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My Guide SDM went to Cambridge to work with Dirac. And after a fruitless year, he declared to whosoever was willing to listen:
"Dirac went senile at 40"
SDM was 45 then and at the peak of his productivity.
When I joined SDM he was 55, and he was 60 when he quit IIT KGP. And I was interacting with him closely. And, whenever he took more than 2 minutes to recall a formula, his face would turn pink and he would utter the words:
"Am I becoming senile?"
And when he left KGP he told me that his wish was to die while working on Physics. And his wish was granted...he died at 82 while giving finishing touches to his book on QM...an Errata for a series of printer's devils over which he fumed.
I retired at 62 and thought I would die teaching in a college. That was not to be.
As soon as I retired I sank into a severe clinical depression that lasted for two long years. And during which I lost all taste for teaching.
During the first year of my psychosis I was unable to even read a newspaper...the mind refused to focus. Forget writing. The pills I was made to take had several side effects...slurring of speech, loss of memory, loss of the ability to crunch even simple numbers, shaking while writing, and stuff.
Slowly I did recover enough to read a few pages of PGW. And also write.
But number crunching was beyond me for a long time.
During those days, one early morning, the milkman knocked and announced that our milk bill for the month was Rs 550. I didn't (couldn't) question him. I fetched a Rs 1000 note, handed it to him and asked him to return me Rs 250. Which he gladly did. And after two days, I sensed that I had gone wrong in my subtraction. And it was with some effort that I could squeeze from him the rest of the amount due to me.
In another couple of years I recovered enough to start blogging daily...an achievement. And publish Ishani booklets and a few pieces in the Now & Again column of The Statesman.
And later I lost my wife to cervical cancer...
And I am on 70 now.
And the fear of senile dementia is a recurring theme...I try hard to forget it ;)
And thought I should fight it like my Guide SDM did...and the other day I read that senile dementia can be deferred by giving challenges to the brain.
So, in addition to blogging, nowadays I do the daily Jumble in DC without pen and paper...all in the head. It is quite easy most of the days. The cryptic answer arrives in less than ten minutes.
Once in a while it takes half an hour or more. And I start sweating...but the answer does arrive finally.
The toughest answer that took more than half an hour the other day was:
"moment of truth"
Note that it has 13 letters in three words...but it has only 4 vowels...2 o's, one e, and one u (of all things). The rest 9 are weird consonants...as many as 3 t's and 2 m's...
I also take up another challenge...this time with our new milkman.
He would arrive duly on the evening of the 1st of every month with his register and his pocket calculator.
And would announce that last month I took like 4 packets for 14 days, 3 packets for 7 days, 2 packets for 3 days and 1 packet for the rest of the month. And would tackle his calculator and fetch the bill in less than half a minute.
And I would ask him not to show me his answer...let me try to do it in my head. And he would be amused. And within 2 minutes I would announce my result. And he would check with his answer and is astonished...I recall Moitreyee Sinha telling me that she was hailed a 'genius!' by her American students since she could get the sine of 30 degrees without a calculator...
Moitreyee later gifted me a copy of the splendid biography of Feynman by James Gleick that I use often when I blog about Feynman. The book is titled: 'Genius'.
I am no Sakuntala Devi (sadly no more) nor Bethe nor Feynman.
But these days I am lucky...
Each packet costs Rs 18, which is 2 less than 20...I just have to double, add a zero and subtract.
Also the service charge is luckily Rs 20 again...
Let me see how long I can push this defunct brain....
************************************************************************************************************
My Guide SDM went to Cambridge to work with Dirac. And after a fruitless year, he declared to whosoever was willing to listen:
"Dirac went senile at 40"
SDM was 45 then and at the peak of his productivity.
When I joined SDM he was 55, and he was 60 when he quit IIT KGP. And I was interacting with him closely. And, whenever he took more than 2 minutes to recall a formula, his face would turn pink and he would utter the words:
"Am I becoming senile?"
And when he left KGP he told me that his wish was to die while working on Physics. And his wish was granted...he died at 82 while giving finishing touches to his book on QM...an Errata for a series of printer's devils over which he fumed.
I retired at 62 and thought I would die teaching in a college. That was not to be.
As soon as I retired I sank into a severe clinical depression that lasted for two long years. And during which I lost all taste for teaching.
During the first year of my psychosis I was unable to even read a newspaper...the mind refused to focus. Forget writing. The pills I was made to take had several side effects...slurring of speech, loss of memory, loss of the ability to crunch even simple numbers, shaking while writing, and stuff.
Slowly I did recover enough to read a few pages of PGW. And also write.
But number crunching was beyond me for a long time.
During those days, one early morning, the milkman knocked and announced that our milk bill for the month was Rs 550. I didn't (couldn't) question him. I fetched a Rs 1000 note, handed it to him and asked him to return me Rs 250. Which he gladly did. And after two days, I sensed that I had gone wrong in my subtraction. And it was with some effort that I could squeeze from him the rest of the amount due to me.
In another couple of years I recovered enough to start blogging daily...an achievement. And publish Ishani booklets and a few pieces in the Now & Again column of The Statesman.
And later I lost my wife to cervical cancer...
And I am on 70 now.
And the fear of senile dementia is a recurring theme...I try hard to forget it ;)
And thought I should fight it like my Guide SDM did...and the other day I read that senile dementia can be deferred by giving challenges to the brain.
So, in addition to blogging, nowadays I do the daily Jumble in DC without pen and paper...all in the head. It is quite easy most of the days. The cryptic answer arrives in less than ten minutes.
Once in a while it takes half an hour or more. And I start sweating...but the answer does arrive finally.
The toughest answer that took more than half an hour the other day was:
"moment of truth"
Note that it has 13 letters in three words...but it has only 4 vowels...2 o's, one e, and one u (of all things). The rest 9 are weird consonants...as many as 3 t's and 2 m's...
I also take up another challenge...this time with our new milkman.
He would arrive duly on the evening of the 1st of every month with his register and his pocket calculator.
And would announce that last month I took like 4 packets for 14 days, 3 packets for 7 days, 2 packets for 3 days and 1 packet for the rest of the month. And would tackle his calculator and fetch the bill in less than half a minute.
And I would ask him not to show me his answer...let me try to do it in my head. And he would be amused. And within 2 minutes I would announce my result. And he would check with his answer and is astonished...I recall Moitreyee Sinha telling me that she was hailed a 'genius!' by her American students since she could get the sine of 30 degrees without a calculator...
Moitreyee later gifted me a copy of the splendid biography of Feynman by James Gleick that I use often when I blog about Feynman. The book is titled: 'Genius'.
I am no Sakuntala Devi (sadly no more) nor Bethe nor Feynman.
But these days I am lucky...
Each packet costs Rs 18, which is 2 less than 20...I just have to double, add a zero and subtract.
Also the service charge is luckily Rs 20 again...
Let me see how long I can push this defunct brain....
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