Operation Barbarossa - 5

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The next item to emerge out of my father's LG Hing Shaving Box was the packet of blades...7 O'clock.

Its flap had to be gently opened out and then it revealed all of half a dozen blades each packed in a blue-green tiny envelope.

One of these had to be pulled out and opened gingerly.

The top flap was lightly gummed and it came up easily. And then there was this whitish thin paper in which the sharp new blade was enclosed.

I asked father what that white paper was called.

And he said: 'Butter Paper"

I still remember the delight I got hearing that word: 'butter' although I didn't know its meaning.

It is now called: 'Oil Paper' I believe.

Much later when I was preparing for my exams in our university, I used to buy quires of what was called: 'Manifold Paper'.

These were extremely thin and milk-white and cheap. I couldn't afford the regular 'Foolscap Papers'; elephant brand with its water mark...

Foolscap? Why?

That takes me back to the raw: 'brown paper' that came to my father's desk along with its combo wooden stand for the 'ink bottle' with its refills of packets of blue 'ink powder', the 'writers' quill', the 'replaceable nib', and the 'rolling blotter'...all Second World War stuff...much like the annular ring: "holed out paisa" coin (చిల్లి కాణీ) to save precious copper (where has that metal vanished?)

Anyway, it was fun to write on the manifold paper with 'Royal Blue Parker Ink' filled by a 'filler' into my leaky fountain pen with its 'feeder' and 'tongue'.

Class Notes were useless. 

And I was too poor to buy imported text books like 'AB Wood' or 'Barton' or 'Richardson'...all of  'Sound' (and Fourier Analysis). Indeed each book was specific to one kind of 'string'...struck string (piano), plucked string (guitar) and bowed string (violin)...the last one had the name of our CV Raman in it and I felt proud (he had a Vizagh Connection).

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Bull. Indian Assoc. Cultiv. Sci. 15 1-158 (1918) 

On the mechanical theory of the vibrations of bowed strings and of musical instruments of the violin family, with experimental verification of the results-Part I

 C V RAMAN, M.A.

 CONTENTS 

Section I-Introduction 

Section 11-Effect of periodic force applied at a point 

Section 111-The modus operandi of the bow 

Section 1V-Simplified kinematical theory 

Section V-Classification of the vibrational modes 

Section VI-The first type of vibration 

Section VII-The second type of vibration 

Section VIII-The third type of vibration 

Section 1X-The fourth and higher types of vibration 

Section X-Construction of the velocity-diagram when the bow is applied at a node 

Section XI-Some examples of the graphical determination of the vibration curves 

Section XII-The effect of the variation of the pressure and velocity of bowing 

Section XIII-Some experimental tests of the theory 

Section XIV-Summary and outline of further research 

Section XV-Bibliographical appendix

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So I used the BBS Theory (Beg-Borrow-Steal):

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/10/of-money-men.html

And copied copiously from those text books in long hand on my manifold papers in order to mug them up and answer "essay" questions on them in our university exams (to get 'classes' and 'ranks' if not 'medals').

And I carried all those 60 'files' to IIT KGP thinking they would be useful in my teaching there.

And I soon discovered they were utterly useless...the 'system' there was 'problem-based'.

And I gave them away to a young Junior Technical Assistant (BSc) intending to appear for his MSc Exams in Calcutta University...he passed gloriously, left for the US (there were no GRE, TOEFL then), did his PhD, and settled there.

And poor me!

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Then came the Carbon Papers (Kores & Camlin).

I first saw 'used' carbon papers soon after I passed my MSc Exams in Vizagh and was footloose. 

I then thought I would learn type-writing as a second string to my bow. And joined the neighborhood Typing Institute.

Since I was the first post-graduate who joined his school, the Teacher was very kind to me and taught me "asdfgf & ;lkjhj" and left me to fend for myself asking seniors for further guidance.

Now I am told by my son it is called a 'qwerty' keyboard.

I didn't then understand the logic behind the weird placement of alphabet "abcdefghijkl..." in the keyboard. 

Much later I learned it is 'ergonomic';...meaning:

relating to the design of furniture or equipment which makes it comfortable and effective for people who use it

Like...our left middle finger is longer than the ring finger and so it goes easily onto the top third letter "e" which I learned is the commonest letter occurring in the English language.

This, I had learned at a tender age while reading Edgar Allan Poe's abridged short story: "Gold Bug":... Legrand deciphering an encrypted code:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2147/2147-h/2147-h.htm#chap05

Much later I felt rather saddened that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the same decryption in his: "Adventure of the Dancing Men" (without attribution):

https://sherlock-holm.es/stories/pdf/a4/1-sided/danc.pdf

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Soon after passing my MSc Exam, I had no valid excuse to travel to our university for business or pleasure. And I didn't want to depend entirely on my poor father's dole.

So I approached the Principal of the 'Bharat Tutorial College' in Daba Gardens in Vizagh. That college was run by my friends in the RSS.

Seeing my mark sheets he offered me ONE hour in his Night College as a prep. If the paying students were satisfied, he promised to absorb me as a full-time lecturer next year.

And I grabbed the opportunity and asked him:

"How much?"

"Rs 30"

And the class was held at 8 pm in the night.

That suited me to a tee...on my way home from the Poorna Market buying vegetables. Rest of the day I combed the beach, read borrowed novels, wrote weird poetry, bought a couple of Janata Kerosene Stoves, cooked lunch and dinner for my two sisters who were in their final years mugging up.

I still recall the thrill I got when I learned the proof of Archimedes Principle while teaching that class.

A couple of months later I got my CSIR JRF that gave me a whopping Rs 250!

But I stuck to my word and continued teaching that one hour in the Bharat Tutorial Night College (God Bless RSS!) for the whole year before I quit.

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To be continued

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