Saturday, December 31, 2011

African Safari

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Saswat read the 'Typical!' post and complained just now that my tailpiece Sardarji joke is: "wicked funny". And I had to disclaim that it is not mine but Dr Chitnis's.

I don't remember if I told you the ONE Sardarji joke that would thrill every Sardarji. When I narrated this to Dr Chawla in our Faculty Hostel, he clapped and shook my hands for one good minute and passed it on. Here it is:

This Sardarji trying to settle down in Kenya desperately wanted to be admitted to this super-exclusive Hunters Club. But, they said any applicant has to pass two tests:

1. Kill a lioness
2. Rape a Negress

Our Surd agrees and they lead him to the cave of the lioness. And after a good half hour, they see their lioness rush out with streaks of blood all over. And our Surd follows her triumphantly, with his
kachhera all red, thumping his chest, and bawling:

"Now lead me to the Negress to be killed!"

Happy New Year!


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Typical!

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In our Village School at Muthukur, we were taught English in our mother tongue Telugu till the School Final Class which my Father used to teach. He never broke into Telugu in his English Class though he used to teach our Science in Telugu (laghu
lolakamu yokka dolanaavartana kaalamu stood for the Simple Pendulum's Time Period).

And our English then started with Elizabethan (Shakespeare) and ended with the Victorian (Bernard Shaw). So, I didn't learn any flash words, slang or even colloquial English till I joined our fashionable University at Waltair.

As a freshman when I once said to my bus-mate (who I came to know later was in the English Department): "I am sweating", he looked at me and said: "Typical!"

That was the first time I heard the word 'typical', so I kept quiet and looked up the COD when I reached home. Still, it didn't make any sense. As I grew up in the University, I came to know that everyone said 'Typical!' for everything, without intending any harm. It was just the fashion of the day to say it with that typical exclamation mark as often as you can. Much later I read from Feynman that the flash word in the Math Graduate School at Princeton was: "Trivial!"

Another fashionable phrase at my University was to say: "Excuse me!" even when I didn't see anything excusable or even inexcusable in her behavior. They said it even when they were asking for the time. At KGP when I used to ride my pushbike, the wayside rickshawalas used to shout: "Time
kotho?" That sudden question used to break my stream of thought and I had to look at my wrist trying to answer him and lose my balance and hit the fence and fall down, to the merriment of other rickshawalas...they ought to be ashamed and say rightly: "Excuse me!" and I: "OK, Excused". Then I saw one of those fabulous Dean Martin movies (The Silencers?) where he ceremoniously picks up a stooping villain off his guard, says: "Excuse me!" and punches him fatally.

At KGP there was this Dev Anand who would say: "Could you please...!" for everything from asking for the sugar bowl at the dining table to borrowing a hundred precious rupees. That reminded me of the famous joke in which Pope was being dined and wined by Lord Mountabatten who asks: "O Divine! Pass the Wine!" to be followed by the equally poetic Nehru: "O Supreme! Pass the Cream!" and then Baldev Singh, not to be outdone, says: "O B*****d! Pass the Custard!"

There was this very erudite and lovable Dr Chitnis who for a while stayed with us in our Faculty Hostel. He was fresh from a decade in the US and I learned many things from him, including the latest Americanisms. At school, my Father used to say: "Keep quiet! I am correcting the answer-scripts", which he really used to do...I mean 'correct' the errors before awarding marks...to be passed on to his students. But by the time I reached IIT KGP, we never bothered to 'correct' but just glance and give marks. So, 'correcting scripts' was a misnomer that I keenly felt. Dr Chitnis used to say: "I have to check the scripts" (another 'check' list!). Once when I said without thinking: "That is like wanting to have the cake and eat it too!", Dr Chitnis gently corrected me: "It should be...eat the cake and have it too!"

There was once this after-dinner round of stale Sardarjee jokes (like the Baldev Singh's above). When my turn came I narrated the one about Baldev Singh breaking the wishbone and saying triumphantly: "Napoleon" instead of "Bone-apart!". Dr Chitnis then narrated the current American version of: "Do and Tell":

When this Sardarjee's turn came, he went to the stage and asked for a Table Fan to be installed. Upon which he slips his pants down a bit and stoops in front of the fan and asks his audience: "Name the Movie!"

Everyone was silent and wondering which film it could be and gave up.

Our Sardarjee stands up and says:

"Can't anyone of you tell? It is very simple...
Gond pe Wind!"


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Friday, December 30, 2011

Shockingly Pleasant News!

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Deccan Chronicle, 30th December, 2011. Page 7

MAN ON TRAIN ROOF SURVIVES 25,000-KV SHOCK

Mumbai, Dec 29

A 20-year-old man travelling on a rooftop of a local train miraculously survived despite sustaining electric shocks when he came in contact with the pantograph, through which 25,000 KV alternate current flows....

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gps: How many Volts is 25,000 KV?

I forgot...


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Viral Fevers

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Here is a news story from yesterday's ToI:

"On Wednesday evening, visiting Japanese PM Yoshihiko Noda had a special guest at his dinner with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh: Dhanush (Rajnikanth's son-in-law), the current rage after his sensational hit, kolaveridi, the Tinglish number that has gone viral on the internet and spawned dozens of copycat versions. Most important, it's now hot property in night clubs and discos throughout Japan. If the humorous lyrics and Dhanush's evident enjoyment of his song made the video go viral in the cyberspace, the equal enjoyment of disco-goers in Tokyo has added to the song's international appeal...."

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Note that 'viral' occurs twice in that short para. One is followed by 'internet' and the other by 'cyberspace' which is the same thing. Online-Webster has this entry for viral:

"quickly and widely spread or popularized especially by person-to-person electronic communication"

I guess this use of 'viral' has its pre-net origin in computer 'viruses'. The history of computer viruses, as expected, goes back to John von Neumann (1949), when neither computers nor their viruses were prevalent.

In 1987, Ed Taylor of MIT sent me two huge floppy disks having the just-developed Spacetime Software. And our Diro Professor KLC came to know of it and ordered me to work on them...he didn't care to know that the Phy Dept then hadn't heard of IBM PCs. It was rumored that ME had the Adam & Eve version called PC XT which had no hard drive but only two slots for those diskettes. My friend and Electronics Guru, BKM (now Dean), had access to one and allowed me 'time' on his private PC.

A year later, I took TRR as my Project Student to work on the topic and gave copies of the Software in his floppies. He came to my room one day and said they were not working. I called BKM and sent TRR to him with his problem. I was desperately worried, but BKM came to my room with TRR and said that his floppies got infected by a virus and he deleted it with his antivirus software.

The whole thing was a mystery to me; but I loved the term 'virus' as applied to computers and still love it; because, like Thurber, I have this picturesque mind, and for days on end I was visualizing TRR's floppy as a sick patient approaching BKM who gave it a shot in the arm and rubbed it with his hand and cleaned his hands in the kitchen sink with soap and water and dried his hands with that turkey towel...

Much later, when RSS used to visit my room early in the morning, and when I asked why he wasn't closeted with his online Hindusthan Times, he would say ruefully: "Kya batavoon, virus ghus gaya!"

I suppose virus does spread like wildfire but it has a limited lifetime since it kills itself but is not killed by anyone else. I am told most antiviral drugs are palliative but not curative and treat only side-effects..."untreated cold lasts SEVEN days while treated cold lasts only a week".

But not computer viruses...they have very specific antidotes, I am told, and can kill computers if early treatment is neglected. Maybe one day some software geek will come up with 'computer fungi'...fungal infections are nasty as you know. I had one such that oozed and troubled me for forty years responding only spasmodically to even cortisone unguenta. It got cured once for all by a single application of a couple of drops of Antibactrin (the cheap Bengali shelf remedy) that is nothing but mustard oil and tulsi perhaps.

And computer AIDS? And computer Sugar? And computer Heart Attack? And computer Parkinson's and Alzheimer's? And computer Cirrhosis? And last but not the least, Love Sickness?

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Men Swear by Menswear

My son has about 20 pants and 40 shirts in his wardrobe, most of them bought in America (Made in Asia). He changes his shirt everyday but pants once a week. I suppose his colleagues see only the upper garment and are thrilled and call him a well-dressed male. Torso Effect? He would prefer to wear no underwear at all...but you know...he is persuaded gently after his marriage...marriage has this 'civilizing effect' on males.

I have about 10 pants and 20 shirts, all gifted by my son. I wear only 2 pants and 2 shirts (the uppermost in the heap). Each outfit lasts for about 3 weeks. That is because nowadays I wear them only for ten minutes a day...go down in the lift, sit in the car, drive to the chai buddy, drive back home and hang the things on their peg behind the bedroom door. But I sweat a lot even in Hyderabad and change banians every two hours...I have 20 high-class Tirupur banians and use and throw ten of them in the washing machine every night.

I guess I am better-dressed.

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Mario Livio

After reading my blog: Tinkering, I got this mail from my cousin GMK:


"Thanks for immortalising me !

Try to get hold of the following books written in a delightful fashion, by Mario Livio, an Astrophysicist. (I am assuming you have not yet read them):

1. Is God a Mathematician ?
2. The equation that couldn't be solved
3. The Golden Ratio

I am sure you will not accuse me of wasting your time"

gps: I haven't read Livio...where is the time now for reading?

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/07/read-or-write.html


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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Teacherisms

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When we were in our school in the good old 1950s, we were taught a few examples of English proverbs. The only one I recall is:

"Manners make a man"

By virtue of the sorry decision a teacher takes to make his living in the class room, he and his manners and mannerisms are under constant and critical scrutiny by his students. There is no escape from mannerisms...all of us have them willy-nilly. There is this story about Daddy Mitra. He was so cut up with the misbehavior of his students that he is once reported to have tried to scold them saying:

"If you can't behave well,...don't behave!"

Since it is impossible not to behave, stories of teachers' behavior abound. The other day, I received a copy of the Diamond Jubilee (Physics) Souvenir and happened to read a droll piece by Siddharth Dwivedi (Integrated M Sc 2008). Since it has been in the public domain for quite a while I guess it is ok for me to stoop to quoting from his article:

"...A short figure, frequently adjusting his specs, he would continue with his love for the chalk and the blackboard in a rather slow and self amused manner...with his speech going into occasional 'ummmmm...ummmmm', and this would take a big slice of his lecture until a coffee break was announced...but all the same we loved his style and he to me is one of the best as seen yet...

...A person with an absolute 'no nonsense or you are dead' look on his face he would straightaway start...But outside the class if one had the courage to talk, he was a totally different person. Always ready to help...

...His trade mark countenance was a smile over any poor soul's over-enthusiasm for a self-acclaimed understanding of the subject, which he took no more than 3 minutes to thwart away...

...Writing the proof on the blackboard, suddenly he would bring us out of our reverie to ask: 'Have I made any mistake?'...."

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All in all I guess Physics Teachers at KGP nowadays are a very interesting lot. I feel like becoming a student once again and enjoy sitting in their classes.

Here are some of my fond recollections of the mannerisms of my Teachers:

There was this Math Teacher in our moffusill college. His handwriting was superb. But the moment he turned towards us, he would jerk his left shoulder up and elaborately down, again and again and again...so we never could concentrate on what he was saying. And if we stared at him, he would stop jerking and start asking questions...and bang us and get irritated and start jerking all over again.

And our Phy Dept at AU those days never boasted of Theoreticians...unlike KGP ;-) But they had to teach us QM and so did job-rotation...3 teachers used to share. Two of them were seriously trying to hide their ignorance (impossible) behind a stern countenance and got ignored by us. But there was this third one, a senior professor of spectroscopy, who would start his lecture with a broad grin that said it all. He would turn to the blackboard and copy a few equations and turn back and grin. And we would all grin. And he would turn back to the blackboard
and copy a few more equations and turn back and grin
...I always wished I could grin like him, but I never could...I was a hypocrite. I saw that beseeching grin later on occasionally in one or two students at KGP when they were facing their Grand Viva...

Like Feynman, we too had to attend Lectures on Philosophy and write an exam on the subject along with Biology, Economics and Astronomy. This gentleman, who later became VC of a neighboring University, would talk to himself most of the time. Our class was 120 strong and even frontbenchers couldn't make out any word except when he got excited and said Hegel and Kant. Backbenchers like us used to play what we called 'game of dots'. But one day our frontbenchers told us that they decided to listen keenly and succeeded in counting how many times he said: "I mean". The score was 120 in one hour.

The most obnoxious mannerism of one of our teachers was that he would utter: "Do you understand?" 120 times in an hour...

"I mean" was far more civilized...

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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Quotable Quotes

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Just can't resist quoting excerpts from Umberto Eco's NYT's piece in DC today:

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"...On hearing Letterman's interview, my jaw dropped. Could this high-profile figure, whose interviews have the potential to help people gain some measure of understanding of the world we live in, really have such infantile ideas about what exists beyond the United States' borders?

Yet Letterman was expressing a common American mindset --- not among intellectuals, but among those immense masses who live in the center of the country, where local newspapers will report extensively on a calf born with two heads, while presenting only vague news coverage of the rest of the planet. Places where the New York Times can't be delivered, or can only be found in select high-class locations, at twice the regular price. Places where, in years gone by, long-distance and international calls could only made through a switchboard operator; places like the one where, when someone once asked a young operator to place a call to Rome, he was asked which Rome he wished to call -- because there's one in Georgia, one in New York state, one in Indiana and one in Tennessee, not to mention a few others that I no longer recall. On discovering there was a Rome in Italy too, the operator expressed utter amazement.

A few years ago at a conference in Florence, a person who worked with the Pentagon or the White House (I don't remember which), after having enjoyed an excellent fish dinner, and on finding out that the fish came from the Mediterranean, asked if the Mediterranean was a salt lake.

Sometimes I wonder how average American politicians (who occasionally get as far in their political careers as George W. Bush did) can make so many mistakes when dealing with Europe, Africa and Asia. Perhaps we should just ask Letterman."

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I guess we should ask our Indra, who said 'intellectuals' like at Princeton were no better...they never heard of Calcutta, nor hilsa...although they seem to have heard of IIT KGP...by now... ;-)


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Tinkering

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More than a year ago I posted a blog describing my misadventures in a friend's kitchen when his wife was away:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/09/cook-it-up.html

As soon as he read it, my cousin, Professor GMK Sarma, retired from the Metallurgy Department of IT-BHU [IIT (BHU)], rang me up and gave me a delightful lesson in metallurgy, since I goofed in that post saying I picked up a lead vessel, poured some cooking oil in it, placed it on the high gas burner, went out for a smoke, returned after a couple of minutes, found it missing, and was told by my friend VR to look below...it had melted and solidified into a shining solid heap.

GMK told me that it couldn't have been a pure lead vessel, since lead is very poisonous and its toxicity can kill if you are fed on rasam made in it for years. And he reminded me of the itinerant tinsmiths who were such a nostalgic feature of our streets, shouting: "kalaai posthaam!, maatlu vestaam!" and collecting old and punctured vessels for plating by tin which is absolutely harmless.

I then asked him why we couldn't as well use tin vessels instead of getting our lead vessels periodically coated with tin. He said tin is dashed expensive. And taught me many things about eutectic alloys, eutectic point, soldering and more.

Anyway, tinkering essentially
means
getting a thing make do as long as one can by trying to tweak it here and there instead of dumping it in the dustbin and looking for a totally new replacement that is faultless.

The itinerant tinsmiths of our fond childhood vanished as soon as stainless steel arrived in our markets. But not before our moms resisted hard...the power of habit.

That is 'tinkering' with kitchen vessels...but history of mankind's ideas, events, and technologies is replete with valiant but vain efforts to try and tinker and tweak and finally realize, often via a rebellious mind, that a brand new stainless steel of an idea is far better than good old lead coated with tin.

Here is my shortlist from history of science...you can have yours.

1. Astronomers were convinced for millennia that heavenly objects move in circles because circle is a figure of perfection. And tried to explain away the wayward motion of retrograde planets by superposing small circles on larger circles and largest circles and calling them epicycles...heavenly tinkering. And Kepler threw them into the dustbin and came up with his fantastic three empirical laws; an achievement par excellence.

2. Darwin (still disliked by most Churches) snatching the business of Creation from the hands of God. Earlier scientists and philosophers tried to accommodate God by tinkering.

3. Maxwell banishing Faraday's tubes of induction with their pushes and pulls and predicting the speed of light in the bargain from electricity and magnetism data.

4. Einstein's predecessors trying hard to accommodate the well-worn idea of Aether with a dozen or more new experimental findings by tinkering with Newtonian Mechanics. Einstein dumped Aether into the dustbin although Whittaker didn't agree and said Vacuum Polarization is evidence of Aether ;-)

5. Rutherford snatching away all matter from the atom and squeezing it into a nucleus...earlier scientists tried hard with plum puddings.

6. Dirac rubbishing all the earlier efforts to tinker Schrodinger's Equation with patches of spin, fine structure, Thomas Precession and more.

7. And the idea of BIG BANG replacing BIG GOD DADDY!

Just for fun...don't take it seriously...the list is far from complete...time up to close the post.


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Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Negligence

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If you are not blessed with the negligent gene, Physics is not for you...shift ho!...to Pure Math, or better, Eastern Philosophy.

When we were in College, we didn't hear of Sears or Resnick-Halliday. So, we were taught Mechanics by an innocent teacher from our Math Dept. And he prescribed Loney for us. That was enough repulsive for us, students of Physics. The trouble with our Math Teachers of Mechanics was that they heard that a projectile moves in a parabola. That's it! Since they knew all about parabolas, not to talk of ellipses (closed orbits) and hyperbolas (open orbits), they would play with all exotic and intricate properties of Conic Sections and 'invent' problems in Mechanics to suit them. It is like you have a screwdriver and are looking for screws...

But such problems have no immediate relevance to the physical world we live in. Let us say we do a typical projectile problem at the Class XII level and get a Horizontal Range of 50 meters. And then take a cricket ball and throw it with the same parameters supplied in the problem sheet. And you would find the Range would be anything between 20 meters and 30 meters. Because you have conveniently done: "Let us neglect air friction". So your text book Mechanics is a lot useless for Sports Physics. And it would be worse for the Artillery Unit of your Army. You not only can't neglect air friction, but also the spin of the earth...you have to take into account the Centrifugal and Corialis forces if the cannon shell has to hit the enemy and not result in friendly fire. And if you are employed by NASA, it is even worse if you neglect air friction...ha!

Not all students of Physics turn up as Physics Teachers and spend the rest of their lives ignoring air friction, spin of the earth, googlies and such inconvenient stuff. They may be employed in the so-called Applied Physics. So, each and every moment they should know what to ignore and what not.

When Einstein brought GR out of his hat, he didn't write his Field Equation and sleep off...he took the enormous trouble of making verifiable astronomical predictions and gave numbers. That was because in his youth he was employed as a Clerk in a Patent Office and day in and day out he had to examine every one of thousands of applications and judge if they make sense or no...which requires a Physicist's intuition of what to neglect and what not.

There was an eminent scientist by name Clifford Truesdell (Google for him if you wish). He developed a branch of Mechanics (and later Thermodynamics with a KGPian) called Rational Mechanics. Somewhere along the line he apparently made a comment like: Newtonian Mechanics is nothing but the study of a class of second order differential equations. That rather was a sweeping statement, since it implied that if you know those differential equations, you know Mechanics. Feynman made a remark like: Folks who think that they know the Physics since they know the Math used there, contribute very little to Physics and even less to Math.

You may think that these coarse things like viscosity of air and spin of the earth are a nuisance at the macroscopic level while QM which deals with atoms and molecules is neat and you don't have to bother what to neglect and what not. The situation is even worse at the Quantum level. It is a mess.

Let us take a single Ammonia molecule (not easy). And heat it from Absolute Zero (with a Bunsen burner???)

We know that the Ammonia molecule (NH3) has the shape of an umbrella (don't ask how we know it) with the three Hydrogen atoms forming an equilateral triangle joined with spokes (bonds) to the heavier Nitrogen atom at the top of the pyramid.

At first the molecule is quiet...as quiet as can be. As you heat it slowly you find that the thing starts rotating. And you can apply the rigid rotor Schrodinger Equation, solve it and get some reasonable answers. Here you are 'assuming' that it doesn't run (translate), its atoms don't vibrate, the electrons in each atom are in their ground states, the protons and neutrons in each nucleus are quiet, the quarks in them don't misbehave and so on...

Then you find that as the temperature rises, the umbrella does a flip-flop-flip-flop-flip-flop as if it is caught in a whirlwind. Even neglecting all the motions mentioned above, you get your Ammonia Maser and your Nobels.

Heat it further...and the atoms vibrate and electrons start jumping and if you cleverly separate the rotations and vibrations as Born and Oppenheimer did, you have a damn good explanation for the very complicated band spectra that result. Heat it further and the bonds break and the molecule has dissociated into its atoms....band spectra are replaced by line spectra and you have to do a lot of 'negligence' if you wish to explain them by QM. Heat it further and all the electrons will evaporate and you are in the regime of Chandra's Astrophysics. And further and further till the proton and neutrons in the nuclei start evaporating and you can 'neglect' everything except hard core Nuclear and then Astro Particle Physics...maybe you are in the interior of stars and supernovae. Heat it further and everything breaks up and you are back to our First Three Minutes... and then the LHC maybe...

Where did you start and where did you end!...At each stage neglecting and neglecting and neglecting...

Physics is verily the Science of Negligence...

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Monday, December 26, 2011

Cheechee Moments

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Cheechee moments are those when one feels disgusted with the mean behavior of honorable men and women (including oneself).

Our epics are rather full of these.

Let us begin with Ramayan.

Sage Gautama had his cheechee moment when he discovered his wife Ahalya in bed with Indra. Everyone knows the lechery of Indra, so it is no surprise. But according to RKN's rendering of Kamba Ramayan, Gautama was not entirely sure of the innocence of Ahalya...

Dasaratha had his cheechee moment when Kaikeyi stunned him asking to fulfill, ex post facto, the boons he promised her in a weak moment. But his cheechee is nothing compared to Bharatha's when he discovered that his mother, of all people, shamed him.

Laxman's cheechee moment was when Sita imputed mean motives for his refusal to leave her alone and go forth in aid of Raam.

Women!

Raam's own cheechee moment was when he egged Sugriva on to wrestle with Vaali promising that he would slay Vaali; but couldn't, because he didn't take care to distinguish between the two...they were so very alike...and had to watch Vaali pummel Sugriva grievously...and had to ask for a second innings.

Hanuman's cheechee moment was when he raced to Himalayas to fetch the lifesaving herb Sanjivani without asking how to pick it among a hundred lookalikes...and had to carry a whole mountain.

Raavan's cheechee moment was when he discovered his own younger brother Vibhishan whom he dandled on his knees betray him and reveal his deadly secrets to Raam.

And Sita's cheechee moment was when she was asked to perform an encore of Agnipariksha by jumping into flames...she refused and ended her life by seeking her mother's embrace.

Let us turn to Mahabharat which is replete with cheechee moments and pick just a few.

Aswathama's cheechee moment was when he watched his father ask for the right thumb of Ekalvaya.

Arjun's cheechee moment was when he was so badly mauled by Bhishma that Krishna broke his promise and jumped down his chariot and took up his discus...and Arjun had to bend on his knees and pray to his B-i-L for forgiveness. A thrilling version of this episode can be found in Potana's rendering:

http://vimeo.com/2815169

Karna had two:

One when the mother who abandoned him at childbirth seeks a boon that he wouldn't kill her subsequent progeny.

The other was when Indra disguises himself as a Brahmin and asks to peel off and donate his impenetrable armor.

And many many others.

Now, why is it important for us to enumerate such epic cheechee moments?

When did I say it is important?

It is interesting...

And comforting...that we are not the only imperfect beings in this otherwise perfect world...there have been others, much more gifted than us ;-)


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Saturday, December 24, 2011

Comma Coma

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I am told that punctuation
(like spelling) came to be standardized by the descendants of John Gutenberg with their Printing Machines. Punctuation is a known aid to reading, especially, aloud. After I write my pieces, I do read them aloud (silently) and fix the punctuation marks. Of course I defy all prescribed rules. It is enough if the meaning is clear and unambiguous.

Commas are known to be treacherous. Here are a few follies picked up from DC a couple of years back...like me, DC too doesn't care for rules... and that is what makes it interesting:

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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Missing Comma, Hey Ramadoss!

Deccan Chronicle news banner, Page 7, Hyderabad, Thursday, 26 February 2009: "..health minister Anbumani Ramadoss on Wednesday pressed for a National Alcoholic Policy to curb consumption of liquor in the Lok Sabha."

A comma after 'liquor'
Would suit our Speaker:
Binge Drinking
And Carousing
Can hardly keep our MPs sober!

Even sober, they crowd the Well,
And raise Cain and Hell;
Rather than booze
Let them snooze
Ramdoss should prescribe a sleeping pill!


Saturday, February 28, 2009

DC does it again!

....RAW, on Friday flown in a key terror suspect involved in the recent serial bomb blasts secretly, reports our correspondent. ...:DC Front Page News Item, Hyderabad, Saturday, 28th February 2009.

A comma after bomb blasts
Would prevent terrorists
Work in secret,
Perhaps regret;
And Assist RAW in its airlifts!

A comma here, a comma there
Deccan Chronicle couldn't care;
In English, a foreign tongue,
Unlike in our mother tongue
Punctuation is a Big Bugbear!

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As mentioned in the above stanza, Classical Telugu Poetry never had punctuation marks. This suited witty poets...they could read their poems aloud with emphases and pauses and gestures at different places in their poems and make them mean differently. Below is an example:

This famous poet of the 15th century, Shreenatha, graced the Courts of several Rulers of the time who were all at loggerheads with one another, and this landed him in tricky situations since all of them wanted to possess Srinatha exclusively and were jealous. He had to extricate himself out of sticky wickets by his grip over double entendre.

While he was working as a minister in the Court of Vemareddy, he was once invited by his neighborhood Ruler, Rao Singha, for a display of his prowess. He applied for CL and went there and was wined and dined on composing extempore the following verse in high praise of Rao Singhjee:

Sarvajnu naamadheyamu
Sharvunake Rao Singha Janapaluna ke
Yurvin chendunu takkoru
Sarvajnulanuta kukka samaja manute

He had read it aloud with a pause after the 'chendunu' in the third line; which meant a Glorification of his Host by raising him to the same level as Lord Shiv himself.

Shreenatha returned home to the Court of his Employer to find, as he suspected, that Vemareddy's spies had already appraised him of his Empolyee's treacherous literary act.

And Vemareddy was itching to crucify Shreenatha for his indecent betrayal. Upon which, Shreenatha laughed and said that he had actually deceived the poor illiterate fool, Rao Singha, by calling him a dog. And read aloud the verse he had composed, this time pausing after 'Sharvunake' rhetorically in the second line.

And everyone in the Court sniggered and laughed and Shreenatha received bouquets instead of brickbats.

Let me render the thing into English:

Omniscience belongs to Lord Shiv
And Rao Singha and Others
Claiming it is like Dog
Calling himself an Elephant

If you insert a comma after 'Rao Singha' in the second line, he is glorified into the exclusive position of Lord Shiv Himself.

On the other hand, if you insert the comma after 'Lord Shiv' in the first line, it means his demotion to the level of a very dog!

Beware of commas!


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Punctuality

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I have observed that habitually unpunctual folks are habitually intolerant of others' occasional unpunctuality...they go berserk if they are made to wait.

Let me cite an exemplary specimen:

The other day Ishani and her mom were arriving from Tirupati by the Narayanadri Express (after an absence from Hyderabad for all of FIVE days) scheduled to arrive at 6.30 AM. My son and I wanted to receive and fetch them home. My son went to bed at 2 AM after coming home at 1 AM. And he asked me to get ready positively by 5.45 AM sharp. I asked him what was the big hurry...and he said: "Ishani is coming!"
Since nowadays I go to bed at about 4.30 AM, that was no big deal for me to keep awake.

I had my early ablutions and, knowing him, got ready by 6 AM, and was waiting for him to emerge from his bedroom. And you know what it is to wait...every second feels like an hour. At 6.15, I decided to make some tea...and entered the kitchen. At 6.16 there was an explosion and he was shouting: "Dad! Where are you? I asked you to be ready by 5.45!"

And we ran down and I sat beside him in his car...and tried to relax. He is, to put it mildly, a petulant driver. He would love to cover the 30 KM in 15 minutes. But in Hyderabad it is not enough if you are a teetotaler...you have to assume that everyone else is drinking and driving. He doesn't believe in the Newton's First Law about going uniformly in a straight line. He swerves this way that to beat all other vehicles. And he is about the only one in the twin cities who honks (others know it is no use). 'Peeeeee!' means a dog is in the way. 'Pip...pip...pip...pip!' means a truck...and so on. And since he now drives a sedan with AC and windows closed, he knows there is no use shouting....so he gestures wildly and unspeakably...At 6.30 he gets a call that they are at Bibinagar, 15 minutes away. He revs, races, and rants, and we arrive at 6.45 and rush in...to be told that they are still at Bibinagar waiting for clearance...and he lets off his steam at the unpunctuality of Indian Railways...

He was not like that when he was a student at IIT KGP. It is this software job that screwed up his time-keeping. They have this flexi-time, work-from-home, light-lelo, and stuff...the only constraint is that the job gets done and moolah in...

Frankly this so-called Puctuality is alien to us Indians and it is an imposition by our British Rulers. As RKN said elsewhere, an hour or two this way or that makes no difference to us whose preoccupation is ever with Eternity.

Not that we were not aware of Nature's own time-keeping...our Vedic Hymns extol again and again the so-called Ritu, symbolizing Nature's Rhythm. Kalidas also wrote his Ritusamhaara...eloquently describing the march of seasons. And our astronomers (we never had astrophysicists) could predict the eclipses knowing that they follow an unyielding cycle. But that is about all...let Heavens keep their punctuality and let us relax and write poetry.

Not that the Westerners were any better before Galileo spoiled all fun and invented his pendulum clock, which can reasonably be considered as the beginning of mankind's slavery to time. Planets were supposed, etymologically, to wander. Copernicus said gently: "It isn't they who wander...it is us!" and showed that they all move in perfect orbits keeping perfect time. I was amazed when I read that astronomers of yore discovered that the inmost planet Mercury was not quite keeping its expected closed orbit but its perihelion advances by 43 seconds of an arc per century...My! My!! My!!!...a right angle is 90 degrees (inexplicably...why not go metric?)...a degree has sixty minutes...and a minute has sixty seconds...and a century has 100 X 365 X 24 X 60 X 60 = 315360000 odd seconds ;-)

How the Heaven could they figure THAT out!!!

And it was left to Einstein and his fan Eddington to explain that away...sort of...actually it was about 560 secs of arc but Newtonian Gravity and Mechanics could explain away all but those 43...incidentally Newton's Gravity and his Mechanics were two separate subjects, no? But in nonlinear Einstein's, the two are messed up inextricably, yes? I forgot my Weinberg...

So, planets are rather more punctual than my son of a fun.

Galaxies apparently are not punctual enough...

Yesterday I was reading Martin Rees prediction that our own home, the Milky Way Galaxy is about to collide soon enough with our nearby neighbor, Andromeda, and sputter and spatter and scatter to form what is pleasantly called the khichiri: Milkomeda.

Very punctually...in precisely 4 billion years...give or take a billion...

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Friday, December 23, 2011

Violence

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The eminently forgettable Ph D thesis I wrote forty years ago (to impress my Guide SDM) starts like this, somewhat:

"It is remarkable that the discoveries of the present century that did so much violence to our ideas of matter and space left Maxwell's Equations practically untouched"

The violence to my space-idea is best exemplified by the episode in which I was walking to our Village Pond with my Mentor (Class X) while I was in Class VIII in our School. I asked him what was so great about Einstein whom he adored. He replied coolly:

"He showed that space is curved"

I didn't pursue the matter but it left quite an impression on me.

Then I read (in my First Year at AU) the classic paperback by Eddington (a known admirer and 'propagator' of Einstein): "Nature of the Physical World".

Despite being a fan of Einstein and his curved space, Eddington wrote that the greatest violence to our ideas was done by Rutherford who showed that the chair in which he was sitting was mostly vacuum...there is nothing 'solid' about it.

Then I read that the most violent spectacle in our Universe is the explosion of a supermassive supernova. But I came to know later on that it is followed by the gravitational collapse of the inner core into a Black Hole. I guess, between the two, the quiet (?) inner collapse is more violent than the outer outburst.

I mean I don't mind, given a choice, being blown up into smithereens but to get squeezed continually into a point without parts is ignominy itself.

Turning the other Christian Cheek led to more violent dismantling of creeds and credos than the looting and burning of sundry Chengiz Khans. And the proactive 'non-violence' of Gandhijee and Martin Luther King, Jr did more violence to Emperors and Oppressors than brickbats and blows.

Our Superpower lost their Vietnam War more due to the non-violent Flower Power of their youth than the bitter consequences of their napalm bombs...they just sang and danced under their peaceful drugs and dopes...not the violent booze.

Talking of Flower Power, I am dismayed by terms like various Springs...the Prague Spring, Arab Spring and maybe Ramlila Spring (who knows?). Spring is supposed to be a sudden peaceful blossoming of flowers...not a political revolt. And the great man who died the other day invented the Velvet Revolution that overthrew Stalinism...nothing velvety about its consequences...ask Putin...

Sex has always been awkwardly violent...ask anyone who indulged in it...nothing velvety about it. But I rate the 'normal' childbirth that is again in vogue more violent than death. Trying to choke an innocent chap before he is born (and then cooing about him) rates as the most violent and condemnable act. I am told that I emitted just a feeble cry. If I could, I would have slapped my progenitors then and there.

Coming to the dozen odd ailments I suffered, I always rated whooping cough as the most violent...till I achieved what was gently called: Depression. Folks think that a patient of Severe Clinical Depression, sitting quietly in his chair for hours without speaking or eating or sleeping is among the most non-violent of madcaps. They don't know. The quietude is like that of a sleeping top. The mind races at the speed of light and more...at the speed of (uncontrolled) thought. There is an irrepressible chatter. I call it: "Inner Noise". It is louder than the loudest decibels of the hammer drill.

I thought I got cured of it. But Aniket gently hints from time to time that no one without this unceasing inner chatter can blog a nonsense piece everyday for years.

He is right...as always.

May I suggest that my handful of regular readers are, to put it mildly, "born insane"...

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Thursday, December 22, 2011

Jungle Bells

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It is that time of the year when jingle bells jingle all the way.

This reminded me of the bells I had listened to in my impressionable years with a variety of associations.

The earliest bells I heard on a regular basis were from the Puja Room of my mom in the 1940s. Every household in the Brahmin Street of our Village had an alcove reserved for their fondest gods and goddesses; some tiny, some huge, and others just a recess in the wall. They all had an idol or two of their family deities... a hundred variations. But an indispensable bell and a lamp for aarti.

I am no Salvdor Dali to boast that I can recall my days and nights in the womb, but everything that happened from my age of 2 when my first younger sister was born left a hazy imprint on my memory alright. The earliest is of my Father leaving everything he was doing and rush to his bath as soon as the first bell of my mom's Puja rang. By the time the second went off a few minutes later, he was seated on his flat-stool and making a pretense of his Gayatri Jap. The third bell meant that food is coming forth...it has been successfully offered to my mom's God...just in time for the first bell of my Father's School rang a couple of hundred meters away.

The Puja Bell was, is, and remains a tiny affair...Ishani has her own now and participates in her mom's puja, jingling it as best as she can with her tiny hands awkwardly.

One day when I was about 3, there was this solemn and sorrowful tung tung tung of a circular bell and an accompanying terrifying boom boom boom of a huge conch approaching from afar. My mom, like all other moms, rushed into the street and pulled their kids in and bolted their front doors. And were watching through their front windows fearfully. And all us kids peeped. And then there was this cot being carried by four and followed by ten and led by this bell-ringer and the conch-blower. Kids are curious since they know no fear of death as yet...

The best bells were of course of our school. There was this massive yard-long rail hung from the low branch of the neem tree near the HM's Office. And a hammer that was always in the custody of his Peon who had a way with it. He would emerge from the Office with his hammer in his proud hands and have a 'go' at it. First bell was long...it could be heard from all corners of our tiny Village. After a couple of minutes was the Second Bell asking all students to file in front of the Office for the Assembly. The third was to announce to the HM that all was ready for his Speech following the flag-hoisting that was touch and go always. And then just one bell for each 'period'. And after three periods, the short bell for recess...we used to call it 'Interbell'. All boys used to rush out and run to the nearest bush outside the fence. I often wondered how the girls could do without it. And then after a few more periods, the Long Bell asking every kid to rush out and rush home...

By my age of 14, my Father moved as HM to Kovur, a small town that boasted a Railway Station. I was by then in my College elsewhere and was visiting home for vacations. Since I had no friend in the new town, I used to walk down to the Railway Station and spend my time there sitting under the shade of a neem tree on a cement bench. There were only four or five trains that used to halt at that Station; but their arrival was as eventful as that of a Maharaja in his palanquin. Suddenly the Railwayman would emerge and have a go at his gong heralding the arrival of the Madras-Vijayawada Passenger...and eventually its departure...

I guess the romance of the sooty steam engine and its openness will haunt me forever...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQnjHzgnixs

and my Satyajit Ray Gen (1955)...

http://rasch187.videosift.com/video/Satyajit-Ray-Pather-Panchali-Train-Scene-1955




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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Overtones & Undertones

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A foreign tongue is always treacherous. Words have different nuances and it is always a tricky thing. One can land in boiling soup if one is careless.

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During the 1960s, PGW's Penguin Paperbacks used to sell at Rs 2 each and I used to bike to the Railway Station at KGP every Sunday to buy a copy or two at the Wheelers (Is it still there?). And my Collection went up to something like 40 over a couple of years and a few of my friends in the Faculty Hostel used to borrow them, read them, and pass them on...I lost all of them, but no matter.

Dr SGH in the Math Dept was a sucker for Jeeves books and used to sprinkle his speech with the British slang of Bertie.

One day he told me that he was about to be beaten up by his colleague Dr VS. I asked him what happened. Dr VS, although in his twenties like the rest of us, was graying and balding. And we didn't know that he was fussy about his looks till one day SGH met him across the street and hailed him:

"Hello, hello, Old Man, what's up?"

Dr VS happened to be walking with his Girl Scholar (which SGH didn't notice); and, as you can imagine, he turned so red and blue in his face and gave SGH such a drubbing that he turned pink.

A red hot soup from which one can't explain, retract or even apologize...a hopeless case. I guess they stopped talking and SGH was cured of his predilection once and for all.

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Then there was this Dr PD who was fond of badminton and rather fancied he was good at it and hogged one end of the Court in the Faculty Club. One evening Mrs D (just back from five years in London) joined the game at the other end. In his (justified) exuberance, Dr PD was trying to so impress the lady that he was running all over the court so heavily that he jumped and ducked and feigned and finally hit his own foot and fell like a sack of coal, breaking his racket and his specs.

And Mrs D rather instinctively tried to cajole him saying:

"What a shame, what a shame!"

And Dr PD was so upset that he got up limping and yelled at her:

"What is there to be ashamed of? It is you that ought to be ashamed!"

And Mrs D turned so pink and helpless and couldn't go about explaining to the injured soul that "What a shame!" means:

"a cause for regret. It is idiomatic and often used to express sympathy or disappointment"
and no more:

http://malaysia.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100717070140AAdrwZT


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Dr BKR was just back completing his Ph D from Tufts, MA.

And he was narrating to me the story of a newly arrived Uttam Kumar at his Grad School who had a way with girls. His trick was to quietly sit down in the Lounge (or whatever...I read that 'or whatever' is a condemned witless bypass like, well, 'like').

And he would open his palm and pretend to be absorbed reading it. And the Yankee girls of those days were suckers for palmistry and would flock around him asking:

"Can you read palms? Do read mine"

and push their palms towards him. And he would hold them delicately and go about gassing.

One day it was the turn of a rather cute and petite girl and our Uttam Kumar tried to please her saying:

"This long thin line here means that you are very innocent"

And the girl slapped him in his face and withdrew...

BKR told me that 'innocent girl' is a compliment in Bengali, but meant 'dumb' in Yankeeland.

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Talking of angelic looks, here is a passage from Jerome K Jerome:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/308/308-0.txt
"...To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was
an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in
the shape of a small fox-terrier. There is a sort of
Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-
make-it-better-and-nobler expression about Montmorency that has been
known to bring the tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.

When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought I should be
able to get him to stop long. I used to sit down and look at him, as he
sat on the rug and looked up at me, and think: “Oh, that dog will never
live. He will be snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, that is
what will happen to him.”

But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had killed; and
had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff of his neck, out of
a hundred and fourteen street fights; and had had a dead cat brought
round for my inspection by an irate female, who called me a murderer; and
had been summoned by the man next door but one for having a ferocious dog
at large, that had kept him pinned up in his own tool-shed, afraid to
venture his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night; and
had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty
shillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I began to think
that maybe they’d let him remain on earth for a bit longer, after all.

To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most disreputable dogs
to be found in the town, and lead them out to march round the slums to
fight other disreputable dogs, is Montmorency’s idea of “life;” and so,
as I before observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs., and
hotels his most emphatic approbation..."




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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Picknick

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"...Today's dinner subtends a larger visual angle than yesterday's revolution...The bore is the same, eating dates under the cedars of Lebanon, as over a plate of baked beans in Beacon Street....a man shall sit down with his friend at the foot of the great Pyramid and they will take up the question they had been talking about under the 'great elm' and forget all about Egypt. When I was crossing the Po, we were all fighting about the propriety of one fellow's telling another that his argument was absurd...Mighty little we troubled ourselves for Paudus, the Po, 'a river wider than the Rhone,' and the times when Hannibal led his grim Africans to its banks, and his elephants thrust their trunks into the yellow waters..."

...Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

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I joined IIT KGP on the May Day of 1965 (it was not yet a Govt Holiday). Everything was new, strange and somewhat fearful for me. The lingo was absolutely unintelligible, food weird, customs unfathomable, etiquette ambiguous...Culture Shock.

And before I could settle down, there was this 'compulsory' Departmental Picnic to Kolaghat. Later it turned out to be not at all compulsory, but Professor SKDR, who was the youthful organizer, knew that I was the goat in the department and put the fear of God into my soul...I was afraid that my CR (yes, we still were under the Govt of India rules) may be blotted.

So, I woke up early (against my nature), finished my ablutions in a hurry and reached the Lovers Circle where I was supposed to be picked up by the IIT Bus at 5 AM...sharp...as SKDR threatened me. The bus came at 7 AM. And I had only standing room...all the Senior Professors were allowed with families...wives and kids.

The bus dropped about 50 of us at the KGP Railway Station. And we boarded the KGP-HWH Passenger. It steamed and tooted and trundled and chugged and dropped us at Kolaghat at 11 AM.

I was dying for a cup of coffee and of course there was nothing like it anywhere en route.

SKDR started bargaining with the couple of boatmen who saw the crowd and raised their tariff I guess by a factor of 3. Intense haggling went on for a good half an hour, SKDR threatening that we would all walk; and the boatmen seeing the ladies and kids knew that he was posturing...

Anyway, I had the misfortune of being pushed into a crowded corner where the 3 wisemen of the Dept, HNB, SKDR and GBM were quarreling over (as far as I could make out the few English words) Operating Grant, Equipment Grant, Senate Norms and such money matters...the three led the Research Labs.

So the breeze, the water, the boatman's song, the sky, and all else that Roop Narayan River could offer a young and wistful soul was completely lost on me. And to add to the discomfiture, the only lady RS of the Dept, about my age, was flirting with that Dev Anand of the Dept at the other end of the boat where they were squeezed willy-nilly...I never could figure out the technique.

By the time we arrived at the R&B Guest House which was booked for us, I was famished, and breakfast was certainly subtending a much larger visual angle than that lady scholar.

All that that Lady and BKM (of the Ukridge fame) could offer us was a plate full of raw bread slices and cut tomato pieces to be picked up and passed on...I could have devoured the whole plate but it just happened that I had yet to develop a taste for bread and salad...was worrying that that yellow patch on the bread slice was mold and that tomato looked rotten...I passed the plate on.

And it was followed by lukewarm tea poured out into strange-looking mud pots from the frayed spout of a jet black kettle...BKM explained that the log fire was buffeted by the swaying north wind.

And I was too scared to smoke in the company of Senior Profs who were all smoking but...

Roop Narayan was rippling and sparkling in the winter sun but the approach was muddy and there was this stench that forever engulfs river beds abutting populated Indian Villages.

BKM called me aside and asked me to accompany him to watch some fun. He took me to an ample figure sitting alone on the roundabout under a fig tree nearby and lost in thought apparently. And asked him:

"Why don't you share your problems with youngsters like us?"

The figure woke up from his reverie and grimaced and replied:

"Why should I? I can do my problems myself without your help"

BKM smiled and took me back into the crowd waiting for the arrival of the lunch packets ordered by SKDR, and said, when we were out of earshot of the old man:

"He is the most kanjoos intellectual in the Department...shame on him!"

Many years later I got to know that his name was SDM.

The lunch baskets arrived and as is the custom, kids were fed first and then ladies and then old profs and at last shy guys like me.

I opened my packet by the side of BKM who devoured his, licking his fingers and saying he never ate such good river fish...perhaps from Roop Narayan.

I offered mine to him and he thanked me immensely and said he would compensate by and by.

I don't know what happened then...maybe I dozed off...

BKM woke me up around 4 PM and asked me to walk with him to an incoming boat...we two walked over to the makeshift jetty, pants in mud and mud in pants...and climbed up...and BKM said something in some lingo to who looked like the Supplier who opened the cover of the aluminum degchi...and BKM picked up half a dozen singaras...hot hot...piled them on a leaf plate and asked me to sit down at the bow and help myself...

Till today I swear I never ate anything tastier, wholesomer, and heavenlier...

That degchi subtended a visual angle ten times larger than the stout and lonely figure under that fig tree...



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Monday, December 19, 2011

Simpleton Physics

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Let me confess: I was born a simpleton in Physics and will die one. But students called me a good teacher.

Moral: One can teach well without understanding the subject.

I have seen and met quite a few (like SDM) who have an amazing grasp of math but till date I have yet to meet one with an equal intuition in bread 'n' butter Physics. That simply may mean I have not mingled with as many as I ought to. Staying put in a colonial place like Hijli might not have done much good to me. There was no Fermi, Purcell or Feynman at KGP. Not my fault.

There was a book titled: The Flying Circus of Physics by Jearl Walker. If you had bought it and started reading, you would discover that you know very little Physics after so many years of dabbling in it. And get depressed. There is only one way of getting out of your blues. Pick up at random ten samples from that book and confront your most hi-fi colleague with them.

Anyway, here are a few goofy quizzes
(I am sure you met all of these in your Prep Physics)
that puzzled all 12 of us classmates at AU, Waltair; and some of our poor teachers too:

1. Inertia: All you have to do to go to America is to simply go vertically up in a helicopter for a hundred feet or so, hover there for 12 hours, and drop vertically down.

2. Antipodes: Dig a tunnel (with steps) from North Pole and keep going down towards the center of the earth and away and you will emerge at the South Pole with your feet first.

3. Bugbear: A sportsman (who forgot to bring his rifle) walks 1 km East and then 1 km North and finds a bear sitting on a rock. He runs back 1 km South, walks another 1 km East and then 1 km North and sees the same bear sitting on the same rock. And runs back....and repeats the drill seeing the same rock and the same bear. What is the color of the bear?

4. Fish in the Water Bucket: Where does the weight lost by the fish go and how?

5. Color TV?: Spin fast a disk with black and white alternate dots on concentric circles around the center of the disk. And you see colored streaks. Why?

6. Free Electron: Shine an alternating em field, say, in the rf range, on a free electron. In the steady state the electron's displacement will be out of phase with the field. Why?

7. Loony Affair: The size of the moon as seen from the earth is the same as that of the sun. Why?

8. Tippe Top: Watch it and keep wondering why.

9. Tides: Why does the sea bulge on both the (opposite) sides of the earth during a high tide instead of the just the side closest to the moon?

10. Feynman's Candles: Stick a dozen candles on the periphery of a disk and light them. And spin the disk.The flames turn inwards defying the centrifugal force.

Note: Don't bother about Q7: Loony Affair...it has no valid answer except that God wanted us to watch the terrifying spectacle of total eclipses...all temple gates were closed for six hours during last week's total lunar eclipse.


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Sunday, December 18, 2011

Flip Side of Teaching

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"...In my college days, I had a professor of history, who said,

'It's a pity you have failed. If you didn't know the answer, you could have written any answer you knew; if you didn't know anything of the subject, you could have copied the question paper. If you couldn't do even that, you could have told me and I would have given you marks.'

'I didn't know you were an examiner, sir'.

'What a pity, they ought not to keep it a secret.. All our troubles are due to it. After all you have listened to my lectures for a year and that's enough.'

I had another professor from Scotland who taught us English; an enlightened soul, who marked a minimum of 35% on all papers, and raised it on request. He was accessible, and amenable to reason and even to bargaining. He would ask, 'What marks do you expect to get?'

'Sixty, sir'. He would pick up the answer paper, glance through it, shake his head ruefully. 'I have given you the minimum of course, but I'll raise it to 40.'

'Sir, please make it 52. I want at least a second class.'

'All right. I hope your interest in literature is genuine'.

'Undoubtedly.'

Oh, but for this noble soul, I'd never have passed in English..."

......RKN in My Educational Outlook.

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It just happens that my Educational Outlook at IIT KGP coincides with RKN's.

In their third year, Indra's batch was very enthusiastic about my 'Elementary QM' Course. And they gave me a fantastic feedback in prose, poetry and drama.

So I thought I should set a good question paper in their Endsem.

The whole class trooped into my room after the exam and gheraoed me. And said unanimously that the paper was phenomenally tough and lengthy and asked me to raise their grades by one level...i.e. B ---> A.

I raised them by two; since there was no legitimate A.

Here is a list of the sidekick functions of a Teacher in increasing order of unpleasantness:

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1. Roll Call:

I used to take attendance at the beginning of every class since the time spent in the exercise helps to dampen the evil effects of their earlier class and helps them to settle down for the next onslaught. When the class strength was less than 25, I was able to match the names and the faces. When it reached 60, I still took the Roll Call with my head down since I liked to get familiar with the names of my students. When it rose to 150 then 250 and then 350, I just didn't bother. The Dean asked me if I didn't take even spot-attendance (meaning by surprise). I said never. When he cited the practices of the other departments, I asked him: "Why do you want an unwilling student in your class? He will be a nuisance." He fell silent.

But there was this curious student in one of my Jumbo Classes who insisted
towards the end of the semester
that I should have taken attendance, since he was thoroughly regular. I told him that there are no marks for attendance.

He fainted...

2. Papersetting

When I used to set an easy paper, IITians would spread the word that gps is a funk. When I set an original paper, they gheraoed me for raising their grades. By and by I decided it is best to set the same paper in all years with data changed. Everyone was happy.

3. Invigilation

To Heaven With It...it was just policing, a job I detest. And it was counterproductive, to say the least. 3 hours of unremitting boredom...

4. Evaluation of Scripts

By weight....

5. Grand Viva

I never faced one at my University and I guess I am ok. I never saw why it should be forced on unwilling students. It should be made optional, with no credits...Let the masochists and sadists have their pleasant get-together and leave me alone.

6. Reco

This is a malevolent instrument of torture for the Giver and Taker devised by Evil. I never had to beg for a Reco and I guess I am ok. It should be abolished forthwith.

The post: Reco Mela - 2

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/08/reco-mela-2.html

has taken a thousand hits.

QED

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Saturday, December 17, 2011

Speed of Light

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The other day there was this news item (later retracted?) that they found neutrinos traveling faster than light.

That recalled my fondness for the topic of Measurement of Speed of Light c. I used to revel in teaching this to first years during my youth at KGP.

If I recall right, that great soul called Galileo made two lamps with shades, gave one to his Assistant and kept one to himself. And one night asked his Assistant to go to the other end of the street and open his shade as soon as he sees light from his own lamp. And counted the seconds, possibly on his pulse. And decided that the speed of light is infinite or nearly so.

This is what I call Cheek...an essential qualification for a Physicist.

And then came Romer who did measure it by watching the moons of Jupiter. And then Bradley using stellar aberration, a fun topic in itself. And then coming down to Earth from the Heavens, Fizeau and his toothed wheel and two hillocks. And then Foucalt bringing it within the four walls of his lab by his rotating mirror. And then Michelson's celebrated interferometric measurements.

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Once upon a time UG students started grumbling that their Phy Lab was most boring and they were doing mesozoic experiments measuring surface tension and viscosity and were being ridiculed wherever they went.

And one day DB ran to me and told me that there is a new experiment in the third year lab on the 'measurement of the speed of light'.

I was rather credulous and also incredulous. And surreptitiously visited the third year lab when no one was there but Basanto-da and asked him to show me the thing.

It turned out to be truly revolutionary.

There was this coil whose parameters like the number of turns, radius etc were known. And students were using an AC Bridge to measure its self-inductance L and, using the formula for L, getting the mu-not of vacuum.

Now, now, using the Halliday-Resnick value of epsilon-not, it is a matter of simple calculation to get the speed of light c in, you know, vacuum.

However, it is not that simple to please IIT students by such gimmicks.

And then the new Physicist-Director sanctioned a fantastic sum of twenty lakh rupees, give or take five lakhs, for the Modernization of the UG Phy Labs.

And show him.

There was this scramble and a big German Company sent its salesman with their latest literature. MLM was the HoD then and apparently placed an order for an experimental set-up to measure the speed of light in the second year laboratory. I was then the Big Boss of the fourth year lab. I got to know about this when MLM came to my room and said that the Pandora's Box has arrived from Germany and could I please open it, install it, test it, measure the speed of the damn thing, and show him how (one lakh rupees have to be accounted for urgently).

I asked BKM the Inside Story. He told me that the thing they sent was not the thing they promised to send...some accessories in the list were missing.

I told MLM that I wouldn't like to go to the second year lab (the lab-in-charge may get angry); and he should send the Box for its deflowering to the fourth year lab where BKM (the present Dean) and SKR (the present HoD) were available all the while. He said ok.

We three opened the Box and after some fiddling discovered that the Germans sent their latest model that no longer needed some of the listed accessories of the older model quoted.

It took about half an hour. And my delight knew no bounds. It was indeed a time-of-flight measurement using a laser beam. There was this wonderful optical bench at one end of which is shot a He-Ne laser beam that is electronically modulated much like Fizeau's toothed wheel cutter. And a mirror at the other end. The reflected beam is mixed with the outgoing beam, demodulated, and the phase difference (due to the time of travel) between the two is measured by watching the Lissajous Ellipse on the screen of an oscilloscope. Just move the mirror on the optical bench till you go over from a straight line through ellipse, circle, ellipse and straight line back.

We felt like Fizeau for once!

The (chopped) light beam can be seen with the naked eye going back and forth, in the mind's eye. And it was sensitive enough for UGs.

Heil Ho Deutschland!


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Friday, December 16, 2011

Atticus Moments

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Watch this video closely:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brVOFCo9c1U

And look at the dumbfounding amazement in the eyes of Jem Finch while he watches his dad.

Well, if you live close to seventy autumns like I am doing, you too would surely have a couple of Atticus Moments when you bowled over unsuspecting kids; and wise folks too.

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Four days back Sailaja's
didi came down from Singapore to our place in Hyderabad with her dad and mom on a vacation. And she has a naughty son of 6 who is all over the place fiddling with things and asking questions to everyone (in another couple of years he will fall silent...).

And found the door of my bedroom always shut and whenever he peeked he found me lying supine on my bed and staring at the ceiling. Never eating on the Dining Table with others, nor sitting in the Drawing Room watching TV like everyone else. Old, with a few strands of gray hair, toothless, speechless and walking around watching each step like a blind man. He made a couple of futile attempts at conversation.

Towards evening one male and three female adults in the household with he and Ishani wished to go overnight to his Grannie's place 10 km away along the unruly Bombay Highway. And found that my son went away to his Office in his sedan. And were wondering how to reach there. Sailja came in and asked me if I could drop them in my jalopy. I got dressed up and ready and all of us lifted down to the basement.

And I opened the doors to let them in and took the Driver's seat and wore the seat-belt and was watching his eyes in the rear-view mirror.

And that was when I recalled that Atticus video.

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About a month ago one evening we had a couple visiting us for an hour. The gentleman, one of Sailaja's distant uncles, is a big shot in Delhi and was on a business trip to Hyderabad and staying in Taj Krishna.

My son was away at his Office and I was the only available male host. And I was in the midst of composing an intricate blog. Finally, Sailja entered my bedroom and apologetically asked if I could come down to the Drawing Room for a couple of minutes to say Hi to her guests.

And I went down and smiled and sat down. The only question that the Uncle decided to ask me was:

"How do you pass your time?"

And I replied as usual: "Oh, doing this and that"

And he sympathized with unemployed retired folks and said that his dad too has a tough time sitting all the while in front of the Box...and perhaps eating chips ;)

And I kept quiet for a while and since the talk was not straying from the topic, I went into my bedroom and returned with a bunch of Ishani booklets, dumped them on his lap and said:

"This is how I spend my time"

....Yesterday, there was this door bell ringing endlessly, I answered it and found a Courier Boy asking for Sailaja.

I returned to my bedroom and in a few minutes, Sailaja gave me the opened envelope saying: "Mamayya, this is for you!"

I found a ToI Clipping with a yellow post-it slip reading:

"Sailaja:

When I saw this article I instantly remembered your father-in-law. I admire him and his infinite love for your daughter. I thought I should pass this article to him.

All the best wishes to you all...

Uncle"

And the clipping is titled:

"I write for my grandson...Gulzar"

Wow!!!


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Thursday, December 15, 2011

Boycott - 2

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To return to the epigraph of yesterday's post, the lady needn't have traveled all the way to India to see untouchability that was the epitome of our caste system. It is there everywhere all the time; you just have to open your eyes and introspect (no contradiction there). It exists at various levels from the brute physical to the subtle intellectual.

It was pretty bad in our Village in the 1950s. They may now resent Gandhijee's attempts to eradicate it as condescending but it was he who took up the Harijans' cause overtly and emboldened them. There was this great commotion in our Village, Muthukur, when a handsome and youthful landlord was ambushed and attacked and lynched to death for his perceived transgressions.

But, untouchability was and is there within the four walls of our South Indian Brahmin households...I was flummoxed when my mom didn't allow me to touch her for all of three days a month. And everyday for the one or two hours while she sits down to her Puja after elaborate ablutions. And if I insisted I have got to embrace her, as a kid of 3, I was stripped stark naked. So, it is no surprise that the first boycott of the so-called outcastes was that they were not allowed to touch the community well; among other things.

Well, the Americans were no better. Just read Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. It is so explicitly against the treatment they gave to their colored fellowmen that it was Mark Twain that was about to be boycotted...because famous literary contemporaries of his were enraged that almost all the white adults in his book were shown as crooks while the coloreds were shown as innocents.

And Muhammed Ali said it openly:

'Ali stated, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong... No Viet Cong ever called me nigger" – one of the more telling remarks of the era.[6]'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali

That is an instance of Black & White. If you want yellow, just cross the Himalayas and enter the dragon kingdom and shout: "Long Live Dalai Lama!"

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The first boycott in which I was asked to join was at IIT KGP. It was like this:

In the good old days, say, between 1955 and 1975, there was this phenomenon of permanent headship of the HoDs. If a senior professor got to be appointed HoD he would head the Department forever till his retirement or death, whichever is earlier, as the legalese went. And the other Professors resented this since most of them never got the chance to hold that powerful position. So, there was a "KGP Spring". Teachers got together and formed a Teachers Association to fight the System. It was called IITTA...I guess it is still there. And enrolled all of us as members whether we paid the Membership Fees regularly or not.

And, as you know, no one in power for decades likes to lose it. So, the Elite formed a rival thing called Faculty Forum and supported the Director of the moment. That sure was cause for trouble.

And the FF, since they were all in powerful positions of Gymkhana President and Deans and Dons and Wardens had direct hold on the Students. And to teach Teachers a Lesson, egged on the Student VP, Hall Secs et al to come up in a hurry with a Muster Roll of all the 250 Teachers with marks against each Teacher how effective he is as a teacher. It was all done in a hurry and most students were given a Feedback Form and asked to rate their teachers overnight on a scale of 0-100. Kids being kids, didn't understand the Game but were most happy to avail the chance of their lifetime.

So, overnight there were copies of the Assessment File floating all over the Campus rating all the 250 of us with consolidated marks against each of us.

Then shoot hit the Teachers' Fan..

A GBM of the IITTA was called and we were all asked to boycott Hall Days (social boycott).

Students didn't mind it...rather...

Since it was ineffective, we were called upon to participate in Reco Boycott.

Then shoot hit the Students' Fan.

Then we were called upon to participate in Invigilation Boycott.

Then shoot hit the Director's Fan.

Then Russi Mody, Chairman, Board of Governors, stepped in and used his Divide and Rule Policy: he asked the Director to sack the troublesome Office Bearers of the IITTA.

And promote all other teachers wherever possible.

That is how all six of us who applied in the Phy Dept, including DB and I, got kicked upstairs (Percussive Sublimation of Peter Principle) as Full Professors...it was called Merit Promotion...or, if you don't like simple English, Supernumerary Promotion...due mostly to Reco Boycott...

Do keep it under your hat!


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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Boycott - 1

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"Once a visitor from a far-off country called on me. When I asked her what I could do for her, she replied, 'I would love to take Indian coffee in Indian style.' This was an understandable request in this part of the country. After coffee she said, 'Now I want to see the caste system. May I see it in your house?' I blinked for a while and then told her that caste system was not a curio in a glass case to be displayed on request."

....RKN in Castes: Old and New in A Writer's Nightmare

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Well, when I opened that RKN's book for that Quote I saw the dedication:

"To Sir, With Love, Aniket Basu, June 19, 1999"

There are too many 9s and a couple of 1s in that date...must be a pleasure for a number theorist if not a numerologist. Talking of numbers, I recall another book gifted to me by KK titled: "e: The Story of a Number" by Eli Maor. As expected, there is no dedication by KK so I had to do it myself. It is dated: 23-11-2001. I strongly recommend this book for all readers of this blog. It is just superb. Chapter 13 titled:

"e^ix: The Most Famous of All Formulas"

has this blurb:

"There is a famous formula---perhaps the most compact and famous of all formulas---developed by Euler from a discovery of De Moivre: e^i pi + 1 = 0...It appeals equally to the mystic, the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician"...Edward Kasner and James Newman, Mathematics and Imagination (1940).

Eli writes: "..(it is a) formula that connects the five most important constants of mathematics..."

Oh, well, to Aniket I can say that I have given him a Return Gift of about 10 times the Bulk Reading Material he gifted me, through my blog...and he does read it. To KK, it doesn't matter...he is so focused on Physics that he has no time for anything else. But we do call and talk for hours once in a while about Queens & Cauliflowers.

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That was too much of a digression from Boycott...

There was this piquant news item that there is a proposal that India should boycott the London Olympics. Because, one of their chief sponsors is a Megalith Firm that bought over another Teralith firm that refused to suitably compensate the victims of the infamous Bhopal Gas Tragedy; and pleads complete innocence of the entire affair.

I strongly support the case of BGT victims. It is one of those inhuman faces of Corporate Evil...'Evil' is another nuanced term I learned from an earlier US President, by name Bush Jr, but failed to acknowledge in my yesterday's post...shows there is no end of learning for a die-hard learner like me ;-)

But boycotting London Olympics? It is as laughable as sitting on the toilet seat of a BA airplane for a good ten minutes and then noticing that their toilet roll is manufactured by a Company you don't like...and then boycotting its product.

It is indeed worse than that...any boycott to be effective should at least be noticed.

Well, of all historical boycotts, I guess, Boston Tea Party (no denying Freud...that came out as Boston Teat Party) takes the cake...we had to mug up a para on it in our school because it was leaked out that a question on it is there in the Board Exam Social Studies Paper...it wasn't there though.

And then there was this most effective boycott of British Mill Cloth by Gandhijee. Its replacement by the hand-spun native khaddar became so popular that in the 1950s, after 3 decades or so, my granpa had a spinning wheel in his home and used to work it for at least half an hour every morning religiously after his retirement. And, we in our school's Craft Classes had to pass a practical exam on it. That Spinning Wheel became the center piece of the Congress Flag. And Gandhijee became the unlikely hero of the ruthlessly exploited workers of the Lancashire Cloth Mills:


"...One of Darwen's biggest claims to fame is that it hosted a visit from Mohandas K. Gandhi in 1931. He had accepted the invitation from Corder Catchpool, owner of Greenfield Mill, to see the effects of India's boycott of cotton goods. The unemployed mill workers greeted the man with great affection even when they were out of work, as they understood it was not India but greedy and irresponsible mill owners who were responsible for their situation..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwen

If you think that Sebastian Coe is going to stop whatever he is doing and run to India to plead with our Bosses: " PULLLEASE don't boycott us! We are innocent of BGT", I think you are on one of those Heights of Optimism so popular during our youth at IIT KGP...say, two homo-paths haggling over a second-hand pram.


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