Cannibalization

======================================================================

To continue yesterday's story...


Raghu managed to somehow drag my broken Chetak to his Prem Bazar workshop.


Seeing her go in that piteous condition, I was heart-broken. I never imagined that my Chetak, on whom I bestowed such love and affection weekend after weekend, could ditch me and leave me so suddenly. She could have given me a warning, notice, or slap in good time. 

It was not as if I 'beat a Bajaj'.

That last sentence has to do with the popular Chetak slogan: "You can't beat a Bajaj". It became a Party Joke later on when a super-cop took undue  liberties with a lady-super-Babu and administered her ample butt a loving pat and went to jail...almost. The wiki-entry has this titillating clause:

 "...he had molested her modesty by "patting" her "posterior" in an intoxicated state..."

It is a valid query if it was 'he' who was in an intoxicated state or 'her posterior'...I guess both.

Raghu took his own sweet time and returned my Chetak replacing the torn foot-board with a duplicate one. Then I knew why Raghu's workshop always had a couple or more of Chetaks in an abandoned condition as grim showpieces...they also come in handy in cadaver organ transplant surgeries...in the Physics Department at IIT KGP, such surgeries were then rampant...they were classified  under 'cannibalization'.

During the years between 1965 and 1968 I had built with my own hands four working NQR Spectrometers at different frequency ranges. I was then sitting in the present Seminar Room and was ringed by these electronic gadgets having power supplies, super-regenerative oscillators, a double beam oscilloscope, a frequency meter and stuff. They used to call it my 'cockpit'.

Suddenly one day I lost all interest in them...like Gautama the Buddha lost all interest in family life...and shifted to Theory under SDM...a veritable tapas (austerity).  

And by and by all my NQR spectrometers were riddled with cobwebs, covered by dust and looked forlorn. And a day came when Dr XXX (an Aspiring Professor then) came to me with a couple of his Research Scholars and asked me if I could let them have all those sickly gadgets. I took a wee umbrage and within half an hour showed them the whopping  35.5 MHz signal from the single crystal of para-dichloro-benzene. XXX was duly apologetic but insisted if I was going to work on them in the near future. Since I feel small to tell a white lie, I had to say: "No". He then asked one of his scholars if he was interested in pursuing work in NQR. And got a prompt: "Yes, sir!"

I then told XXX that he could take away everything built by my hands but not the Oscilloscope and Frequency Meter which I borrowed under my signature from the Electronics Workshop. And the solution was ready-made: 

"Don't worry...I will get them transferred under my name"

That is how my love-kids acquired foster parents...or so I thought.

A decade and half later when I was sitting in the Fourth Year Lab, a sudden (false) inspiration dawned on me, saying: "Those NQR spectrometers will be ideal for the 4th year student Lab"

And I ran to XXX (now a senior Professor) and asked him if I could please have my NQR things back; and I got the chilling reply:

"What NQR things are you talking about?"

I let it go at that but caught one of his new Scholars and asked him to show me XXX's Lab on a moonless midnight. And he was nice enough. And lo and behold...everything except the Oscilloscope and Frequency Meter were "hollow"...their innards like pots, resistors, capacitors, coils, tubes, lug strips and every good thing except the soldering lead were missing...apparently soldering lead can't be recycled easily.

To change the metaphor, they reminded me of the sumptuous cadavers we used to see strewn in the Railway Maidan on our way to Gole Bazar ringed by the vulture family for which Railway Maidan was then famous; which cadavers on our return trip a couple of hours later were cleaned bone-dry...

I consoled myself that much good (and many Ph Ds) must have come from those organ transplants...I didn't know nor care...

=======================================================================