Late one evening in 1972 I was visiting my guide SDM's Qrs to settle some issues with the Field Calculation of Cherenkov Radiation. He and I sat in sofas opposite one another and he was deeply pondering with his favorite book on Integral Transforms in his hand (I forget the author's name). As usual, after ten minutes of eerie silence and intense brooding, he nodded his head with a smile lighting up his face, and asked me to try Faltung...he never called it Convolution Theorem. Meanwhile I was also thinking, and his comment lit up a bulb in my tiny brain too. I collected my khata and was about to leave when he asked me to go to his Study (Guest Room), do the calculations then and there and report, since he was curious to know the result.
I can proudly say that after I joined him in the Cherenkov Problem he never had to take pen and paper...he supplied the Brain and I the Brawn.
After about half an hour he called me out: "Shastry!" and I left my khata and went back to the Drawing Room. And found him sitting in the long sofa with his Remington Portable in front of him on his center-piece and composing the Introduction of his 'independent' Paper titled: "Volume Element of SU(n)". He had a perplexed look on his face and said: "I am unable to see how best to write this para and I am unhappy with what I have written; see if you can help."
I was aghast since I knew nothing of group theory, and he knew it too. So, without looking at what he had written, I asked him to tell me what exactly he wanted to say. That was an unexpected gambit for him...he thought I would read his version and ask him questions for clarification. And he sat back and thought for a couple of minutes and 'explained' to me what he wanted to say in another minute and half.
I then said: The sentence should be framed like this: "............."; listening to which he was happy and he cancelled what he wrote earlier and typed what I dictated. And he read it aloud and smiled naughtily and remarked: "But this is precisely what I told you just now." And I too switched on my smile. And then he paid the best compliment I ever got from him:
"Discussions with you have always been fruitful"
And this is just because I always made him talk it out and merely acted like a sounding board for him.
Here is the wiki entry for the Sounding Board:
"The term is also used inter-personally to describe one person listening to another, and especially to their ideas. When a person listens and responds with comments, they provide perspective that otherwise would not be available through introspection or thought alone."
This trick worked with DB many times later on during our 2-decade community-living in C - 239
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Of all the Talkers I met, KK is special.
He did his M Sc Project with me and it turned out to be the best, with some new results that later appeared in PRS (London). During that summer vacation, he used to arrive at my Qrs after his dinner and do the calculations then and there while I was busy keeping my toddler son out of mischief. So, after about a couple of months, my wife and I ceased to be Prof and Mrs Sastry for him but became Uncle and Auntie. And my son, Sonoo.
A couple of decades later he joined us as an esteemed colleague in our Phy Dept at IIT KGP and participated as my partner in teaching the Jumbo Physics Theory. By when he was a father of two cute sons himself. And it was a pleasure for me to watch his talking style more closely. Here is its best description from Siddharth Dwivedi:
"First name that comes to my mind is that of Dr. Krishna Kumar (KK to us). A short figure, frequently adjusting his specs, he would continue with his love for the chalk and blackboard in a rather slow, self-amused manner to dwell into the basics of mechanics and non-linear dynamics with his speech going into occasional "ummmmm...mummmm", and this would take a big slice of his lecture until coffee break was announced if it was a 2-hour drill...But all the same, we loved his style and he to me is one of the best as seen yet."
"Self-amused" is the operative word. And SD missed to mention another lovely mannerism of his. When I said something and asked him if he agreed with it, he would jerk his head down in a semi-circle before saying: "Yes!"
Anyway, a good quarter century after he saw my son as a kid, he took pains to travel all the way from KGP to Hyderabad in the punishing Falaknuma Express to attend the Wedding Reception of my son in the Taj Mahal Hotel here. After the festivities were more or less through and guests began lining up for grub, there was this unexpected bunch of about a dozen Purohits (invited slyly by the Bride's party) climbing up the podium and surrounding the exhausted couple as if in a boxing ring and chanting delicious Vedic hymns blessing them for a good ten minutes.
By then KK was half-way through his plate and walked down to my side and asked:
"Who are they?"
And I said: "Brahmin Pundits"
And he switched on his ummm and mummm and an enchanting smile and remarked:
"They do look well-fed"
That one brief sentence carried a ton of innuendos on our social scene.
That is the beauty of KK's style. He would weigh and wait and when everyone would be thinking he is short of words, he would shoot a Bullet...
He told me that once he had applied for a Rs 5 lakh Project and was asked to present his proposal at IISc Bangalore. And by the time his turn came, it was too late since the earlier folks went on and on and the Chairman, Board, himself an illustrious KGPian, asked him to finish what he wanted to say in 3 minutes.
And KK told me he finished it under 2 minutes.
The Chairman was beyond himself in appreciation and said:
"Rs 5 lakhs is insufficient for such a broad investigation...I am making it Rs 10 lakhs"
And KK told me that he could do it because of his long training at IIT KGP and then IIT KNP.
Who was it that said: "Brevity is the soul of wit"?
We revert to Hamlet again:
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LORD POLONIUS
"This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go."****************************************************************************************************
And let that quote be our opposite of epigraph...whatever it is...
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