Here is the canonical search for the needle in the haystack:
Imagine you went out of your forest bungalow promising your wife to get that trophy for her. And you duly find that not only the trophy vanished into thin air, but on your return, you find there is no response for your demand for a cup of chai. You then discover that your wife too vanished into thin air meantime. And you are stuck in the middle of nowhere in a dense jungle, without your cell phone or your two-wheeler. You then go round and round in increasing circles shouting for her, since you have no clue which way to turn. And you cry and keep asking the beasts and birds and bees and flowers and trees till you hear a faint voice calling you. And find a mortally wounded bird who says your wife has been airlifted by a bearded chap. And before he could answer your query as to which way they went, he breathes his last. You then cry more, with the only consolation that she has not been waylaid by woman-eating lions and tigers and may still be alive. And roam around till you meet a monkey king who promises to help you if you shoot his elder brother; and then forgets his promise. And then the monsoon breaks and you are stuck in your cave and when rains cease at last you threaten the monkey king that either he keep his word or get shot plumb dead. And he says sorry and summons his troops and orders them to go forth. And you give your id card to the most trustworthy research scholar of the lot and ask him to go south since you guess Sri Lanka is full of bearded chaps (before they migrated to Punjab en masse). And wait and wait till he at last brings cheerful news. Ha!
****************************************************************************************************************
Talking of 'canonical' which I use often, I met with it first in Goldstein's Canonical Transformations. One day, my Guru SDM was in a great mood chanting praise of those transformations which he cutely used to call Contact Transformations a la Dirac.
SDM: Can you tell me the meaning of 'canonical'?
gps: Following a well-laid rule
SDM: That is a pedantic definition
gps: ???
SDM: Canonical means 'beautiful' (and his eyes shine like those of a wildcat in the dark)
*************************************************************************************************************
A J Cronin was our hot favorite half a century ago. We read most of his novels. The one called Beyond This Place is again about a search for a needle in the haystack. This kid graduates and is about to launch on a teaching career when his mom tells him her secret: his dad is not dead, but was convicted of murder long long ago. He then abandons his teaching career to look out for his long-last father. And at last finds the prison where he is lodged. But he is denied entry. So, he goes about contacting the witnesses in the case still alive and after years of painstaking leg-work finds a store girl willing to help him reopen the case. And gets his father out on appeal. When he at last meets him, he finds his father a complete wreck but glad to restart his system with his son's help.
Gripping novel!
***********************************************************************************************************
I had my own hunting for the proverbial needle which I narrated long ago in:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/10/of-money-men.html
Briefly it is like this:
In 1970, I owed Rs 200 (= $40) to Dr N. Gajender, our ex-colleague at KGP, who got lost in the wild west of the US. Lost contact with him for five years. The only clue was that he hailed from Nellore, our District HQs, and his dad was having a shop in Santhapet. But NG left Nellore for his higher studies a decade or more ago. And I was keen to repay my debt of gratitude to his father, whose name I didn't know. So, one morning I set out for Santhapet determined to locate NG's father. I inquired in shop after shop asking if they know a gentleman who was having a shop in that street and whose son left for IIT KGP and then to America. And was greeted with staunch denials as if I were either a cop or a nut . As they say, at last, one shop-owner asked me to go to Chinna Bazaar where a shop-owner had shifted three or four years ago. Then in Chinna Bazzar, everyone denied knowledge till...at last...I was asked to try in Pedda Bazaar...you get the idea, right? At the end of four hours of legwork, I landed up at the door of NG's father's new and posh home. NG sent them so much money from America that his father shut shop and sold it and retired like gps.
He took the money alright...nice of him to release me from my debt.
************************************************************************************************************
And now here is a lovely mail I got this morning:
"In search of GPS' thesis"
There is no copy of your thesis in our Physics Library. I located it on the third floor (British) of the main library, The room is like an attic and it is kept locked. I had to get a permission from the technical section, where I was interviewed. When the chief was convinced that I was a faculty member then he sent one his persons with me with the keys. After climbing up when the room was opened I found stacks having some five- six thousand theses ( I should say scattered over the stacks!) without any order. There are catalogue numbers on the bound volumes but no record of cards or computer database and the person who came to assist me didn't have any clue. He left me saying
"khunje dekhun jadi peye jan, aage to sabai thesis library te jama kartona."
I tried looking for 530... to 539.. with `SAS' on the spine.
After spending some thirty or forty minutes I located your thesis but unfortunately they told me it can't be issued. (Thesis is a very precious item, that is why it is kept under lock and key! They have made it sure that if anyone is interested in an old thesis (s)he won't be able to locate it!). When I asked them about getting some of the pages photo copied they told me that I had to get the permission of the librarian (who sits in the annexe building some half a kilometer away), moreover there was no photo copy machine nearby in that building. I browsed it for sometime and placed it back on the stack.
(I was stunned by those two photographs of cross sections of Cerenkov cones, especially the one in which particle was moving in a direction perpendicular to the Optic axis and where the ellipse is visible.)
I would love to read your `work of love' one day.
Your thesis number is `609' which cannot be inverted!
With regards,
P. S. That byline above reminds me of a Dilbert comic strip.
This new kid seeks Dilbert's hep with his login.
Kid: I am unable to log in
Dilbert: What is your username?
Kid: gps@phy.iitkgp.ernet.in
Dilbert: Password?
Kid: Those six little stars...
=========================================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment