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While at school we had few doubts and never bothered to raise our hands to ask a question...most of the raised were little fingers asking permission for a visit to the open spaces for what we called #1.
As soon as I entered college I was baffled by several doubts...the medium of instruction suddenly turned English and all our books were in English.
And then there was this Physics teacher, Krishna Rao, who came to the class wearing a coat and a tie and the first thing he did was to elaborately remove his coat and hang it over his chair, thus exposing one of his collection of check-shirts. His English was impeccable, though not his Physics, as I learned by and by.
Our first lesson was on a wicked thing called Vernier Calipers which we had to handle in our lab as well. And I didn't quite follow why we should multiply the vernier coincidence reading with the least count and add it to the main scale reading...a Golden Rule. I was a puny chap sitting in the first bench and I raised my hand. Krishna Rao tried to ignore me but I kept my hand raised. And when at last he looked at me and said:
"Yes?"
in a mock serious tone, I asked my question in halting English. And he smiled a knowing smile and said:
"This is a silly question...the answer is obvious...think for yourself"
And as I sat down humiliated, my classmates giggled...a thing worse than the teacher's snub. Like it is said in our joint families that what is more humiliating than getting beat up by the husband is the giggles of the sisters-in-law.
Krishna Rao came to know by the next day that I was the nephew of our Principal...we used to arrive at college in the same rickshaw till I got the hang of the route. And then onwards he would peer at me every ten minutes and ask:
"Am I clear?"
But of course I, and all the 60 others, kept mum forever...
This snub:
"It is obvious!"
rankled badly and when I grew to be a teacher at IIT KGP I promised myself never to brush off the question of any student abruptly.
Incidentally it took a couple of decades after my first attempt at college to figure out that bloody Vernier Calipers, when I saw a so-called Negative-Reading Vernier at IIT KGP...a wickeder evil but educative.
In life and science nothing is obvious. A couple may be handsome and rich and laughing, but take it from me, they have at least one secret sorrow...maybe the fear that their happiness would not last forever. On the other hand, when we rented half of a small tenement at Vizagh during out University career, the other half was occupied by a glum clerk with a stern wife and three little kids. And we never heard the wife and husband speak to each other...they were always looking daggers. But within 3 months the wife got mutely pregnant and delivered a bonny baby. And yet another before I left Vizagh to KGP.
Just take a look at our Share Market. I read that the Sensex crossed a new all-time high on this Diwali. For a novice in these matters it may look obvious that our economy is booming. But of course it is in the dirtiest dumps. I am told that things are no better in New York where they talk about the disconnect between the Wall Street and the Main Street.
Our Chemistry teacher at the university used to say:
"Chemistry is different from Math. In Math (1+1 = 2) is always true but, in Chemistry, the mass of two hydrogen atoms is not the same as the mass of their combination called the hydrogen molecule"
AP was too warm for me to need any hot water baths in any weather. We relished cold water baths...the colder the better. But when I reached KGP, I found the winter there quite unsuited for cold water baths...the water stored overnight in the steel bucket in my room in our Faculty Hostel turned chill by the morning.
So I spent a bit of my costly money and bought a 1000 Watt immersion heater. And, the first morning, I dipped it half-way down into the water-bucket as advised by the water-mark and switched it on. After half an hour when bubbles started blowing at the top, I switched the unit off, and after waiting for the advised one minute, carried the bucket into the bathroom.
And as I was enjoying my first hot water bath, the water I poured on my head suddenly turned icy and I started shivering. It was quite a lowbrow Archimedes thing for me. And I loved it.
And then I took my seat at the breakfast table where there were already 5 engineers seated and started narrating my novel experience. And at once I was snubbed by KKR, the Electrical Engineer in the crowd:
"Of course it is obvious...everyone knows water is a poor conductor!"
And the others giggled. I kept quiet without rebutting:
"It has nothing to with conduction, fools!....it is all about convection...you guys forgot the calorimeter experiment of your first year where you were given a stirrer and asked to keep stirring till the cows came home"
For, I recalled the story my friend NP used to narrate with relish:
A troop of monkeys were feeling cold in the evening and wanted to heat themselves under the tree by setting up a cozy fire. They collected dry leaves, twigs, and branches and were looking how to light their fire. And they saw a hundred fireflies floating around and caught handfuls of them and threw them into their heap of fuel and hoped that the fireflies would light their fire.
Watching their antics, a dove came down from the tree and advised them:
"Fireflies don't carry fire...they carry light!"
And the monkeys were so hurt and offended that they caught the dove, twisted her neck, broke it, and flung her far away...monkeys being veggies...
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http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060506205303/uncyclopedia/images/5/51/CaptObviousTitanic.jpg
While at school we had few doubts and never bothered to raise our hands to ask a question...most of the raised were little fingers asking permission for a visit to the open spaces for what we called #1.
As soon as I entered college I was baffled by several doubts...the medium of instruction suddenly turned English and all our books were in English.
And then there was this Physics teacher, Krishna Rao, who came to the class wearing a coat and a tie and the first thing he did was to elaborately remove his coat and hang it over his chair, thus exposing one of his collection of check-shirts. His English was impeccable, though not his Physics, as I learned by and by.
Our first lesson was on a wicked thing called Vernier Calipers which we had to handle in our lab as well. And I didn't quite follow why we should multiply the vernier coincidence reading with the least count and add it to the main scale reading...a Golden Rule. I was a puny chap sitting in the first bench and I raised my hand. Krishna Rao tried to ignore me but I kept my hand raised. And when at last he looked at me and said:
"Yes?"
in a mock serious tone, I asked my question in halting English. And he smiled a knowing smile and said:
"This is a silly question...the answer is obvious...think for yourself"
And as I sat down humiliated, my classmates giggled...a thing worse than the teacher's snub. Like it is said in our joint families that what is more humiliating than getting beat up by the husband is the giggles of the sisters-in-law.
Krishna Rao came to know by the next day that I was the nephew of our Principal...we used to arrive at college in the same rickshaw till I got the hang of the route. And then onwards he would peer at me every ten minutes and ask:
"Am I clear?"
But of course I, and all the 60 others, kept mum forever...
This snub:
"It is obvious!"
rankled badly and when I grew to be a teacher at IIT KGP I promised myself never to brush off the question of any student abruptly.
Incidentally it took a couple of decades after my first attempt at college to figure out that bloody Vernier Calipers, when I saw a so-called Negative-Reading Vernier at IIT KGP...a wickeder evil but educative.
In life and science nothing is obvious. A couple may be handsome and rich and laughing, but take it from me, they have at least one secret sorrow...maybe the fear that their happiness would not last forever. On the other hand, when we rented half of a small tenement at Vizagh during out University career, the other half was occupied by a glum clerk with a stern wife and three little kids. And we never heard the wife and husband speak to each other...they were always looking daggers. But within 3 months the wife got mutely pregnant and delivered a bonny baby. And yet another before I left Vizagh to KGP.
Just take a look at our Share Market. I read that the Sensex crossed a new all-time high on this Diwali. For a novice in these matters it may look obvious that our economy is booming. But of course it is in the dirtiest dumps. I am told that things are no better in New York where they talk about the disconnect between the Wall Street and the Main Street.
Our Chemistry teacher at the university used to say:
"Chemistry is different from Math. In Math (1+1 = 2) is always true but, in Chemistry, the mass of two hydrogen atoms is not the same as the mass of their combination called the hydrogen molecule"
AP was too warm for me to need any hot water baths in any weather. We relished cold water baths...the colder the better. But when I reached KGP, I found the winter there quite unsuited for cold water baths...the water stored overnight in the steel bucket in my room in our Faculty Hostel turned chill by the morning.
So I spent a bit of my costly money and bought a 1000 Watt immersion heater. And, the first morning, I dipped it half-way down into the water-bucket as advised by the water-mark and switched it on. After half an hour when bubbles started blowing at the top, I switched the unit off, and after waiting for the advised one minute, carried the bucket into the bathroom.
And as I was enjoying my first hot water bath, the water I poured on my head suddenly turned icy and I started shivering. It was quite a lowbrow Archimedes thing for me. And I loved it.
And then I took my seat at the breakfast table where there were already 5 engineers seated and started narrating my novel experience. And at once I was snubbed by KKR, the Electrical Engineer in the crowd:
"Of course it is obvious...everyone knows water is a poor conductor!"
And the others giggled. I kept quiet without rebutting:
"It has nothing to with conduction, fools!....it is all about convection...you guys forgot the calorimeter experiment of your first year where you were given a stirrer and asked to keep stirring till the cows came home"
For, I recalled the story my friend NP used to narrate with relish:
A troop of monkeys were feeling cold in the evening and wanted to heat themselves under the tree by setting up a cozy fire. They collected dry leaves, twigs, and branches and were looking how to light their fire. And they saw a hundred fireflies floating around and caught handfuls of them and threw them into their heap of fuel and hoped that the fireflies would light their fire.
Watching their antics, a dove came down from the tree and advised them:
"Fireflies don't carry fire...they carry light!"
And the monkeys were so hurt and offended that they caught the dove, twisted her neck, broke it, and flung her far away...monkeys being veggies...
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1 comment:
"But within 3 months the wife got mutely pregnant and delivered a bonny baby. And yet another before I left Vizagh to KGP".
Any secret confession here?
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