Katti - Bhaap

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The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

..........Omar Khayyam

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m

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Well, I never read but snatches of the Rubaiyats of Omar Khayyam in Fitzgerald's English translation.


The above quote I read in 'The Nature of the Physical World' by Sir Arthur Eddington when I was 18. Since then I must have read a couple of dozen popular and semi-popular physics books by renowned Physicists. Among those that stuck are 'The First Three Minutes' by Weinberg, a similar book by Igor Novikov, Clifford Will's 'Was Einstein Right?',  'QED' by Feynman, 'A Brief History of Time' by Stephen Hawking...

I never read Science Fiction Books. But watched the movies: ET,  Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and the Jurassic Park in the Netaji Auditorium at IIT KGP.  Netaji is as much of a movie theater as this blog is Eng Lit. So, it doesn't count.

But my reading of Eddington's book was on a different footing. It was a rare confluence of three romantic streams: my own romantic age, Eddington's romantic prose, and the most romantic period of Physics...the first quarter of the 20th century when Relativity and QM were exploding in the consciousness of physics.

That Moving Finger refusing to cancel half a line referred to the irreversible arrow of time and increase of entropy of the Universe.

But, of course, the prosaic moving fingers of Eddington's Age were full of cancellations, over-writings, scribbles, doodles and marginal comments. Here is a scintillating sample of Mark Twain's manuscripts:  


 


 http://harryjolivet.tumblr.com/post/1048439605/entregulistanybostan-mark-twain-samuel


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Eddington's book also bristled with quotes from Lewis Carroll...my initiation into the world of abol-tabol, the seemingly nonsense poetry.

I hear India and Pakistan are once again in the Love Mode of their Love-Hate affair. Frankly, there can't be abiding negotiations on dowry between hen-pecked husbands.

Whenever India-Pakistan affairs appear in print, I recall the quote from Lewis Carroll:

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

    Agreed to have a battle;

For Tweedledum said Tweedledee

    Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Just then flew down a monstrous crow,

    As black as a tar-barrel;

Which frightened both the heroes so,

    They quite forgot their quarrel.^[1]

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweedledum_and_Tweedledee 


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I often feel Truth in the Physical World is a highly subjective entity. Perhaps Gandhi's insistence on 'Truth and Non-Violence' may just be a good political slogan.

Take this Gita Verse:

Anudvega karam vaakyam satyam priya hitam cha yat

Swadhyayaabhyasanam chaiva vangmayam tapa uchyate

.................Bhagavad Gita 17-15

It is about Speech that is at once dispassionate, true, endearing, and wholesome...an unrealistic combination. That is perhaps why many wise men preferred silence. 

There is an unforgettable scene in the 'Great Train Robbery' movie where Lesley-Anne Down tries to pin down Sean Connery:

"Do you ever tell the truth?"

"Truth...truth...?"

"Yes, truth"

"No!"

Among the three-word combos that did duty for millenniums, the most treacherous is said to be:

"I love you"

There was this fiftyish Russian Teacher, Madam Shcherbakova, at IIT KGP in the late 1960s:  

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/03/my-fair-russian-lady.html

She was then learning spoken English. On the lawn bench she would sit and ask me to say:

"I love you!"

And then she would smile, touch her ample chest, and stutter:

"I...also...love myself"

That about says it all of love in the Soviet or any other Regime.

I am wary of kids who don't lie and adults who do:

  http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/10/seven-ages-of-lying-man.html 


Lying is natural to kids as they don't have a clear idea of the holiness of truth. Their whole life is centered around wants. If a lie quickly gets that toffee they keenly desire, they find nothing wrong in it...indeed they innovate. A kid that always tells the truth (as we see it) is either dysfunctional or dull, lacking imagination...seeing idols instead of gods. No good for a Teaching Career in Physics.

I have this ambivalent stand on truth...I do indulge in prevarication, fabrication, adumbration, sophistication, simplification, obfuscation, equivocation, but never in outright falsification in my life and blogs (nowadays the two are synonymous).

But I studiously avoid adults who tell lies... 

One day, in the Dining Hall of the Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP, I was freely floating a titillating campus story about a Professor who made an ass of himself in the class room. And Prof RSN asked me:

"Who told you this?"

"Prof Sikand"

"Then, it must be true...Sikand never tells lies"

Thought it was a rare tribute...and then on, Prof Sikand became my Guru in Physics...for, he would frequently say:

"I don't know"

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The other day I taught Ishani the technology of Katti-Bhaap, the Bengali method of cutting and restoring friendly relations between two kids that I learned from my son when he was in St Agnes School at KGP. The two kids concerned extend their right little fingers and 'cut' them away and say "Katti!"; and after a period of reconciliation, they come together and extend their thumbs and enfold them saying "Bhaap!". Nowadays  whenever she visits my bedroom, we play Katti-Bhaap.

This doesn't seem to work always in adult world:

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1993 Qrs B-140, IIT KGP

From 1974 to 1993 we were living in Qrs C1-97, a bungalow with an enormous garden. And over the previous five years the woodwork in that Qrs was crumbling. Also, the trees in the compound grew tall and dense and no sunlight was streaming in. The whole house got dark, dingy and suffocating even during daytime. So, we bided our time and shifted to what I used to call the best Qrs at KGP...B-140.

It was the middle floor apartment of a 3-story building. But, we were not used to what my ground-floor tenant, Prof Z, dubbed 'corporate living'.

Z was hospitable enough for a week, but gradually he started disliking our existence over his head. The trouble was the usual: they were 3 larks and we were 3 owls. So, our sleeping and waking hours never coincided. And the slab that did duty as our floor and their roof was perhaps the thinnest ever. 

So, one day, he rushed into our Qrs when I was away at Harry's, and shouted at my wife and son and asked us to mend our ways or quit. He made quite a ruckus and my wife was scared and my son amused. When I returned home, my wife told me the incident and I asked her to ignore it. 

The next week, he revisited our Qrs and told my wife that he 'can trace' her footsteps and mine and my son's and tell the difference. Also that he could, by leaning on the drain pipe in his bathroom, clearly make out the pillow-talk between my wife and me.

Clearly, we had a 'case' on our hands and I advised my wife to ignore him completely. But of course we never mended our owlish ghoulish ways.

Next month, we found copies of an unsigned Notice he wrote and circulated and pasted on the walls detailing his 'Ten Rules of Corporate Living (and Loving)'...a Notice loaded against us. The other co-residents of  the Block had a fun time reading his Memos and Injunctions and laughing and tearing them.

At one time I was scared that he would go to either our Director or even the Police Station with a written complaint against us.

But, as usual, I kept quiet...I was by then known as Professor Cool.

Two years later, one fine morning, he visited us bearing a packet of sweets and trying to embrace me...it happened to be Holi.

I sort of escaped...

And then on his overtures turned groovier and groovier.

Upon discreet inquiries, I came to know that all his long-dreamed desires got suddenly fulfilled: an overdue promotion, birth of a grandkid, a Fellowship for his son...and maybe a Lottery Jackpot...

His Oldy-Baldy Katti-Bhaap syndrome was truly childish...even Ishani would laugh...



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