Jams & Jimies

==========================================================================

Q: What does a Policeman have on his bread?

A: Traffic jam

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

That was a Champak PJ of my son's generation.

Talking of traffic jams, monsoon traffic in Hyderabad is exhilarating. What would be a one-hour summer commute from Secunderabad to Hi-Tech City (even with seven flyovers along the way) grows threefold after just a drizzle.

Another exhilarating news of Traffic Police is that it is now on Facebook. Whatever Hyderabad's faults, it is very tech-savvy, thanx to Naidu. Apparently, the Police will be sending you text messages on your mobile about impending jams on your route and advise you of alternate routes...frying pan to fire.

I read that one of the worst but most exhilarating traffic jams in the US happened at the Woodstock thing in mid-August 1969. They expected a 30,000 crowd and discovered that half a million were on their way all driving their jalopies (most were in their teens).

http://www.celticguitarmusic.com/woodstock.htm

Our own Pt Ravi Shankar was there performing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz8vZHLohJY

1969 and Woodstock counter-culture were the stuff my gen recalls at the Faculty Hostel at KGP.

There were several novel additions to our lingo:

flower power, baby boomer, hard rock, psychedelic, LSD, Beatles, Hippies, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix...

We heard soulful melodies like: "Blowin' in the Wind" routinely in the Lunch Time Varieties of AIR, Cal (is it still there?):

http://beemp3.com/download.php?file=1084986&song=Blowin%27+In+the+Wind

And slogans like: "Make babies, not war!"

Sure, but how?

We were no longer in our teens, but carefree bachelors nonetheless.

The few young residents in SN Hall were in the Architecture Dept. Since Humanities Dept didn't have a UG Program, Architects were the pretenders for arts and culture.

One day a staid 45-year-old Professor of Architecture whose wife was away came to our Dining Hall as a guest, and declared aloud:

"There is no hope for the world except in Hippies and Mahesh Yogi"

Absence of wife makes a man bold!

Anyway, we too had our first look at Hippies when a couple visited IIT KGP for sightseeing and were put up in our Hostel which doubled as a Guest House. All of us were stunned at what we saw, the less said the better...only they were high and huddled all the time.

And then when I next visited Chowringhee, the place was full of them...chock-a-block. The shock slowly subsided, but not before I was traveling in a sleeper compartment of Madras Mail and at the dead of the night smelt some strange, funny, sweet and nauseating odor and traced it to a Hippie couple busy at the dark bathroom corridor.

Unfortunately that smell recurred at SFs and I had to quit watching them.

And the flower power sadly coincided with the Naxalism Wave that swept Cal causing havoc to the Presidency College. Parents who used to send their brightest students to Pres Physics started thinking of IIT KGP for the first time. I guess Pres never recovered. Unfortunately, once they stepped down to the glorified Engg College in Bengal, they started looking at other IITs and the best of the lot drifted to Kanpur...the loss is theirs {;-}

Maybe Didi will bring Pres Physics back to its past glory...

I recall one of the APS Conferences being hailed Physics Woodstock...is it Hi-Tc Superconductivity...very hip...



=========================================================================