Smart, Smarter, Smartest

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This morning I called a young twentyish lady "Very Smart!"

And got away with it. She simply hung her head down and her face radiated happiness.

This is the advantage you get with a white head and missing teeth. Although you may still be an impossible adolescent at heart. Our Autocrat reports:

"...several years short of the time when Balzac says that men are --- most --- you know --- dangerous to --- the hearts of --- in short, most to be dreaded by duennas that have charge of susceptible females. --- What age is that? said I, statistically. --- Fifty-two years, answered the Professor. --- Balzac ought to know, said I, if it is true that Goethe said of him that each of his stories must have been dug out of a woman's heart..."

Well, Balzac was a hot-blooded Frenchman like the one who got into hot soup in that New York hotel the other day, and got out of it terribly scalded.

But any praise like I mentioned above has to be subtle and context-sensitive to be enjoyable.

It is like this:

My son of a fun is a non-smoker and teetotaler. So, I was surprised when he said he has to urgently visit a dentist. So, I accompanied him into a nearby Dental Clinic manned by a young surgeon with a young lady-receptionist-cum-assistant-cum-cashier all rolled into one. And as my son walked into the sanctum sactorum, I followed him to watch the proceedings. The Dentist asked my son to open his mouth and shouted in despair: "Your oral hygiene is $$$...I can see urgent need for two sittings of cleaning, one extraction, one crowning, one filling and possibly one root-canal."

After our first visit, I thanked our friendly Dentist for letting me right into his Surgery; and he said generally he doesn't, since there is every likelihood of the father fainting at the sight of all those frightening drilling machines and scalpels and tongs and mallets and chisels going to work on his fond son's orals; but he saw at once that I was different (three teeth missing).

This morning was our fifth visit by when we became friendly, and the Dentist, while working on my son, started chatting with me asking me where I worked and stuff...it was a cheap ploy to beguile my son from his crowning achievement...he didn't give anesthesia today.

All these days I was watching his Assistant perform her multitasking admirably...handing him the tool required, loading the syringe, mixing the atta (cement) for filling cavities, loading the X-ray cassette, not to speak of collecting the fees in cash with full anticipation and efficiency. So, while leaving the surgery, I looked at her and then the Dentist pleasantly and asked him:

"Did you recruit and train her? She is so very smart!"

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Well, Feynman admits he was very unsmart once in his choice of workplace:

"...I went to Princeton to do graduate work and in the spring I went once again to the Bell Labs in New York to apply for a summer job. I loved to tour the Bell Labs. Bill Shockley, the guy who invented transistors, would show me around...I asked the Bell Labs if they would let me work for the army that summer, and they said they had war work too, if that was what I wanted. But I was caught up in a patriotic fervor and lost a good opportunity. It would have been much smarter to work in the Bell Labs. But one gets a little silly during those times..."

So, if Feynman could get unsmart once in a while and admit it, why not us?

The smartest decision I took in my professional life was to join SDM and stick with him for five years. You should remember that I got my M Sc Degree (First Class) without knowing what a 'matrix' is. And then for the next seven years, apart from teaching, I was busy soldering, pushing samples, trying to take readings in various NQR spectrometers a couple of which I myself built (topoing the circuits from the literature). With such a background, being thrust into the forbidding lap of one of the best Theoretical Physicists of India was like an infant thrown into the bath tub. But I was smart enough to see what few in WB saw then...that this guy is a GENIUS and would be fun to interact with. My life took a different turn then on.

The unsmartest move I made in my professional life was to get carried away by the persistent demand by batch after batch of students to offer them an elective in GR and learn and teach it. I made the proposal thinking it would be cakewalk, since I was already a Full Professor (as BKS used to call himself) and had no axe to grind. But it bombed!!! And I had to pocket that insult. But I was then smart enough to convert it into an opportunity. I went ahead and worked out the first 12 chapters of Weinberg over an year and offered some Review Projects for M Sc students. There was a terrific demand and the Dept couldn't reasonably come in my humble way. About half a dozen students benefited from these Projects and still remember them fondly.

Here is the latest sample:

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"Dear GPS,

You may not remember me. I did my Integrated MSc from IIT-KGP 19 years back (1992)! I also did a MSc project under you on Brans-Dicke theory. Still proudly displayed on my CV.

Recently I was randomly googling IIT-KGP and found your blog which I now read regularly. So thought will bother you with an email.

Warm regards,

***** "

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The smartest move I made in my personal life is surely to take up whole-time blogging, egged on by many of my young friends. Over the past 3 stressful years, Blogging has been the Parallel Universe I am living in, populated by many English-Lovers. Here is the sms I got an hour ago:

"Remembered Dadi Kaku for all his help during my illness. Puja Pandal came alive once again. Thank you"

Ref: http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/03/dadi-kaku.html

The unsmartest thing (among the many) I did in my personal life was not being able to anticipate the Culture Shock I would be having soon after shifting from KGP to HYD. I ought to have done better than sink into that Severe Clinical Depression. But as luck would have it, I was with my loving wife and caring son and my friend NP and his family and a good psychiatrist, and I got over it after two blanked-out years.

But, after recovering, I was smart enough to realize what fun I was having with my mind all those decades till then, and try and write readable English.

Listen to Feynman again:

"...One day, about 3:30 in the afternoon, I was walking along the sidewalk opposite the beach at Copacabana past a bar. I suddenly got this treMENdous, strong feeling: 'Thst's just what I want; that'll fill just right. I'd love to have a drink right now!'

I started to walk into the bar, and I suddenly thought to myself, 'Wait a minute! It's the middle of the afternoon. There's nobody here. There's no social reason to drink. Why do you have such a terribly strong feeling that you have to have a drink?' --- and I got scared.

I never drank again, since then. I suppose I really wasn't in any danger, because I found it very easy to stop. But that strong feeling I didn't understand frightened me. You see, I got such fun out of thinking that I don't want to destroy this most pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick..."

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Saswat writes:

"...Really enjoying your blogs! Met Piyush a few days ago (as I am spending time in Physics Department at Columbia, finishing up some old Physics project, during my "Garden Leave".). We were both marveling at your blogging stamina! :).."

gps: There is nothing to it. If one has RKN's Next Sunday, Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, and Feynman's Surely Joking books by the bedside, anyone can blog a piece everyday...just open one of them at a random page...and you get the material...provided you have NOTHING ELSE to do during the whole day...

Isn't that the smartest trick in the trade?

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