age.

But their hearts were in Physics. I guessed this and made a suggestion to HNB that our Ist Year B Tech Syllabus be modernized to include at least Relativity if not QM (DB didn't join KGP then). He asked me to give a 'Talk' on Syllabus Revision in F-127 to the Faculty about my ideas. There was furor. A compromise was reached that the top branches like ECE and ME should have Relativity while the less-interested could continue with the old Pulleys and Wheatstone Bridges.

And, the Mouse who was asked to bell the Cat was myself.

In that batch, I remember the front-bencher PSM and the second-bencher (eventual PGM) SD were unusually delighted with as simple things as Length Contraction and Twin Paradox.

And went to the US and promptly shifted to Physics: PSM to Black-Hole Physics and SD to Semiconductor Physics [he used to write lead-articles in Physics Today (APS, USA Publication)].

35 years later, just before I retired, Sayan and a gentleman were waiting for me in front of my Ofice. Sayan said: "Here is someone you taught a long while ago and he was asking to meet you". "I said; Hi! PSM, how are you? I know you are in MatScience. Our student there, ST was talking about you."

PSM was very delighted that I not only remembered him, but also was tracking his world-line. We talked about SD, the KGP of 1970s, the usual nostalgia and all. He shifted to Cal a couple of years back. Big shot now; but for me the starry-eyed front-bench freshman, always.

Fast forward to 1990:

CSE has taken over. Anyone who is someone wanted to do Algorithms and Networking and what not. Physics has fallen by the wayside. Only determined young men pursued it and few could stick to it. 3 post-docs and yet no 'tenure-track'.

But, Black Holes, Quasars, Quantum Gravity, ToE were in the Air. Second Coming.

And, I and a handful of Physics Teachers had to fight tooth and nail to teach QM to every student of B Tech against the wishes of KLC, the Diro, who wanted to teach every B Tech First Year a Course on: 'Characterization of Materials'.

Thanx to some Progressive Engineering Teachers fond of Physics like Professor Joshi and Amalendu, we won hands down. And we started teaching a COMPULSORY QM Course of one semester in the 2nd Year for All B techs (a decade later, Sayan & Co saw to it that QM came down to First Year Jumbo, which I had to teach for the last 5 years of my stay at KGP).

In 1990, I was teaching my First Batch of Chemical Engineers this QM Course. Most students were just about forgiving, because apart from Cultural Value they could not find any use for QM in their Inks, Dyes, and Pulp Factories.

But this guy in the last bench, PC, was aglow. Always asking probing questions.

The last but one Class over; and I find in my Locker a fat envelope with 5 hand-written PT Sheets full of agony asking me how he could survive without Physics for the rest of his life. Apparently, he was madly in love with Physics ever since he knew himself but was forced into Chemical Engineering by his parents because Physics has 'no prospects'.

I asked him to meet me in my Office next evening. PC came and started literally sobbing. It was a difficult time for me and DB. He said he was determined to shift to Physics Dept. But unfortunately it was too late for a Branch Change: he was already in Second Year. He realized it and his agony was even more unbearable.

I asked him to meet me next day and we would see what could be done.

24 hours didn't cool his fervor.

I told him to continue in his Ch E. And prepare for AGRE in Physics the next day onwards. And show me his scores after 2 more years. And then I promised to move Heaven and Earth to see that he gets into some Grad-School or the other in Physics in the US. Meanwhile, he should meet me whenever he wants to, for 'coaching' in Physics one-on-one.

PC then on used to meet me quite often in the beginning but at times later on when he got the hang of AGRE Physics.

I clearly recall one late evening, when he brought his Griffiths and wanted to apply the Maxwell-Stress Tensor for the Electric Field of a single point charge...something no one does. We two sat down for 15 minutes and did the surface integral; And, lo and behold I understood for the first time the meaning of just not the Lines of Force but the Faraday Tubes of Induction, which we were forced to read from an unreadable book called Starling. My heart was full. The 'linear extension and lateral compression' that Faraday talked about much before Maxwell and his Stress-Tensor' were born canceled exactly to give zero force!

I sent him to the Summer School at Bangalore sponsored by IUCAA. He did very well there and one reco was guaranteed from Bangalore.

And I advised him to take up the Elective in the Cryogenics taught by the wonderful Physics Professor VRK. Another reco in place.

And, he topped the AGRE at KGP beating our own Physics students.

And for the first time I COMPOSED a Full Page Reco exclusively for him (for others I had the 'template' with the name and date changed year after year).

He applied to 14 places, most of them without the hefty Registration Fees.

He was modest, and was beyond himself when he got Admission and Fellowship with Fee Waiver from Leheigh.

And within a month he got everywhere he applied.

He went to Rochester. Changed to Minnesota the next semester.

Aniket met him at the Wilson High Energy Labs at Cornell a decade later.

I found that his Home Page contained my name, while I was looking for 'gps' entries.

A few months back I got a mail from him.

You might have guessed: PC stands for 'Pussy Cat'.

End of 'Reverse Osmosis'.

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