***********************************************************************************************************
Catherine the Great wanted to learn mathematics and employed the best French mathematician as her home tutor. And he arrived and said he would teach her the infinite and the infinitesimal to start with. Upon which she asked him not to bother about the infinitesimal since she knew all about it from the behavior of her courtiers.
Like everything, big and small are relative.
When I was a kid of 4, I used to walk by our village tank which had four equal sides with many stone steps. Boats used to ply in it during temple festivals carrying idols of our god and his consort. To me it looked like the biggest ever water body known to man. After a good 60 years I revisited it and was amazed to find that my car could cover its circumference slowly in just three minutes.
So also our school playground on which we used to play improvised football.
The first time I saw the Bay of Bengal at the age of 4, it was a stunning experience. Yet, it remained so even after 60 years.
Talking of the sea, I recall our geography primer in Class 4. I just loved the book because it had a wonderful picture on it showing the course of a river from its birth in the mountains to its confluence in the sea. I still recall the winding stream collecting its tributaries before splitting into five fingers with their deltas between them.
The book used to have a chapter on how we know that our earth is a sphere:
1. Watching an incoming ship from the beach, we see the flag first and then the mast and then the hull. I tried this experiment much later when I was at my university town of Vizagh, sitting on the beach for hours hoping to catch an incoming ship into the harbor. Needless to say, I failed in spite of my living by the seaside for 7 long years.
2. During eclipses, the shadow of the earth on the moon is circular. Oh, ok, but I never understood till a ripe age why there are no eclipses alternately every fortnight when either the earth or the moon cover each other.
3. An ant crawling on a tennis ball eventually returns to its origin. This was the most mysterious of all. What ants and tennis balls had to do with our earth was an untold story.
Anyway, my first experiences of the really big happened at the age of 21 on my first visit to Calcutta with my boyhood friend who had earlier explored the City of Joy. As our train steamed into the Howrah Station at 10 AM on a working day and as we stepped down on the platform, we didn't have to walk...we were swept away by the milling crowd. And then there was this relief of finding ourselves in this really HUGE hall with stalls all around it. To this day I can't forget that elevating experience.
And then my friend took me to the first floor waiting room balcony to have a look at the Howrah Bridge we had seen in a picture of that name. And the sight was memorable...the river, the cantilever thing without a single pier, and boats plying beneath it and the steam launches hooting...it was all so thrilling.
And then he took me to the New Market. It was a glory as Humpty Dumpty would have called it. It was all under one roof with fancy decorations and shops selling everything from flower pots to gold chains. The terms 'supermarket' and 'mall' were yet to arrive in our diction...it was just the New Market. And pricey.
Then we walked along the Dalhousie Square, Dharamtalla Street, College Street, Chittaranjan Avenue and everything on either side was BIG.
And we landed in the Amber. It was all so dark that I thought there was one of those power cuts...I didn't know about concealed and muted lighting and it took a couple of minutes to see clearly and not step on someone's toes. There were reddish little little things floating in juice in a bowl on the dining table. And my friend told me that they were baby onions pickled in vinegar and asked me to taste one.
And I asked him if I could have one more. He said I could have the entire lot... for FREE!
*************************************************************************************************************
wiki
All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful
The Lord God made them all
Hymn
Catherine the Great wanted to learn mathematics and employed the best French mathematician as her home tutor. And he arrived and said he would teach her the infinite and the infinitesimal to start with. Upon which she asked him not to bother about the infinitesimal since she knew all about it from the behavior of her courtiers.
Like everything, big and small are relative.
When I was a kid of 4, I used to walk by our village tank which had four equal sides with many stone steps. Boats used to ply in it during temple festivals carrying idols of our god and his consort. To me it looked like the biggest ever water body known to man. After a good 60 years I revisited it and was amazed to find that my car could cover its circumference slowly in just three minutes.
So also our school playground on which we used to play improvised football.
The first time I saw the Bay of Bengal at the age of 4, it was a stunning experience. Yet, it remained so even after 60 years.
Talking of the sea, I recall our geography primer in Class 4. I just loved the book because it had a wonderful picture on it showing the course of a river from its birth in the mountains to its confluence in the sea. I still recall the winding stream collecting its tributaries before splitting into five fingers with their deltas between them.
The book used to have a chapter on how we know that our earth is a sphere:
1. Watching an incoming ship from the beach, we see the flag first and then the mast and then the hull. I tried this experiment much later when I was at my university town of Vizagh, sitting on the beach for hours hoping to catch an incoming ship into the harbor. Needless to say, I failed in spite of my living by the seaside for 7 long years.
2. During eclipses, the shadow of the earth on the moon is circular. Oh, ok, but I never understood till a ripe age why there are no eclipses alternately every fortnight when either the earth or the moon cover each other.
3. An ant crawling on a tennis ball eventually returns to its origin. This was the most mysterious of all. What ants and tennis balls had to do with our earth was an untold story.
Anyway, my first experiences of the really big happened at the age of 21 on my first visit to Calcutta with my boyhood friend who had earlier explored the City of Joy. As our train steamed into the Howrah Station at 10 AM on a working day and as we stepped down on the platform, we didn't have to walk...we were swept away by the milling crowd. And then there was this relief of finding ourselves in this really HUGE hall with stalls all around it. To this day I can't forget that elevating experience.
And then my friend took me to the first floor waiting room balcony to have a look at the Howrah Bridge we had seen in a picture of that name. And the sight was memorable...the river, the cantilever thing without a single pier, and boats plying beneath it and the steam launches hooting...it was all so thrilling.
And then he took me to the New Market. It was a glory as Humpty Dumpty would have called it. It was all under one roof with fancy decorations and shops selling everything from flower pots to gold chains. The terms 'supermarket' and 'mall' were yet to arrive in our diction...it was just the New Market. And pricey.
Then we walked along the Dalhousie Square, Dharamtalla Street, College Street, Chittaranjan Avenue and everything on either side was BIG.
And we landed in the Amber. It was all so dark that I thought there was one of those power cuts...I didn't know about concealed and muted lighting and it took a couple of minutes to see clearly and not step on someone's toes. There were reddish little little things floating in juice in a bowl on the dining table. And my friend told me that they were baby onions pickled in vinegar and asked me to taste one.
And I asked him if I could have one more. He said I could have the entire lot... for FREE!
*************************************************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment