Sinking Feeling

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

Apropos of Sweet Sixty:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/09/sweet-sixty.html

Saswat writes:

Dear Sir:

Regarding your recent blog "Sweet Sixty", Indra's piece is funny. I also remember feeling quite confused upon seeing the wash basins in lecture rooms. Wash basins usually belonged to bathrooms. It was very distracting to see the wash basins in the lecture rooms every day for the first 3 years! It was only when you did your almost algorithmic ritual of erasing the blackboard and washing your hands that it all made sense - almost an aha moment for us! It became clear immediately, once you did your ritual in front of us for the first time, that here was a teacher who will shine light on many mysteries by the sheer power of simple and clear demonstrations.

As for the grumpiness that Indra refers to, you did seem a bit unapproachable to the freshers. Perhaps it was the aura that had built up around you due to all those GP stories we heard from seniors all the time. But, of course, it just took one class from you for us to realize that you were not only approachable but also the ideal person on whom to unleash all our questions.

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

Dear Saswat:

Well, Truth is truth even if it turns out to be disllusionmenting {;-}

When the Physics Department started its M Sc programs way back in the 1960s, it had only 2 floors (ground and the first) in the C-Block. So, most of the rooms in our C-Block served as labs. All lecture classes were held in the F-Block which don't have any 'wash basins' as you call them. They still don't have. When I had to take my lecture classes there, after erasing the black boards (which later turned green, with envy), I had to use my hankie to clear the 'white-collar' dust and I resented it.

Suddenly, the ECE Dept which was occupying the top floor suffered a Free Expansion as SDM called it and got their own building. When they moved out, Prof HNB of Physics and Prof. Bhattacharya of Chemistry fought for exclusive possession of the entire top floor. The Director did a Radcliffe Award and divided the spoils between Physics and Chemistry Depts. The rule was that if any contiguous room is left unoccupied by either dept, it would go to the other. So, HNB shunted Research Scholars and CLR upstairs and me too. I was allotted the Wagah Border post for one year as a sitting room. It was an ECE Electronics Lab earlier and so, it had 3 ft angle irons jutting from the walls, used as brackets for their electronics equipment like oscilloscopes. SDM once visited my room and remarked in his own style of graveyard humor that if all my papers get rejected, the angle iron projections would come useful. So, as HNB ordered, I had to hold fort till the angle irons were removed and it was converted into a lab, much later occupied by RNP.

Coming back to the Radcliffe Award Rule, we had to shift all our Lecture Classes from the F-Block to within our C-Block to use up and thereby save our Space, since obviously you can't build so many labs to fill the huge number of rooms acquired overnight. So, the labs in our first floor were uplifted to the top floor and we were asked to take our lectures in what used to be the first floor labs.

That is the reason you find so many 'wash basins' as you call them in our lecture halls. They were not wash basins but huge 'lab sinks' meant for draining our chemicals and stuff and wash our hands. You would also have noticed if you cared that these 'lecture rooms' also have sockets for what was a DC 300 volt line charged by a central battery bank in the ground floor; the reason being electronic equipment those days were vacuum-tube driven and these required 300 volt supply for their 'Plates'.

So, what I was happily using for washing my hands were really lab sinks...sorry!

As to grumpiness, it was a post-marital phenomenon.

gps

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