**********************************************************************************************************
My didi's husband (IAS) has a poor opinion of teachers and their trade. He loses no chance to fling at me sarcasms like:
"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach"
"I really like the 1st year Physics syllabus for IIT-KGP engineers, made by you. It is just superb. It has a flow - it goes from oscillation to wave to light to qm. What one learns from one topic uses to understand the next topic. I did not know how difficult it is to prepare a balanced syllabus! Now I realize more what a blessing we had to have yours and Prof. Saraswat's book with us to teach 1st year Physics. By the way, your book is still the bible of the 1st year physics course. Students also refer it in EM and optics lab in IV year"
***********************************************************************************************************
My didi's husband (IAS) has a poor opinion of teachers and their trade. He loses no chance to fling at me sarcasms like:
"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach"
Another of his favorite generalizations is:
"Teachers are scared of taking risks"
He exceeded himself when he once asked me:
"Tell me two professionals whose spouses are most likely to cheat on them"
"I don't know"
"Policemen and software employees"
"Why?"
"They return home past midnight"
Sound logic...I didn't tell him that during my last decade at IIT KGP, I used to regularly return home past midnight...I was collaborating by e-mail daily with Ed Taylor of MIT who loved to work in his mornings. Because, the IAS chappy would have retorted that my wife and I were by then too old to cheat on each other. He didn't know that age held no bar to a supreme judge who retired recently...'bar' is right; though he was on the 'bench', he was too full of nightly 'spirits' in his hotel room.
Anyway I never 'did' much at IIT KGP except 'teach'. And its class rooms were heavenly for me.
So I often used to brood if I gave my IIT, which also doled me my highest and best degree, any sort of return gift.
The answer used to be an emphatic "No!"
Its alumni and alumna (a new word to me) are giving their alma mater millions of dollars...the latest alumna-gift was to set up a Center for Petroleum Engineering.
The other day I promised a measly Rs 1000 as 'contribution' to Kshitiz; and fervently hope it will never be redeemed.
However, it now appears that I did gift my junior teachers at IIT KGP a sort of lasting gift.
I am talking about the 'book' I wrote with Prof R S Sarsawat just before he quit this world and I quit KGP, both for good.
Here is a mail I got the other day from a professor who happened to be my student at KGP long before rejoining it as a faculty:
"I really like the 1st year Physics syllabus for IIT-KGP engineers, made by you. It is just superb. It has a flow - it goes from oscillation to wave to light to qm. What one learns from one topic uses to understand the next topic. I did not know how difficult it is to prepare a balanced syllabus! Now I realize more what a blessing we had to have yours and Prof. Saraswat's book with us to teach 1st year Physics. By the way, your book is still the bible of the 1st year physics course. Students also refer it in EM and optics lab in IV year"
I had forgotten all about this so-called 'book' of 260 pages with as many hand-drawn figures and double the number of equations done on the primitive Word 6.0 in 1999. And when I got this mail, I was curious to take a re-look at that book. And recalled that the only copy that I had with me in Hyderabad was snatched away by an ex-student, now settled for good in the US. He calls himself PoLTS, I don't know why and was too afraid to ask... "Who isn't afraid of PoLTS?"
So I called Mohinder Thacker at the Technology Market the other evening...the first time in 8 years and more. He was glad to hear my voice...he was a stripling when his dad started the Thackers Bookshop at IIT during my youth.
After the usual how-do-you-do, he said:
"Sir, your book is selling very well nowadays"
"I have lost all my copies, Mohinder. Can you send me a copy by one of the many students there hailing from Hyderabad?"
"Why one, sir! I will send you five gift copies"
That, as they say, is from the horse's mouth...
So that was my poor return-gift to my alma-mater-pater-chatter...
Mother Teresa was fond of chiding:
"Don't give from your largesse....give till it hurts!"
I must say that the 9-month job of key-boarding this book that I took it upon myself hurt me alright.
One Sunday afternoon while I was at it in my room in the department, I felt extremely weak suddenly. And I got scared and took out my Chetak scooter and rushed to Debanth Clinic in Prem Bazaar and asked him to tell me then and there if I have a sugar problem. He pulled out my blood, went in, and returned after half an hour saying:
"No, sir! Your sugar is normal"
That was the first time I had my blood tested for sugar...I was then all of 56.
By the time the thing was ready on 1st January 2000, I was struck down with such a bad spondylitis that I couldn't lift my left hand to push it into my banian...so I had to buy a new set of banians one size bigger...like Ishani's blouses.
And I couldn't touch my computer for a whole year, taking a sabbatical from Ed Taylor.
That was the best time of my life...no e-mailing, no word-processing, no net-browsing, and no building blogarithms...
No comments:
Post a Comment