Surfeit

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Surfeit is: 'too much of a good thing'

Like for instance the feeling Gandhari must have had when she came out of anesthesia and the Sister exhibited her prodigal progeny...a clean century of them. Even with a lone Ishani and with a grannie and a granpa to take turns, her mom is exhausted by 9 PM.

I guess about a dozen is just right. There was this Punch Cartoon showing this American Journo stationed in a Gulf Country waiting in front of about 40 barricaded cribs for the Sister to arrive and display to him his newborn in the 5th row. He was joined by a beaming Sheikh and asks him which one is his:

"The first 3 rows"

One of my KGP 'nephews' (he used to 'uncle' me) had a sweet tooth. One day he overindulged in khejud gud rasogollas and his tummy turned. When I went to see him the next day, he said sweetly that the sight of any sweet revolts him.

While we were at KGP, my son and I were always playing and horsing around all the time (it continues). My poor wife was outnumbered 2 to 1 by the male population and every once in a while she used to complain: "I am getting bored seeing your two faces all the time." That was hint for us to take our scooter out and go away. Within an hour she would be desperately waiting in the verandah for us two to arrive back.

There is this canonical cartoon of Thurber in which this man is sitting snugly in his sofa with his hands folded on his doubled up legs, and this woman in another sofa nearby with her hands closing her ears. The caption reads:

"With You I Have Known Peace, Lida, and Now You Say You're Going Crazy"

It was like that for me with SDM who used to talk and talk for hours together on totally irrelevant things. After working with him for my Degree, I found him trying to incite and induce and interest me to join him in another problem of his in Molecular Spectroscopy (having to do with solving a Lame' Equation, or was it Hill's Equation?). I ran away like that 'nephew' of mine. For five long years SDM didn't let me read anything...calculating and writing up, calculating and writing up...I was just dying to read and read and read...

During my long stay at IIT KGP, I was solving and storing my solutions to all the UG problems in Resnick-Halliday, Irodov, Verma et al just for kicks. When I retired, I gave away most Physics books but brought my Solution Manuals safe thinking that I will mint money by joining one or more Tutorial Colleges thriving in every street of Hyderabad. Also to pass time 'fruitfully'.

Word spread and I got a phone call from Dilsukh Nagar (20 km from our apartment) inviting me to come and join their Coaching School. I went in a bus, since I had not by then the courage to drive my Maruti on the streets of Hyderabad. It took one whole hour and I couldn't breathe because folks were breathing down my standing neck. I stayed put in the same bus and returned home without 'attending' the School.

Next day, I was asked what happened and I said it was too far for me to commute. The Prince then said they are opening a new branch a stone's throw from my apartment in SR Nagar and I am invited. I duly got a call and walked down and met the new Prince. He was cordiality personified and looked at my gray hair and said he didn't want to trouble me with taking classes since there are youngsters to do it; it is enough if I set Model Question Papers (one each every week) for IIT JEE, IIIT, AICTE, EAMCET and a couple of others and dumped their syllabi in my lap. It so happens that I always loved taking classes and hated setting question papers. I said Thanx and sank into Depression for the next two years.

After recovering enough of my senses, I had a look at my Solution Manuals, and they turned my stomach like those khejud gud rasogollas. I sold them as raddi and bought old volumes of PGW with the money I got.

And here I am, blogging like the Devil for the past three years.

I guess I am a born story-teller. The kick I get in composing and posting a fairy tale like say Waxworks is infinitely pleasanter than that Paper in Journal of Physics that gave me my promotions. It is titled bombastically as:

"Electrodynamics of doubly anisotropic media with non-parallel principal axes of permittivity and permeability"

No one (including my Ph D examiners) read it through...


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