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King Dasharatha could shoot blind...just by hearing the sound he could aim and pull unerringly. A great gift...that led to his distress and death. For, he shot an unseen object thinking it was an elephant drinking at its watering hole but ended up killing a teenager filling his pitcher...dabuk...dubuk...drook. And was cursed by the sage who sent his son to fetch water that he too will get to know the pangs of losing a son.
By the way, what business had Dasharatha killing a harmless vegetarian elephant?...He couldn't have eaten its flesh...or was he poaching for ivory? If you haven't already read this fantastic essay by Orwell, do so right away:
http://eslreading.org/shootinganelephant.pdf
Raama was so proud of his rectitude as a King that he asked Sita to jump into a bonfire...not once but again and again. Had Sita been an equal-rights activist like my mom, she would have turned around and asked him to jump in first...for, while she was always ringed by a dozen keen-eyed rakshasis in her open-air jail, her hubby was all that time wandering freely all around the jungles of voluptuous Tamilnadu.
The less said about the vaunted and flaunted Dharma of Yudhistir the better...ask Draupadiji...
There was this Professor J in the ME Department of IIT KGP. He used to boast that his Ph D thesis was in two volumes of 500 pages each. When I said this to Raamda with whom I was sharing office for a year, he laughed and said his own thesis was 90 pages...most of it Bibliography, Acknowledgments and Introduction.
And then Prof J was made the Time Table-in-Charge of the whole Institute... a dreaded task. Prof J took a month to do it...with the assistance of his scholars he filled an entire room with a dozen and more notice boards with mega drawing sheets pasted all over them. Anyone could walk in, search, and find out if Room F-232 is vacant on Friday 5th hour, if not, which class is going on there and which teacher and which subject and which section...all you have to do is to spend a half hour scanning and peering and bending over sundry boards...but it was a do-it-yourself thing.
And then the job fell into the lap of Raamda. He took two days and two nights and after inventing many intricate codes and symbols and legends he micro-miniaturized the entire Institute Time Table into just one PT Sheet which he folded and pocketed. Anyone wanting to know if Room F-232 is vacant on Friday 5th hour had to just ring him up...he would pull out the sheet from his kurta pocket and not only tell whatever Prof J's boards did, but suggest that Rooms F-131, C-235 and Raman Auditorium are vacant then. And if anyone asked for a copy of the Institute Time Table, Raamda would most willingly invite him to our office and push his original and hand him a blank PT sheet and a pen...plain-paper-copiers were unknown then. I have seen many who barged in, leaving dismayed returning his PT sheet and pen...the whole thing was a cryptogram whose codes are in a secure place...Raamda's bald head.
One morning DB was emitting smoke rings in our room trying to figure out which way the contour should bend and trap all those wicked poles when a student entered unannounced and announced to DB excitedly: "Sir! Sir!! Mother Teresa won the Nobel this year!!!" DB looked at the kid severely and rebuked: "Mother Teresa could be proud of it...but you and I have to hang our heads in shame that she chose our Calcutta for it, of all the thousands of cities in the world." The kid's jaw fell and he left in a rueful mood.
Here is a snatch of e-chat between Edwin and me circa AD 2000:
"GP! What is your KGP famous for (apart from GP)?
"Its Railway Platform is the longest in the world"
"What?...What!...hee heee heeeee!"
"What is Boston famous for (apart from Edwin)?"
"Well, MIT, Harvard...."
"Never heard of them before I came to IIT KGP...but all of us had heard of Boston Strangler...haa haaa haaaa!"
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King Dasharatha could shoot blind...just by hearing the sound he could aim and pull unerringly. A great gift...that led to his distress and death. For, he shot an unseen object thinking it was an elephant drinking at its watering hole but ended up killing a teenager filling his pitcher...dabuk...dubuk...drook. And was cursed by the sage who sent his son to fetch water that he too will get to know the pangs of losing a son.
By the way, what business had Dasharatha killing a harmless vegetarian elephant?...He couldn't have eaten its flesh...or was he poaching for ivory? If you haven't already read this fantastic essay by Orwell, do so right away:
http://eslreading.org/shootinganelephant.pdf
Raama was so proud of his rectitude as a King that he asked Sita to jump into a bonfire...not once but again and again. Had Sita been an equal-rights activist like my mom, she would have turned around and asked him to jump in first...for, while she was always ringed by a dozen keen-eyed rakshasis in her open-air jail, her hubby was all that time wandering freely all around the jungles of voluptuous Tamilnadu.
The less said about the vaunted and flaunted Dharma of Yudhistir the better...ask Draupadiji...
There was this Professor J in the ME Department of IIT KGP. He used to boast that his Ph D thesis was in two volumes of 500 pages each. When I said this to Raamda with whom I was sharing office for a year, he laughed and said his own thesis was 90 pages...most of it Bibliography, Acknowledgments and Introduction.
And then Prof J was made the Time Table-in-Charge of the whole Institute... a dreaded task. Prof J took a month to do it...with the assistance of his scholars he filled an entire room with a dozen and more notice boards with mega drawing sheets pasted all over them. Anyone could walk in, search, and find out if Room F-232 is vacant on Friday 5th hour, if not, which class is going on there and which teacher and which subject and which section...all you have to do is to spend a half hour scanning and peering and bending over sundry boards...but it was a do-it-yourself thing.
And then the job fell into the lap of Raamda. He took two days and two nights and after inventing many intricate codes and symbols and legends he micro-miniaturized the entire Institute Time Table into just one PT Sheet which he folded and pocketed. Anyone wanting to know if Room F-232 is vacant on Friday 5th hour had to just ring him up...he would pull out the sheet from his kurta pocket and not only tell whatever Prof J's boards did, but suggest that Rooms F-131, C-235 and Raman Auditorium are vacant then. And if anyone asked for a copy of the Institute Time Table, Raamda would most willingly invite him to our office and push his original and hand him a blank PT sheet and a pen...plain-paper-copiers were unknown then. I have seen many who barged in, leaving dismayed returning his PT sheet and pen...the whole thing was a cryptogram whose codes are in a secure place...Raamda's bald head.
One morning DB was emitting smoke rings in our room trying to figure out which way the contour should bend and trap all those wicked poles when a student entered unannounced and announced to DB excitedly: "Sir! Sir!! Mother Teresa won the Nobel this year!!!" DB looked at the kid severely and rebuked: "Mother Teresa could be proud of it...but you and I have to hang our heads in shame that she chose our Calcutta for it, of all the thousands of cities in the world." The kid's jaw fell and he left in a rueful mood.
Here is a snatch of e-chat between Edwin and me circa AD 2000:
"GP! What is your KGP famous for (apart from GP)?
"Its Railway Platform is the longest in the world"
"What?...What!...hee heee heeeee!"
"What is Boston famous for (apart from Edwin)?"
"Well, MIT, Harvard...."
"Never heard of them before I came to IIT KGP...but all of us had heard of Boston Strangler...haa haaa haaaa!"
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1 comment:
Before I visited Boston in 2002, I already knew MIT,Harward(& its most famous Indologist,Prof. Diana Eck). But when I returned to BHU,Varanasi, one of my colleagues remarked "Here comes the thrice born, the Boston Brahmin". That was the first time I heard of the phrase "Boston Brahmin" !
Kittappa
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