Grin, Delete & Disappear!

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Sailaja, my cute daughter-in-law, left for Nellore November last and returned yesterday with her cutest 4-month-old daughter, Ishani.

"Ishani?"

Well, that's a typical Bengali name. Meaning Durga, the Consort of Ishwar.

My son, Sonoo, was brought up in Bengal for his first 24 years. Studied in St. Agnes Convent, KV, and IIT KGP. He speaks Bengalee slang as one of their ilk. And loves eating Hilsa. Has many Bengali friends of both sexes spread all over the World.

In our family there is this nice custom: The Naamkaran (Name-giving Ceremony) is an elaborate ritual with Agni Hoam, Vedic Chants and what not. At the end of a 2-hour mumbo-jumbo, the mother holds her infant in her lap and the father whispers the given 'Official' name that will enter the kid's Passport. Everyone around (about 50 relatives and friends gathered bearing presents for the kid) would be curious. Then a silver plate would be produced and topped up with white uncooked rice. The father is given a golden ring and asked to write the 'name' with the 'head' of the ring on the rice in the plate (my son was supposed to write it in Telugu, but since he can't write in his 'mother tongue', he was permitted to write it in English). And everyone would ask him to speak it out aloud 3 times, and explain its meaning and context. It is generally the prerogative of the father to choose the name and the mother to approve it. The name is kept a dark secret from everyone else to keep up the suspense.

My son was at pains to explain the meaning of the Bengalee name, Ishani, to the hard-core Telugu audience.

I could guess that 5 years in Hyderabad haven't been able to wean away my son from his 24 years in Bengal.

Anyway, Ishani is now here with us for a stupendous and joyous welcome. For me and my wife it is a return to Bengal after about 30 years: we recalled how we both went mad raising our infant son, Sonoo. I stopped going to the Institute for more than 2 years except for the 3 Lectures and 6 Lab Classes, to the consternation of my HoD, who was somehow consoled that I was at least taking my classes.

The other day, I wrote to SSG, who was my student at KGP during my most wacky years and is now back in India after an exile of more than 5 years in the sub-Polar Climate (Joke: "This Coffee is as cold as Polar Bear's Arse" "Why arse?" "It has got to sit on the ice all the time; where else?"):

"Dear SSG: Now that Ishani will be here, the "Devil's Workshop" will be shut down and there may be no more blogging from this keyboard".

SSG was understanding, but not quite happy.

So, I asked him to take my place and himself do my blogging henceforth: "Ghost-Blogging".

And I reminded him of the Blogger's Anthem I composed a year ago.

He was delighted with the Anthem which he says he missed somehow; but politely declined to join the Bloggers' Club.

I paste it below for anyone else who is pleased to take up my job. Most welcome!

One of the beauties of Blogging is: "Grin, Delete & Disappear", which I did last week after one of my blogs appeared too brash.

Here it is:

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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Bloggers Anthem

Hail Blogosphere!
All are welcome here
You may have little to say
Still you can say it here

Other spheres are round
But this one is profound
Empty your heads here
They will be lost and found.....Hail Blogoshpere!

This is the beauty of our Blogosphere
A cat can wink at a King here
And like his Cheshire forebear
Grin, delete and disappear!.....Hail Blogosphere!

For this truly is the Wonderland
Alice and Tompkins would understand
Gamow meets his Carroll here
Prose and Verse hand in hand!.....Hail Blogosphere!

Others publish and perish
Here you post and cherish
Till the Net weaves its Web
You stay here and flourish......Hail Blogosphere

Hail Blogosphere
You are welcome here!


Posted by G P Sastry (gps1943@yahoo.com)

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Humming Birds

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I recall reading RKN's Swami, maybe, where he could never concentrate on what his teacher was saying, busy productively imagining things he would love to do to his teacher's pony tail etc.

This is the canonical dilemma of anyone paid to 'Teach' in a Lecture Hall: "How to focus the students' mind on what he says".

I was rather fortunate in that I had to teach IITians. By default IITians can concentrate; otherwise they wouldn't be there.

But by default, once they are in, they would like to relax, after a mighty struggle to be there.

July 1st, 1965: Bidhan Roy's Birthday. And my first interaction with IITians. I was lucky that I was in a Tutorial Class. My HoD told me to make them solve some problems in Physics.

There were about 12 Freshmen in a small room. Cozy as cozy can be. I dictated the first problem and relaxed in the Chair. 12 heady brains silently 'concentrating'. My first such experience.

The silence was not 'deafening'; It was 'humming'. I could almost 'hear' it sing. 12 'humming birds'.

It was at once pleasing and daunting. Then and there my problem started: How to engage these brains in a Lecture Class, where they are forced to be spectators than actors.

Physics has a lot of diagrams to draw and steps to write on the black board. That means I couldn't 'face' the students but 'back' them; and my back is not all that scintillating or inviting attention to what I say.

I wished I could convert every Lecture Class into a Tutorial and listen to their musical humming.

Where there is a will, they say, there is a way. Several.

One was to write a step and ask the students to 'go' to the next. It worked wonders. IITians are always happy when they are asked to 'do' things than 'listen'.

The other was to make one of them teach in my place. Students love such sessions and are busy trying to find fault and question one of their own kind who doesn't have marks in their pocket. And it would be their turn next. And all I had to do was to 'moderate'.

Three decades later, there was this 'Educational Technology Center'. They wanted to 'film' some Teachers' Lectures and 'distribute' (sell) them to other Colleges.

I was approached to permit their TV crew to enter my Electrodynamics Lecture Hall and take a Live Video. I smiled and said that it would be the dullest Video, for, most of the time I would be sitting in my Chair while the Anikets, Kedars, Indras and Arundhutis would be attacking their Note Books in a humming silence.

Then it was proposed that I could come to their 'Lab' where I could 'Teach' without the distraction of the presence of my students to an empty Class Room. I said it would be worse: "My teaching is my Love Affair with my students; and without them it would be ************".

I was never forgiven because I was decrying a brand new Teaching Tool.

I mailed this 'exchange' to my 'mouse-friend' Edwin Taylor of MIT, the Father of Educational Technology' so to say at MIT. He replied I did the right thing; showing 'Films' of Physics Teachers to remote students would be the worst kind of teaching.

My desire was fulfilled 100% when I was asked to teach a Jumbo Class of more than 300 enthusiastic Freshmen in an Air Conditioned Hall.

I prepared 'Transparencies' for an Over Head Projector. I used a thick blanking sheet so I could make parts of those transparencies 'opaque' at will. Diagrams were there and 'steps'. I would place the transparency, cover it up, and slide down the opaque sheet as though it were an act of 'inverse strip-tease'. I never had to 'back' my students but face them all the while, and go round the Hall inspecting their 'process' to their next step, giving hints, appreciating the first one to arrive at the next step etc before returning to the OHP to slide the opaque sheet by just one step and climbing the stairs and 'inspecting'.

It was a 'beautiful' experience as well as a pleasing application of the Principle of Least Action. At the end of an hour, my throat was as fresh as at the beginning after 'teaching' 300 students; when all the while I was looking at them imagining things like Swamy did instead of them doing it.

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Feynman Lectures

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Let me first thank Michael Gottlieb for his Comment on my earlier blog: "Tributes & Tributaries"

I just read the link provided and enjoyed reminiscing my youth. I also viewed the Picture of Feynman's Lecture Room, and my memories went back to that Golden Era of Black & White photos (more about Black & White later)

1966: IIT KGP; I was just 23 and was somehow persuaded to teach EM I, EM II, and EM III one after another. Just because our HoD (HNB)'s daughter Seema Bose was in my EM I Class and wanted me to be assigned her later EM Courses. That's what happens in a small Campus

EM I was fine: There was Halliday & Resnick. EM III was also ok: There was this formidable Panofsky & Phillips, with their Photos on its Inside Back Cover

I was stumped what to do with EM II and was getting depressed and praying to God. He sent me his Messiah in the form of Feynman and his Volume II. I DEVOURED it. At that time my memory was photographic. I didn't 'teach' from Feynman. I did one better: The Class was small, about 12 strong. I assigned one inimitable Chapter (like the one with the 'Oil-Can' Resonant Cavity) each to my students and asked them to take my place and give Lectures, while I sat in their chair (I renounced one of my 3 Lecture Classes a week). Everyone enjoyed the Course. When you ask the Cream of the Country to talk to their Class, they excel. Their Lectures turned out to be better; because they have not yet got to Panfsky & Phillips as I had to. This I continued for at least a decade

A decade later, I was asked to teach QM I, QM II, and QM III. By then I had read practically every book on QM. But forgot about Feynman Volume III. When I picked it up, I was just charmed. And I taught QM in the Reverse Chronological Order made famous by the one and only Feynman: Start from 2-state Systems, go to 3-state, six-state Bezene Molecule, discrete infinity crystal, and finally the continuous infinity free particle and the mixed Hydrogen Atom

One of my students, Sougato Bose, wrote to me another decade later that he could never quite get rid of Feynman's 2-state systems and was making thousands of Pounds Sterling of Project Money by many clever uses of it

A decade later, in 1995 or so, there was this Exhibition in the Nehru Museum of Science & Technology. One of the exhibits there was the converse of Newton's Wheel. Instead of the seven colors merging by its spinning and giving white, here there was a striped 'Black & White' wheel giving colors on fast rotation. There was great excitement and I was trapped into 'explaining' this queer phenomenon

My Messiah came to my rescue. I recalled there was an entire Chapter in Feynman Volume I (I think) on the Physiology of Vision. I told them to go home and re-read their old Feynman

My son visited the US last month and brought back what is labeled: "Croc Wrench". It is fantastic! It has a set of concentric spring-loaded hexagonal-packed elements. It can do ANYTHING on nuts and bolts that you want

Feynman Lectures are like the Croc Wrench. Name it, and it has its uses

At 67, I have now forgotten all Physics except Feynman Volumes

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Post Script: Around 1995, there was a Coffee Table Discussion among my colleagues at IIT KGP. There were those who used both Feynman Diagrams and Feynman Lectures on Physics. A vote was taken which of the two they thought would be used, say a century later. The consensus was: "Both", in equal measure.

I also cherished Feynman's QED, the compilation of five Popular Lectures. By 2000, Edwin F Taylor at MIT, who was my pen-friend for more than 2 decades, was using it for generating interesting Computer Programs for teaching Path Integrals. I recall assigning these as Lab "experiments" for simulating, of all things, Fresnel and Fraunhofer Diffraction for Double Slit, Triple Slit and Grating!

Talk of the Croc Wrench!

Tributes & Tributaries

======================================================

This is for those who benefited me academically.

Omissions are due to senility rather than irreverence.

Unfortunately, most names mentioned 'here' are 'elsewhere'. But that is no reason why I shouldn't mention them here before I join them there.

I choose to talk about their Teaching & Research prowess without drawing any conclusions.

My first teacher was my father, GRK, who taught English classes of around 40 in several High Schools of our District. He was known as the Best Teacher of English in our District. He taught me at home too and created a lasting love for English from my age 6. Before giving books he bought from School Funds to the Library he used to scatter them around in our home as surreptitious bait. Abridged Versions of Tom Brown's School Days, Lorna Doone, Tolstoy Stories, Hector and Achilles etc (with cute pictures). Luckily he happened to be at KGP the week before my Draft Ph D thesis was passed on to that tyrant SDM (who never read it, which is beside the point). GRK went through my 30-page Introduction and rapped my knuckles for wrong choice of about 10 prepositions, and won a handsome Acknowledgment. He wrote a couple of 'pieces' for our School Magazine (which I would have loved to edit!)

I then shifted to a College where my Uncle, GVS, was the Principal and our English teacher. He was the uncrowned 'Shakespeare' of the Region and students used to flock to his Classes. He did publish a couple of booklets of 'Devotional & Love Poetry' that were footed by wealthy Frontispiece Patrons of Literature to whom they were 'Dedicated' but who were otherwise innocent. Frankly he was influenced by Tagore. I have copies of these two booklets which he gifted to me. It is my fault that I happen to be allergic to Devotional & Love Poetry.

Like Business & Politics, Devotion & Love are to be 'done' than sung about (SC will kill me!)

In my University, where Raman worked for a while, there was a strong Spectroscopy group and a Radio Electronics group. I was too young to know much about their Research. Our Best Teacher was BRR, who built up a thriving Ionosphere Lab. He was a Great Teacher of small as well as big Classes. My own erstwhile Guide for a while, DPS, had some Formulas based on QM in Molecular Spectroscopy, which I have seen in Standard Text Books. He was too shy to be a Teacher of large Classes. The really good Teachers of our small Classes were BHK and VSR. Nothing much is known of their Research prowess. I benefited from their teaching.

There was this young and beautiful Lady Teacher of large Classes of English. I forget her name, but not her face. She was a Great Teacher and students who had no business to be there were attending her Classes.

I then shifted to IIT KGP.

HNB, our HoD for a decade and more did not have a Ph D, but built a large School of Luminescence. He was a truly Great Teacher and keen encourager of budding talent.

SDM of course qualifies as a Great Researcher, but the less said about his Class Room Teaching the better.

I heard that GBM had some Papers in X-Ray Line Profile Analysis that entered Text Books of repute. I don't think he was a great teacher of large Classes. I benefited from him contrariwise.

RGC, who quit Research after Ph D was loved by all students of large and small Classes. He learned and taught Electronics all by himself and was also a great First Year Teacher. He was a very popular JEE Coach in Cal after he quit KGP. I shared Office Space with him for 2 years and enjoyed his company.

MSS never completed his Ph D nor published anything. But he was not only a Great Teacher and Coach, but he was a Teacher of Teachers. I benefited from discussions with him immensely.

STA was the Role Model of a Professional Teacher. He never completed his Ph D.

AVK was very popular as a Teacher of small and large Classes. He published nothing after his Ph D. I shared a Bachelor's Flat with him and learned much.

DB published 2 papers or so in Particle Physics proper while doing his Ph D at Delhi, but was dissatisfied and turned to Math Physics. He continued his Group Theory publications at the rate of one Paper a year for 30 or more years, with SDM as well as on his own in JMP. Without doubt he was the Best Teacher of large and small Classes at IIT Phy Dept. I shared Office Space with him for 20 Golden Years. Learned much and enjoyed more.

RSS had a way with large Classes. He quit active Research in Physics after his Ph D. I chose him as my partner for the Jumbo Course and several publications as co-author, including a Lecture Notes of 250 odd pages.

Many of my M Sc Project Students worked with me willy-nilly. And a large number of other students (including my son) asked thought-provoking questions. All of them find mention in my articles as co-authors or in Acknowledgments. They were indispensable for my somewhat honorable survival at KGP.

Special mention is due for KK who took over from RSS as my co-teacher of Jumbo Course. A large number of highly talented youngsters helped me as Tutorial and Lab Teachers of this Course. They are all great Teachers and Researchers of the younger generation at KGP. I thank them all.

There was one BG who stayed in the Faculty Hostel for a couple of years in the early 1970s and was a Lecturer in English. He was no doubt the most popular English Teacher. I marveled at his proficiency, knowledge and sheer breadth of scholarship. He was asked to write just a 25 page 'Article' on any author of his choice to get a promotion. He never found the time or inclination for it. He left KGP and perhaps Academia as the rumor went. He was plainly one of those souls troubled by their vast knowledge, and inability to reach the goals they set for themselves.

My Fair Russian Lady, Scherbakova, was my Best Teacher of Foreign Languages.

Hawking chose Galileo, Newton and Einstein for special mention in his 'Brief History of Time'.

We all know that the one and only Feynman was also a Great Teacher by virtue of his Feynman Lectures. But I read that his Lecture Classes at Caltech were shepherded by Junior Teachers and Scholars to make up for the rapid evaporation of the intended Freshmen and Sophomores by and by. Feynman never knew that.

Whoever tried to teach from Feynman Lectures verbatim at KGP was a stupendous failure. His highly readable Lectures, in particular the QM of Volume 3, are meant to be read, chewed and digested but not vomited.

I owe Feynman Volumes much by way of pleasure and (mis)understanding.

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Currency Goddess

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My son returned from Nellore the other day and was describing just now the latest exploits of his 4-month old daughter Ishani.

Her auntie visited and gifted her a Rs. 500 Note. Ishani took it in her left hand, and was about to chew it clean when it was hastily retracted.

This reminded me of a True Story told me by Rasoi Lal:

KGP circa 2000:

Punna Rao was his co-khalasi in the Welfare State of Indian Railways at the sprawling Railway Workshop.

One fine evening Punna got his Pay Commission Arrears of Rs. 10,000 in the form of a bundle of crisp new Rs 100 Notes.

On their way home, Punna got full, high, tight and reached his Railway Quarters. He straight went over to his favorite Laxmi, his pet buffalo.

Laxmi was lying on her back and ruminating. Punna squatted on her back, bent over her head, dangled his currency bundle and started gloating, singing and making merry.

In just a second of absence of mind (whatever was left of it), he found that the bundle vanished; crunched and shredded by Laxmi.

Punna swooned instantly, was carried to the Railway Hospital, where the Doctors on Duty declared him: "Brought Dead".

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Of Mice, Me & Olivia

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It is 3 A M Saturday. Quiet night. AC Bedroom.

After blogging a ghastly KGP story earlier in the evening, I was in the mood to relax over a glass of cool buttermilk and the Day's DC.

Yet I had to get up and re-blog. There is a limit to human endurance.

Circa 1994. Qrs B-140, IIT KGP. 9 P M.

My 12 year-old son and I would be playing a game of Carom awaiting the call for Dinner from the kitchen.

Instead we get a squeak and a howl.

We spring into action. We have a technically crafted and perfected mouse trap. Fail-proof and benign.

My son would fetch it quickly and I would fry a peel of onion just so in ghee. And hook it ever so gently, yet firmly. Open the trap-door and set it to perfection. Switch off the lights. Go back to play. Within minutes there would be a loud 'pphutt!'. My son springs into action and watches the trapped mouse fascinated. His eyes (Jerry's) staring wide open, ears twitching, whiskers praying. He (my son) wouldn't let me proceed.

When he (son) is done mouse-watching, we give him (Jerry) a free scooter ride to the Tata Steel Stadium. Get down, open the door and watch him (Jerry) run for his life and vanish in a second.

Hundreds of times in a decade.

Maybe from too much 'Tom & Jerry' or doing Ganesh Puja every year, both of us have a soft corner for mice. Not for rats or bandicoots.

Almost everyday in DC there is a Health Report which I avidly read since it is my duty to keep in good shape. With an IIT Pension around Rs 30K, I am a cash cow for the family and why not?

Within seconds I encounter mice and turn the page. Just now it happened twice in 10 minutes.

That was too much.

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Page 8: Bold Headlines: "Red Wine Limits Brain Damage" (or what is left of it). Washington, April22

Report:

"The researchers have discovered the way in which red wine consumption may protect the brain from damage following a stroke.

Two hours after feeding mice....."
----------------------

I turn the Pages to Op-Ed:

Bold headlines with the cute slanting face of Olivia Judson: "Fat Facts about Brain"

Report:

"Being fat is bad for your brain......

Diet may also play a role, too. Studies in mice have shown....."

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I scowl, get up and blog.

Am I being reduced to Jerry or vice versa?

Depends

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Lotus Eater of B C Roy Hall

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CLAIMER: Some of this is hearsay, some hyperbole, and the rest good old Gul

For most Research Scholars, B C ROY Hall is a halting place in the caravan of their lives

For AC it turned out to be his Permanent Address. AC took his Doctorate in Mathematics. This Profession demands madness (inborn, acquired or plain posed). A 'worldly' mathematician is a blot on its loonscape

Theoretical Physicists are equally mad. But their Profession demands an added aura of Arrogance

I earned my M Sc Degree in Physics from AU at the tender age of 19. That is why I learned no Physics there. I was too young and my Teachers too old. I joined as a Research Scholar in Experimental Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance. My Guide and I were competing 'Escape Artists', to borrow from Aniket. We met only six times, including when he signed my (1) JRF Application, (2) No-Objection Certificate, (3) Release Order. The other 3 were in the narrow corridor with space only for two

Nothing came of it in 2 years except 2 Letters in Current Science and 1 Paper in the Indian Journal Of Physics, all in Theoretical NQR!

But it laid the Foundation for 2 things in my Life. (1) 2 years of 'Research Experience' that were needed for the august Post of Associate Lecturer at IIT KGP (Lecturers were dubbed 'asses' so what were their 'Associates'? Answer: 'Assoasses') (2) I read all English Novels that I could lay my hands on, which helped me become the Master Blogger (like the Master Blaster) in retired life

Conjugation: Blog, Blogger, Bloggest; Like go, went, GONE!

I was there in B C Roy Hall for 3 days, Gokahle Hall for 6 months, Faculty Hostel for 7 years, C1 Qrs for 20 years and the rest in the Heavenly Qrs B-140

AC joined B C Roy Hall almost at the same time as an RS in Math Dept. 1965. He never quit

He won a good Ph D. All Doctorate Degrees had to be good then. At least one of the 2 External Examiners had to be from a reputed Foreign Country; in rare cases like mine both. SDM never trusted Indian Theoretical Physicists (once bitten twice shy)

After earning Ph D, AC stuck on for a couple of Post Docs in the Math Dept, staying in B C Roy. He so liked KGP and B C Roy that he hoped to be absorbed there as Faculty. There were many slips between that Holy Grail and his lip. He stayed on at B C Roy on his own funds till they dried up. He never applied anywhere else. Duly he became the non-paying Guest. The Hall Tempo then was such that he was pardoned for a while

In 1975 while I was staying and getting my Thesis typed in the Banerjee Typing Center, I found AC one evening handing over a Roll of about 50 hand-written illegible foolscap pages to our ever-smiling Shankarda. AC mumbled that it was urgent and he wanted it typed by tomorrow. Shankarda took those papers and said: "Theek Aachey". AC turned up after a fortnight with another such Roll and got another "Theek Aachey!". I was curious and looked at Shankarda. He replied respectfully: "Bhadralok ektu sick". I asked him: "Did you type his earlier Roll?". He smiled: "Ami ki Pagol!"

By and by B C Roy downsized its hospitality. The resident Boarders were newer and newer and declined to pay for this Ancient Mariner. Some old-timers footed his food-bill for a while, but the Management turned him out of his room. He took to its broad and breezy corridors as his nightly nest. His favorite haunt (like the rest of ours) was the Co-Op Canteen. By the time DB joined me in my Canteen trips in 1975 (after SDM quit KGP), AC was poorly clad, ill-fed, highly vocal mumbling something Math and something Poetry at a fantastic WPM (Words Per Minute). We could never get what he was saying. He smoked and lived on Tea and Samose for which his erstwhile colleagues at B C Roy who WERE absorbed in their Parent Depts used to foot the bill for a while

I told his story to DB, who joined KGP in 1970 as an Assoass with a Ph D in Paarticle Physics from Delhi: "There goes but for a hairbreadth of luck: gps" to which he added: "+ DB"

By then AC took to plain begging with stretched palms but screaming weird Mathematical Jargon. DB and I decided for a while to pool and deposit Rs 30 with the Co-op Canteen with instructions to its Manager to use it for AC's Tea and sweets. But it didn't work out. Whenever he saw us he would give a sweet smile and stop mumbling and stretch his hands. DB and myself decided to give him a Rupee on alternate days. That too didn't work. We were not alone; there were many. AC kept fairly good Physical health but didn't care to dress by and by. Within a few years, he stopped footwear, shirt or pant, and was clad only in torn half-pants (long before they became fashionable 'Bermudas')

His friends took him to the Railway Psychiatrist who pronounced it a bad case of Schizophrenia and prescribed drugs. They were purchased, but: "One can take the horse to water...". Apparently he had a brother in Cal and he used to whisk AC away. But within a week he was back at the Canteen and B C Roy Corridors

I guess he was also committed to an Institution (other than IIT KGP), but he was back again within weeks

This went on for 25 long years, by the end of which he was nothing but BURNING EYES

Many (including me and DB) would give him satchels full of pants, shirts, and footwear; but he would decline and ask for: "Cash"

A few years before I left KGP in 2005 AC disappeared from KGP

Rumors were many

But the one that comforted us most was that he found his Requiem at the Missionaries of Charity

Amen!
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Thacker's and Harry's

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At my alma mater(Andhra University, Waltair) the only English-sounding landmark was 'Erskin Square', a magnificent Open Air Theater within a Quadrangle in the Biology Building.

But when in 1965 I set foot on the soil of Golden Bengal I heard more than my fill. 'Splanade, Dalhousie Square, Victoria Memorial, Theater Road, Park Street, Amherst Street, Flurry's, New Market, New Empire, Light House, Metro..an unending list. Bristling with the Raj relics.

In the backwaters of the Desi Hijli, even IIT KGP boasted of two: Thacker's and Harry's.

At first I thought Thacker is a distant relative of William Makepeace Thackeray, whose Vanity Fair was popular at our English Department at AU.

But lo! and behold!: I was told the grand-old Thacker's original Gujerati name is: 'Takker'. Cosmetic Enhancement. Thacker's is the bookshop at the Tech Market, as old as IIT itself (around 60 years). It is one of the first shops (apart from Saha's selling broomsticks) visited by Freshers on Day 1. And for as long as they are there.

I knew the grandpa Thacker, who had a branch in Gole Bazaar, selling school books and stationery. A grand-old man. I am told there is one outlet in Calcutta too. By the time I left KGP in 2005, it was being manned by his grandson Mohinder & his wife and occasionally his daughter. When I visited the shop last (January 2010), all of them were there and I got a grand welcoming smile. I could guess that, like me, Mohinder is a grandpa too.

The smile is extra-special. When a Jumbo Course for 500 freshers was thrust on me and RSS, we decided that we would write up a 250-page Lecture Notes & Problems Bank and get 500 copies printed in time for the arrival of the First Year kids. The idea (as all my ideas are) is based on the Principle of Least Action. We would announce in the very first Class that they should go and buy this Book at Thacker's and not come to the Jumbo Class. Attendance would not be taken and the book has everything we are going to display on the white screen by OHP.

The thing worked wonders. After a couple of classes, the Class strength fell from 500 to a cozy 100. Only those gunning for the President's Gold Medal, and Quislings desperately trying Branch-Change used to attend the Class. And they were all ears and eyes.

We had just 8 months to write the book. And Mohinder promised to deliver the 500 Offset printed bound copies on dot. Which he did. We were relieved. And he priced them on a 'no-loss no-profit' basis at the ridiculously low-price of Rs. 100. I was very happy and asked him why he should take all the trouble if he isn't going to make a single Rupee out of it (RSS & me did it for free).

He smiled and said: "Sir, we will use your book as Advertisement. Freshers come with bundles of their doting father's cash in their bulging wallets. If you announce in the Class that they have to buy this book at Thacker's, they would flock to my shop and would be lured into buying everything else from pens, khatas, Calculators, PT sheets etc, which I will price so that I can more than make up!"

There you are...Mohinder didn't get an MBA from Harvard Business School. Like the Dabbawalas of Bombay he can teach MBAs a trick or two.

[A word about PT sheets: As soon as I joined IIT KGP I was dismayed by students calling Bond Papers of a certain grade by this weird name. I unraveled this mystery. "One has to ASK!" (as Feynman said in a very different learning context). Then on, whenever students in my Lab Classes used 'buying PT sheets' as the bahana (excuse) for going out for chai and gupshup, I used to tell them that I would let them go if they tell me what is PT about those sheets. None could. Neither did I leak the answer: At first, as the Holy Bible would have it, there was this Production Technology Lab manned by an American Guest Professor, who insisted his students write up their Lab Reports on good quality Bond Papers rather than 'Shilpi Khatas'].

Then comes Harry's. In 1965 there was this Petrol Pump at the heart of the Campus. The Hoarding proclaimed: "S. D. Harry's Filling Station". But was manned by a Dhoti-clad Bengali Bhadralok. By then I was curious about names of places, people and things. I got to know that it is the Cosmetic Enhancement of the owner's name:'Hari Das Sur'. Beat that!

There were a few scooters and a car or two then, but the Route Buses used to ply by his Petrol Pump and he made his monopoly pie. After the death of the owner I guess it changed hands and became:'Swapan Filling Station'. After the By-Pass Ring Road was built and buses ceased to ply, it was dislodged from the Campus and the open space became a cute Parking Lot.

Very few students knew that Harry's was actually a Petrol Pump. It was like this:

In 1965 when I was living in the Faculty Hostel, the food was unbearable. So, promptly at 5 PM we used to jump the fence and sit in droves in a ramshackle shed manned by a charming man known as Nandida, with his six sons ranging from ages 12 to 1 (the 1 was called Tikka) with all of whom we used to play soft-ball cricket. Why 'Tikka', I don't know. The only Tikka I knew was the Ace of Playing Cards. Maybe a connection there. Nandida had a worker under him who was a specialist cook in Rasogollas and hot hot Singaras (he had a utility hobby...snake catching). We were so famished that we used to order and eat on the fly at least half a dozen Singaras each.

Nandida suddenly passed away and the worker who came to be known as Dadu took care of the family and the shop. The first thing he did was to shift shop in front of Harry's Petrol Pump: a mobile Chai Dukan making its profits in Paan and Cigarettes (again the practically free Chai was the bait). As the kids grew up and became a dozen working hands under the tutelage of Dadu, the thing flourished and grew by leaps and bounds and diversified.

At the end of 3 decades, Harry's vanished but the Chai Dukan became the folklore Harry's: a fenced-in huge semi-permanent structure, with lots of lawns on which dollops of IITian boys and girls used to sit and lie down reveling in Birthday Bashes, Placement Parties, Endgame Photo-ops and the like; all watched by bunches of their Professors smoking on cement benches and gossiping. A large happy family as it were. And Tikka who inherited this Papacy was the Pope, serving Holy Chai, Singaras, Sweets and Cool Drinks.

We old fogs called it 'Tikka Dukan' but students used to refer to it as 'Harrys', not knowing why. For 3 decades and more the cement benches were haunts for my Woolgathering.

This Tikka Dukan (Harry's) has a special thing for me:

One evening around 1995 myself and DB were sitting on one of the cement benches and gabbing just after I took my Relativity Class. A large group of students entered via the turnstile and one of them, Sougato, left his friends and approached our bench (later he turned out to be DB's Project Student). He then posed me a riddle. Off hand I said something which apparently satisfied him (I knew him from his age 3). But I was inwardly dwelling on it and knew that if some effort is put, it would be publishable (I had a nose for these things...any doubt of an IIT student that took more than 2 hours for me to address has the germ of a publication in AJP, EJP or such).

It took 5 years and more, and newer and newer authors and an M Sc Thesis filled with Computer Programs and Graphics before it appeared in print:

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"Tippe top paradox in relativity", European Journal of Physics, Volume 23, Number 3, Page 295, 2002

by

Aniket Basu (1,4), R S Saraswat (1,5), Kedar B Khare (1,2), G P Sastry (1) and Sougato Bose (1,3)

1 Department of Physics and Meteorology, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, 721302, India
2 The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, USA
3 Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
4 On leave from: Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA.
5 Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.

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A pleasing memento of Tikka Dukan, alias, Harry's!

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The Shy & the Shameless

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IM's batch was special. For various reasons.

It had only a dozen students. The right mix of boys, girls, JEE qualified, Campus Quota, Lateral Entrants, Cancers and Capricorns.

It was our mutual (mis)fortune that I had to take the largest number of courses for that batch: QM1, QM3, EMT, in addition to two semesters of labs for which I happened to be the Lab-in-Charge. For these and other reasons the batch grew to be most intimate not only with me but my wife and Class X son. The batch demanded and squeezed two whopping At-Home Parties from my wife.

IM was 'by far the Topper'. And I used to call him the most 'shameless' (academically speaking and later otherwise too). He got his chance to hit back. There was a sort of bouquet of online encomiums to me on my 60th Birthday from ex-students and well-wishers.

He wrote something like: "gps used to call me 'shameless'. I would love to repay him in the same coin and call him 'equally shameless'"

That was about the best compliment I got from a student who knew me in and out.

Once I bragged to him that at the end of 3 classes of such a small batch I knew 'who is who' physics-wise.

To which he replied that his entire batch knew 'who is who' physics-wise at the end of a teacher's first 10 minutes of his lecture! He said something about 'body-language'.

I don't know if he was bragging. My own student life was a rigid talk-listen conservative stuff 50 years ago. We couldn't guess even after one year. Opaque teacher-student relations prevailing then. We could never dream of demanding and getting an At-Home Party from any of our teachers even after 5 long years.

About 35 years back I had to take a First Year Tutorial Class right after a somnolent lunch. The batch had only a few JEE entrants and the rest were Campus kids (girls).

I used to write down a problem (I think Optics) on the grayboard and sit down quietly in my chair and ask them to do it. Soon after taking it down this boy in the second bench used to go to sleep. That never bothered me since he didn't snore and disturb the sleep of others.

There would soon be giggles from the girls watching him bend his head down and wheeze. The giggles used to wake him up and he would look at me and we both smiled. In two minutes he would show me the answer, while the giggling girls would still be biting their pens on how to go about it. I would put him on the board and while he wrote out the Solution, the rest would be furiously noting it down before I could say: "Good" and erase it.

I would then write out the next problem and he would go to sleep..and the girls would giggle...and the routine was kept up for the entire hour in which he would crack about half a dozen problems. A record of sorts.

Three years later, I taught the batch two semesters of Theory and it wasn't very different. But he was one of the very few students with whom I exchanged practically no words in the Class or outside it. Maybe his sleepy habits made him shy. Once in a while he would quit for a few minutes for a wash and a smoke and get back if the lecture happened to particularly interest him.

It needs no mention that he was again the 'by far the Topper' of his batch.

After ten years or so he ended up in a prestigious Institution and was doing rather well, I was told. We never exchanged mails or visits. He simply vanished from KGP.

After another fifteen years or so, another 'break-neck Topper' spent 'some time' at that Institution on his own admission. This kid was equally shy but somehow kept in touch with me...maybe found in me a virtual soul-mate.

I asked him about the Shy Sleeper of my Tutorial Class and how shy he is now two decades later.

He replied: "Sir, anyone here would be shocked to hear that he is shy. Anything but that".

I then realized that kids grow and acquire mustaches and sideburns with age. And it is the fallacy of Teachers to think that shy students end up shy professionals.

Maybe there is some good sense in the tradition that some Institutes have of never taking their own students as their Faculty. That would stunt their growth and they have to "dye their whiskers green and always use so large a fan that they can't be seen"

I think IIT Kanpur follows this rule.

Also the brash Feynman was shunted to Princeton after his stint as student in MIT for precisely this reason.

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Cancers

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No, this is not about the deadly diseases that go by that name; nor the folks born under that Zodiacal symbol.

This is about crabs and crablike folks in my academic life.

One of the major shocks of my childhood was my visit to the sea beach at Vizagh at the age of 4 at eventide. Like any kid of that age, I was fascinated by the first one I saw. I rushed towards him trying to catch and make friends. I was aghast when he made a neat perpendicular run into his hole. I was stunned that his legs point one way and his run an entirely different.

I didn't check, but maybe this is how the deadly disease got its name. It appears, say, as a lump on the shoulder. You try and remove it and it slips and reappears in the groin...

In short, as one of my ex-students fondly labeled me recently: 'a slippery customer'

Before I forget: This kid who did his Project under me, took a 3-year Jumbo course along with me and rose to be a Professor cautioned an innocent colleague of his who was trying to make me 'work': "Forget about it: gps is a slippery customer. I tried to make him write an Optics book with me after his retirement, but he gave me a neat slip on telephone praising me sky-high but the message was clear: Hands off!"

He is right and why not? Slipping away from people who wanted me to work was my specialization at IIT KGP. But I was deeply wounded when a customer who was more slippery conferred this title on me long ago.

It was this way: This gray eminence was a most reputed GR researcher in the Math Dept. Unfortunately for us (and maybe fortunately for the Math Dept) there was no vacancy of a Professor Post in his parent department which he eminently deserved. The then Director did the famous Parkinsonian Lateral Arabesque and promoted him as a Professor in Phy Dept, because GR had the name of Einstein tagged with it and Einstein dabbled in Physics too.

That was the beginning of the end. Instead of continuing his GR work, he tried to learn and do research in QM at the age of 50. SDM retired just then and his mantle somehow fell on DB (richly deserving) and me (richly undeserved). He started with reading up Dirac. And taking lectures in it for all those who wished to learn the subject from a Mathematician's point of view. He tried to induce several people to attend his classes. DB flatly said no. So did CLR. So did several other Theoreticians. He tried to catch me and have me. Unfortunately I could never say a blunt no to anyone but used to send signals by body language and other subtle means. He mistook it and pestered me till I attended one of his classes and nodded my top the wrong way, as it turned out. He misread that too and thought that I would continue attending his classes.

After a couple of weeks I was told that he declared aloud in public: "gps is a slippery customer".

Anyway it is good that wisdom dawns on one later than sooner.

There was this kid who did his M. Sc. Project under me and left for Calcutta. As it turned out, I got busy then solving Irodov problems for 2 years. Then I picked up the old M. Sc. theses and it turned out that his thesis led to 4 papers jointly with me. I used to send him reprints to his Cal address. He was a litle taken back and somehow felt that he didn't deserve all of them or so (he was fresh and didn't know the collaboration game). Since then he never touched base at KGP again for 20 odd years till I left. He never acknowledged receipt of those reprints. But whenever anyone from KGP happened to meet him, he would remember me and threaten that he would be coming to KGP next weekend to meet me. That never happened!

After SDM left KGP, at least half a dozen Professors (including DB) tried to make me work with them and write research papers, but they got to know know the hard way: "gps is a crab!"

The antithesis of Cancer is the Capricorn. Etymologically it means: 'Battering Ram'

If you wish to meet one of this species, visit:

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http://patihas.blogspot.com/2010/03/hassled.html?utm_source=feedbur
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Thank You!

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The Three Cheers

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Abdul Mazeed, my erstwhile colleague at IIT KGP (he figures namelessly in one of my earlier blogs) told me this joke (before explaining to me the meaning of his name, 'Servant of the Glorious'):

Man and wife go to a Party. The Ladies gather in a group while the Men crowd around a VIP Guest.

Suddenly there is a burst of laughter from the Men's ring.

On their way home wife asks him why he was laughing uproariously. The husband replies: "I don't know. Everyone else was laughing at the VIP's joke. I too joined"

Just while falling asleep, the husband laughs again. Wife looks at him quizzically. "I just understood the joke"

Next morning just before getting up he laughs again. Wife is really curious. "I misunderstood the joke last night. What a fool I was!"

I find that there are three such cheers in Family Life too (read: 'sex')

When he waits long years, gets married, has his First Night, Honeymoon and cozy homecomings, he smiles and knows what Family Life is.

3 years later he gets an anxious telegram that his wife gifted him a son. He fights for leave with his boss, travels a 1000 KM, reaches the Leela Bai Maternity Home, his wife smiles and points to the crib, he pokes the newborn in his ribs, gets a knowing wink in return, he smiles again and and says to himself; "Oh, this is the meaning of Family Life".

He grows into impotence and senility and at 67, he gets a phone call and goes forth to his daughter-in-law's place, the son and his wife drop his grandkid gently into his fragile lap, he plants a wee kiss on his chubby fortnight-old granddaughter, he smiles again for the third time and knows finally THE Meaning of Family Life.

There are three cheers in the life of a teacher too:

When he struggles for long, finds a perfect Ph. D. guide, enjoys working for 5 years, gets glorious comments from a Caltech Professor, he smiles and knows this is what Acads is all about.

When he retires and gets an extra-special At-Home Farewell from his 'Students and Admirers' with a sweet memento etched to that effect, he smiles again and knows the meaning of a lifetime of teaching.

5 years later, when he has forgotten all Physics, takes to mindless blogging to beguile his idle hours and suddenly he gets a Comment like this from an anonymous grandstudent:

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Don Quixote said...

"As a KGP physics passout who never had the fortune of being a fellow woolgatherer with you while you still adorned the KGP campus, can I implore you to kindly expand 'DT', the rest I know"

April 19, 2010 12:49 AM

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he finally smiles again and understands the true fruit of his 40 years Labor of Love!

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Arrogance of Humility

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Jesus famously declared from the Mount: "Blessed are the meek; they shall inherit the Earth"

At the height of the British Empire on which Sun never dared set, Mark Twain twitted: "English are the meekest, for, they have inherited the Earth"

I watched the Gandhi movie intently. I found that as the movie progressed, Gandhi became a strip-tease artist, from a suited booted Anglican to the half-naked fakir of Churchill. As Gandhi's attire and lifestyle 'grew' simpler and humbler, he became more and more of a terror to the King and Churchill. And grew arrogant enough to say to the King, who asked what he could do to please him: "Just get off our backs". He also is reputed to have twitted that the King had more than enough warm clothing on to cover both their bodies. And ,when the Empire was tottering in WW2, he discarded all his humble cheek-turning Non-Violence and asked the British to get lost: "Quit India"

Jesus, that epitome of humility, rocked the all-powerful Romans after his martyrdom, while Gandhi the all-powerful British before his.

I was told that Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was the pinnacle of humility, enough to carry the luggage of a commoner, but that he brushed off as great a saint as Ramakrishna as no good for him.

In our own pantheon of Gods, Shiva is supposed to be the epitome of simple living and intellectual innocence. He is always clad shabbily in half-naked Tiger skins (before they became expensive smuggled goods), lived on alms and retired to Himalayas away from the cities, was foolish enough to grant booms to his Bhasmasur-type devotees that boomeranged on himself; but once he opens his third eye, the whole Universe is supposed to burn up into ashes.

Coming to academics, we have the other extreme: "Humility of Arrogance" in Feynman. To anyone who reads his own life-story, he is the summit of Arrogance and Brashness of the intellect. He ridiculed one and all of his famous contemporaries, including his own Ph. D. guide Wheeler (an unpardonable sin) for which his portrait among the Nobel-winners of Princeton, I am told, hangs in a dimly-lit corridor hidden away from spotlight.

But Bohr knew better. I recall reading that, in the thick of the Bomb Project discussions, Bohr dismissed all other Physicists overawed by his reputation, but asked Feynman to hang on for further discussions simply because Feynman was too brash to hide his thoughts: "The Kid who saw the Emperor naked and said so"

I am told that a generation of simpleton Physics students at IIT KGP mistakenly regarded DB and GPS epitomes of humility. There are cultivated reasons for this. They avoided the trap: "Don't you know this simple thing?" cleverly. Never were too afraid to tell students (not colleagues): "I don't know the answer...ask GPS or DB as the case maybe (as per mutual contract)" (MSMA). Both led reasonably simple & shabby lives: DB never owned even a push-bike, GPS never had a sweater on in chilly KGP winters. One never went abroad nor took a Ph.D. student (out of fear); the other never dared set a JEE Question Paper nor take the 4th year lab (out of fear again). Neither had Project Money, nor wrote any books during their tenures. Never cared for promotions...they were gifted 'compassionate appointments' at regular time-lapsed intervals. Never attended august Senate Meetings (out of boredom). Shared a dingy smoke-filled Office and refused to move till their luggage was thrown out. Never asked for a PC which was a status symbol. One of them had a PC forced on him, but never learned even e-mailing. The other did nothing but e-mailing.

By all this they created an aura of (false) humility among the students.

But their wives knew better.

In the context of academic egos and arrogance today I asked Mrs GPS, who observed the Phy Dept closely for 25 years: "Who is the most arrogant faculty member in the Phy Dept?"

She at once replied: "Of course DB"

She also volunteered the known and declared opinion of Mrs. DB if the same question was put her: "GPS..that fool!"

I rest my case!

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Shocking Thoughts

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I was 14 when I got my first shock from 'current'. Till then I was living in a village which had no 'current'. In 1957 I shifted to my uncle's place for my College Studies. The house there had just got 'current'. And there were no 3-pin plugs. Just 2-pin plugs without switches. You can imagine how a curious village bum would play with unfamiliar 220 Volt invitingly empty sockets.

I was simply dashed away and my heart started pounding like never before. I decided then and there that that would be my last shock ever. Since then I was like a kitten, once bitten twice shy, always using footwear when fiddling with 'current' (which I had to do all my working life in Physics Labs).

Then I bought a Maruti 800 at age 57. One fine whistling morning in winter I tried to open the car door and was knocked down by shock after half a century. The Mechanic said there was nothing wrong with the car...it was just static electricity...and showed repeatedly how nothing happens when he touches it (come on!). Many of my friends said that they do get a mild pleasant sensation in winters but nothing alarming. Since then my toy car was a daily terror to me in winter; till I cleverly engaged a 'boy' to clean the car every morning @ Rs. 200 a month....a small price to pay for keeping the car clean and letting him in for it. But he never complained.

Then I retired and was visibly sinking into what turned out to be a Major Depression which took a good couple of years to get over. The first inkling that something was going wrong was that I got a terrific shock one afternoon while trying to sink into a nap (a perfectly harmless and routine thing to do).

I was somewhat amazed that I could get a shock from 'within', without the help of external AC or DC power packs. I then recalled that the entire physiology of animals like me is driven by current impulses generated within. The twitching of muscles (Galvani and the poor frog with its rotating smoked drum), neurons within nerve cells and what not. My entire brain is wired electrically. The EEG's and ECG's and such beastly kits are all electrical contraptions.

O Well, thoughts are electrical too; some good, others crazy! If they are electrical, we must be radiating and leaking them all over via our earlobes (some! like Obama's) as antennae. I guess that is how our thoughts are read by mind-readers using 'their' earlobes as receivers. I have a screwy bunch of thoughts in store for them.

But Why ME? I asked my psychiatrist if shocks are precursors of Depression. He brushed aside my query laconically saying that such symptoms are part of 'arousal'. Arousal my foot! That sounds very sexy. Then I recalled that these same psychiatrists used, in earlier times, 'shock treatment' routinely to revive their poor patients.

Then I read about 'electric eels'. These chaps wantonly generate a pretty high voltage difference (around 600 Volts) between parts of their bodies like the two ends of their tails, without inflicting any shocks on themselves. They then catch a poor fish which at once dies of shock and gets happily eaten.

Oh Well! Can we not do what a lousy witless eel does? A curious thought. Maybe some Yogis can do it. With intense reverence to Him and equally to rationality, could this be what Ramakrishna Deb did to Vivekananda when he 'touched' him and dispatched him into a well-described trance state?

The question: 'Why ME'? is easily answered. In 1962, our University held a 'Science Exhibition' where one of the attractions was: 'Resistance Meter'. The paying guy (or girl) was asked to hold a couple of innocent terminals; and a spot on the Galvanometer moves and gives the reading: a foolsy High Resistance Bridge. Many were pleased that they have a 'high body resistance'. I had the least. There was also a 'Complexion Meter'. Just a beam of light reflecting off your face falls on a photo-diode and gives a reading on a spot Galvanometer. There also I scored very low.

There was this Demonstrator in our Electronics Lab at our University. We were constantly working with a terrifying 500 Volts DC. And we had too few Voltmeters to go around and most were dead most of the time. Whenever the circuit we rigged up didn't give 'oscillations' on the Oscilloscope, we would fetch him with baits of tea and biscuits. He was always wearing thick boots, never heard of in the warm Waltair weather. He would pass his finger touching it along announcing: 20 Volts, 150 Volts, 80 Volts etc and declare that this resistor or that capacitor has gone phut and needs replacement. And the diagnosis invariably proved correct and the circuit would dance into 'oscillation'!

Chap must have had a body resistance of a Hundred Mega Ohms!

This trend of thoughts is provoked by a news item which said that many youth nowadays induce electric shocks upon themselves to get 'kicks' and thereby get addicted to high voltage batteries which they have to carry wherever they go! Crack seems easier to carry; no?

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Make it Up!

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This blog is for respectable Senior Citizens born before 1945, male, female etc, alive and kicking, and taking great interest in the Make-Up Services for today's youthful minds available (I mean the services; not youth) in our locality in Hyderabad (the exotic spellings come free of cost):
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Shaving, Cutting, Facial, Bleach, Colouring, Straightning, Highlighting, Ear Piercing, Grooming, Pedicure, Menicure, Waxing, Henna, Mehandi Designing, Bridal Packages, Reducing inches from stomach thighs arms and hips, Tone up Skin shape, Pimple, Pigmentation, Hairfall, Brest-Development & Uplifintg, Scars, Under-eye, Fariness, Eye brow shaping, Permenant lipstick, Mole Application (Beauty Spot), Lipliner & Lipshaper, Advance Electrolysis and Laser technic for unwanted hairs without side effects, Therapetical Messages for Body Pains, Tension Relief, Relaxation & Get rid of Body Dryness with steam bath, Aroma Oils, Biotique, Galvanic, Thermoapak, Veg-peel, Fruit peel, Pearl, Platinum, Japanese, Diamond, Gold & Silver, Proffesioanl, Fashion Colours, Grey Coverage, Striking with branded products, Permemant Perming, Nail Art, Water Proof, Leukoderma, Ironing, Roller Setting, Threading, Latesh Hair Cuts, & Hair Styles, Saree Wearing, Self Grooming.

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Disclaimer: I am not a paid agent or Brand Ambassador. This 5 minutes of keyboarding is for the education of Senior Citizens only.

Thak You!

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Gul

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The perfect Gul (Bluff) is an audacious and atrocious mix of fiction with fiction. Requires practice and training (like teaching at IIT KGP).

Summer vacations circa 1990: All the grandkids of the family used to gather at my father's place for a month or so. There were about half a dozen ranging in age from 12 to 3. I was the only 'uncle' available with time hanging heavily on my sultry hands. Mornings and evenings they used to play outdoor games but otherwise they would flock around me for entertainment.

I knew that they were all in English Medium Schools. So I used to engage them to competitively play word games like 'What is the Good Word?' and 'Superghosts' (an invention of Thurber where letters can be 'prefixed' as well as suffixed in 'Word-Building'). I was the compere and the 6 boys and girls save the last (3 years old) used to participate en masse and enjoy competing among themselves; and learning too.

I could guess that this last niece of mine felt left out but never said anything. Such girls belong to the 'Sensitive High IQ' group and I learned from my teaching experience that they should be ignored and left alone till they feel safe that they won't be humiliated. The other end of the girl spectrum is 'Brash High TQ'. These should be encouraged from Day 1 till they feel at home.

This last niece of mine found a time when all others were busy outdoors and came to me for a story:

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Me: How old are you?

She: 3

Me: I was born at 3 and straight went to school after my father slipped the uniform on me

She: You are bluffing

Me: Ask your mom

She: .................I asked and she told you are lying

Me: How does she know? She was born ten years later in front of my eyes at age zero. Because I was born at 3, they recruited me at IIT as a teacher at 21 and all others at 24. Ask your mom

She: ..................My mom says that part is ok. Anyway tell me a story

Me: I will do that if you promise not to interrupt

She: Ok

Me: There was this Pied Piper at Hamelin

She: I know this story. My mom told me

Me: How does it end?

She: The Mayor refuses to pay and the Piper leads all kids to drown in the Sea

Me: Your mom tells scary tales. Actually the Piper lures the Mayor's daughter away from all and marries her. And it turns out that this crying daughter of Mayor realizes that the Piper in truth is a Prince of the neighboring Kingdom. They lived happily forever

She: .............I like your stories; Tell me another.

Me: There is this goose that lays golden eggs

She: ......I know this; but anyway (cheerfully anticipating) go ahead....

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I used to play this trick on students of my Physics Class at IIT KGP. Used to tell them tall tales of the exploits of their famous Seniors who were in my Class. Since the names were rather well-known they couldn't contest. Here is one:

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"..ZC sat grimly alone in the back bench. He never took Notes nor even pulled his pen out of his pocket in my Theory Class. He used to stare piercingly at the blackboard and my back. I knew he was a serious student trying to absorb each word I utter and each step I write. I didn't mind.

When it came to the 4-dimensional Green Function the blackboard had to wiped clean thrice before the pithy end result materialized (SB later told me he never had to read EMT since he mastered this one result from my class). I used to ask the students to dump all the dozen or so intermediate numerical factors like 4, pi, i into a bracket in front of each step and keep track. The other 11 students were busy copying profusely from the blackbaord. At the end I would sit down and ask the students to multiply all the bracketed factors and come out with the right value of the final denominator. Others would take 10 minutes to figure it out the hard way. But ZC would at once announce: (1/4 pi). I smile implying he knew the famous asswer. He would then reel out each bracketed figure one by one from his head and multiply them aloud one after the other.

I would lift my eyebrows and utter in astonishment: "ZC, you are a genius!"

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This story was lapped up by everyone and did the rounds till IM happened to meet ZC and confront him with it. Apparently ZC replied laconically: "True but for the last line".

The other day I blogged a piece called 'My Fair Russian Lady'. It evoked a response from Aniket saying 'pilmony' ought to be 'pelmeny' and giving its funda. I then wrote to him saying the story was like an inverted iceberg with 90% exposed and the last 10% hidden: "She was a KGB agent".

Promptly I got this response:

"...My father, who entertained us with stories at bedtime on a regular basis, always told me that for the purposes of a good narrative, it was never necessary to stick to facts, so I have learnt very early to have utter disregard for facts....."

I was so impressed that I at once chose him to write his famous Foreword for my booklet: 'Woolgathering'.

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The Right & the Wrong Way

>============================================================================

This blogpost is NOT for prudes...they have been warned!

I have to say this because there has been a complaint that there are 'dirty' and 'vulgar' jokes in my booklet: 'Woolgathering' (meant for a girl child)!

I am tickled pink!

This morning the Hall Curtain's middle hole at its top slipped out of its metal hook in the pelmet. I was holding the hook and trying in vain to pass the Curtain into it. After five sweaty minutes I realized that I should do the other way round; and the thing was done in a second!

First afternoon in my First Year Physics Lab at my Univ in 1958: The experiment allotted to me (we were singletons with no 'partners') was Borda's Pendulum.

A massive metal sphere with a pin stuck to its bottom and hanging from the ceiling by a long metal wire. It was all supposed to be about Moment of Inertia. There was a telescope clamped to a rod. Its height is adjustable, it can be tilted right and left and up and down, and could be 'focused' in and out. Too many 'degrees of freedom'.

After 10 minutes of failing to get the pin's magnified image into the eyepiece, I sought help from the 'Attendant' who came up, did it for me in a second so I could see the damn thing as clear as my face in the morning mirror, knocked the entire thing off its adjustment, and asked me to do it by myself.

I tried unsuccessfully for four days, got penalized, but didn't seek further help. At the end of those four days I became an expert in all labs where things are to be focused and got into the field of view: practically every experiment in every Physics Lab.

At the end of 4 years I stood First in the Labs.

The trick is NOT to try and see through the instrument in the first place. Knock the instrument off its alignment, see the thing with the naked eye, fix your eye, and THEN bring the instrument between you and the thing you want to see, and adjust the screws.

VR told me a short story by some famous French writer whose name I forget:

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This girl complained to the Judge that she was screwed against her will, but not 'raped'; yet she wanted the guy to be punished for beguiling her.

The Judge said it can't be done.

He volunteered with a Demo. He would hold a needle in his hand and let the girl try and push a thread into its eye. In public.

Whenever the girl tried and neared, the Judge would push his hand slightly away.

After a few failed trials the girl knew what went wrong.

She then held the Judge's hand softly, crooned in her sweet voice: "Lovely Needle, Darling Needle, Beautiful Needle" and so on and so forth as the whole Court and the Judge fell laughing.

And the thread was in the needle before they recovered!
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Old Man and the Seer

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It was never easy.

IIT KGP had a stream of unending undergraduate talent for 40 years of my life there, and a terrific 10 to 1 Student-Teacher Ratio. How best to use them for mutual benefit without little little inevitable strains was my big problem. It would indeed call for a treatise of negligible public use.

Anyway, I suppose I did my best. Very few students could guess the tremendous difficulty a well-meaning teacher faces in striking the right balance between academics and 'friendship'.

Here is an e-Certificate I proudly preserved:

..... "I know that you are one of the very few professors back home who can come down to the level of students yet maintain his stature"...................

Thank you lady! You are a very perceptive seer for your tender age.

Thanx again!

Let me however add that, the 'academic feminist' that you were, the last but one word: "his" in your tribute has been a let-down! I would have written: "their" to avoid your broomstick!

....The Old Man Dreams..like in the first para of "Old Man and the Sea" of Hemingway.

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Feeling One's Oats

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I first read this idiom in Feynman's quirky autobiography dictated to a youngster about one-fourth his age. Feynman did something unusually naughty even for him one day when he was 'feeling his oats'.

I didn't have access then to a Dictionary of Idioms and so guessed that it referred to one of those days we all feel unusually 'uppish': Like the day I rashly decided to get married at 36 with two PF loans running concurrently in 1979 (I had to postpone the wedding by 8 months after engagement till one of these was cleared).

All of a sudden tonight it occurred to me look up Google. Here it is, the official Free Dictionary:

Entry: "Feel one's oats" means 'to be very lively'. Examples: "Careful with that horse. He's feeling his oats today". "Mary was feeling her oats and decided to go out dancing".

For a few weeks after I joined IIT KGP in 1965 as a Junior Faculty, I was asked to stay in the B. C. Roy Hostel dedicated to Research Scholars, many of them FRS (Frustrated Research Scholars). After our weekly 'Special Dinners', a couple of them feel their oats and come out of the Hall which is just across the Main Gate Rickshaw Stand. They would howl "Station Jayegaa?" . The first one in the queue would jump up, get down and pull up saying, "Jayegaa Saab!". Then the naughtier of the two would shout "Jaao, Jaao!" while the other would laugh boisterously. The other Rickshaw chappies would laugh uproariously and there would be bad blood and foul muttering. Then the FRS would give the stricken Rickshaw chap a Tenner and ask him to sit in the back seat, get on to his driving seat, and drive the Rickshawala hither and thither till everyone around feel 'their oats'.

I tried driving a rickshaw once. It is not at all easy. The driving wheel is on one side and it pulls to the left and lands you in a ditch. Requires lots of practice.

One of these FRS went to the US and became a millionaire despite B C Roy. He returned after ten years and did the same thing. Only this time he gave the stricken Rickshawala a Rs. 500 Note.

Since then I was waiting for a day when I would be doing something like that.

When I retired 4.5 years ago, my take-home fell suddenly from Rs. 40K to 13K. It was a shock and landed me in Deep Depression for a while.

4.5 yeas later I was stunned with the TV announcement that my take-home now will be 28.5K. More than doubled in less than 5 years!

That night I was for once feeling my oats.

I saw my son off at the Secunderabad Railway Station at 11 P.M. and came out empty-handed with no baggage. A bevy of autorickshaws tailed me asking me to board. They were all on their way home and were in a hurry. I haggled. Generally they charge 1.5 times the meter rate after 10 P.M. I refused to do that and said I would pay just the meter rate. They asked where I wished to go. When I said Khairatabad, one of them grudgingly agreed (his home was in Chinthal Basthi near ours). I boarded and within 2 minutes asked him to stop saying I would get down. He asked why. I said his meter was doctored and it is showing 1.2 Km when I knew it had run only for 0.5 Km. (I know the entire route like the back of my hand). He turned back and howled at me but I insisted. He calmed down and asked how much I paid usually for the trip. I replied Rs 58. It was no bargain for him and it was he who was feeling cheated. He grumbled and we settled for Rs 60. He shut off the meter and by the time we were on the Tank Bund we got chatting, me sympathizing with the plight of autowallahs in general.

I got down at my place and gave him a Rs 100 crisp note fresh from the ATM and said: "Keep the change and buy sweets for your kid son".

I felt like that Foreign-Returned FRS for once in my lifetime.

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Nagging vs Grumbling

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The advent of the 80-channel color TV in Indian homes killed many age-old traditional virtues. Like story-telling, small talk while eating together, reading together, walking together, thinking together; all replaced by viewing atrocious programs together banishing all imaginative and creative small time activities that bonded a family.

A man went on a business trip to a far-off place in the good old days and felt home-sick. He was late for his dinner and was the last man in the restaurant. The waitress served his food and was watching him and her watch impatiently. The man proposed that he would give a dollar extra tip if she could please sit opposite him. Which she gladly did. He then proposed that an extra dollar tip would be hers if she could please nag him a bit while he ate.

Alas, nagging has all but disappeared in families, replaced by the verbal violence on the screen by the mother-in-law vs her daughter-in-law. Not the same at all. No creative virtues of nagging on different themes on different nights.

As he grew old, man discovered his own weapon against nagging. Grumbling.

Women just can't stand grumbling. They would rather prefer argument, reason, even shouting. But grumbling is a more potent weapon than all these put together. Women ask their men to shut up. Men do it as best as they can.

But the woman shouts: "Your lips are moving and I know you are grumbling about the excess salt in the curry".

Man would then stop moving his lips.

Woman then shouts: "I Know you are grumbling in your head that my blouse doesn't match my sari".

Man would then get up and go away to his laughing club...the last resort he has at his age..60.

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Sound Bytes

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The Campus at IIT KGP is full of trees. It is a Paradise for bird-lovers (ornithologists, if you want the sound byte). Jim Corbett in his 'Jungle Lore' divides birds into 6 groups (he knows!):

1. Beautiful (minivets, orioles, sunbirds; come on Corbett, give the Hindi words, we have a Park named for you -;)

2. Melodious (thrushes, robins, shamas)

3. Regenerating (barbets, hornbills, bulbuls.. there you are Corbett!)

4. Warning (drongos, red jungle-fowl)

5. Nature-balancing (eagles, hawks, owls)

6. Scavenging (vultures, kites and crows).

I am surprised Corbett omits the cuckoo and the peacock. One is ugly but sweet; the other the other way round. Everyone enjoys the song of cuckoo but never asks its meaning. A thing which has nice sound but means either nothing or grand nonsense is my definition of a 'sound byte'.

Our University in the 1960s had a grand tradition of Experimental Physics (Raman and Bhagavantham worked there...some detractors say that Raman stole the work of Bhagavantham..doesn't matter, both are Indians for a Desh Bhakt like me).

But it had little use for theory. The theory teachers were a scared lot; escapists. Soon we found out that it is better not to ask them any questions. Not even simple ones like:"If the action and reaction are equal and opposite, how does a horse-drawn cart move at all? The horse pulls the cart forward and the cart pulls the horse backward..".

Forget about Quantum Mechanics. The Professor would simply smile away if anyone asks about the Uncertainty Principle's meaning. Like the shopkeeper in Abu Dhabhi. I am told they never say 'no' for any goods that are out of stock...saying 'no' is taboo..they simply smile away.

The Professors of a certain branch of Physics at IIT KGP were worse. They would shout. I had been brushed aside and called a 'fool' asking 'nonsense' questions. Incidentally 'nonsense' was a swear word for our Bengalee teachers. It is a red rag.

I simply asked: "If Bragg Scattering and Compton Scattering occur for the same X-ray beam falling on the same crystal, why does one give spots while the other gives noise?" They would all smile knowingly and say: "Don't you know that one is 'coherent' while the other is 'incoherent'?". Then I ask why. They would scowl, call me an ignoramus and also a 'nuisance'. It took 20 years for poor me to figure it out my own way, and I published a Note in the European Journal of Physics to which the grand old Bleany wanted to add a para of his own; Noblesse Oblige!

The 'coherent' and 'incoherent' of our Profs are supreme examples of 'sound bytes'.

My father was a student of Sanskrit. He used to recite the Veda Mantras like Purusha Suktam, Shree Suktam, Mantra Pushpam in his grand voice loudly. I was charmed by them and used to ask him what they mean. He would gently say that the meanings are not as important as the sounds: Vedas have a 'sound value'. I was skeptical, but enjoyed them all the same.

The other day I was gifted a beautiful book containing all those Veda Mantras and more, with word-by-word meaning and exposition, published by the Ramakrishna Mission (May it live on Forever!). I was drawn back to my childhood and the memory of my father's resounding voice.

Most of them are genuine sincere prayers for Nature Gods like Sun, Wind, Night, Dawn, Fire, Wealth. No harm.

But the grandest of them all, which I now read day in and day out has atrocious meanings. It is our Rishis' equivalent of Bible's 'Genesis' and equally foul.

But I read it nowadays day in and day out for its beautiful 'sound value'.

The greatest 'sound byte' in the Vedas...Purusha Suktam...May it live on Forever!

George McDonald

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Yesterday's DC has this quote by George McDonald:

"Work is not always required....there is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected".

The 'now' there refers to a century and a half ago; for Wikipedia tells me that George was the Guru of Lewis Carroll.

One of our Professors when he was HoD used to refer to the then Director as a "Work-minded Fellow". It looked like a compliment.

Work has several meanings in several contexts. In Physics, the work done by a man standing in the hot Sun with a bag of wheat on his head is precisely zero.

An ex-Director fond of Physics couldn't keep quiet after retirement (unlike me). He had to dabble in Physics, of all things. He sent a question to the above HoD: "What is the Temperature of a laser beam?" The question did the usual rounds and at last landed in my lap, the lazy bone of the Physics department.

I answered: "It depends".

This answer apparently interested the ex-Diro and led to an unlimited round of our one-on-one discussions, the latest being 4 years after my retirement and 24 years after his (when we met at KGP this January). He is 90, but attends Office and presented me with his latest reprint in the Proceedings of the thing at Bangalore. Apparently he is still seized with the laser issue.

Oh, Well! Since he never leaked to me what exactly was his problem, I had to write a monograph on "Lasers..the Light Wave of the Future"; exclusively meant for his eyes. But Prof STA who was the Chairman of the Nehru Museum of Science and Technology published it as NMST..001 (what a Dream!). I am told that the number of the NMST series never exceeded 005.

But I digress as Aniket is fond of saying......

Bertrand Russell also wrote a monograph: "In Praise of Idleness", but as expected, it is a political and not a literary or scientific document (unlike mine).

Work-minded, my foot! Feynman says all his brilliant ideas came to him at weird places and times when 'work' was the last thing on his mind.

It is always 'pleasure' that produces the finest children of the mind and the body.

Live Habit

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…………………“Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit”………………………………

So wrote the Poet. He knows. Dead habits kill. There is no doubt about it.

William James wrote a 1500-page close-printed tome: ‘Principles of Psychology’. It was available in our fantastic Central Library of IIT KGP during the 1960s. Students at Harvard needed an abridged version for their classes. His condensed version appropriately called ‘Jimmy’ is eminently readable, reputed for its lucidity and lack of jargon. There is a whole Chapter in it on ‘Habit’. He analyses this strange thing to which all of us are slaves from childhood till death. Essentially Jimmy shows it to be a labor-saving device.

When does a ‘habit’ become ‘dead’? Is there a ‘live’ habit?

These are relevant questions. When the labor-saving device takes us over so completely that we cannot change it come what may, I suppose it becomes a dead habit.

I am not talking of physical habits like tying the shoe strings or wearing trousers in our own idiosyncratic ways. There is no harm even if they become dead habits. One is sure that one’s zip is never down if one obeys his habit, unless the wife suddenly detracts by their usual last minute shout that the gas cylinder needs to be urgently changed. That brings me to My Fair Lady’s Dead Habit: When we are half-way down to Gole Bazaar on our scooter, she would cry, “Did I turn off the gas?” That meant going back home and checking on our every trip. It never happened that the gas was NOT turned off. But the routine continued for decades. I decided every time that I make sure to turn it off before we start; but I could never slip into that new habit. Open the garage, take the scooter out, lock the garage, kick the starter, load the pillion and take off till the Puri gate and turn back…..

I am talking about habits of the mind. Like for instance in our professional lives. When we were students in 1960 we had only Vacuum Tubes in our Electronics labs. Working with 500 Volts DC: quite a deadly shocking affair. When I became the lab teacher in our Electronic lab at IIT KGP in 1970, the tubes were getting replaced by transistors working at a very safe 12 Volts. My dream come true. No more shocks. But transistors worked very differently than tubes: they were ‘current-controlled’ unlike the ‘voltage-controlled’ tubes. The theory and practice were very different. Only those teachers who didn’t fall into the dead habit of their student lives could survive in the Fourth Year Electronics lab. Others went down to the harmless viscometer in the First Year lab.

There was another horrible thing called the soldering iron. I never could escape burns and shocks from these curses. But one fine day I was given the punishment-posting of Lab-in-charge of the Electronics lab. One lateral entry student from Calcutta (he joined GMRT later) who had this hobby of Electronics brought his own new thing to the lab the very first day and was doing his experiment using it. He was not using the soldering iron. I at once ran to him and he coached me how to use what he called the ‘Bread Board’. At once I ordered 50 Bread Boards and banished soldering irons, much to the annoyance of Tarapada Babu, who insisted that a student who can't solder and doesn’t burn his fingers in his Electronics lab ‘learns nothing’. I was reminded of Thurber’s Father Moth rebuking his son who refused to fall into their family calling of swirling around street lamps and singeing their wings: “You will come to no good”.

One of my relatives is a fitness freak. Every year I meet him he says he has ‘fallen’ into a new habit: It is Gym this year, Yoga next year, Jogging the next, Dieting next and so on. The last I heard was when he was singing the inimitable virtues of joining their ‘Laughing Club’ where apparently 50 odd old goons stand in a line and laugh their heads off.

He is the supreme example of a man with ‘Live Habits’.
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Foreword & Aftword

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Yes, it's official! There is a booklet in print of about 62 pages titled: "Woolgathering". It is a compilation of about 30 blog pieces written over the past 3 years.

Aniket wrote a Foreword and I wrote the reason behind this crazy thing. 'Thing' is a nice buzz-word (lazy man's first refuge).

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Foreword


When I laid my hands on ‘A Writer's Nightmare’ by R K Narayan, I was so enthralled by the personal essay I became utterly incapable of producing a single line of serious prose. It took a bout of tonsillitis to get me really down in the dumps, so down, so low, I ended up reading Kafka's ‘The Castle’ weeks before joining IIT Kharagpur, where my entire experience of having to meet elusive professors for any purpose seemed nightmarish.


When, nearly three years later, I first summoned the courage to enter GPS' office to debate a physics paper, the localization of interference fringes was foremost on my mind, yet thirteen years on it seems to me that physics was only an excuse for my running into him. For in all these years our discussions have quickly digressed at first to the story behind the Poisson spot and subsequently to cabbages and kings of various descriptions.


To quote one of his favorite authors, James Thurber, “Everyone should once in a while ask himself where he came from, what he is running away from, and whereto”.


And when I put this question to myself, I realize that for an inveterate escape artist like me the list is rather long. Fortunately or otherwise, I am not alone. There have been others, from Kalidasa's yaksha to Thurber's Mitty, from Maugham's Lotus Eater to Narayan's Swamy. One could be forgiven for imagining that such people were only the stuff of fiction, but to deny the dormant woolgatherer within us his or her due is probably unforgivable.


So, welcome to the world of daydreams pleasant that only makes the harsher detention camp of life a little more bearable, at the very least.



Aniket Basu

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A Curious Proposal


A business portal coaching students online for GRE, CAT, GMAT desperately wanted new ‘passages’ suitable for Reading Comprehension. They asked me if I could write some ‘original’ passages of ‘high quality’ (for money). I replied that they could use about a couple of dozen prose pieces that I had already posted on my blogspot. A week later, the Boss reverted to me saying that they found my pieces meeting their high standards of originality and quality, but there is a catch: “They are easy to read”. He wanted me to write new passages with abstract ideas, tough vocabulary and hidden depths of meaning. I said sorry, it is like asking Ravi Varma to paint in the Cubism style of Picasso. Mine is Calendar Art. When I paint a picture, a child of 3 should be able to look at it and exclaim: “Elephant!”, and not wonder if the cloud mass hides a camel, weasel or even a whale (like Hamlet and Polonius). He then requested me to permit his team of editors to rework my blog pieces into passages suitable for them. I told him to go ahead and feel free; but I would be curious to read his team’s end-products. I am sure I won’t hear from my Boss again.


These pieces were written to give an agreeable job to my Devil’s Workshop; and also to ‘forget’ (till I forget what it was I wanted to ‘forget’ in the first place). From IIT KGP freshers to knowledgeable IAS Officers quite a few found them diverting. But for one or two, none of these pieces have any ‘sentiment’. They are all heartless. I thought I better compile them before they are lost, just for the fun of it.


I thank Aniket for his telling Foreword; and my son Shreenath and daughter-in-law Sailaja for gifting me a blogspot and a keyboard to play with, and a printer too!


Who knows? A Shakespeare Sonnet may emerge if I live a million years!


G P Sastry

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