Chickpea

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During our 3-year stay in Banjara Hills, an old man of about 75, then 10 years older to me, introduced himself as PR and, as he told my son several times, liked me so much that he called me 'lovable', an adjective which everyone in my family (except Ishani) and all colleagues at KGP will dispute heartily saying, 'on the other hand'...

PR was a civil engineer in the AP Government and thirty five years back took up the challenge of working in the Armed Forces for the Border Roads Organization near Bhutan as a sponsored civilian for three years...an offer many of his colleagues and seniors refused because of the trouble and risk involved.

Within a week of joining, PR walked into the Chamber of his top Army Boss defying all protocol, and warned him straightaway that instead of getting his coveted promotion in the Army HQ at Delhi, he is likely to be demoted if not dismissed outright. The Boss, who, according to PR was taking things easy and teaching golf to the Prince of Bhutan and partying, grew red in the face but decided to listen to PR since such a thing as a contemptible civilian walking into the chamber of a Lt General or whatever was unheard of...such things happen you know.

PR told his Boss that his engineering staff had been misleading him all the while and those three bridges across those three gorgeous gorges can never be built within the stipulated six months the way things have been going on and the deadline is fast approaching. And showed him figures and tables displaying work vs men vs funds vs vehicles...in short he gave what you young chaps nowadays call a 'presentation'.

His Boss's face fell and he at once asked PR what to do. PR told him bluntly that goods can be delivered and targets achieved only by flouting all norms, recruiting 120 laborers, working them 3 shifts 24/7 with 50 gas lamps for the contraband night-shifts (risking injuries and death for the workers), showing the first completed bridge to the Army Brass, asking for more funds, and in general working like the very Devil.

The Boss dragged PR by hand to his Engineers Office manned by a couple of dozen idlers senior to PR and ordered that for the coming six months PR will be their Boss and everyone should obey him or risk outright dismissal.

God, as PR told me, was with him, and those three magnificent bridges, which stand tall even today, were completed just in time and his Boss got his promotion to Delhi, and PR was then on a victim of envy, jealousy and rancor, and his immediate boss spoiled his CR (Confidential Report) and PR was on the point of being demoted.

He then did something equally 'not done'...he telephoned the Army HQ and squealed to his erstwhile Army Boss who telephoned the powers that be and PR was shifted back to the AP Govt Services on double promotion as Chief Engineer over the heads of half a dozen of his seniors. And built many more brdiges and roads whose foundation stones still carry his name.

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This story took half an hour for me to keyboard and will take ten minutes for you to read, but PR took two hours to narrate it in every loving detail. I was shifting all the while from my right leg to the left and back, on the pavement of the Main Road of Venkataramana Colony where he caught me by the eye like our good old Ancient Mariner, with this difference that PR held me two hours each by his eye ten or more times during the three years I stayed there...verbatim...

Now you know why he called me 'lovable'... others on whom he tried his autobio used to perhaps escape saying they have a Rotary Club Meeting to preside or a wedding feast to gorge or visit their dentist...

I, on the other hand, was fascinated by his 2-hour narrative 'repeat telecast' (as Dalia says) every once in a while so truthfully that I could predict which sentence was coming next and the next and the next...it was a game I played with myself. It was like a non-musical man like me forced to listen to kolavari di again and again and wishing heartily that that papappa paam will somehow become pipippi peee at least once...and failing.

Senility is a many-headed hydra. But its neck is unique...Unending Repetition...of habits, thoughts, speeches and the works of Old Age.

Cicero (literally chickpea because of the excrescence on the tip of his nose) wrote an article on the subject of Senility...de Senectute...in the 4th century BC, which became compulsory reading for beginners of Latin.

Saying the same thing again and again year after year is the bane of Lecturers like me at IIT KGP...I taught a course on EM & STR for two good decades.

But that didn't make me senile then.

Listen to our Autocrat:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/751


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A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.

It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.

Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making the same speech
twice over, and yet be held blameless.  Thus, a certain lecturer,
after performing in an inland city, where dwells a Litteratrice of
note, was invited to meet her and others over the social teacup.
She pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in his new
occupation.  "Yes," he replied, "I am like the Huma, the bird that
never lights, being always in the cars, as he is always on the
wing." --Years elapsed.  The lecturer visited the same place once
more for the same purpose.  Another social cup after the lecture,
and a second meeting with the distinguished lady.  "You are
constantly going from place to place," she said.--"Yes," he
answered, "I am like the Huma," --and finished the sentence as
before.

What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had made this fine
speech, word for word, twice over!  Yet it was not true, as the
lady might perhaps have fairly inferred, that he had embellished
his conversation with the Huma daily during that whole interval of
years.  On the contrary, he had never once thought of the odious
fowl until the recurrence of precisely the same circumstances
brought up precisely the same idea.  He ought to have been proud of
the accuracy of his mental adjustments.  Given certain factors, and
a sound brain should always evolve the same fixed product with the
certainty of Babbage's calculating machine.

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