viva la kgpia! - 3

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By and by I learned that Electronics was SDM's Blind Spot (he was a terror in the Spectroscopy Lab though; he did breathtaking work in Theoretical Molecular Spectroscopy solving the Polyatomic Schrodinger Equation in a novel way that led to his famous Majumdar Formula for CG Coefficients).

I guess in his Presidency College days he lectured passionately and patriotically that Marconi stole the circuit for his first Radio from Sir J C Bose amidst claps from his juniors; and then cut his Electronics Labs and left for their Harry's Coffee House for a rush of heady nicotine. He was a chain-smoker alright. But unlike other reformed smokers he never used to decry smoking. On the other hand he used to say that it is impossible to do a Ph D in Theoretical Physics without smoking.

Reformed smokers, like reformed sinners, are better avoided by and large.

There was this gifted writer Chalam in the 1940s who became famous for his series of novels called Chalam Sahityam that advocated Free Love, Liberation of Women from the fetters of Marital Vows, and the Works, which together were brave and rave and sold like hot cakes and helped societal reform.

Unfortunately however, after his hormones dried up, Chalam came under the spell and became a Devotee of a famous Guru and started preaching Sublime Love and Devotion. Had he consistently indulged in soft-porn mixed with Divine Love he could easily have written prose versions of Jayadev's Geet Govind.

SDM was the antithesis of Chalam, hormones or no hormones.

Maybe due to his allergy to Electronics, SDM was unhappy with his M Sc (Physics) results and did a brilliant M Sc (Math) as an add-on. His intuition in Physics was marvelous but his ability in Math was unparalleled. He told me that Teachers in his Sylhet School used to learn Math from him (he stood First Class First in the Pre-Partition Combined Calcutta University Matriculation Exam).

Returning to SDM's lifelong aversion to Electronics:

Four years after I joined him in my Ph D work which was more or less through by the end of 1973, by some wicked evanescent Rule, SDM was posted as a Teacher in the Electronics Lab for a Semester (the Semester system took over by then).

One day when I went to his Office he showed me his Routine with the Tuesday Afternoon Electronic Lab Class with a grin of chagrin. But he was too proud to ask for a repeal (by contrast later on when I became the TT-in-Charge for a couple of years, Senior Professors used to rush to my Office with Requests).

I then went to the TT-in-Charge (Prof RGC) and saw to it that I was posted as SDM's Co-Teacher in that Electronics Lab on Tuesday Afternoons.

What happened in that Lab for a whole Semester, I reserve for
viva la kgpia! - 4

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