=========================================================
Maugham: "Think again before renouncing money...a decent bank balance will let you ask anyone you don't like to go to Hell"
Larry: "I don't think I would ask anyone to go to Hell....and if I did, the lack of a bank balance wouldn't prevent me....."
.........Razor's Edge......from poor memory..............
******************************************************************************
As I said a hundred times by now, Money simply baffles me...I just don't get the hang of it. Everything about it is a mystery. So I have a terrific inferiority complex with anyone talking knowingly about money.
The other day my autowallah held forth for ten good minutes on the relative merits of renting an auto vs buying one: cost, depreciation, maintenance, resale value, spare parts, insurance, inflation, fiscal responsibility so on and so forth. It was all high finance for me.
Having never produced anything tangible and always lived like a parasite on the Public, this ignorance also gives me a guilty conscience; but try as I might to follow the ups and downs of Sensex, Mutual Funds, Equities, Balance Sheets, Takeovers and such Mumbo-Jumbo, I failed miserably.
I give up! It is too late in the Day...old dog & new tricks...
We had an Eminent Sardarjee Teacher MSS at IIT KGP. I learned all my Bread 'n' Butter Physics from him; he was 15 years my senior so I had no shame to surrender my ego to him. And hence perhaps no one else in our Department benefited as much as I did from his keen insights.
My Ph D Guide SDM used to call MSS The Lower Court and himself The Higher Court. In the Farewell Function of MSS I referred to this and said I had the unique privelege of attending both the Courts.
He never cared for a Ph D or promotions. Whenever I happened to meet him alone in the Canteen I would ask him: "Please tell me something". And he would happily talk about his latest intuition into the Basics of Physics.....as Feynman said in an altogether different context: "You have to ask".
Fed up with demands from his wife (as he told me) to earn money so that they can take care of their three daughters' responsibilities, he took up IIT JEE Coaching in his Qrs.
And Liquid Money flowed in such a Deluge that he stopped visiting the Bank for years to draw his salary; and my friends in the Bank used to tell me to ask MSS to withdraw some cash once in a while so that his Savings Account doesn't go dormant.
He used to ridicule the Bengali kiptey-money-mindset saying things like:
"You can't make money by saving....you have to EARN it"
"You look for Service...We look for Servants"
*************************************************************************
And then an out-and-out Bengali kid christened Amartya (Immortal) by Tagore himself at Santiniketan goes on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics of all things!
Trust Bengalis to pull stunners out of their hats every once in a while.
But don't expect Bengal to change its Economic Philosophy just because one of their kids won a Nobel....Bengal has its own illogical logic of Progress...Their longest-serving Chief Minister of any State in India, Jyoti Basu, who was inspired by Harold Laski and Rajni Palme Datt had to yield to his Party Discipline and permit what he called their Himalayan Blunder of not accepting the Prime Ministership which was for asking at one time.
*************************************************************************
Reverting to the Nobel Prize for Economics, it was not established by Alfred Nobel and so can't be derided as Alfred Nobel's An-Other Mistake by Feynman fans. Alfred Nobel can't be blamed for terming it: Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
"Economic Sciences"; eh?
*******************************************************************************
".....In his speech at the 1974 Nobel Banquet Friedrich Hayek stated that if he had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics he would "have decidedly advised against it"[23][26] primarily because "the Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess... This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally."[26]............http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences
**************************************************************************
Suppose some Russian discovers a new type of Radiation in his Physics Lab and announces it. Within days a hundred people at a hundred labs all over the world confirm it.
And then it takes 20 long years for him to get a Nobel in Physics.
Not so in Economics: one (or two) may announce their latest technique of predicting the ups and downs of the Stock Market. He (They) may get their Economic Sciences Nobel the very next year; and everyone who follows their technique may go broke the next but one year...and the Nobel is not likely to be retracted or surrendered.....a hypothetical situation...
**************************************************************************
Coming down to home truths, I always thought, as a salaried man, that the Ideal Economy would be one in which my salary goes up, up and up and the prices of everything go down, down and down.
But I am told there is some fallacy there...if salaries go up by a factor of 2, prices would go up by a factor of 3.
And when the Economy of our country was apparently going through a short phase of Stagflation if not Deflation (whatever they mean), Sensex tanking by a factor of 4, every Economist was worried; but I was not..the food prices were racing upwards...and food is all that matters to me; forget Gold; and Petrol whose Administered (Cooked-Up?) prices also raced upwards...
The whole thing is a mystery...
The only thing I can bet on is that:
(1) You can't win
(2) You can't break even
(3) You can't quit
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/06/thermodynamics-marital-bliss.html
***************************************************************************
My mother (88), who never had much money under her control (like myself), once said that the greatest invention of Mankind is: "Compound Interest".
And I always had trouble with its ugly formula in my Arithmetics (in school we had no logarithm tables, forget calculators).
The ugliness came from the way Interests are compounded: Yearly or Half-Yearly or Quarterly etc..
If only one can compound the Interest every moment, the formula would be the simplest of all Algebraic ones: what they call Exponential.
I am told that Bankers are now getting down to it and the Savings Bank Interests are now calculated on an every day basis, thanks to the Digital Computer (?).
****************************************************************************
All my gloom about my total inadequacy in Economics was dispelled last year when there was this huge Housing Bubble leading to the World-Wide Recession on the back of the failing of almost all US Investment Banks.
Apparently they trusted too much the wizardry of their geeks, most of whom were ex-Theoretical Physicists.
My blissful moment was when I read the wail of some of the Greatest Bankers in the World that they can no longer read their Bottom Lines (what about their Top Lines?) and had absolutely no idea where their Money vanished.
And they laid their blame squarely on their Theoretical Physics Employees.
As a Failed Experimental Physicist, I qualify eminently as a Theoretical Physicist and my Joy knew no bounds on reading this News Item.
Investment Bankers and Hedgehog Funders!!!
Economic Sciences, Eh?
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/10/arts-crafts.html
==========================================================
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Understanding Understanding
=======================================================
Q: What is meant by Understanding?
A: I haven't Understood.
****************************************************************************
That about sums it up.
We had this Senior Professor at IIT KGP living for a while in our young Faculty Hostel till his family joined him (happily for us). He had this most irritating mannerism: while holding forth on even such a trivial thing as the 3-Language Formula (his pet baby) he would peer at everyone after every sentence and ask ponderously: "Do you understand?".
Lucky he was an Esteemed Senior 15 years older to us; if he were our age and a friend, I would have given him a verbal slap every time he uttered those three Golden Words and diluted them infinitely (like in Kohlrausch Method).
When one is deeply troubled for months trying to make out a thing and fails and approaches another who he feels can help, it is the Golden Moment for the teacher and the taught (whatever their relative ages are). The teacher leaves everything he is doing at the moment and passes on his Understanding to his pupil as best as he can, mostly by examples one after the other.
If it clicks it is a Million-Dollar Moment for both.
**************************************************************************
There are dozens of these Golden Moments in the Upanishads.
The best is in the Taittiriya Upanishad when Bhrigu is troubled and approaches his father Varuna to address the question that was troubling him for long.
Varuna shows the way and asks his son to spend more time struggling to Understand it by himself. Thereafter, every time Bhrigu comes up with an answer, Varuna asks him to struggle some more. This repeats four times. And finally Bhrigu Understands it all by himself and troubles his father no more.
Varuna was just helping his son dispel his Misunderstandings his own way:
The Best way to Teach (if you have the time and the inclination).
In the Chandogyopanishad, the sage Uddalaka sends his son Svetaketu in his 12th year to a Boarding School (Rugby?) for 12 years. At the end of which Svetaketu returns home thinking that he has learned all that is to be learned. Seeing his son's smugness, Uddalaka takes his Viva by asking him just a simple but fundamental question that baffles his son who says his teachers at Rugby didn't teach this thing; they would definitely have taught it if they knew the Question and its Answer!
Svetaketu then begs his father to let him know the answer: Golden Moment.
Svetakatu needs Nine different examples from his father: at the end of each of which Svetaketu begs his father: "Please teach me some more". Finally at the end of the Ninth, Svetaketu falls eloquently silent (the silence of fulfillment).
And there is this famous Instruction by Yagnyavalkya to his wife Maitreyi who was not interested in goods and goodies like his other wife Katyayeni; but asks her husband going forth as a mendicant to instruct her the gist of what he has learned in his life.
The detailed reply of the immensely delighted Yagnyavalkya forms the most sublime poetry of the bulky Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (with otherwise juicy stuff like the Song of Solomon in the Holy Bible).
*****************************************************************************
AND our Senior Professor tries to spread his querulous Message by asking: "Do you Understand?" after every silly sentence!!!
*****************************************************************************
It is said that students eager to learn come in 3 grades (to set their minds afire):
1. Like Coal: These need example after example
2. Like Dried Grass: These need one example
3. Like Gun Powder: These need just one word.
AND I was asked to teach 350 students in a Jumbo Lecture Class towards the end of my stay at IIT KGP.
But this Mass-Instruction does have its value: In those few to whom Feynman refers Gibbon, it just raises the right question. Framing the right question is so tough; and one good question makes the teacher struggle for decades to get the right answer.
I just asked that Senior Professor why during the New Moon when the Sun and the Moon are on the same side of the Earth there are tides on both sides of the Earth.
He left me in peace for the rest of our stay at KGP. The right question can be a silencer for tormentors.
*************************************************************************
Nowadays I find in Hyderabad a new breed of schools for 8-year-olds: "Concept Schools".
Can anyone explain to me in simple words how a "Concept" is communicated....?
This of course begs the question: "What is a Concept?"
Please don't tell me the Online-Webster Definition!
I can look it up myself: "Something which is conceived in the mind".....
Looping the Loop!
========================================================
Q: What is meant by Understanding?
A: I haven't Understood.
****************************************************************************
That about sums it up.
We had this Senior Professor at IIT KGP living for a while in our young Faculty Hostel till his family joined him (happily for us). He had this most irritating mannerism: while holding forth on even such a trivial thing as the 3-Language Formula (his pet baby) he would peer at everyone after every sentence and ask ponderously: "Do you understand?".
Lucky he was an Esteemed Senior 15 years older to us; if he were our age and a friend, I would have given him a verbal slap every time he uttered those three Golden Words and diluted them infinitely (like in Kohlrausch Method).
When one is deeply troubled for months trying to make out a thing and fails and approaches another who he feels can help, it is the Golden Moment for the teacher and the taught (whatever their relative ages are). The teacher leaves everything he is doing at the moment and passes on his Understanding to his pupil as best as he can, mostly by examples one after the other.
If it clicks it is a Million-Dollar Moment for both.
**************************************************************************
There are dozens of these Golden Moments in the Upanishads.
The best is in the Taittiriya Upanishad when Bhrigu is troubled and approaches his father Varuna to address the question that was troubling him for long.
Varuna shows the way and asks his son to spend more time struggling to Understand it by himself. Thereafter, every time Bhrigu comes up with an answer, Varuna asks him to struggle some more. This repeats four times. And finally Bhrigu Understands it all by himself and troubles his father no more.
Varuna was just helping his son dispel his Misunderstandings his own way:
The Best way to Teach (if you have the time and the inclination).
In the Chandogyopanishad, the sage Uddalaka sends his son Svetaketu in his 12th year to a Boarding School (Rugby?) for 12 years. At the end of which Svetaketu returns home thinking that he has learned all that is to be learned. Seeing his son's smugness, Uddalaka takes his Viva by asking him just a simple but fundamental question that baffles his son who says his teachers at Rugby didn't teach this thing; they would definitely have taught it if they knew the Question and its Answer!
Svetaketu then begs his father to let him know the answer: Golden Moment.
Svetakatu needs Nine different examples from his father: at the end of each of which Svetaketu begs his father: "Please teach me some more". Finally at the end of the Ninth, Svetaketu falls eloquently silent (the silence of fulfillment).
And there is this famous Instruction by Yagnyavalkya to his wife Maitreyi who was not interested in goods and goodies like his other wife Katyayeni; but asks her husband going forth as a mendicant to instruct her the gist of what he has learned in his life.
The detailed reply of the immensely delighted Yagnyavalkya forms the most sublime poetry of the bulky Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (with otherwise juicy stuff like the Song of Solomon in the Holy Bible).
*****************************************************************************
AND our Senior Professor tries to spread his querulous Message by asking: "Do you Understand?" after every silly sentence!!!
*****************************************************************************
It is said that students eager to learn come in 3 grades (to set their minds afire):
1. Like Coal: These need example after example
2. Like Dried Grass: These need one example
3. Like Gun Powder: These need just one word.
AND I was asked to teach 350 students in a Jumbo Lecture Class towards the end of my stay at IIT KGP.
But this Mass-Instruction does have its value: In those few to whom Feynman refers Gibbon, it just raises the right question. Framing the right question is so tough; and one good question makes the teacher struggle for decades to get the right answer.
I just asked that Senior Professor why during the New Moon when the Sun and the Moon are on the same side of the Earth there are tides on both sides of the Earth.
He left me in peace for the rest of our stay at KGP. The right question can be a silencer for tormentors.
*************************************************************************
Nowadays I find in Hyderabad a new breed of schools for 8-year-olds: "Concept Schools".
Can anyone explain to me in simple words how a "Concept" is communicated....?
This of course begs the question: "What is a Concept?"
Please don't tell me the Online-Webster Definition!
I can look it up myself: "Something which is conceived in the mind".....
Looping the Loop!
========================================================
Friday, October 29, 2010
Roll of the Road
=========================================================
What follows is an unofficial story:
************************************************************************
Being the first IIT and located at an off-beat place called the Hijli Jail away from city civilization, IIT KGP had the distinction of a state-highway running right through its Campus. Perhaps, this highway and the parallel railway track were necessary for building the Giant when the Nation was in its Infancy:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/09/sefasa.html
In the beginning I suppose the highway was arterial and much loved and adored by everyone there: it is the only and cheap connection to the world outside, like the KGP Railway Station (Longest Platform in the World), Gole Bazaar (you had to go there for your engagement ring), South Institute (for a decent hairdo) and the BNR (Railway) Hospital (HNB got his heart-attack treated there in 1967).
Pushbikes were the only mode of independent transport till even 1980 (most Professors and HoDs of the older generation used them; my own Ph D Guide SDM reveled in riding his; but he was from a rural background in East Bengal and learned it in his childhood; but city-slicks like HNB never learned to bike and had to depend on rickshaw-pullers or their own legs).
The Campus grew on either side of the highway and in due time, tea-stalls (vending nicotine and more profitable sticks on the side), eateries, rickshaw stands, itinerant barber shops, cycle repair shops and such grew up around the two bus-stops on the Campus Highway. and there was this Petrol Pump (the Original Harry's):
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/04/thackers-and-harrys.html
And then Tikka shifted there; with Kabuliwalas standing by:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/10/tipheraray.html
But growth has its own problems.
Bachelors got married and begot kids as byproducts. And they grew up and wanted schools. The Central School came up right beside the Highway. And it became very popular and spread its wings, displacing the Old Telephone Exchange (there were few telephones, but a Gigantic Exchange; microminiaturization was 4 decades away).
That meant children crossing the highway now bustling with speeding overcrowded buses with revelers and travelers climbing atop their roofs*, trucks and double-bullock-carts (my son's push-bike fell underneath one of them; he being the Ultimate Survivor like his father abandoned his bike and jumped into the ditch beside while he was in Class VII; his bike got as skewed as Ashtavakra, the Rishi with eight bends in his body).
*http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/04/top-of-world.html
And perhaps for reasons of security and proximity to the Main Building all the Ladies' Hostels came up beside the Highway. And this was invitation to the KGP-City Awaras and Ramaiya Vastavaiyas to shift their revelries into the heart of the IIT Campus in their favorite Hondas (bikes and then cars) trying to tease Hi-Tech Eves.
So the highway which once was a much-loved artery grew malignancies all along it. And by then many had their own vehicles and didn't depend on the Highway Buses as desperately as they did earlier.
There was then a terrific outcry to close the highway for buses, trucks and outside private vehicles. And the DM was requested to lay a by-pass road skirting the sprawling Campus.
But thereby hangs the tale of any Beaten Track: it refuses to be shut up; whether it is the Highway of the Roads & Buildings Department or the Minds & Customs Department.
And the highway was perhaps the contentious symbol of Competing Power: Who Owns It?
Amusing incidents were galore when a kid is killed by a merciless Truck, a Bump is raised overnight by IIT, only to be flattened the very next day by the State Authorities (their permission is required to raise a regulation bump on any highway however menacing; but not taken):
This reminds me of the tale of the new daughter-in-law who refuses to give alms to the itinerant beggar standing in front of their house and chases him away. The mother-in-law is scandalized by this Usurpation of Power and asks the beggar to return. And when he does return she shouts: "Who is she to order you to go away? I alone have that Power: Get lost now prompto!"
Ultimately, after 4 long and turbulent highway-decades, a compromise formula was perhaps reached between the State of West Bengal and IIT KGP to share the expenses of building and maintaining a ring-road around the Campus and closing the age-old Highway to Public.
Stickers (washable in the first monsoon shower) were duly issued to Genuine Campus Residents to be stuck on their 2- and 4-wheelers enabling the IIT Security to screen out the Outsider Vehicles and deny them the age-old access they enjoyed on the old highway. Obviously tempers flared up. And the self-same stickers were a give-away when the vehicles proudly bearing them betrayed their origin when they traveled outside the alienated Campus.
Everyone felt one can take a horse to water but can one make it drink? In Physics it is called: Inertia.
However, within a year we found that the New Ring Road became very popular, with new Hotels and Motels and Eateries and Barber Shops and Cycle and Scooter Repair Shops coming up in a big way ringing it all along. Entrepreneurship & Private Enterprise. And the Original Harry's Petrol Pump in the heart of the Campus got shifted and was doing roaring business in its new avatar by the new Ring Road: In Physics it is called Momentum.
The greatest and oldest surviving city called Benaras (Varanasi) lives on the bank of the holiest of Rivers: Ganges (Ganga). The city owes its picturesque existence to a majestic Bend in the Course of this Holy River. I was told a charming story: Ganga the eventual consort of Shiv (residing in Kashi, the Benaras) couldn't resist the temptation of washing his Holy Feet, like my mother and father, and so took that Bend).
The nightmare of every ancient resident of Varanasi (and even loving me too) is what would happen to this city if by a Quirk of Nature or Greed of Mankind, Mother Ganges decides to change her course and abandons this beautiful city:
Unthinkable!!!
============================================================
What follows is an unofficial story:
************************************************************************
Being the first IIT and located at an off-beat place called the Hijli Jail away from city civilization, IIT KGP had the distinction of a state-highway running right through its Campus. Perhaps, this highway and the parallel railway track were necessary for building the Giant when the Nation was in its Infancy:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/09/sefasa.html
In the beginning I suppose the highway was arterial and much loved and adored by everyone there: it is the only and cheap connection to the world outside, like the KGP Railway Station (Longest Platform in the World), Gole Bazaar (you had to go there for your engagement ring), South Institute (for a decent hairdo) and the BNR (Railway) Hospital (HNB got his heart-attack treated there in 1967).
Pushbikes were the only mode of independent transport till even 1980 (most Professors and HoDs of the older generation used them; my own Ph D Guide SDM reveled in riding his; but he was from a rural background in East Bengal and learned it in his childhood; but city-slicks like HNB never learned to bike and had to depend on rickshaw-pullers or their own legs).
The Campus grew on either side of the highway and in due time, tea-stalls (vending nicotine and more profitable sticks on the side), eateries, rickshaw stands, itinerant barber shops, cycle repair shops and such grew up around the two bus-stops on the Campus Highway. and there was this Petrol Pump (the Original Harry's):
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/04/thackers-and-harrys.html
And then Tikka shifted there; with Kabuliwalas standing by:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/10/tipheraray.html
But growth has its own problems.
Bachelors got married and begot kids as byproducts. And they grew up and wanted schools. The Central School came up right beside the Highway. And it became very popular and spread its wings, displacing the Old Telephone Exchange (there were few telephones, but a Gigantic Exchange; microminiaturization was 4 decades away).
That meant children crossing the highway now bustling with speeding overcrowded buses with revelers and travelers climbing atop their roofs*, trucks and double-bullock-carts (my son's push-bike fell underneath one of them; he being the Ultimate Survivor like his father abandoned his bike and jumped into the ditch beside while he was in Class VII; his bike got as skewed as Ashtavakra, the Rishi with eight bends in his body).
*http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/04/top-of-world.html
And perhaps for reasons of security and proximity to the Main Building all the Ladies' Hostels came up beside the Highway. And this was invitation to the KGP-City Awaras and Ramaiya Vastavaiyas to shift their revelries into the heart of the IIT Campus in their favorite Hondas (bikes and then cars) trying to tease Hi-Tech Eves.
So the highway which once was a much-loved artery grew malignancies all along it. And by then many had their own vehicles and didn't depend on the Highway Buses as desperately as they did earlier.
There was then a terrific outcry to close the highway for buses, trucks and outside private vehicles. And the DM was requested to lay a by-pass road skirting the sprawling Campus.
But thereby hangs the tale of any Beaten Track: it refuses to be shut up; whether it is the Highway of the Roads & Buildings Department or the Minds & Customs Department.
And the highway was perhaps the contentious symbol of Competing Power: Who Owns It?
Amusing incidents were galore when a kid is killed by a merciless Truck, a Bump is raised overnight by IIT, only to be flattened the very next day by the State Authorities (their permission is required to raise a regulation bump on any highway however menacing; but not taken):
This reminds me of the tale of the new daughter-in-law who refuses to give alms to the itinerant beggar standing in front of their house and chases him away. The mother-in-law is scandalized by this Usurpation of Power and asks the beggar to return. And when he does return she shouts: "Who is she to order you to go away? I alone have that Power: Get lost now prompto!"
Ultimately, after 4 long and turbulent highway-decades, a compromise formula was perhaps reached between the State of West Bengal and IIT KGP to share the expenses of building and maintaining a ring-road around the Campus and closing the age-old Highway to Public.
Stickers (washable in the first monsoon shower) were duly issued to Genuine Campus Residents to be stuck on their 2- and 4-wheelers enabling the IIT Security to screen out the Outsider Vehicles and deny them the age-old access they enjoyed on the old highway. Obviously tempers flared up. And the self-same stickers were a give-away when the vehicles proudly bearing them betrayed their origin when they traveled outside the alienated Campus.
Everyone felt one can take a horse to water but can one make it drink? In Physics it is called: Inertia.
However, within a year we found that the New Ring Road became very popular, with new Hotels and Motels and Eateries and Barber Shops and Cycle and Scooter Repair Shops coming up in a big way ringing it all along. Entrepreneurship & Private Enterprise. And the Original Harry's Petrol Pump in the heart of the Campus got shifted and was doing roaring business in its new avatar by the new Ring Road: In Physics it is called Momentum.
The greatest and oldest surviving city called Benaras (Varanasi) lives on the bank of the holiest of Rivers: Ganges (Ganga). The city owes its picturesque existence to a majestic Bend in the Course of this Holy River. I was told a charming story: Ganga the eventual consort of Shiv (residing in Kashi, the Benaras) couldn't resist the temptation of washing his Holy Feet, like my mother and father, and so took that Bend).
The nightmare of every ancient resident of Varanasi (and even loving me too) is what would happen to this city if by a Quirk of Nature or Greed of Mankind, Mother Ganges decides to change her course and abandons this beautiful city:
Unthinkable!!!
============================================================
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Learning Curve
=====================================================
Online Webster:
blog: "a web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer".
************************************************************************
Just now I happened to ask myself what were the phases in my long life where there was Learning, whatever that means.
Like for everyone School Life takes the cake....everything was new....and it is the start of self-discovery: What I like and what I dislike, what I was good at and where I felt bad.
And since our School Life was casual and stress-free, I could indulge my likes and dislikes.
I learned that I liked English in all its aspects...prose, poetry, grammar, usage: the stuff needed for reading, writing and communicating.
I also learned that I was no good at all in Arithmetic, but Algebra was a relief and that starting fuse: "Let x be the the unknown wanted thing" cracked walls that seemed impenetrable".
Unfortunately the six years of my College and University student life were full of unrelieved Agony. It need not have been so, yet it was.
To put it bluntly, our Physics teachers knew no Physics. They just committed their horrendous text-books to memory, with their left-hand, right-hand, cork screw and swimming-man's Rules, vomited them and fled from their students. Exams too were based on Essay Questions (!) in Physics, with not a single problem solved either in the class or outside.
The little bit of Ecstasy was again in the two years of English that were compulsory: we had excellent teachers and wonderful books (17 in all).
And in the Physics Labs: Each of us dozen students were on our own (no partners) and the labs were very good. I didn't fancy myself as an Experimental Hand, but Lab had no fear for me then on: to this day!
The two years of Experimental Research in Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance Spectroscopy at my University were Hell. Everyone was soldering, pushing samples, taking readings, reporting them; soldering, pushing samples, taking readings.... and getting their degrees in 7 years of Unrelieved Ignorance followed by ganging up and browbeating anyone who dared talk of Dirac Equation as an upstart.
But no one could explain to me the first para of the Only Book on the subject by T P Das & E L Hahn: Solid State Physics Supplement 1: It started with writing down and taking for granted the Matrix Elements of the Electric Quadrupole Moment Spherical Tensor Operator between Angular Momentum Eigenstates; and Wigner-Eckart Theorem; Jobberwocky to one and all (we will return to this later).
At the very first opportunity I ran away like a Bat out of Hell (I started the Exodus); and unbeknown to me landed in what for me was Heaven (IIT KGP) as an Associate Lecturer.
My bewilderment knew no bounds when I discovered in my very first class that I got to learn Physics on my own if I had to survive there with some sort of honor. The threat of impending humiliation at the hands of students ten times more talented was enough to drive me to learn: it was Agony followed by daily doses of small Ecstasy that I was learning just enough to keep my classes pleased.
Back to School Life again!
There was intense pressure on me to join one or the other Experimental Groups, solder, push samples, take readings and report results; solder, push samples...
I congratulate myself on my stubborn refusal to do so.
And then the 5 years of Theory under SDM started as Agony Supreme!
It was as if a pygmy was asked to ride a high horse on which he was supposed to mount by himself; And SDM was no Born Teacher to Idiots. He never suffered fools gladly.
Again I congratulate myself that I stuck stubbornly to him. My earlier 5 years of trying to learn Elementary Physics by myself to survive in the class room helped a lot.
Within a year SDM found me ok.
Getting a Ph D Degree was bonus: SDM deleted from my soul the fear of Theory once for all...Exorcised what to me (and my Teachers at my University) was the Ultimate Evil Spirit.
I welcomed opportunities to teach new subjects (at the cost of Publications).
The very forbidding subject of QM I learned all by myself my own way and kept my students just happy enough.
The greatest Agony and Ecstasy was when I was asked by my students to learn and teach GR (Einstein's Tough Baby).
I didn't shrink. The year I spent with Weinberg's Gravitation & Cosmology was the best in my Learning Curve.
And then a colleague who was teaching Spectroscopy had family problems and went from pillar to post for two successive semesters requesting everyone to teach his course as a standby. Everyone declined. I took it up more out of courtesy.
Then I found that he was teaching from a wonderful book.
Those 2 semesters were again a great learning experience for me: Using Dirac Equation for bread'n' butter Physics.
It was then that I learned what rended my heart 30 years earlier: "Matrix Elements of Electric Quadrupole Moment Spherical Tensor Operator between Angular Momentum Eigenstates; and their Applications " ...Better late than never!
My joy knew no bounds.
In 1965 when I joined IIT KGP there was the latest IBM 1620 Digital Computer that filled a whole floor but couldn't calculate what my pocket calculator does now (I had to learn Fortran Programming and Punching Cards instead of punching buttons).
We were young and all of us learned it as a lark, but left it since it was not easy to get Time on the Computer (you leave your Requisition in the Box and you will get a Call two years later; if you are not an Insider).
A full twenty years later, I was extraordinarily lucky to get in touch with the Father of Educational Physics at MIT who developed the first good Relativity Problem-Solving Package and sent me two 5.25 Floppy Diskettes.
Once again the challenge was for the asking. We didn't have a PC in our Department. I had to go begging all over the town just to know what was there in those two queer-looking objects.
Then I learned in 30 days the Relativity I couldn't learn in 30 years.
Once again a Moment of Joy!
10 years later a PC came to my Personal Office Desk (it was thrust on me).
My son showed me how to use MS Word (he was another SDM!).
It was a major end-life crisis.
But I stuck on and in a year learned to use its Equation Editor all by myself. Once again the incentive was from students: to write up a 250-Page Lecture Notes full of Equations.
At 57 I learned to drive a Maruti Car (suffering sneers from my Son of a Fun)...a big achievement after the agony of trying to reverse, which persists. All I needed was two more eyes at the back of my head like Calvin's Mother.
After retirement at 62 I learned the hard way what Severe Clinical Depression is like: it was touch and go (mostly Go!) for two long years; but something I cherish in retrospect because I learned that it can be cured by the right combination of drugs, time, and love.
Now I am learning what it means to blog daily a few hundred words of Readable English. It is a daily crisis till the Title hits you..the rest is as easy as keyboarding (which I learned on a Remington Manual Typewriter in the couple of months I was unemployed nearly half a century ago)....This seems enough challenge to last a Lifetime (of the brain).
I keep repeating but, as Feynman said, there is no harm in Redundant Truth...no point trying to stick to a minimal set of self-consistent axioms which Kurt Godel proved leads one nowhere.
In short the symptom of Learning is Pain...everyday Ishani falls down and cries but never gives up...
If you are leading a painless life rest assured you are what looks like that Brand-New ATM; the only thing that can happen to it is break down frequently in due course and be a nuisance to everyone.
Now I know why my students change over from String Theory to Finance and Biology...to suffer the pains of continuous learning....it becomes a habit....
========================================================
Online Webster:
blog: "a web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer".
************************************************************************
Just now I happened to ask myself what were the phases in my long life where there was Learning, whatever that means.
Like for everyone School Life takes the cake....everything was new....and it is the start of self-discovery: What I like and what I dislike, what I was good at and where I felt bad.
And since our School Life was casual and stress-free, I could indulge my likes and dislikes.
I learned that I liked English in all its aspects...prose, poetry, grammar, usage: the stuff needed for reading, writing and communicating.
I also learned that I was no good at all in Arithmetic, but Algebra was a relief and that starting fuse: "Let x be the the unknown wanted thing" cracked walls that seemed impenetrable".
Unfortunately the six years of my College and University student life were full of unrelieved Agony. It need not have been so, yet it was.
To put it bluntly, our Physics teachers knew no Physics. They just committed their horrendous text-books to memory, with their left-hand, right-hand, cork screw and swimming-man's Rules, vomited them and fled from their students. Exams too were based on Essay Questions (!) in Physics, with not a single problem solved either in the class or outside.
The little bit of Ecstasy was again in the two years of English that were compulsory: we had excellent teachers and wonderful books (17 in all).
And in the Physics Labs: Each of us dozen students were on our own (no partners) and the labs were very good. I didn't fancy myself as an Experimental Hand, but Lab had no fear for me then on: to this day!
The two years of Experimental Research in Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance Spectroscopy at my University were Hell. Everyone was soldering, pushing samples, taking readings, reporting them; soldering, pushing samples, taking readings.... and getting their degrees in 7 years of Unrelieved Ignorance followed by ganging up and browbeating anyone who dared talk of Dirac Equation as an upstart.
But no one could explain to me the first para of the Only Book on the subject by T P Das & E L Hahn: Solid State Physics Supplement 1: It started with writing down and taking for granted the Matrix Elements of the Electric Quadrupole Moment Spherical Tensor Operator between Angular Momentum Eigenstates; and Wigner-Eckart Theorem; Jobberwocky to one and all (we will return to this later).
At the very first opportunity I ran away like a Bat out of Hell (I started the Exodus); and unbeknown to me landed in what for me was Heaven (IIT KGP) as an Associate Lecturer.
My bewilderment knew no bounds when I discovered in my very first class that I got to learn Physics on my own if I had to survive there with some sort of honor. The threat of impending humiliation at the hands of students ten times more talented was enough to drive me to learn: it was Agony followed by daily doses of small Ecstasy that I was learning just enough to keep my classes pleased.
Back to School Life again!
There was intense pressure on me to join one or the other Experimental Groups, solder, push samples, take readings and report results; solder, push samples...
I congratulate myself on my stubborn refusal to do so.
And then the 5 years of Theory under SDM started as Agony Supreme!
It was as if a pygmy was asked to ride a high horse on which he was supposed to mount by himself; And SDM was no Born Teacher to Idiots. He never suffered fools gladly.
Again I congratulate myself that I stuck stubbornly to him. My earlier 5 years of trying to learn Elementary Physics by myself to survive in the class room helped a lot.
Within a year SDM found me ok.
Getting a Ph D Degree was bonus: SDM deleted from my soul the fear of Theory once for all...Exorcised what to me (and my Teachers at my University) was the Ultimate Evil Spirit.
I welcomed opportunities to teach new subjects (at the cost of Publications).
The very forbidding subject of QM I learned all by myself my own way and kept my students just happy enough.
The greatest Agony and Ecstasy was when I was asked by my students to learn and teach GR (Einstein's Tough Baby).
I didn't shrink. The year I spent with Weinberg's Gravitation & Cosmology was the best in my Learning Curve.
And then a colleague who was teaching Spectroscopy had family problems and went from pillar to post for two successive semesters requesting everyone to teach his course as a standby. Everyone declined. I took it up more out of courtesy.
Then I found that he was teaching from a wonderful book.
Those 2 semesters were again a great learning experience for me: Using Dirac Equation for bread'n' butter Physics.
It was then that I learned what rended my heart 30 years earlier: "Matrix Elements of Electric Quadrupole Moment Spherical Tensor Operator between Angular Momentum Eigenstates; and their Applications " ...Better late than never!
My joy knew no bounds.
In 1965 when I joined IIT KGP there was the latest IBM 1620 Digital Computer that filled a whole floor but couldn't calculate what my pocket calculator does now (I had to learn Fortran Programming and Punching Cards instead of punching buttons).
We were young and all of us learned it as a lark, but left it since it was not easy to get Time on the Computer (you leave your Requisition in the Box and you will get a Call two years later; if you are not an Insider).
A full twenty years later, I was extraordinarily lucky to get in touch with the Father of Educational Physics at MIT who developed the first good Relativity Problem-Solving Package and sent me two 5.25 Floppy Diskettes.
Once again the challenge was for the asking. We didn't have a PC in our Department. I had to go begging all over the town just to know what was there in those two queer-looking objects.
Then I learned in 30 days the Relativity I couldn't learn in 30 years.
Once again a Moment of Joy!
10 years later a PC came to my Personal Office Desk (it was thrust on me).
My son showed me how to use MS Word (he was another SDM!).
It was a major end-life crisis.
But I stuck on and in a year learned to use its Equation Editor all by myself. Once again the incentive was from students: to write up a 250-Page Lecture Notes full of Equations.
At 57 I learned to drive a Maruti Car (suffering sneers from my Son of a Fun)...a big achievement after the agony of trying to reverse, which persists. All I needed was two more eyes at the back of my head like Calvin's Mother.
After retirement at 62 I learned the hard way what Severe Clinical Depression is like: it was touch and go (mostly Go!) for two long years; but something I cherish in retrospect because I learned that it can be cured by the right combination of drugs, time, and love.
Now I am learning what it means to blog daily a few hundred words of Readable English. It is a daily crisis till the Title hits you..the rest is as easy as keyboarding (which I learned on a Remington Manual Typewriter in the couple of months I was unemployed nearly half a century ago)....This seems enough challenge to last a Lifetime (of the brain).
I keep repeating but, as Feynman said, there is no harm in Redundant Truth...no point trying to stick to a minimal set of self-consistent axioms which Kurt Godel proved leads one nowhere.
In short the symptom of Learning is Pain...everyday Ishani falls down and cries but never gives up...
If you are leading a painless life rest assured you are what looks like that Brand-New ATM; the only thing that can happen to it is break down frequently in due course and be a nuisance to everyone.
Now I know why my students change over from String Theory to Finance and Biology...to suffer the pains of continuous learning....it becomes a habit....
========================================================
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Parliaments & Assemblies
=========================================================
Six months ago, fish were swimming into our blog.I didn't see much of live fish...except in aquaria. Dead fish I saw aplenty in the KGP fish market and fried ones on the dining table of our Faculty Hostel. Marlins, sharks, and barracudae in novels by Hemingway and Alistair MacLean.
Not so the owls that have been flying in recently.
During the six-month monsoon and post-monsoon period, my son and I used to take late-night walks, around 11 PM, on the 1 km long road to Gate Number 5. One side of the road was jungle, full of trees flush with rain-soaked leaves glistening in the diffuse light of about 40 equi-spaced street lamps.
The lamps (mercury and then sodium) were hoist on posts with overhanging metal tubes on poles about 25 feet high. Their shades cast shadows on the tubes just enough to hide an owl perched tight on each post. If you don't notice closely, the owl sitting on it would look like a metal fitting.
The road was deserted at that hour. As we walked chatting nonchalantly we could feel in our bones that our owl was staring at us unblinkingly. As we approached the lamp post we would halt as if we were taking rest. And the owl would glare at us. Then we suddenly turn our heads and stare at her. In a split second, she would fly back into the depths of trees behind.
Shy to the core.
We noticed a few things:
1. Her flight looked labored with lots of flapping of her wings, but absolutely silent. A flamboyant flapping like it on any other winged bird like a crow would rattle the wind all around. I read the other day that the wing-tips of owls are serrated, as if their edges were like the borders of lace curtains. That muffles the sound completely. For a night-hunter silence is of the essence.
2. The owl would first take off in the forward direction towards us for a couple of feet before taking a graceful right-about-turn mid-flight; just a lovely bit of aerobatics we never tired of watching.
3. No lamp post ever had more than one owl. Very unsocial birds, unlike crows, parrots, starlings and such 'birds of a feather that flock together'.
So it was amusing to learn that a group of owls is known as a Parliament of Owls.
Well, why not? Let us invent some more:
An Assembly of Pigeons
A Bar of Crows
A Bench of Woodpeckers
A Senate of Parrots
A Cabinet of Doves
A Party of Peacocks
An Opposition of Geese
An Electorate of Sparrows
A Bureaucracy of Falcons
A White House of Nighting-ales
A Kremlin of Eagles
A Pentagon of Hawks
etc etc etc....
******************************************************************
Pratik told me that her school-going daughter reads our crazy blog off and on and remarked that the Piece: Bitter Surprises is a Blogful of Gul.
Like a Mouthful of Lies?
That reminded me of the poem my son had in his school-book (parodied):
"I blew a gul into the air
It fell to earth I know not where
For so swiftly it blew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight
I breath'd a Blog into the air
it fell to earth, I know not where
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of a Blog?
Not long afterward in KGP
I found stripped the gul of GP
And the Blog from beginning to end
Ripped by the daughter of a friend"
..............H W Shortfellow
************************************************************************
An year and half ago when I just started blogging, I posted this hindsightful verse:
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Blogger's Illusion
"His next blog,
The whole world
Awaiteth
With bated breath"
******************************************************************
The whole world
Awaiteth
With bated breath"
I would only change Illusion to Delusion after all these months.
*******************************************************************
========================================================
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
The Great Indian Rat Race (GIRR)
====================================================
Ishani is now ten months old.
I can see that she has already outgrown her toy-world and is eager to participate in the real world. Well, she likes her toys...but just that they are her property and no more.
Her great moment is when her mother tucks Ishani into her left hip with a left hand vice-grip and cooks with her right hand. The smells and sounds of the Indian kitchen (whistle of the pressure cooker, whir of the mixer-grinder, cling-clang-cling-clang of the ladle stirring up the vegetable in the frying pan, the sudden subdue of the hectic noise when water is poured into the hissing pan....) simply fascinate her. She knows that this is life for real, unlike her toy-kitchen-set.
When she is leased into my lap for a couple of minutes while I am blogging, she knows that things happen when the keyboard is punched; and into my bed while I read a book, that books are great Silencers.
In short she is investigating the household.
And when I dress up, she knows that it is now the turn of the wide world outside full of cars, autos, kids, stray dogs, the hustle and bustle of city life.
She enjoys it immensely.
But then, our watchman stops us and tries in vain to befriend her, and in a great impulse of chivalry he blesses her:
"Study well and become a Collector!"
Collector is the South Indian aliter for District Magistrate (DM).
[The DM was and is (till recently) the symbol of Ultimate Power over his subjects in the District under his command for the nonce (He can round you up for Election Duties). My MD Physician-Uncle reputed for his prowess not only in diagnosis and treatment but also for his Lectures in his Medical College, and ruled over the biggest and best Hospital in our Region, wished he were a Collector; Reason: "When the Collector is ill, his PA rings me up and it is I who has to go to his Bungalow in the JEEP he sends; not the other way round"].
And then even before we cross the threshold of our Apartment Complex, our Retired Chief Engineer wags his finger at li'l Ishani and says: "You have to outshine your parents and grandparents and become the Best Engineer in the US (like my cousin's grandson)".
So poor li'l Ishani is firmly into GIRR even before she can lisp.
I can only wish that like her tell-tale gran'pa she would try hard to be herself rather than try to scale unending heights set for her by uncaring others (I know it is impossible, just trying to be inspirational for a change like AC, DC & PC).
********************************************************************************
My Ph D Guide SDM of the Freedom Movement whose aim in life was to prove to the world that Indians have no less Native Intelligence than the Westerners was keenly looking forward to the day India would become a Free Country.
And within 3 years of that Tryst With Destiny he discovered that all that happened was that the Brown Sahibs flushed the Gora (White) Sahibs away with a deluge of our age-old Brown Values.
And then he had the opportunity to sail for England in the mid-fifties. He was a poor judge of persons (he told me he thought I was an HNB spy) and worldly affairs but his insights were phenomenally sound at times. He told me that the moment he set foot on the British soil: "I could smell it in the air that this is a country that has been Free for a Thousand Years (unlike India that has been a Slave for that same period)".
Unfortunately he never set foot on the US soil, so I didn't have his reaction to it ...but I remember the quip of Churchill when Roosevelt appealed that Indians be granted Freedom: "Which Indians are you talking about; the Brown millions under our Benign British Rule multiplying by leaps and bounds or the Red millions you annihilated?" (Selective vs Systematic).
********************************************************************************
Talking of GIRR, I liked the one about the wife of the Hyderabadi Beggar who complained that their neighbor is bringing 200 Rupees everyday, double of what her husband nets. HB retorts: "What can I do? Only one of my legs is lost to Polio and so I stand on the other leg the whole day at one place; while that chap lost both his legs in a Railway Accident and got a wheel-cart so he can roam and beg all over the place."
This reminds me of the very convincing plea of Das Babu, our sweet Life Insurance Agent at KGP asking my friend to take a Double-Accident-Benefit Policy:
"Jodi apnaar ekta tong bhangley ek lakha taka paaben; jodi dutoyee bhangley....taholey aaro besh bhalo....dui lakha taka paaben!"
("If you lose one leg you get 1 lakh Rupees; if both legs are gone...it is all the more better...you get 2 lakh Rupees!).
Long Live GIRR!!!
=========================================================
Ishani is now ten months old.
I can see that she has already outgrown her toy-world and is eager to participate in the real world. Well, she likes her toys...but just that they are her property and no more.
Her great moment is when her mother tucks Ishani into her left hip with a left hand vice-grip and cooks with her right hand. The smells and sounds of the Indian kitchen (whistle of the pressure cooker, whir of the mixer-grinder, cling-clang-cling-clang of the ladle stirring up the vegetable in the frying pan, the sudden subdue of the hectic noise when water is poured into the hissing pan....) simply fascinate her. She knows that this is life for real, unlike her toy-kitchen-set.
When she is leased into my lap for a couple of minutes while I am blogging, she knows that things happen when the keyboard is punched; and into my bed while I read a book, that books are great Silencers.
In short she is investigating the household.
And when I dress up, she knows that it is now the turn of the wide world outside full of cars, autos, kids, stray dogs, the hustle and bustle of city life.
She enjoys it immensely.
But then, our watchman stops us and tries in vain to befriend her, and in a great impulse of chivalry he blesses her:
"Study well and become a Collector!"
Collector is the South Indian aliter for District Magistrate (DM).
[The DM was and is (till recently) the symbol of Ultimate Power over his subjects in the District under his command for the nonce (He can round you up for Election Duties). My MD Physician-Uncle reputed for his prowess not only in diagnosis and treatment but also for his Lectures in his Medical College, and ruled over the biggest and best Hospital in our Region, wished he were a Collector; Reason: "When the Collector is ill, his PA rings me up and it is I who has to go to his Bungalow in the JEEP he sends; not the other way round"].
And then even before we cross the threshold of our Apartment Complex, our Retired Chief Engineer wags his finger at li'l Ishani and says: "You have to outshine your parents and grandparents and become the Best Engineer in the US (like my cousin's grandson)".
So poor li'l Ishani is firmly into GIRR even before she can lisp.
I can only wish that like her tell-tale gran'pa she would try hard to be herself rather than try to scale unending heights set for her by uncaring others (I know it is impossible, just trying to be inspirational for a change like AC, DC & PC).
********************************************************************************
My Ph D Guide SDM of the Freedom Movement whose aim in life was to prove to the world that Indians have no less Native Intelligence than the Westerners was keenly looking forward to the day India would become a Free Country.
And within 3 years of that Tryst With Destiny he discovered that all that happened was that the Brown Sahibs flushed the Gora (White) Sahibs away with a deluge of our age-old Brown Values.
And then he had the opportunity to sail for England in the mid-fifties. He was a poor judge of persons (he told me he thought I was an HNB spy) and worldly affairs but his insights were phenomenally sound at times. He told me that the moment he set foot on the British soil: "I could smell it in the air that this is a country that has been Free for a Thousand Years (unlike India that has been a Slave for that same period)".
Unfortunately he never set foot on the US soil, so I didn't have his reaction to it ...but I remember the quip of Churchill when Roosevelt appealed that Indians be granted Freedom: "Which Indians are you talking about; the Brown millions under our Benign British Rule multiplying by leaps and bounds or the Red millions you annihilated?" (Selective vs Systematic).
********************************************************************************
Talking of GIRR, I liked the one about the wife of the Hyderabadi Beggar who complained that their neighbor is bringing 200 Rupees everyday, double of what her husband nets. HB retorts: "What can I do? Only one of my legs is lost to Polio and so I stand on the other leg the whole day at one place; while that chap lost both his legs in a Railway Accident and got a wheel-cart so he can roam and beg all over the place."
This reminds me of the very convincing plea of Das Babu, our sweet Life Insurance Agent at KGP asking my friend to take a Double-Accident-Benefit Policy:
"Jodi apnaar ekta tong bhangley ek lakha taka paaben; jodi dutoyee bhangley....taholey aaro besh bhalo....dui lakha taka paaben!"
("If you lose one leg you get 1 lakh Rupees; if both legs are gone...it is all the more better...you get 2 lakh Rupees!).
Long Live GIRR!!!
=========================================================
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Thurber's Owl
==========================================================
Here is the connection: Enjoy!
*******************************************************************
http://www.k-state.edu/english/baker/english320/Thurber-The_Owl_Who_Was_God.htm
******************************************************************************
After Passion & Humor, I have now been accused of harboring Wisdom; that too by Pratik, who is in the same Cheating Profession as I was. And he is a night-owl like most of us.
Here is the connection: Enjoy!
*******************************************************************
http://www.k-state.edu/english/baker/english320/Thurber-The_Owl_Who_Was_God.htm
******************************************************************************
- James Thurber
- "The Owl Who Was God"
Once upon a starless midnight there was an owl who sat on the branch of an oak tree. Two ground moles tried to slip quietly by, unnoticed. "You!" said the owl. "Who?" they quavered, in fear and astonishment, for they could not believe it was possible for anyone to see them in that thick darkness. "You two!" said the owl. The moles hurried away and told the other creatures of the field and forest that the owl was the greatest and wisest of all animals because he could see in the dark and because he could answer any question. "I’ll see about that, "said a secretary bird, and he called on the owl one night when it was again very dark. "How many claws am I holding up?" said the secretary bird. "Two," said the owl, and that was right. "Can you give me another expression for ‘that is to say’ or ‘namely’?" asked the secretary bird. "To wit," said the owl. "Why does the lover call on his love?" "To woo," said the owl.
The secretary bird hastened back to the other creatures and reported that the owl indeed was the greatest and wisest animal in the world because he could see in the dark and because he could answer any question. "Can he see in the daytime, too?" asked a red fox? "Yes," answered a dormouse and a French poodle. "Can he see in the daytime, too?" All the other creatures laughed loudly at this silly question, and they set upon the red fox and his friends and drove them out of the region. They sent a messenger to the owl and asked him to be their leader.
When the owl appeared among the animals it was high noon and the sun was shining brightly. He walked very slowly, which gave him an appearance of great dignity, and he peered about him with large, staring eyes, which gave him an air of tremendous importance. "He’s God!" screamed a Plymouth rock hen. And the others took up the cry "He’s God!" So they followed him wherever he went and when he bumped into things they began to bump into things, too. Finally he came to a concrete highway and he started up the middle of it and all the other creatures followed him. Presently a hawk, who was acting as outrider, observed a truck coming toward them at fifty miles an hour, and he reported to the secretary bird and the secretary bird reported to the owl. "There’s danger ahead," said the secretary bird. "To wit?" said the owl. The secretary bird told him. "Aren’t you afraid?" he asked. "Who?" said the owl calmly, for he could not see the truck. "He’s God!" cried all the creatures again, and they were still crying "He’s God" when the truck hit them and ran them down. Some of the animals were merely injured, but most of them, including the owl, were killed.
Moral: You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
Arts & Crafts
==========================================================
About 9 months ago, I was talking on phone to Indra's father at Calcutta about cabbages, queens and cauliflowers (http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/04/queen-and-cauliflower.html).
He suddenly told me: "You will be surprised to know that Indra left Sciences and is pursuing an Arts subject at MIT; but I won't tell you more about it...let Indra himself speak out".
I was dumbstruck. Indra's family is dedicated to Physics. His father was one of the brightest students of Physics from Presidency College in its Golden Era. His sister did her Ph D from a well-known US Univ in Physics.
And Indra himself said in so many words to me repeatedly that he was wedded to String Theory for Life (His or Strings', or whichever is earlier, as the Insurance Companies put it tactlessly).
And from Princeton and Berkeley (Some Great Shakes!)
And now THIS!!!
That Indra is as crazy as they come from Calcutta followed by IIT KGP, I had no doubt. Indeed it was a close thing between him and me. But as far as I knew (and I knew well enough) he showed no aptitude for any Arts except possibly the gentle art of demurring when cornered at Harry's during lab hours.
Music, Dance, Pottery, Painting?
A veritable Stockbroker turned Painter like Paul Gaugin, ditching his wedded Sthree and a Cherubic Son in the lurch one stormy midnight, rare in California?
Well, I was needlessly worried...he just jumped into Financial Economics.
But, as Feynman put it like: "Is it Art?"
******************************************************************************
When we were in School at our seaside Village, every week we had an Arts Class and a Crafts Class as soon as we graduated to Class VIII.
We were allowed to buy our first Drawing Book, folding the other way, broadside-on, and having thick papers. And we were allowed to buy Tip-Top Pencils with a grade 2B (a dream come true!); earlier we could only buy 6H which lasted for years but made no visible impression on paper.
Only a couple of students could draw the parrot free-hand. The rest used Tracing Paper Technology (at IIT KGP they had a higher-tech called Topo, using glass sheets with a bulb underneath).
In Class X we were allowed crayons and pastels of various colors, but colors don't make a parrot out of an owl.
And finally in School Leaving Class XI we got water-colors; more water than color.
The only good thing about the Arts Class was that it was sex-indifferent...both boys and ladies had to draw the same squinting parrot.
Not so in the Crafts Class: Ladies had their embroidery kit. Boys were not allowed the option of change-over. They had a circular wooden frame into which another circular frame was inserted with the cloth screwed up in between. And just needle-work...any child can do it with eyes closed.
But we boys were given a roll of brown raw cotton of the crudest grade, seeds and all. And a hand-held device about 6 inches long with a hook at the top and a wheel at the bottom (moment of inertia). We had to insert the bolly thing of cotton into the hook's crooked eye, hold it with the left hand, spin the wheel with the right hand and pull...to convert cotton into yarn!
It was just impossible.
And we graduated to a genuine spinning mini-jenny and then a loom of sorts which we were not allowed to touch since they were expensive.
Fortunately we didn't have to pass in Arts & Crafts although we were subjected to an exam of sorts.
*************************************************************************
As soon as we entered College, we had to choose between Arts & Sciences:
History, Economics, Politics, Logic (!), Civics etc were Arts.
Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Gelogy etc were Sciences.
Maths fell between two stools. I am now convinced it is neither Arts nor Sciences: it is Crafts (Witchcraft).
Law was in a different category of its own: there was a Law College from which the Union President was invariably elected; sometimes a lady too (they could ARGUE!).
About Physics I have no doubt: it is a science, trying hard to become an Exact Science and failing badly after Heisenberg entered the picture with his Uncertainty Principle (so far unbeaten).
As I said earlier String theory is a pole apart; Proof: Like Autocrat said famously: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris";.... "Good String Theorists when they graduate and squint after a post-doc or two go to Digital Finance".
I can't say decisively about Chemistry. It started well, trying to convert base metals into gold: Alchemy. That was definitely Voodoo, Sorcery and Witchcraft rolled into one with all their brews and incantations and weirdo dances.
But somehow after Mendeleev brought some order into it and invented his Periodic Table (Bless his Soul!), it became an Arts subject.
Don't grumble...it can never be a science as far as I know from my experience in the Chemistry Lab.
They said that the flame test decisively indicates the metal, depending on whether you get a blue, red, violet, green, or purple flame.
All of us always got a yellow flame indicating Sodium (from salty sea water in our seaside University).
They also said we can get the others from several exotic tests like: Silver Mirror Test, Brown Ring Test, Fruity Odor Test etc.
When I took my test tube triumphantly to our Demonstrator to show that I got a Banana-smelling Ester indicating perhaps Uranium maybe, he smelled it, scowled at me and sneered: "It is the Ethyl Alcohol you poured in, you fool!".
Kipp's apparatus was good-looking (what Hour-Glass Figures, God!) but the smell of Hydrogen Sulphide it emitted still wakes me up in my nightmares.
*************************************************************************
Gauss was, it seems, scared to announce his discovery that there could be spaces in two-dimensions which are intrinsically curved.
And Gauss is fairly modern; not like Galileo or Joan of Arc.
Why? Why?? Why???
Because Maths was and is high-level Witchcraft.
=========================================================
About 9 months ago, I was talking on phone to Indra's father at Calcutta about cabbages, queens and cauliflowers (http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/04/queen-and-cauliflower.html).
He suddenly told me: "You will be surprised to know that Indra left Sciences and is pursuing an Arts subject at MIT; but I won't tell you more about it...let Indra himself speak out".
I was dumbstruck. Indra's family is dedicated to Physics. His father was one of the brightest students of Physics from Presidency College in its Golden Era. His sister did her Ph D from a well-known US Univ in Physics.
And Indra himself said in so many words to me repeatedly that he was wedded to String Theory for Life (His or Strings', or whichever is earlier, as the Insurance Companies put it tactlessly).
And from Princeton and Berkeley (Some Great Shakes!)
And now THIS!!!
That Indra is as crazy as they come from Calcutta followed by IIT KGP, I had no doubt. Indeed it was a close thing between him and me. But as far as I knew (and I knew well enough) he showed no aptitude for any Arts except possibly the gentle art of demurring when cornered at Harry's during lab hours.
Music, Dance, Pottery, Painting?
A veritable Stockbroker turned Painter like Paul Gaugin, ditching his wedded Sthree and a Cherubic Son in the lurch one stormy midnight, rare in California?
Well, I was needlessly worried...he just jumped into Financial Economics.
But, as Feynman put it like: "Is it Art?"
******************************************************************************
When we were in School at our seaside Village, every week we had an Arts Class and a Crafts Class as soon as we graduated to Class VIII.
We were allowed to buy our first Drawing Book, folding the other way, broadside-on, and having thick papers. And we were allowed to buy Tip-Top Pencils with a grade 2B (a dream come true!); earlier we could only buy 6H which lasted for years but made no visible impression on paper.
Only a couple of students could draw the parrot free-hand. The rest used Tracing Paper Technology (at IIT KGP they had a higher-tech called Topo, using glass sheets with a bulb underneath).
In Class X we were allowed crayons and pastels of various colors, but colors don't make a parrot out of an owl.
And finally in School Leaving Class XI we got water-colors; more water than color.
The only good thing about the Arts Class was that it was sex-indifferent...both boys and ladies had to draw the same squinting parrot.
Not so in the Crafts Class: Ladies had their embroidery kit. Boys were not allowed the option of change-over. They had a circular wooden frame into which another circular frame was inserted with the cloth screwed up in between. And just needle-work...any child can do it with eyes closed.
But we boys were given a roll of brown raw cotton of the crudest grade, seeds and all. And a hand-held device about 6 inches long with a hook at the top and a wheel at the bottom (moment of inertia). We had to insert the bolly thing of cotton into the hook's crooked eye, hold it with the left hand, spin the wheel with the right hand and pull...to convert cotton into yarn!
It was just impossible.
And we graduated to a genuine spinning mini-jenny and then a loom of sorts which we were not allowed to touch since they were expensive.
Fortunately we didn't have to pass in Arts & Crafts although we were subjected to an exam of sorts.
*************************************************************************
As soon as we entered College, we had to choose between Arts & Sciences:
History, Economics, Politics, Logic (!), Civics etc were Arts.
Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Gelogy etc were Sciences.
Maths fell between two stools. I am now convinced it is neither Arts nor Sciences: it is Crafts (Witchcraft).
Law was in a different category of its own: there was a Law College from which the Union President was invariably elected; sometimes a lady too (they could ARGUE!).
About Physics I have no doubt: it is a science, trying hard to become an Exact Science and failing badly after Heisenberg entered the picture with his Uncertainty Principle (so far unbeaten).
As I said earlier String theory is a pole apart; Proof: Like Autocrat said famously: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris";.... "Good String Theorists when they graduate and squint after a post-doc or two go to Digital Finance".
I can't say decisively about Chemistry. It started well, trying to convert base metals into gold: Alchemy. That was definitely Voodoo, Sorcery and Witchcraft rolled into one with all their brews and incantations and weirdo dances.
But somehow after Mendeleev brought some order into it and invented his Periodic Table (Bless his Soul!), it became an Arts subject.
Don't grumble...it can never be a science as far as I know from my experience in the Chemistry Lab.
They said that the flame test decisively indicates the metal, depending on whether you get a blue, red, violet, green, or purple flame.
All of us always got a yellow flame indicating Sodium (from salty sea water in our seaside University).
They also said we can get the others from several exotic tests like: Silver Mirror Test, Brown Ring Test, Fruity Odor Test etc.
When I took my test tube triumphantly to our Demonstrator to show that I got a Banana-smelling Ester indicating perhaps Uranium maybe, he smelled it, scowled at me and sneered: "It is the Ethyl Alcohol you poured in, you fool!".
Kipp's apparatus was good-looking (what Hour-Glass Figures, God!) but the smell of Hydrogen Sulphide it emitted still wakes me up in my nightmares.
*************************************************************************
Gauss was, it seems, scared to announce his discovery that there could be spaces in two-dimensions which are intrinsically curved.
And Gauss is fairly modern; not like Galileo or Joan of Arc.
Why? Why?? Why???
Because Maths was and is high-level Witchcraft.
QED
=========================================================
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Methodical Minds
===========================================================
In a sense a Methodical Mind (MM) is the opposite of Genius, a necessarily Chaotic Mind (CM).
I am not talking of people but phases of mind. Indeed in modern scientific world the two should and often do coexist.
Unlike in arts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin
The Chaotic Mind (CM) of Genius is like a brewing Summer Thunder Storm. I watched hundreds of these at KGP. They call them Nor'Westers and more colorfully: Kaal Baishakhi in Bengali.
At 3 PM it is broad daylight with sweltering weather, sweat pouring from all pores. At 3.10 it is dark as midnight. Huge cumulonimbus clouds swirling. And then a sudden gust of wind that could topple you and your scooter if you are careless.
And then a blinding flash of lightning dispelling all darkness..
CM is like that. And the chaos is a necessary precursor to that blinding flash of understanding.
Feynman wonderfully describes his passage through this phase just before the idea of Feynman Diagrams hit him.
In a way Feynman is different than the other geniuses of modern scientific world. He was unable to get down to the MM phase quickly enough to pass on his Message to his audience at Shelter Island and later on needed Dyson's MM to clarify and integrate everything that he invented into mainstream physics.
************************************************************************
The Extreme Chaotic Mind (ECM) is like perennial hail storm and is often confined to the asylum. The Extreme Methodical Mind (EMM) is his opposite. He is like perennial sunshine. He too ought to be confined but by a loophole in the Law is let loose.
He is All Order all the time. Nil Chaos.
EMM's motto is: "A place for everything and everything in its place".
He is somewhat like RKN's Library Builder.
Our EMM is preoccupied with funds, building, shelves, Inaugural Ceremony; everything except books which come last. When the dust has settled down EMM would order just enough number of books in various disciplines that exactly fill the book-shelves, not an inch to spare.
Once they are in, he would catalog them, arrange them discipline-wise, and Open the Library to Readers who are inconsequential in his scheme of things. An Open-Access System where anyone can reach any shelf, pick up any book he likes, bring it to the table, flip through it and push it away is anathema to EMM.
His Heaven would be a Library in which no reader is allowed to spoil his Orderliness. It would be like Salar Jung Museum with books locked up in shelves with glass doors so that people can see without touching, and appreciate their beauty.
Life with an EMM is tough at home.
He may be all love to you and permit you to bring down that COD for you to browse. But then you would suddenly hear the pipe music of the itinerant bull-artist who visits homes with his decorated bull and makes him dance a few steps; and you would rush out. By the time you return to your table in 5 minutes EMM would have kept the COD back in its place:
"A place for everything...."
EMM would then enter the kitchen and try to help his wife in her absence by cleaning up everything and rearranging all the chaotic spoons, ladles, cups and saucers, dishes and utensils according to their weight: lightest ones on the top shelf and heaviest at the bottom.
Wife would return from her gossip-session and all Hell would break lose...
He would then descend on the toy-kit of his grandkid and rearrange every toy according to its price: Softies from the US at the top (out of reach) and the tin-ones at the bottom so Ishani could cut her fingers every once in a while:
And he alone knows where Dettol and Cotton Roll are.
EMM is brimming with Lists....they fill his mind....he is never listless..
OK, let me just describe what happened to an EMM Friend of mine a half century ago:
*************************************************************************
EMM was transferred from Nellore (NLR) to Rajahmundry (RJM). He asked everyone to let him handle everything so that there would be no "too many cooks to spoil the broth".
They shifted family on the Madras-Howrah Mail, notorious those days for 2-minute halts at every place except Vizagh (VZH) where there was a change of Engines...a half-hour halt.
EMM got down from the train at RJM with his family and trunks all safe and sound except for the last Box (Number 12) which was missing.
He went to the Station Master (SM) at RJM to lodge a Complaint:
**********************************************************************
EMM: Please send a Wire to SM, VZH to safe-keep the last box of mine which couldn't be unloaded because of heavy rush.
SM: Give me the details
EMM: Train Number: 3 Up; Engine Number: MS 135672; Bogie Number: 6743; Position from Engine: 6; Seat Number: 35; Box Number:12 written in white indelible paint on top; Lock Number: PP 647; Lock Make: Godrej Navtal; Here is the Key Number: 26782
SM (Recovering from his swoon): How did you number your boxes...just curious..?
EMM: According to their priority of unloading: Box 1: Kitchenware; Box 2: My Sherlock Holmes, Thurber and Wodehouse Novels; Box 3: My Toolkit with hammers, screw drivers, nails to hang the pictures in Box 4 on the walls...Box 5...
SM: OK! OK!! OK!!!; What is there in the last Box 12 that is to be unloaded last?
EMM: Silk Sarees of my wife: 3 Banarasi, 5 Gadwal, 4 Kanjeevaram. 6 Tussore and 11 Venkatgiri..
In a sense a Methodical Mind (MM) is the opposite of Genius, a necessarily Chaotic Mind (CM).
I am not talking of people but phases of mind. Indeed in modern scientific world the two should and often do coexist.
Unlike in arts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin
The Chaotic Mind (CM) of Genius is like a brewing Summer Thunder Storm. I watched hundreds of these at KGP. They call them Nor'Westers and more colorfully: Kaal Baishakhi in Bengali.
At 3 PM it is broad daylight with sweltering weather, sweat pouring from all pores. At 3.10 it is dark as midnight. Huge cumulonimbus clouds swirling. And then a sudden gust of wind that could topple you and your scooter if you are careless.
And then a blinding flash of lightning dispelling all darkness..
CM is like that. And the chaos is a necessary precursor to that blinding flash of understanding.
Feynman wonderfully describes his passage through this phase just before the idea of Feynman Diagrams hit him.
In a way Feynman is different than the other geniuses of modern scientific world. He was unable to get down to the MM phase quickly enough to pass on his Message to his audience at Shelter Island and later on needed Dyson's MM to clarify and integrate everything that he invented into mainstream physics.
************************************************************************
The Extreme Chaotic Mind (ECM) is like perennial hail storm and is often confined to the asylum. The Extreme Methodical Mind (EMM) is his opposite. He is like perennial sunshine. He too ought to be confined but by a loophole in the Law is let loose.
He is All Order all the time. Nil Chaos.
EMM's motto is: "A place for everything and everything in its place".
He is somewhat like RKN's Library Builder.
Our EMM is preoccupied with funds, building, shelves, Inaugural Ceremony; everything except books which come last. When the dust has settled down EMM would order just enough number of books in various disciplines that exactly fill the book-shelves, not an inch to spare.
Once they are in, he would catalog them, arrange them discipline-wise, and Open the Library to Readers who are inconsequential in his scheme of things. An Open-Access System where anyone can reach any shelf, pick up any book he likes, bring it to the table, flip through it and push it away is anathema to EMM.
His Heaven would be a Library in which no reader is allowed to spoil his Orderliness. It would be like Salar Jung Museum with books locked up in shelves with glass doors so that people can see without touching, and appreciate their beauty.
Life with an EMM is tough at home.
He may be all love to you and permit you to bring down that COD for you to browse. But then you would suddenly hear the pipe music of the itinerant bull-artist who visits homes with his decorated bull and makes him dance a few steps; and you would rush out. By the time you return to your table in 5 minutes EMM would have kept the COD back in its place:
"A place for everything...."
EMM would then enter the kitchen and try to help his wife in her absence by cleaning up everything and rearranging all the chaotic spoons, ladles, cups and saucers, dishes and utensils according to their weight: lightest ones on the top shelf and heaviest at the bottom.
Wife would return from her gossip-session and all Hell would break lose...
He would then descend on the toy-kit of his grandkid and rearrange every toy according to its price: Softies from the US at the top (out of reach) and the tin-ones at the bottom so Ishani could cut her fingers every once in a while:
And he alone knows where Dettol and Cotton Roll are.
EMM is brimming with Lists....they fill his mind....he is never listless..
OK, let me just describe what happened to an EMM Friend of mine a half century ago:
*************************************************************************
EMM was transferred from Nellore (NLR) to Rajahmundry (RJM). He asked everyone to let him handle everything so that there would be no "too many cooks to spoil the broth".
They shifted family on the Madras-Howrah Mail, notorious those days for 2-minute halts at every place except Vizagh (VZH) where there was a change of Engines...a half-hour halt.
EMM got down from the train at RJM with his family and trunks all safe and sound except for the last Box (Number 12) which was missing.
He went to the Station Master (SM) at RJM to lodge a Complaint:
**********************************************************************
EMM: Please send a Wire to SM, VZH to safe-keep the last box of mine which couldn't be unloaded because of heavy rush.
SM: Give me the details
EMM: Train Number: 3 Up; Engine Number: MS 135672; Bogie Number: 6743; Position from Engine: 6; Seat Number: 35; Box Number:12 written in white indelible paint on top; Lock Number: PP 647; Lock Make: Godrej Navtal; Here is the Key Number: 26782
SM (Recovering from his swoon): How did you number your boxes...just curious..?
EMM: According to their priority of unloading: Box 1: Kitchenware; Box 2: My Sherlock Holmes, Thurber and Wodehouse Novels; Box 3: My Toolkit with hammers, screw drivers, nails to hang the pictures in Box 4 on the walls...Box 5...
SM: OK! OK!! OK!!!; What is there in the last Box 12 that is to be unloaded last?
EMM: Silk Sarees of my wife: 3 Banarasi, 5 Gadwal, 4 Kanjeevaram. 6 Tussore and 11 Venkatgiri..
THE END
============================================================
Friday, October 22, 2010
Bitter Surprises
==========================================================
One day, when I was in Class IX in our Village Muthukur, I was allotted a chaperon duty (boy-in-waiting) by my father.
Jairam Sir, the famous Sanskrit & Telugu Pundit of our District Headquarters town Nellore was visiting us. He was an ultra-orthodox Brahmin like my father (these guys stick together). So, it was taken for granted that he would be staying in our house for the day as an esteemed guest, eating home-cooked food after Puja, not even drinking a glass of water that was not offered to God. Such arrangements were quid pro quo, and whenever my father visited another town or village, even on Election Duty, it was understood that the hospitality was taken care of by the local Brahmin Pundit.
Jairam Sir was invited by the bigwigs of our Village to give one of his famous Mono-Acting performances that night in the public grounds of our school. There were no tickets sold. Everyone was welcome. A ballot box (piggy bank) was kept on the stage and whoever was pleased could walk up and insert a coin or a currency note.
I escorted Jairam Sir from the Bus Stand to our house early that morning, forgoing my morning play. And he was received by my father with due courtesies and asked to have his bath. Seeing the cramped condition of our thickly populated bathroom, Jairam Sir asked me to lead him to the Village Pond where he could jump in, swim and wash to his heart's content. While walking I could sense that he was sizing me up as all teachers are prone to do. He saw at a glance that I was a shy silent kid who preferred Work to Small Talk.
As he flung his dhoti (lower garment) and jibba (upper one) on the ground to jump in, I noticed that something fell out of his jibba pocket. On recovering it I saw it was a blue plastic bangle ladies wore those days. I could have pushed it back into his jibba pocket quietly, but the boy-scout spirit prevailed and I was waiting for him to return, and present it to him to earn praise and thanx.
As soon as I handed it to him, he looked at it, looked at me, shook me warmly by my young hands, went emotional, said I saved his honor, and went all soft and gooey. I was getting embarrassed at such a display on a trivial matter when he narrated the Story of the Blue Bangle in a tear-jerking voice:
Apparently, he lost his young wife and child in her first childbirth, and since it was a marriage of deep love, he never married again. When the corpse was being led away to the cremation ghat, he stole this one bangle of hers and kept it with him on his body in jibba-after-jibba; and this was the first and hopefully the last time in his life that he ever lost it.
Even for a kid like me the whole episode reeked of soup and I averted my eyes to hide my tears..
The evening show went off very well: Jairam Sir chose the famous episode from Ramayan where Raam and Laxman were led away by a fake golden deer and Raam's wife Sita was stolen by Raavan and whisked away to Ceylon; a truly tear-jerking story.
The performance lasted three full hours: every half an hour he was taking respite, when I would be serving him home-made coffee and pills that these pundits keep in their pillbox to keep their voice from getting hoarse.
As the story progressed with ecstatic scene after scene, I could see that the hoi polloi were moved and frequently walked in pushing note after currency note into the ballot box, the front row VIPs vying with each other.
He made quite a pile.
Next morning when we were waiting for the bus in the bus-stand, he embraced me and slipped a silver rupee coin into my hands as remuneration for services rendered, and with a twinkle in his eyes he again thanked me for retrieving the blue bangle and said:
"Nice gul I told you yesterday. My wife is very much alive and we have three kids like you and she was pestering me to buy her a pair of silver bangles. I wanted to give her a surprise, so I stole this one bangle from her kit-box for size before I left home yesterday, thinking that if I made decent money, I could buy a pair in the Silver Shop in Chinna Bazaar on my way home. You will see that if you become a teacher like me, you have to be in constant practice of telling tall tales making them up as you go."
The bus arrived, he got up and left..
I still have that silver rupee coin which I preserved all these years...it was my first earning...
*******************************************************************************
Sorry folks: I made up that entire story (plot stolen from Madhurantakam Rajaram who wrote something like it more than half a century ago...I don't know where he stole it from) now as I was going to tell you the True Story of today's blog:
********************************************************************************
Now my True Story:
My HM father was very strict and never made easy money by selling Marks.
But Brahmin teachers were as poor as church mice and the populace those days were convinced that if they offer some fruits, flowers, vegetables, ghee and the wherewithal to deserving Brahmins, they would go to Heaven duly.
So, we did get a few Offerings now and then with no strings attached.
But these were forbidden for a month before and after the Exam Season, till the Results were put up; so that no tongues could wag.
One morning during Exam Season, when I was running along the road for a round of goli play, I was hailed and beckoned by the newly-opened Modern Tailor, the fancy one.
As I went in, I found that a well-to-do Reddy was sitting and rolling his various gold rings around his fingers. The Modern Tailor asked me to stand erect and took measurements for my full shirt and full pant (a dream come true!), and asked Reddy if lining is required for the pant, at which he grunted yes, make it silk!
My joy knew no bounds, as I thought this was going to be a wonderful gift to the HM's son after the Exam Season was over....perhaps the wealthy Reddy wanted to go to Heaven in Business Class.
After more than a month elapsed and nothing happened, I could no longer bear the suspense and shed my shyness and walked to the Modern Tailor and asked him if that pant and shirt were delivered in due time.
"Oh, yes...that Reddy wanted them the very next week as a surprise birthday gift to his son who is about your build"......
============================================================
One day, when I was in Class IX in our Village Muthukur, I was allotted a chaperon duty (boy-in-waiting) by my father.
Jairam Sir, the famous Sanskrit & Telugu Pundit of our District Headquarters town Nellore was visiting us. He was an ultra-orthodox Brahmin like my father (these guys stick together). So, it was taken for granted that he would be staying in our house for the day as an esteemed guest, eating home-cooked food after Puja, not even drinking a glass of water that was not offered to God. Such arrangements were quid pro quo, and whenever my father visited another town or village, even on Election Duty, it was understood that the hospitality was taken care of by the local Brahmin Pundit.
Jairam Sir was invited by the bigwigs of our Village to give one of his famous Mono-Acting performances that night in the public grounds of our school. There were no tickets sold. Everyone was welcome. A ballot box (piggy bank) was kept on the stage and whoever was pleased could walk up and insert a coin or a currency note.
I escorted Jairam Sir from the Bus Stand to our house early that morning, forgoing my morning play. And he was received by my father with due courtesies and asked to have his bath. Seeing the cramped condition of our thickly populated bathroom, Jairam Sir asked me to lead him to the Village Pond where he could jump in, swim and wash to his heart's content. While walking I could sense that he was sizing me up as all teachers are prone to do. He saw at a glance that I was a shy silent kid who preferred Work to Small Talk.
As he flung his dhoti (lower garment) and jibba (upper one) on the ground to jump in, I noticed that something fell out of his jibba pocket. On recovering it I saw it was a blue plastic bangle ladies wore those days. I could have pushed it back into his jibba pocket quietly, but the boy-scout spirit prevailed and I was waiting for him to return, and present it to him to earn praise and thanx.
As soon as I handed it to him, he looked at it, looked at me, shook me warmly by my young hands, went emotional, said I saved his honor, and went all soft and gooey. I was getting embarrassed at such a display on a trivial matter when he narrated the Story of the Blue Bangle in a tear-jerking voice:
Apparently, he lost his young wife and child in her first childbirth, and since it was a marriage of deep love, he never married again. When the corpse was being led away to the cremation ghat, he stole this one bangle of hers and kept it with him on his body in jibba-after-jibba; and this was the first and hopefully the last time in his life that he ever lost it.
Even for a kid like me the whole episode reeked of soup and I averted my eyes to hide my tears..
The evening show went off very well: Jairam Sir chose the famous episode from Ramayan where Raam and Laxman were led away by a fake golden deer and Raam's wife Sita was stolen by Raavan and whisked away to Ceylon; a truly tear-jerking story.
The performance lasted three full hours: every half an hour he was taking respite, when I would be serving him home-made coffee and pills that these pundits keep in their pillbox to keep their voice from getting hoarse.
As the story progressed with ecstatic scene after scene, I could see that the hoi polloi were moved and frequently walked in pushing note after currency note into the ballot box, the front row VIPs vying with each other.
He made quite a pile.
Next morning when we were waiting for the bus in the bus-stand, he embraced me and slipped a silver rupee coin into my hands as remuneration for services rendered, and with a twinkle in his eyes he again thanked me for retrieving the blue bangle and said:
"Nice gul I told you yesterday. My wife is very much alive and we have three kids like you and she was pestering me to buy her a pair of silver bangles. I wanted to give her a surprise, so I stole this one bangle from her kit-box for size before I left home yesterday, thinking that if I made decent money, I could buy a pair in the Silver Shop in Chinna Bazaar on my way home. You will see that if you become a teacher like me, you have to be in constant practice of telling tall tales making them up as you go."
The bus arrived, he got up and left..
I still have that silver rupee coin which I preserved all these years...it was my first earning...
*******************************************************************************
Sorry folks: I made up that entire story (plot stolen from Madhurantakam Rajaram who wrote something like it more than half a century ago...I don't know where he stole it from) now as I was going to tell you the True Story of today's blog:
********************************************************************************
Now my True Story:
My HM father was very strict and never made easy money by selling Marks.
But Brahmin teachers were as poor as church mice and the populace those days were convinced that if they offer some fruits, flowers, vegetables, ghee and the wherewithal to deserving Brahmins, they would go to Heaven duly.
So, we did get a few Offerings now and then with no strings attached.
But these were forbidden for a month before and after the Exam Season, till the Results were put up; so that no tongues could wag.
One morning during Exam Season, when I was running along the road for a round of goli play, I was hailed and beckoned by the newly-opened Modern Tailor, the fancy one.
As I went in, I found that a well-to-do Reddy was sitting and rolling his various gold rings around his fingers. The Modern Tailor asked me to stand erect and took measurements for my full shirt and full pant (a dream come true!), and asked Reddy if lining is required for the pant, at which he grunted yes, make it silk!
My joy knew no bounds, as I thought this was going to be a wonderful gift to the HM's son after the Exam Season was over....perhaps the wealthy Reddy wanted to go to Heaven in Business Class.
After more than a month elapsed and nothing happened, I could no longer bear the suspense and shed my shyness and walked to the Modern Tailor and asked him if that pant and shirt were delivered in due time.
"Oh, yes...that Reddy wanted them the very next week as a surprise birthday gift to his son who is about your build"......
============================================================
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Deadly Humor
====================================================
Can Death and Humor mix? Judge for yourself:
**********************************************************************
Thurber on humor:
Thus the old controversy as to whether death can be made funny is left where it was before Carl Rose came up with his wonderful idea..."
*****************************************************************************
Dorothy Parker: Tombstones in Starlight:
***************************************************************************
Sam Weller:
"There's nothin' so refreshin' as sleep, sir, as the servant-girl said afore she drank the egg-cupful o' laudanum."
"It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they alway say in Turkey, ven they cuts the wrong man's head off."
"Business first, pleasure arterwards, as King Richard the Third said wen he stabbed t'other king in the Tower, afore he smothered the babbies."
"Werry sorry to 'casion any personal inconvenience, ma'am, as the house-breaker said to the old lady when he put her on the fire...."
". . . now we look compact and comfortable, as the father said ven he cut his little boy's head off, to cure him o' squintin'."
". . . I'm pretty tough, that's vun consolation, as the wery old turkey remarked wen the farmer said he was afeered he should be obliged to kill him for the London market."
**********************************************************************
Nursery Rhymes
***********************************************************************
Jerome K Jerome:
"Everything has a flip side as when the mother-in-law died and they came down for funeral expenses" (inexact quote)
**********************************************************************
Autocrat:
Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade,
Alike was famous for his arm and blade.
One day a prisoner Justice had to kill
Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill.
Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed,
Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd.
His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam,
As the pike's armor flashes in the stream.
He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go;
The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow.
"Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act,"
The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.)
"Friend I HAVE struck," the artist straight replied;
"Wait but one moment, and yourself decide."
He held his snuff-box,--"Now then, if you please!"
The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze,
Off his head tumbled,--bowled along the floor,
- Bounced down the steps;--the prisoner said no more!
Woman! thy falchion is a glittering eye;
If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die!
Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head;
We die with love, and never dream we're dead!
*****************************************************************************
Mark Twain:
"It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork".
=====================================================
Can Death and Humor mix? Judge for yourself:
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Thurber on humor:
"[Humor is] a kind of emotional chaos told about calmly and quietly in retrospect."
"Well, someone once wrote a definition of the difference between English and American humor... I thought his definition was very good. He said that the English treat the commonplace as if it were remarkable and the Americans treat the remarkable as if it were commonplace. I believe that's true of humorous writing."
"This drawing (Touche'!) was originally done for New Yorker by Carl Rose, caption and all. Mr Rose is a realistic artist. and his gory scene distressed the editors, who hate violence. They asked Rose if he could let me have the idea, since obviously there is no blood to speak of in the people I draw. Rose graciously consented. No one who looks at Touche'! believes that the man whose head is in the air is really dead. His opponent will hand it back to him with profuse apologies, and the discommoded fencer will replace it on his shoulders and say: "No harm done, forget it!"Thus the old controversy as to whether death can be made funny is left where it was before Carl Rose came up with his wonderful idea..."
*****************************************************************************
Dorothy Parker: Tombstones in Starlight:
The Very Rich Man
He'd have the best, and that was none too good;
No barrier could hold, before his terms.
He lies below, correct in cypress wood,
And entertains the most exclusive worms.
The Actress
Her name, cut clear upon this marble cross,
Shines, as it shone when she was still on earth;
While tenderly the wild, agreeable moss
Obscures the figures of her date of birth.
He'd have the best, and that was none too good;
No barrier could hold, before his terms.
He lies below, correct in cypress wood,
And entertains the most exclusive worms.
The Actress
Her name, cut clear upon this marble cross,
Shines, as it shone when she was still on earth;
While tenderly the wild, agreeable moss
Obscures the figures of her date of birth.
***************************************************************************
Sam Weller:
"There's nothin' so refreshin' as sleep, sir, as the servant-girl said afore she drank the egg-cupful o' laudanum."
"It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they alway say in Turkey, ven they cuts the wrong man's head off."
"Business first, pleasure arterwards, as King Richard the Third said wen he stabbed t'other king in the Tower, afore he smothered the babbies."
"Werry sorry to 'casion any personal inconvenience, ma'am, as the house-breaker said to the old lady when he put her on the fire...."
". . . now we look compact and comfortable, as the father said ven he cut his little boy's head off, to cure him o' squintin'."
". . . I'm pretty tough, that's vun consolation, as the wery old turkey remarked wen the farmer said he was afeered he should be obliged to kill him for the London market."
**********************************************************************
Nursery Rhymes
Hush a bye baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
When the wind blows the cradle will rock;
When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
***********************************************************************
Jerome K Jerome:
"Everything has a flip side as when the mother-in-law died and they came down for funeral expenses" (inexact quote)
**********************************************************************
Autocrat:
Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade,
Alike was famous for his arm and blade.
One day a prisoner Justice had to kill
Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill.
Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed,
Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd.
His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam,
As the pike's armor flashes in the stream.
He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go;
The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow.
"Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act,"
The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.)
"Friend I HAVE struck," the artist straight replied;
"Wait but one moment, and yourself decide."
He held his snuff-box,--"Now then, if you please!"
The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze,
Off his head tumbled,--bowled along the floor,
- Bounced down the steps;--the prisoner said no more!
Woman! thy falchion is a glittering eye;
If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die!
Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head;
We die with love, and never dream we're dead!
*****************************************************************************
Mark Twain:
"It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork".
=====================================================
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Workaholics Anonymous
**********************************************************************************************************************
It is now more than 5 years since I retired, left IIT KGP, and started living (physically) in this metropolis called Hyderabad.
I regret to say that I still feel very much a square peg in a round hole or the other way round.
In their work culture Hyderabad and IIT KGP are poles apart.
They generate enormous real wealth here continuously day and night. By this I mean cash, houses, cars, gold ornaments, brick and mortar, fruits and vegetables, flowers, and goods and services required for real wealth generation. Everyone works here; even the traffic signal beggars and vendors and the benign policemen that look the other way.
In IIT KGP we had none of these; but I guess we did generate lots and lots of virtual wealth. By this I mean mostly gas, useless but interesting knowledge (like cosmology, not to be confused with real-wealth-generating astrology), published papers (good for thonga industry; i.e. lifafa or paper bags), some little-known degrees, prizes, awards, and hundreds of twinklings of understanding in thousands of youthful eyes...amidst mosquito bites....
Of that life Shakespeare knew well:
It is now more than 5 years since I retired, left IIT KGP, and started living (physically) in this metropolis called Hyderabad.
I regret to say that I still feel very much a square peg in a round hole or the other way round.
In their work culture Hyderabad and IIT KGP are poles apart.
They generate enormous real wealth here continuously day and night. By this I mean cash, houses, cars, gold ornaments, brick and mortar, fruits and vegetables, flowers, and goods and services required for real wealth generation. Everyone works here; even the traffic signal beggars and vendors and the benign policemen that look the other way.
In IIT KGP we had none of these; but I guess we did generate lots and lots of virtual wealth. By this I mean mostly gas, useless but interesting knowledge (like cosmology, not to be confused with real-wealth-generating astrology), published papers (good for thonga industry; i.e. lifafa or paper bags), some little-known degrees, prizes, awards, and hundreds of twinklings of understanding in thousands of youthful eyes...amidst mosquito bites....
Of that life Shakespeare knew well:
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.I would not change it.
Honestly, I have nothing against work: As Harris said: "I love work; I like to watch others work".
But here they don't let me watch it: they sermonize. And for one who sermonized for his living for 40 years at IIT KGP, it is tough to be at the wrong end of the stick.
I try to pull a long face, avert eye contact, walk alone, sip tea alone in pavement stalls and hide myself away from the public eye.
All this unusual behavior makes them suspicious and I am a bit of a talk at the pensioner's linked-in working groups here; and I am told so. About half a dozen strangers did succeed in breaking my repulsive barrier and tried to encourage me.
Let me dump them in one group and call them Workaholics Anonymous (WA).
Here are the occasional snatches of our Conversation all rolled into one:
WA: I am told you retired from IIT KGP. What was your subject?
gps: Physics
WA: Very paying. My neighbor's son left IIT Chennai Physics and started coaching here. He is busy from 8 AM to 10 PM and earns a lot of money
gps: Good
WA: He says he needs Helpers badly
gps: I can understand
WA: Shall I suggest your name?
gps: No thanx..I forgot all Physics
WA: How do you spend your time?
gps: Fine
WA: I mean what do you DO?
gps: This and that
WA: Like what?
gps: I keep writing
WA: Lots of money in Physics writing
gps: Yes
WA: On what subject do you write?
gps: Mostly reminiscence
WA: What is that?
gps: Memories of childhood and IIT KGP
WA: One should not live in the past. One should live in the ever-present
gps: Sometimes in the future too
WA:What do you mean?
gps; I worry about day after tomorrow's blog
WA: What is blog?
gps: It rhymes with log, slog, frog, bog, cog, dog, fog, hog, jog, smog..
WA: Do you write poetry?
gps: Occasionally
WA: What poetry?
gps: Limericks mostly
WA: What is limerick?
gps: It rhymes with brick, thick, wick, flick, prick, stick...
WA: Is there lot of money in them?
gps: Pots
WA: I am too old to work, but I do social service
gps: Me too
WA: But I see you always shuffling along the road and sipping tea here and there
gps; That is my social work
WA: How?
gps: Encouraging small-scale Industries
WA: Do you live in a rented house or your own?
gps: My son pays the rent; I only live
WA: Here is my Business Card. Can I have yours?
gps: I have placed an order....I shall give one as soon as I get
WA: Very interesting and fruitful discussion. We must meet often.
gps: Yes
WA: Do you like Tea or Coffee?
gps: Yes
WA: Light or strong?
gps: Yes
WA: Are you a devotee of Tirupati Balajee or Shirdi Sai Baba?
gps: Yes
WA: I must be going.I have a meeting of Rotary Club to attend
gps: Yes, yes, yes, yes...
...Posted by Ishani
**********************************************************************************************************************************
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.I would not change it.
Honestly, I have nothing against work: As Harris said: "I love work; I like to watch others work".
But here they don't let me watch it: they sermonize. And for one who sermonized for his living for 40 years at IIT KGP, it is tough to be at the wrong end of the stick.
I try to pull a long face, avert eye contact, walk alone, sip tea alone in pavement stalls and hide myself away from the public eye.
All this unusual behavior makes them suspicious and I am a bit of a talk at the pensioner's linked-in working groups here; and I am told so. About half a dozen strangers did succeed in breaking my repulsive barrier and tried to encourage me.
Let me dump them in one group and call them Workaholics Anonymous (WA).
Here are the occasional snatches of our Conversation all rolled into one:
WA: I am told you retired from IIT KGP. What was your subject?
gps: Physics
WA: Very paying. My neighbor's son left IIT Chennai Physics and started coaching here. He is busy from 8 AM to 10 PM and earns a lot of money
gps: Good
WA: He says he needs Helpers badly
gps: I can understand
WA: Shall I suggest your name?
gps: No thanx..I forgot all Physics
WA: How do you spend your time?
gps: Fine
WA: I mean what do you DO?
gps: This and that
WA: Like what?
gps: I keep writing
WA: Lots of money in Physics writing
gps: Yes
WA: On what subject do you write?
gps: Mostly reminiscence
WA: What is that?
gps: Memories of childhood and IIT KGP
WA: One should not live in the past. One should live in the ever-present
gps: Sometimes in the future too
WA:What do you mean?
gps; I worry about day after tomorrow's blog
WA: What is blog?
gps: It rhymes with log, slog, frog, bog, cog, dog, fog, hog, jog, smog..
WA: Do you write poetry?
gps: Occasionally
WA: What poetry?
gps: Limericks mostly
WA: What is limerick?
gps: It rhymes with brick, thick, wick, flick, prick, stick...
WA: Is there lot of money in them?
gps: Pots
WA: I am too old to work, but I do social service
gps: Me too
WA: But I see you always shuffling along the road and sipping tea here and there
gps; That is my social work
WA: How?
gps: Encouraging small-scale Industries
WA: Do you live in a rented house or your own?
gps: My son pays the rent; I only live
WA: Here is my Business Card. Can I have yours?
gps: I have placed an order....I shall give one as soon as I get
WA: Very interesting and fruitful discussion. We must meet often.
gps: Yes
WA: Do you like Tea or Coffee?
gps: Yes
WA: Light or strong?
gps: Yes
WA: Are you a devotee of Tirupati Balajee or Shirdi Sai Baba?
gps: Yes
WA: I must be going.I have a meeting of Rotary Club to attend
gps: Yes, yes, yes, yes...
...Posted by Ishani
**********************************************************************************************************************************
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