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On a rainy lunchtime in 1970 I was sitting in my Office on the first floor waiting for the rain to halt. It was quiet and the corridors were deserted because of the rain. Suddenly there was an explosion in the verandah in front of the Director's Office, as if a Diwali atom-bomb had gone off. Along with a few others I too went over for a look-see and by then the miscreant had run away. There was no crater nor a mushroom cloud but just a few pockmarks on the ground and some vestigial smoke.
That was enough...those were the days of nascent Naxalite violence in the Calcutta Colleges, and the 'bomb' near our Diro's Office was enough to set the cat among the KGP pigeons.
Within a few days, a series of collapsible gates made of the toughest steel were installed in either entry of each and every corridor. They were supposed to roll in and roll out frictionlessly over wheels on a frame on the ground.
Ha!
Within a few months, dirt and sand and grime got deposited in the grooves on the floor. With the result that when they collapse after a Herculean effort, they wouldn't relapse....and sometimes they would prolapse...
But the strength of any gate is less than or equal to the strength of its lock, which was usually the smallish Link lock since bigger locks wouldn't go into the semi-openable latches with tiny keyholes.
But a huge establishment came into being from nowhere consisting of several security men deployed to lock them in the evening and open them in the morning with two sets of keys, one with them and the other hanging on a board at the Main Security Gate.
A typical instance of Parkinson's law at work.
Couple of times I was locked in and had to scream and gesture like a wild monkey to catch the attention of a passerby. Because, the security man in charge of locking our collapsible gates had a tiff with his wife and was too distracted to check if any inmate is trapped inside before locking him in.
Once, in 1985, two good decades after my stay there, one Sunday noon, I got this terrific urge to read Weinberg's book at home and discovered that the tome was in my Office. And when I went there, I found I couldn't enter it because the collapsible gates were closed and locked. I returned to the Main Gate and found that a new chap was manning the key-board. I asked him for the key of the Gate Phy-2.
And he asked me:
"Where is your letter?"
"What letter?"
"The letter from your HoD permitting that you can be issued the key"
"Is it a new rule?"
"Yes, since this morning"
"But I am a Professor here for all of 2 decades"
"Sorry, no letter --- no key"
Fortunately the HoD's then had phones in their Qrs and so I asked him to connect me to our HoD. Which he did grudgingly. And Professor BKS was kind enough to instruct the young chap to issue me the key for the nonce.
I could see Bernard Levin's Theorem at work here:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/07/bernard-levins-theorem.html
In 1995, Professor P from IIT Delhi, a close friend and ex-colleague of our Director KLC, was on a ten-day visit to IIT KGP as an External Expert for our Physics JEE. And seeing our collapsible gates, he wondered aloud:
"You guys seem to be living in jungle-raj. I will talk to KLC and get him remove all your collapsible gates and dump them in the Bay of Bengal"
Apparently he didn't succeed...they were very much kicking and thriving when I went there a couple of years ago...they must have become a vested interest to the Establishment...like those Pearly Gates.
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"But there, everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when
his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the
funeral expenses."
........Jerome K. Jerome
*******************************************************************************************************
I hate locks...
I don't say they don't have their uses...but as Jerome K Jerome said, everything has its drawbacks. Just because something has its uses it doesn't mean that I have to love it.
The first pushbike I bought was with my second pay-check at IIT KGP in 1965. I traveled to the Gole Bazaar in a rickshaw and got down at the street-corner cycle shop of Motilal Vohra Bros. Vohra Saheb was condescending and didn't even offer me a seat...it was a sellers' market then. And he took 2 hours for assembling my Avon Green bicycle. The only frill was her Green Color. She cost me Rs 220 which was more than half my take-home then. And he gave me the key of her rim-lock and asked me to buzz off...which I did and reached Gokhale Hall in half an hour flat. It was dinner time and I was hungry. So, I parked her in the verandah beside a few other decrepit bikes and felt awfully proud. And entered the Mess after duly locking her rim-lock. By the time I returned after dinner, she was gone with the wind...I cried.
When I bought my Maruti 800 car 35 years later it was a dream come true. She came with two keys. But with a trick door-lock. I hung up one of the two keys on the peg at home and one day made bold to drive her to the Gole Bazaar where there was no parking zone. As I tried parking her under a tree to and fro and left and right, I got nervous and switched off the ignition and came out and shut the door plumb. And was locked out. I had to ring up my son at our Qrs and beg him to bring the duplicate key on his scooter.
And one noon, after parking my Maruti triumphantly in the Institute and emerging victoriously, I was met by a gentleman apparently waiting for the driver of a Maruti looking similar to his brand new one which was parked under the mango tree. He smiled at me and asked me for the key of my Maruti:
"What for?"
"O, I am locked out with the key of my Maruti inside...I would like to try and open it with yours"
"Sorry, that won't work...it will damage both your lock and my key...I can drive you to your Qrs and you can fetch your duplicate key"
"My duplicate is with the Indian Bank...which gave me the loan."
"Chalieye...I will drive you to the Indian Bank and fetch their man with your duplicate key"
Do you think that gent would love his locks any day?
*********************************************************************************************************
In 1965, when I joined IIT KGP, it was like the dream-come-true of our Vishwa Kavi who sang:
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high..."
There were no collapsible gates in the Main Building where our Physics Department is housed.
On a rainy lunchtime in 1970 I was sitting in my Office on the first floor waiting for the rain to halt. It was quiet and the corridors were deserted because of the rain. Suddenly there was an explosion in the verandah in front of the Director's Office, as if a Diwali atom-bomb had gone off. Along with a few others I too went over for a look-see and by then the miscreant had run away. There was no crater nor a mushroom cloud but just a few pockmarks on the ground and some vestigial smoke.
That was enough...those were the days of nascent Naxalite violence in the Calcutta Colleges, and the 'bomb' near our Diro's Office was enough to set the cat among the KGP pigeons.
Within a few days, a series of collapsible gates made of the toughest steel were installed in either entry of each and every corridor. They were supposed to roll in and roll out frictionlessly over wheels on a frame on the ground.
Ha!
Within a few months, dirt and sand and grime got deposited in the grooves on the floor. With the result that when they collapse after a Herculean effort, they wouldn't relapse....and sometimes they would prolapse...
But the strength of any gate is less than or equal to the strength of its lock, which was usually the smallish Link lock since bigger locks wouldn't go into the semi-openable latches with tiny keyholes.
But a huge establishment came into being from nowhere consisting of several security men deployed to lock them in the evening and open them in the morning with two sets of keys, one with them and the other hanging on a board at the Main Security Gate.
A typical instance of Parkinson's law at work.
Couple of times I was locked in and had to scream and gesture like a wild monkey to catch the attention of a passerby. Because, the security man in charge of locking our collapsible gates had a tiff with his wife and was too distracted to check if any inmate is trapped inside before locking him in.
Once, in 1985, two good decades after my stay there, one Sunday noon, I got this terrific urge to read Weinberg's book at home and discovered that the tome was in my Office. And when I went there, I found I couldn't enter it because the collapsible gates were closed and locked. I returned to the Main Gate and found that a new chap was manning the key-board. I asked him for the key of the Gate Phy-2.
And he asked me:
"Where is your letter?"
"What letter?"
"The letter from your HoD permitting that you can be issued the key"
"Is it a new rule?"
"Yes, since this morning"
"But I am a Professor here for all of 2 decades"
"Sorry, no letter --- no key"
Fortunately the HoD's then had phones in their Qrs and so I asked him to connect me to our HoD. Which he did grudgingly. And Professor BKS was kind enough to instruct the young chap to issue me the key for the nonce.
I could see Bernard Levin's Theorem at work here:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/07/bernard-levins-theorem.html
In 1995, Professor P from IIT Delhi, a close friend and ex-colleague of our Director KLC, was on a ten-day visit to IIT KGP as an External Expert for our Physics JEE. And seeing our collapsible gates, he wondered aloud:
"You guys seem to be living in jungle-raj. I will talk to KLC and get him remove all your collapsible gates and dump them in the Bay of Bengal"
Apparently he didn't succeed...they were very much kicking and thriving when I went there a couple of years ago...they must have become a vested interest to the Establishment...like those Pearly Gates.
=======================================================================
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