Yesterday evening I got the best of recent gifts from Samit & Pratik. They were a great team indeed!
The first was a gorgeous hard-covered Coffee Table Book titled:
"Sixty Years in the Service of the Nation: An Illustrated History of IIT Kharagpur"
It must have cost a thousand rupees at the least. Its 271 pages are full of delightful drawings (mostly by one Swapan Bala whose name doesn't ring a bell for me), 'old is gold' black & white photographs, and authoritative write-ups of the 6-decade-history of IIT KGP. It was great to browse. Its byline has, among others, the team of:
Dharam Vir
Dhrubajyoti Sen
Priyadarshi Patnaik
Arnab Kumar Hazra
In the main body of Acknowledgments I was delighted to find my name (who wouldn't?) The thing reads: "The blog-site of Professor G. P. Sastry also provided us with helpful information."
This reminded me of a mythological tidbit told me by my Father as to how the squirrel got its stripes on its back. Apparently Raam was coolly watching the building of the bridge to Lanka (the controversial Ram Sethu) by his monkey-warriors. They were all carrying huge boulders and dumping them in the sea tirelessly. A squirrel watching the commotion and the radiant face of Lord Raam had this desire to help in the supreme ongoing effort of Civil Engineering. And couldn't resist.
So, on a pious impulse, it dug itself into the sand, came up, ran to the seashore, and shook itself like the KGP dog does when he is bored, so that the sand sticking to its body dropped into the sea, thus contributing its pennyworth. It ran back and forth again and again and again till it stood stock still when it ran out of breath. Watching the squirrel, Raam walked down and held the squirrel up in his left palm and, with his three right fingers, stroked down its back gently in loving Acknowledgment, leaving those permanent indelible marks of his running fingerprints.
***************************************************************************************************************
The other is the lovely Dinner Table Book titled:
"60 Years of Department of Physics & Meteorology"
It is Dinner Table Book because, though thinner and less expensive, it took that much more time to read, chew and digest than the Coffee One. Needless to say, my good name is there in a dozen places (I didn't count though) including the From the Desk of the HOD by Samit. As expected, Pratik decided to be Anonymous...after me, he will be the most modest.
The sentence that tickled me pink goes under the photo item of my Guru SDM:
"Prof. G. P. Sastry, who is admired for his pedagogy, worked on the electrodynamics of anisotropic media and Cherenkov radiation for his Ph D under the supervision of Prof. Datta Majumdar."
That is because the word 'pedagogy' always amused me somehow.
See the Limerick I posted long long ago:
**************************************************************************************************************
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Soggy Foggy Groggy Limerick
Somu has his Cosmology
And Pratik his Demo-gogy
They wrote a book
It has a great look
And cites my poor pedagogy
And Pratik his Demo-gogy
They wrote a book
It has a great look
And cites my poor pedagogy
Dedicated to my younger colleagues Professors Somnath Bharadwaj and Pratik Khastigir.
And indebted to Dr. Shyamal Chakrabarty (didn't do spell-checks) for this free-for-all art form...
===========================================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment