Aptitude

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...A meeting of a writer and his reader invariably produces disillusionment, which might as well be avoided. I remember one person who went away in chagrin after coming to see me. He had found in my shelves other people's books, and not my own in golden editions as he had expected. My talk was not scintillating and, above all, I was different from the picture he had of me in his mind...

...RKN   

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ap·ti·tude

noun \ˈap-tə-ˌtüd, -ˌtyüd\

 

: a natural ability to do something or to learn something

Hmm! So, that is what aptitude is... a natural ability. 

Ok, Nature comes in there very much. Like cuckoos have an aptitude for singing and fish for swimming but not vice versa. And tigers are equipped to kill and monkeys to funny business.

When we escalate higher in the animal kingdom to the modern man and woman, things get pretty complicated. The cave man could throw a spear and relax while his wife could roast the pig and feed her babies. But not today's 'working couples'. By the way, does it mean that my mom and dad were 'unworking couples'?"

Sure, my mom was kitchen-bound. And we loved her cooking.  But I come from an orthodox South-Indian brahmin family and my mom wasn't allowed to enter her kitchen and puja room for all of 3 days once a month when she was 'polluted'. And those 3 days were hell for us. For, Father had to cook and feed us all, and he had no aptitude for cooking, though not eating. He had no idea where the sugar and suji dabbas went and his bifocals didn't help much in mixing them up.

But all my mom's four working daughters are scared of cooking. The other two became expert cooks (according to their hubbies). My cousin was a working lady, a lecturer in math at Vizagh, and was ever afraid of guests manifesting without adequate notice. Fortunately Vizagh, unlike KGP, has many eateries, so that solved her worries.

My wife and I were never working couples at KGP in any sense of the term. So my wife became an expert cook (according to me) and she was never scared of half a dozen guests arriving for lunch or dinner provided she was given a couple of hours notice.

That Vizagh cousin I was talking about came from a family where everyone had math in their genes. Her father was settled on the seashore of the Coromandel Coast in a village called Sullurpet (now famous for the rocket launching station) as a salt maker. And he had a flair for math. And had a side-business of coaching students in math. And was known by everyone there as the 'Lekkhala Mastaru' (Math Teacher). The side-business soon became the main. And his half a dozen kids became math teachers. One of them unfortunately couldn't get a job as math teacher in any college and so became a Drill Teacher in a school (he is an expert in badminton). But he became a multimillionaire, coaching students in math at home. 

That is what aptitude is.

In the 1970s, admission to M Tech in Engg at the five IITs was an in-house affair. B Techs from all over India arrived at, say, the Chemical Engg Department one fine morning by invitation and were asked to sit for an entrance test. The question paper had bit questions from coal, petroleum and whatever, and a list of the winning candidates was put up by the evening. And those who couldn't make it at KGP traveled to Kanpur and got admission there easily.

But in the early '80s this was thought a waste of time and energy and the five IITs sat together and evolved a Joint Entrance Exam for M Tech along the lines of IIT JEE for B Tech. And they called it GATE...a picturesque acronym. I thought the A there meant Admission but was told I was wrong (as usual) and the A there stood for Aptitude. I guess they just wanted to be different. For, the question papers had very little to do with aptitude but were rather routine. I know it for, soon enough, the M Tech in Sciences were also included in the GATE. I said it should now be called GATES but was laughed off.

I was bemoaning that my Uncle filled up my Admission Application for Physics at the university in Vizagh since the physics we were taught there was most boring and the text books even more so.

But somehow I was recruited as a teacher of physics at IIT KGP in 1965 and I was dubious. But within a couple of years I found that physics was the only teachable subject as far as my aptitude went and I thanked my invisible Guardian Angel that I was not asked to teach the Strength of Materials or Gray's Anatomy. Teaching was in my genes since I came from a family of teachers.

In the early 2000s at KGP there was a 'workshop' for teachers of physics from all over India, conducted by our department at KGP. It was funded by the AICTE and Prof RSS insisted that I give them a 'lecture' on lasers since the workshop was on 'Lasers and their Applications'. The remuneration was good and I was running a home-loan and car-loan, both at a whopping 14% interest. So I agreed, with apprehension, since I had never taught lasers at IIT in the classrooms.

My only fame as a laser-man was because Prof STH Abidi (Chairman, Nehru Museum of Science & Technology) was looking to launch a series of booklets titled, ambitiously, the NMST Series. And found on my table a 16-page typescript titled: 'Laser Light vs Ordinary Light' that I wrote up exclusively for the benefit of Late Prof GSS. And STHA whisked it away and published it as NMST 001 (what a hope!).

There was this Prof KKG in the Humanities at IIT KGP who was an expert in International Relations. We got acquainted and he used to visit my room once in a while. And once he also cursed me benevolently:

"Pox on you!"

Anyway he found a copy of the slim NMST 001 on Lasers on my table and took it away for reading. And brought it back the next day. I asked him:

"How is my booklet?"

"Don't call it a booklet...it is just an essay"

"OK, how is my essay?"

"No good for me"

"Why so?"

"There is no mention of the military applications of lasers"

Those were the years of Reagan's Laser Missile Shield Program, SDI (Star Wars), and Prof KKG wanted funda on that...his aptitude...

Anyway, I agreed to take this AICTE 'lecture' for physics teachers and, since I didn't know much of the applications of lasers, I thought I would convert this lecture into a 'Q & A' session on the fundamental principles and properties of lasers . 

I was waiting in my room from 2 PM, for my lecture was to begin at 3 in the afternoon. And found from the time table circulated by RSS that they were then having a lecture by an expert in Production Engineering. The lecture hall was our H N Bose Seminar Room just in front of my office. And found that there was a captivated silence from the audience who were 35 strong, with three middle-aged ladies who, RSS warned me, were rather 'loud'. I thought that the Production Lecture was super-excellent, and became nervous.

After the Production Engineer left the Seminar Room, I walked in and held my Quiz Session for all of 60 minutes in which more than half the men and all the 3 ladies participated throatily. At the end of my lecture, a young man from the audience walked into my room for clearing some of his doubts and we soon became chatty. I asked him how the Production Lecture went, since it was all very quiet, unlike mine. And he said:

"It was damn boring for us teachers of physics. He was talking all the time about '1mm bore' and '2mm drill' and we all were into our post-lunch siesta"

So, that is Aptitude in Engineering...GATE...

Anyway, I loved teaching physics for all of 40 years at KGP and thought I had an aptitude for it and would continue doing it after my retirement at Hyderabad to aspirants of IIT JEE. But soon found that I had lost all interest in physics, if any. 

And launched myself as an inveterate blogger. And soon Ishani arrived and I started printing slim Ishani Booklets and distributing them to all and sundry. And became an 'author'. It is so easy to turn an author nowadays if you can afford to spend some money on self-publishing...indeed there are several firms willing to do it and also arrange for a 'Book Launch' by a VIP (who could as well be illiterate), for money.

I used to mail copies of my Ishani booklets to my Psychiatrist, Dr G Prasad Rao, who cured my Depression (and turned me into a maniac). I thought mine was a good case-study for him...he was guiding MDs in Psychiatry. The other day my son was escorting a colleague of his to him and so I gave him a copy of my latest Ishani booklet to be delivered to my psychiatrist as a gift. Apparently he was very pleased and told my son:

"I read his blog once in a while, and he writes very humorously"

Now, this is a reputation I would rather not have. For, humor is a serious business. None, no one, who had ever met me at KGP during all those 40 years would call me a 'humorist'. I was a loner and silent as a tomb. All I wrote were a few technical articles in physics journals. And I didn't host comedy shows.

The other day I got a charming mail (excerpted below). This is from a 'constant reader' of my blogs from 2007 onwards. We missed each other by a year at KGP. He was a young boy then in the department of physics who graduated to his third year just when I migrated to my first year Jumbo teaching. So we never met. Just recently he got a great Ph D in Theoretical Physics from California and wrote me a mail on that happy occasion.

And he is scared of meeting me at Hyderabad, a la RKN's guest cited above:

"...Finally, no amount of words can describe the helplessness I felt upon realizing how my worldline missed yours by those few whiskers. I sometimes have an urge to pay you a visit in Hyderabad although the decision is pulled to the antipode by my apprehension that this beautiful relation might acquire earthly hues once the meeting takes place - just like RKN's dictum on never wanting to meet authors. Reading you is like listening to the void while writing to you is like talking to it. My imagination is free now to ascribe form to your psyche in the corners untouched by your blogs. Will I be risking much by discovering the physical reality?"

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