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The first time I saw a shuttlecock was when, out of boredom, I enrolled as a member of the Faculty Club at IIT KGP...I don't know if I am still a member since the mills of our Faculty Club grind as slowly and ponderously as the shaft of the oil mill I saw in my Village, Muthukur, where a well-fed buffalo was yoked to it and went round and round in everlasting circles...he was blindfolded, like I was at KGP, figuratively, so he thought he was covering a great distance, say from Muthukur to Nellore, while all the while he was at his oil mill...man truly is the most cunning animal.
When I first saw two shuttle-boys tossing a shuttlecock nonchalantly, I figured they must be great masters at the game...the shuttlecock was not at all like my wool-ball which was round and figureless...while the shuttlecock had a wine glass figure; and to keep hitting its bottom all the time must need a terrific skill, I thought. It required only a couple of days practice for me to discover the trick...
"Don't look at the shuttlecock...just keep hitting it looking where you want it to go"
...like in an argument with your wife, figuratively again.
It is a nice thing to be born naive...life holds such lovely mysteries for you. When my Father took me to Nellore when I was about 5 and we were watching the steam locomotive doing its stuff...chugging along the tracks...chug chug chug...I kept staring at the Engine Driver who had a sort of steering wheel in front of him but was not 'steering'...his hands were off the wheel and he was waving his hands at me. I wondered aloud what an expert he should be since he could steer the huge engine so that it precisely followed the tracks and didn't slip off by not staring at the railway tracks that took a curve in their course. Father just laughed me away. It was only much later I saw that he used his 'steering wheel' assiduously only he wanted to reverse...the steam loco had only two continuous gears...forward and reverse.
Everything about the steam locomotive was a mystery since she was as open as a barn, with all her machinery visible to the naked eye. These mechanical engineers are mantriks...I knew how to convert a rotation into translation...keep the spinning ball on the ground and it takes off like a rocket. But they do the reverse...like in a steam loco...the piston-rod thing is in translation as you can see for yourself in a steam loco; and they have all sorts of cams and eccentric stuff to convert it into a rotation of the driving wheel. I also wondered everyday at the machinery in a Pfaff sewing machine which taught me the lesson of my life:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/10/teacher-is-born-with-lesson.html
You just oscillate the pedal swinging your feet this way and that, and the sewing needle goes up and down!!!
Coming back to the steam loco, I used to wonder at the peculiar shape of the rail with a T-shaped rounded section on which rides the equally queer wheel with its flange...the two defied my common sense...I thought they should be tight-fit. Till Prof MSS (again) explained to me that the steam loco didn't have a 'differential', unlike an automobile; and the loose fitting between the wheel and the track automatically serves the purpose of providing for different turning radii of the inner wheel and the outer on a bend. How devious a design!!! I hereby withdraw all disparaging comments I might have made about Mechanical Engineers so far except when they try to ridicule Physics:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/03/physics-of-sex.html
Talking of mechanical engineers, and buffaloes, watching them take their daily bath in the roadside pond is a mood elevator for little Ishani. Nowadays she has started going to school. And every morning as soon as she wakes up and has her tumbler of reluctant milk, she walks into my bedroom and announces cheerfully:
...Posted by Ishani
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The first time I saw a shuttlecock was when, out of boredom, I enrolled as a member of the Faculty Club at IIT KGP...I don't know if I am still a member since the mills of our Faculty Club grind as slowly and ponderously as the shaft of the oil mill I saw in my Village, Muthukur, where a well-fed buffalo was yoked to it and went round and round in everlasting circles...he was blindfolded, like I was at KGP, figuratively, so he thought he was covering a great distance, say from Muthukur to Nellore, while all the while he was at his oil mill...man truly is the most cunning animal.
When I first saw two shuttle-boys tossing a shuttlecock nonchalantly, I figured they must be great masters at the game...the shuttlecock was not at all like my wool-ball which was round and figureless...while the shuttlecock had a wine glass figure; and to keep hitting its bottom all the time must need a terrific skill, I thought. It required only a couple of days practice for me to discover the trick...
"Don't look at the shuttlecock...just keep hitting it looking where you want it to go"
...like in an argument with your wife, figuratively again.
It is a nice thing to be born naive...life holds such lovely mysteries for you. When my Father took me to Nellore when I was about 5 and we were watching the steam locomotive doing its stuff...chugging along the tracks...chug chug chug...I kept staring at the Engine Driver who had a sort of steering wheel in front of him but was not 'steering'...his hands were off the wheel and he was waving his hands at me. I wondered aloud what an expert he should be since he could steer the huge engine so that it precisely followed the tracks and didn't slip off by not staring at the railway tracks that took a curve in their course. Father just laughed me away. It was only much later I saw that he used his 'steering wheel' assiduously only he wanted to reverse...the steam loco had only two continuous gears...forward and reverse.
Everything about the steam locomotive was a mystery since she was as open as a barn, with all her machinery visible to the naked eye. These mechanical engineers are mantriks...I knew how to convert a rotation into translation...keep the spinning ball on the ground and it takes off like a rocket. But they do the reverse...like in a steam loco...the piston-rod thing is in translation as you can see for yourself in a steam loco; and they have all sorts of cams and eccentric stuff to convert it into a rotation of the driving wheel. I also wondered everyday at the machinery in a Pfaff sewing machine which taught me the lesson of my life:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/10/teacher-is-born-with-lesson.html
You just oscillate the pedal swinging your feet this way and that, and the sewing needle goes up and down!!!
Coming back to the steam loco, I used to wonder at the peculiar shape of the rail with a T-shaped rounded section on which rides the equally queer wheel with its flange...the two defied my common sense...I thought they should be tight-fit. Till Prof MSS (again) explained to me that the steam loco didn't have a 'differential', unlike an automobile; and the loose fitting between the wheel and the track automatically serves the purpose of providing for different turning radii of the inner wheel and the outer on a bend. How devious a design!!! I hereby withdraw all disparaging comments I might have made about Mechanical Engineers so far except when they try to ridicule Physics:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/03/physics-of-sex.html
Talking of mechanical engineers, and buffaloes, watching them take their daily bath in the roadside pond is a mood elevator for little Ishani. Nowadays she has started going to school. And every morning as soon as she wakes up and has her tumbler of reluctant milk, she walks into my bedroom and announces cheerfully:
"I won't go to school today"
And I don't like to spoil her great mood...and her mom arrives and sweeps her off...
Kids are great at adjusting...an hour later, she is all dressed up in her cute uniform and waves me 'bye'. And I tell her I would come to her school as part of her Welcome Party. And as she leaves her school she looks glum for a few minutes till her daddy on our way back halts his car by the roadside pond and asks her to have a look at the buffaloes bathing their hearts out. And her mood swings back to buoyancy watching the floating buffaloes.
Yesterday I watched closely the herd of buffaloes on their expectant way to the pond....each trying to outrun the others pushing and shoving...like the devotees waiting for the temple gates to open on a Shiv Ratri Day. And I found their faces immersed in a profound pool of devout hope...as they say:
"It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive" (in mud)
...Posted by Ishani
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