It has been 3 days since I blogged. And I used these days to edit the forthcoming slim booklet, and mailing and mailing...
To be sure, these activities are much more restful than blogging one new and fairly original piece everyday for months, which is a really exhausting deal.
Like the delightful Oliver Wendell Holmes simile: "Like holding a pet cat in the lap after trying to hold a wild squirrel".
But a hopeless addict of my blogs had this to say, inter alia:
".....I am a bit alarmed though at the announcement of your duck quack. I will miss your posts............".
One lesson I learned early in life is that it is hard to get compliments. So, one should try and take every forthcoming sentence as a compliment, come what may.
So, I thought instead of 'serious' blogging I can once in a while indulge in what I earlier on called 'RTP' (Random Talk Phenomenon).
There was again this curious statement from him:
"....I always thought that in the academic community, blogging is frowned upon as a bit frivolous......"
Frivolous, my foot!
About half a century ago, when I left home and joined College, there was this wonderful cartoon strip titled: 'Mere Frivolity'.
Till then I never had to look up a Dictionary; my father was my walking Dictionary. But now I was living in my Uncle's home....he was an MA (Hons) in English and was renowned as 'Professor Shakespeare' (he taught our Class English Prose, but). I was too shy to use him as my Dictionary.
So I surreptitiously took out his fat Dictionary to look up this word: 'frivolous', the first time ever in my life. And this is the entry from my online Webster for this word:
2 a : lacking in seriousness; b : marked by unbecoming levity
I challenge anyone who calls my blogs 'frivolous'. They are all dead serious.
A few days ago, I posted a series of half a dozen pieces on 'Spin'.
Let me quote the 'compliments' (see above) I got from impeccable professionals:
...................................................................................................
1.
In my life I called many people 'wonderful' teachers. But I reserved the term: "Best Teacher" to only one youngster, about half my age now. Not in speech or writing, but etched on a crystal glass memento (rather expensive for a pensioner) (I think by hydroflouric acid, if I remember my school chemistry right).
Here is what he says (and he, like Aniket, is the most kanjoos gent as far as doling out explicit compliments go; I being the most 'spendthrift' as they cost me nothing and fetch a lot of goodwill till some 'half-empty' guy reads too much between my lines):
"...Your Spin-stories should be prescribed to the UG/PG students and teachers of physics....".
2.
Again, there is this retired professor from IISc Bangalore (who unfortunately is trying to make me work), who has this to say about the same:
"....Simply super (not superb!) ... I feel , you should come here
and give a course of ten lectures on quantum mechanics
to college teachers and M.Sc. students. You should not
keep it to yourself--- really. We will plan it during this year...."
Those who know me could have guessed my reply:
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Respected Sir:
Like Feynman "You must surely be joking!".... Me coming to Bangalore leaving
Hyderabad! What will happen to the Charminar? It would surely collapse if my
benign presence is removed!
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3.
And this is what my most erudite eldest Brother-in-law
(of the Gifter-Giftee post) has to say
(he is a retired IAS; they really don't retire, they just lie low!):
Dearest Prabhakar, 21-06-2010
spinning theories underlying those
spins are better and finally spinning yarns are, of course,
the best. Carry on, You Master
Spinner & Master Weaver of Facts and Fiction.
Akkayya (didi) is proud , no end of your
literary faculties, (so am I) Love, ranga rao
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Long while ago, I read the Bhagavad Gita and the Ten Principal Upanishads for fun. Also the Holy Bible, the New Testament fully and the Old in parts. In the famous Chapter 15 of Gita titled: Purushottama Prapti Yoga, there is this wonderful line:
"Vaayur gandha nivashayat".
Krishna is saying (hold your breath!) that the Lord takes away your favorite last thoughts just before your death (for bestowing you your next avatar) just as:
"The breeze whisks away the fragrance of a flower".
Surely, I would like to think at that blessed moment of these frivolous compliments rather than the ones I got for my 'serious' works of Physics (a couple of them from John Wheeler and Edwin Taylor in their 'hard copy' books sold on Amazon).
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A few minutes back, my earlier post: 'Physics of Sex' elicited this comment from Polts:
"This is a riot!"
This naturally made me look up that piece posted six months ago. And found this sentence there:
"..I said ok and went over to RGC and asked him to tell his joke with the bait of my share of free Rosogollas. RGC (who had a pleasing stammer) agreed..."
I refer to this because in my piece: "Get-up Please!" a few days back I said:
'There is a wonderful word in English which I am fond of: "Pleasing".'
I shared Office with RGC (Ramda) during the first years of my life at IIT KGP. And he was a master-teller of jokes. But he had this very 'pleasing' stammer.
But he was the Best B Tech Teacher then. Students just loved him, despite his stammer.
MSS used to tell me that Ramda compensated his stammer with appropriate gestures; the most famous being:
"...When he had to show three balls colliding, he would hold two imaginary balls one in each hand, and for the third one he would 'point his nose', like a 'pointer dog' (a large strong slender smooth-haired gundog that hunts by scent and indicates the presence of game by pointing .....Webster)..."
Ramda, after retirement was the most famous JEE Coach in Calcutta.
I would love to listen any day to Ramda's Tales rather those of silver-tongued orators.
He was a master-computer-miniaturizer in those 1960s. When he became the Institute Time-Table-in-Charge, he reduced the whole damn thing into just ONE piece of centimeter graph paper kept in his Kurta pocket that he alone could decipher. Prof So-and-So of Mech Engg Dept, the earlier TT-in-Charge needed a whole room with 30 Drawing Sheets stacked in it; but always made mistakes.
Once there was this announcement that Ramda would be giving a Seminar Talk and everyone should attend.
I asked him in our Office just before we left for his seminar; "Ramda! To which branch of Physics does your topic of today belong?"
Without batting an eyelid he replied: "Solid State Physics".
And his talk turned out to be a highly entertaining and educative one on:
"Perpetual Calendar" (the thing there is now on my mobile).
We shall meet soon, Ramda and exchange our Tall Tales!
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