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...Well, you know, I have never been much of a lad for exhibitions. The citizenry in the mass always rather puts me off, and after I have been shuffling along with the multitude for a quarter of an hour or so I feel as if I were walking on hot bricks. About this particular binge, too, there seemed to be a lack of what you might call human interest. I mean to say, millions of people, no doubt, are so constituted that they scream with joy and excitement at the spectacle of a stuffed porcupine fish or a jar of seeds from Western Australia - but not Bertram. No; if you will take the word of one who would not deceive you, not Bertram....
...PGW
I guess I suffer from, or rather enjoy, a heavy dose of Bertram Wooster's Complex about museums and exhibitions.
The first proper exhibition I was involved in was in 1964 when I was a research scholar at my university in Vizagh. And there, I was at the right end of the stick...I was the exhibitor rather than the exhibited...I mean I was in charge of a science exhibit in our physics department, which was cutely called:
And village girls by the hundred were waiting in a queue in front of my exhibit to get their complexions measured and a number given out of 100...like 39% for the Cleopatras and 99% for the Angelinas.
The device is pretty simple now, but then the photocell was new and a rarity. We had a wall galvanometer with a lamp and scale and a beam of light focused on the lady's face who peeped into the device. And the light reflected from her face fell on a hidden photocell and the current generated measured by the running spot on the meter scale.
And after her turn was over, she would get a slip signed by me on which was written her 'score'. And she would push the chit into her blouse and scram without showing it off if she was as dark as me. When a particularly swarthy girl's turn came, I would tweak the potentiometer a bit so that she was not entirely disappointed.
On the last day of our exhibition we volunteers were replaced by our seniors and we were given the chance to travel to all other departments to see their exhibits (for free). And word spread that the best one was in the geology department and called itself:
So I went there and entered a small room in the basement where I was told the volcano would go into action every half hour. Unfortunately by the time I entered, the earlier show was just over and I had to sweat it out in the basement and wait for almost half an hour. Pretty soon I found that crowds had gathered and flocked by the dozen leaving me no room for retreat. And that was when I discovered I hated crowds and closed spaces.
By and by the volunteer came and showed us the rather huge conical brickwork they had built to resemble a 'real' volcano. And he talked for all of 5 minutes during which the crowd was restive and then he went in and switched on the gadget. And, lo and behold, the volcano started erupting fumes and make-believe fires and spewing lava. The whole thing was over in less than a minute and everyone was impressed and shouted with joy...except me for whom it was a big relief...the thing was just a huge Diwali Thubri (anar...flower pot).
And then I quit and went home.
35 years later my friend NP and I found ourselves at a loose end on the humid Calcutta roads in the Esplanade and wanted some place where we could rest. And we thought the prestigious Indian Museum was just the place where we could relax and educate ourselves to the brim.
And we paid for the tickets and found it was too big a place to educate ourselves in within half an hour. So we peered at one or two exhibits and came out and sat on the lawn of its huge quadrangle. And started gossiping.
And then I happened to watch a drain pipe going down a wall of the building that looked like this:
In addition to the Bertram Wooster Complex, I also suffer from the Thurber Syndrome. When I saw the head of the monster at the pipe's mouth, I thought I knew the name for it...but promptly forgot. I tried to recollect it with no avail. Then I tried to forget it but to no avail. It was on the tip of my tongue and yet eluding me and leaving no room for any other thought. And I started going crazy. The whole afternoon was spoiled for me till it suddenly popped up:
"Gargoyle!"
And I started saying gargoyle, gargoyle, gargoyle lest I should forget it again..and then the 'gargoyle' never left me for the rest of our trip...it was mumbling itself like an unwanted mantra all the time in my enfeebled mind.
I stopped visiting museums then on.
There are folks who go crazy about museums. My MIT friend and his wife invariably take their summer vacation every year to Europe...just to visit as many museums as they can cram in a week...again and again. And once he told me that he never misses to visit the museum in The Hague just to have another peek at what he called his 'girl-friend'.
And I got curious and asked him who that lucky girl could be and he then sent me this picture:
I then wrote back to him that I had seen it in the 1960s on the back cover of an issue of Readers' Digest just for Rs 2...no need to travel to Europe for me.
On my first visit to Hyderabad in 1974, I found myself again at a loose end for all of 4 days and enjoyed trekking the streets of the unpolluted Nizam's city all those decades ago...just walking lazily and sipping tea here and there. And everyone asked me if I had visited the famous Salar Jung Museum. And I asked them its best exhibit. And they said it was its musical clock:
"Another master piece at the museum is an old European musical clock. I was amazed to see over 200 people sitting in a theater style in front of the clock waiting for –“The Show”. This 19th Century clock by Cook and Kevely Co. has 250 parts and it has a bronze man with a hammer beating something every second. Every hour, a timekeeper emerges out of a door (3 minutes before it is time for the hour), and strikes the gong at exact hour."
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...Well, you know, I have never been much of a lad for exhibitions. The citizenry in the mass always rather puts me off, and after I have been shuffling along with the multitude for a quarter of an hour or so I feel as if I were walking on hot bricks. About this particular binge, too, there seemed to be a lack of what you might call human interest. I mean to say, millions of people, no doubt, are so constituted that they scream with joy and excitement at the spectacle of a stuffed porcupine fish or a jar of seeds from Western Australia - but not Bertram. No; if you will take the word of one who would not deceive you, not Bertram....
...PGW
I guess I suffer from, or rather enjoy, a heavy dose of Bertram Wooster's Complex about museums and exhibitions.
The first proper exhibition I was involved in was in 1964 when I was a research scholar at my university in Vizagh. And there, I was at the right end of the stick...I was the exhibitor rather than the exhibited...I mean I was in charge of a science exhibit in our physics department, which was cutely called:
"Measure your complexion!"
And village girls by the hundred were waiting in a queue in front of my exhibit to get their complexions measured and a number given out of 100...like 39% for the Cleopatras and 99% for the Angelinas.
The device is pretty simple now, but then the photocell was new and a rarity. We had a wall galvanometer with a lamp and scale and a beam of light focused on the lady's face who peeped into the device. And the light reflected from her face fell on a hidden photocell and the current generated measured by the running spot on the meter scale.
And after her turn was over, she would get a slip signed by me on which was written her 'score'. And she would push the chit into her blouse and scram without showing it off if she was as dark as me. When a particularly swarthy girl's turn came, I would tweak the potentiometer a bit so that she was not entirely disappointed.
On the last day of our exhibition we volunteers were replaced by our seniors and we were given the chance to travel to all other departments to see their exhibits (for free). And word spread that the best one was in the geology department and called itself:
"Watch a real volcano!"
By and by the volunteer came and showed us the rather huge conical brickwork they had built to resemble a 'real' volcano. And he talked for all of 5 minutes during which the crowd was restive and then he went in and switched on the gadget. And, lo and behold, the volcano started erupting fumes and make-believe fires and spewing lava. The whole thing was over in less than a minute and everyone was impressed and shouted with joy...except me for whom it was a big relief...the thing was just a huge Diwali Thubri (anar...flower pot).
And then I quit and went home.
35 years later my friend NP and I found ourselves at a loose end on the humid Calcutta roads in the Esplanade and wanted some place where we could rest. And we thought the prestigious Indian Museum was just the place where we could relax and educate ourselves to the brim.
And we paid for the tickets and found it was too big a place to educate ourselves in within half an hour. So we peered at one or two exhibits and came out and sat on the lawn of its huge quadrangle. And started gossiping.
And then I happened to watch a drain pipe going down a wall of the building that looked like this:
"Gargoyle!"
And I started saying gargoyle, gargoyle, gargoyle lest I should forget it again..and then the 'gargoyle' never left me for the rest of our trip...it was mumbling itself like an unwanted mantra all the time in my enfeebled mind.
I stopped visiting museums then on.
There are folks who go crazy about museums. My MIT friend and his wife invariably take their summer vacation every year to Europe...just to visit as many museums as they can cram in a week...again and again. And once he told me that he never misses to visit the museum in The Hague just to have another peek at what he called his 'girl-friend'.
And I got curious and asked him who that lucky girl could be and he then sent me this picture:
I then wrote back to him that I had seen it in the 1960s on the back cover of an issue of Readers' Digest just for Rs 2...no need to travel to Europe for me.
On my first visit to Hyderabad in 1974, I found myself again at a loose end for all of 4 days and enjoyed trekking the streets of the unpolluted Nizam's city all those decades ago...just walking lazily and sipping tea here and there. And everyone asked me if I had visited the famous Salar Jung Museum. And I asked them its best exhibit. And they said it was its musical clock:
"Another master piece at the museum is an old European musical clock. I was amazed to see over 200 people sitting in a theater style in front of the clock waiting for –“The Show”. This 19th Century clock by Cook and Kevely Co. has 250 parts and it has a bronze man with a hammer beating something every second. Every hour, a timekeeper emerges out of a door (3 minutes before it is time for the hour), and strikes the gong at exact hour."
So I went there and found to my relief that the said clock was housed in a quadrangle and so no need to enter closed spaces. But as my luck would have it, the clock had just then given its 11 AM show and so I had to wait for a whole hour. I sat there alone for 45 minutes and then found a seething sea of surging crowd about to drown me. And I eased myself back to the gate in the nick of time and walked away to the Tank Bund...
That was the last time I visited that museum and hope it stays the last...we have a huge wall-mounted HD TV in our Hall and once in a while it gets switched on to the exquisite Travel Channel and I am lost viewing everything worth watching in the world for free, pushing my legs up the stool in front of my bean bag:
...Posted by Ishani
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