Ishani is just into her second year, but being a girl child, has already outgrown her hundred toys and dolls that move, spin, squeak and blink (I still play with her spinning tops).
Her mom's kitchen-work from peeling vegetables to boiling her milk fascinates her. She also assists our maid Parvati in her broom-work, snatching it and undoing whatever has been done with it (the broom is twice her height).
And fetches her Picture Books and asks her mom what each picture does by pointing her finger on them.
This morning while I was going out I found the two absorbed deep in their studies, her mom showing a rooster and saying it crows: "Coacko-row-co!"; and passing on to their next pic.
I couldn't resist poking in, and asked Ishani what a hen says: cupping my mouth I called:
"Peckack-peck-peck-peck---Peckack-peck-peck-peck!...".
She then lost all interest in her books and chased me around for repeat performances, grinning wide all the day whenever she saw me.
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If you ask me what I had been doing at IIT KGP in and out of the Class Room, the short and pithy answer is: "Peckack-peck-peck-peck---Peckack-peck-peck-peck!...".
And my Guru and Guide SDM was even worse: he had no interest at all in crowing.
He never read any Book or Paper at KGP as he admitted to me for fear they would 'influence' him, nor attended any Conference; and his Class Rooms were famous for his off-the-cuff remarks on the subject he was supposed to teach laced with pearls of insight not to be found elsewhere; and I never saw him get to the black board (the doors were always open and he would be found sitting in his chair and talking Quantum Field Theory...his students loving it like li'l Ishani...his Question Papers were formal and anyone who cared knew the standard essays and got good enough marks in the classic Calcutta University tradition...high second class).
Maverick!
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Webster defines Maverick as "an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party".
I have always been enchanted with by-lanes rather than highways even when they led to dead-ends like a curious wall or a palatial mansion.
Sidestreams vs Mainstream.
Today's Maverick may turn out to be tomorrow's Mainstream, but then the charm gets diluted.
Bernard Shaw was the typical Maverick of his times, both in his writings and life (he met his match in Gandhi and the two met up):
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Gandhi meets George Bernard Shaw
"This leader from India, Gandhi, was a mystery and a wonder for the British. The way he lived everyday was news in London. His day began at four and he kept on working well past midnight.
Attending the meetings, taking part in discussions with leaders and his visitors, writing replies to the letters received, and preparing articles for the journals.
One day George Bernard Shaw, the famous thinker and playwright visited him. “I am also a sort of a Mahatma’’, Shaw said as he grasped the hands of Mahatma Gandhi. They discussed various topics of common interest for about an hour.
“Is not this Round Table Conference testing your patience”, asked the playwright.
“Infinite patience is needed in matters like this” Gandhi, the great Indian leader responded".
http://www.indiavideo.org/text/gandhi-met-george-bernard-shaw-80.php****************************************************************************************************
Among Physicists Feynman was certainly the Maverick Supremo in all senses of the word. His book: "Surely you are joking, Feynman!" annoyed as many as it thrilled.
His Feynman Lectures are maverick: his Third Volume turns QM on its head..he starts with a Two-State System and the Free Particle Schrodinger Equation comes last.
Another QM Book by Levy-leblond and Balibar titled Quantics is equally maverick: it has hardly any Equation, but hundreds of graphs culled from the latest papers...QM as it is done in the lab by experts in the subject.
Landau-Lifshiz's Classical Theory of Fields (First Edition) was an eye-opener for me; and S Chandrasekhar said he learned all his GR from that single book (as usual, the later editions are more than double its size and half as good for a beginner like me). Instead of starting from Coulomb's Law it started its EM with a Lagrangian Formulation.
String Theory was maverick when it began...and it is Mainstream now, I guess.
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Coming to myself, I published a couple of dozen Articles and Papers on the by-lanes and alleys of undergraduate Physics in Teaching Journals and am rather proud of them all. Sayan found my first Note in AJP 1970 helpful after a good 35 years and that made me so happy.
Vinit says he downloaded them all and read them with pleasure; and Vinit is not one to be pleased easily...he sat in my QM Class but missed my EM.
My retired blog-life is certainly maverick...all my contemporaries are into more formal pursuits.
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For me Edward Lear is the Maverick in Eng Lit.
I had to mug up Classical Love Poetry in my School and College days, terminating in the Tennyson lines:
'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
But any day, any number of times, I can re-read Lear's: The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bongy-Bo:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/search?q=Lear%27s+Best
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I asked Shyamal, the maverick Physicist-Poet why he doesn't blog his poetry.
He replied that he was afraid folks would steal them.
Like "Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays virtue", I guess "Plagiarism is the tribute mediocrity pays excellence".
How I wish my blogs get plagiarized please!!!
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