Acta Mechanica

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All my childhood ambitions were petty and mechanical...I achieved all of them save one.

None artistic, intellectual or literary.

For instance I never tried singing, dancing, drawing, painting, writing, discussing or debating.

As for modern art, I always thought it was an elaborate exercise in conning...to me all those cubism, primitivism, surrealism and stuff sounded like vegetarianism or hinduism if not 'organ'ism. My friend Edwin Taylor was an inveterate museum-hopper and used to take his annual holiday in Europe...no wonder the benign Autocrat said 150 years ago: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris" (he did his Degrees in Medicine in Paris and so ought to know).

As for music, I am the Personification of RKN's Non-Musical Man, one of his best prose pieces in Next Sunday. I tried sitting in Classical Music Concerts, both Carnatic and Hindusthani (to say nothing of Rabindra Sangeet or Beethoven Symphonies); and my attention span was at best 5 long minutes...and then I scamper to Harry's cement bench for a leisurely session of woolgathering. Give me some light classical filmy music of Manna Dey or the baritone of Hemanta-da (there is no escape from Bongs wherever you go) and I am pleased as punch.

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The earliest ambition of mine was to drive a thin steel wheel of about a meter diameter with a steel 'hooked guide' along the streets of my seaside village Muthukur. I borrowed one from my friend and 'did' it in 5 minutes without training.

My father could fling my spinning top (latthoo) in the air and catch it on his palm...that took a couple of days.

Yo-yo came much later and I had to spend days and nights mastering it.

After I left my village to a proper town I begged one of my friends to teach me how to ride his 24" heavy push-bike when my leg- height was much less than that; and he demonstrated what he called charmingly: "half-pedal" (instead of sitting on the seat which was too high, he inserted his right leg within the frame and drove away in a half-standing posture). It took 2 days and 20 tumbles and 30 bruises, but I just DID it...as that T-shirt slogan said.

Starting a leg-driven sewing machine took 2 years in Jaansaheb's dukan much to my profound regret later on when I broke his precious bobbin and had to embark on a futile life-long career in teaching ....

Much later I learned to drive my friend NP's Bajaj Chetak and then Maruti 800 after much fretting and fuming...the damned clutch is a negative device...to put the vehicle in motion you have to 'let it out' slowly instead of 'pushing it' slowly, I don't know why...I can only be thankful that the throttle is not designed like the clutch {;-}

Meanwhile I mastered the craft of soldering electronic components at my University on my own...our Demonstrator was damn good at it but he never let out the technique...yes, there is a technique! Many of my older students in my 4th Year Lab recall their frustration when they came to me with their 'data' for signature and I used to go to their Table, pull out all their soldered components one by one with a mere flick of the finger and they had to admit that their data was 'pressure-cooked'. Unlike my Demon-strator at AU, I used to teach them the 'right' way but they couldn't care less because they were sure that Cosmology or String theory didn't need soldering...just 'pressure-cooking' {;-}

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The lamentable exception was 'swimming'.

One evening when I was a kid of 3, I was standing by the side of a half-filled cement water tank and slowly by and by started trying to reach the water by bending over the wall of the tank which was half my height...and took a fearsome tumble with head dipping in water and legs dangling skywards. Some uncle of mine retrieved me, much to my shame and chagrin...I mean the retrieval...it was touch and go.

Since then I had a healthy fear of water and was convinced that I am not a mildly amphibious animal like a dog or a goat.

But the ambition persisted since all my friends were merrily swimming in the village pond and showed off several of their tricks like effortlessly standing in 20 feet of water without drowning.

So, when I was a good 12 years old I begged a senior of mine to teach me swimming. He took me to the village pond, both of us walking in till I was neck-deep, and suddenly he thrust my head into the water and refused to let go, saying that this was his first Lesson. I hit him here and there with my legs and feet till he let go; and ran like a bat out of Hell to my home stark naked and as wet as an angry hen.

I suppose this unfulfilled ambition of mine will make me come back here on Earth pretty soon after I get my ticket and visa to the Great Teachers Heaven....I mean I learned then and there from my swimming 'lesson' that dipping a student's head in deep waters all of a sudden will only make him flee Physics as a career...and switch over to Banking and Finance which work on a similar principle applied to 'customers'.

Not so Landau.

The great teacher that he was, I am told he used to shove his graduate students into the whirlpool of Theoretical Physics by giving them a Problem each and asking them to come up with the Solution in 24 hours...much like SDM...the survivors stick around and the rest go to Civil Engineering...

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