Self-Pollination

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We read in our school books that Mother Nature goes to great lengths to avoid Inbreeding, particularly in the plant kingdom. Most flowers like the javaa phool (hibiscus) have taller stamens than carpels to avoid self-pollination. While I was sitting and smoking on the lawn bench of the tiny lawn of our Faculty Hostel at KGP, I discovered an extreme example of this abhorrence of Nature...a species of tiny flowers growing around have their stamens and carpels screened away from one another by the petal itself...a delightful sight to watch. In our seaside Village on the Coast of Coromandel of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo we had hundreds of palm trees. About half of them were male and the better half female...Who said Man is the most intelligent?...

In the human kingdom also consanguinity (inbreeding) within large families and sects reduces the population, like in the famous Parsis. But there are families that insist that they marry within their sect. A branch of our own extended family which was a 'closed set' had this feature: All their boys are geniuses in their own fields; but all girls while extremely good-looking are jara nadan; for generations.

I don't know about Oxbridge but I read Feynman being asked to quit MIT after his UG and shift to Princeton for his Ph D, to avoid Inbreeding. I also heard that IIT Kanpur (being a clone of the best of the US) had this tradition of giving their Research Scholars (like KK) the heave-ho, asking them to join as Faculty elsewhere, prove their worth and try and return later if they wish (like DC). Complete Cross-Pollination.

But during the 1960s when I joined IIT KGP, I found no such rules against Inbreeding. The tradition was for Professors to try and absorb their Research Scholars as Associate Lecturers or JRAs and make them climb the ladder slowly and steadily till they become Professors if they are lucky thirty years later; and let them try and absorb their Scholars. Thorough Self-Pollination. And since the number of permanent positions is limited and decidedly less than the number of Scholars there were tricks and intrigues and the works.

For the record, throughout my stay there for 40 years, NONE joined as a Full Professor in our Phy Dept of IIT KGP from outside (if my memory serves me right...GB doesn't count...he was already in our Math Dept as AP).

But it was all ok in a way...our students did us proud enough. We taught them Physics so badly in their B Sc that one of them went to Kanpur for his M Sc with high hopes and found it worse and ended up as the present Governor of the Reserve Bank of India...

One of my colleagues who climbed the tedious ladder mentioned above told me this story:

He was then a Research Scholar under a well-known Professor and was applying for a post-doc after six years or so, having exhausted all other options. And he left his Application Form for Comments to be filled in and forwarded by his renowned Guide. And happened to have a sneak-peek.

To the query: "How long will the Applicant take to complete his Ph D?", the answer turned out to be:

"About six more years, give or take a year"

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P. S. This Post got delayed because Ishani (completing 2 years next week) jumped into my lap and ordered me to play on my laptop her favorite video: "bloggu bloggu...boru boru..."

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