3 is Crowd!

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It is said that 1 is lonely, 2 is company and 3 is crowd!






So it was for me for the past couple of days....I have been crowded out of my blog by 3 factors hopelessly:







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1. Early one morning, i.e. 11 AM, I passionately switched on my PC and NOTHING happened...it just went dead.



She was not to blame...she has been sending warning signals of her impending demise for almost six months...she would just hang, first every 15 minutes, then 10 minutes,,,etc.



She has served me for eleven faithful years, and it was time to go.



My son came in and dignosed her and pronounced her "Dead!".



And he at once gave me one of his two laptops and declared: "This is yours!".



Everyone in the household: my son, wife, D-i-L and even Ishani feel at a complete loss when I am not found in front of my PC Table...for various reasons...mostly fearing my mental health...they think my PC is like one of those Poopcee plastic nipples that were once popular for silencing the babies...now they are out of fashion.



But for a chap who is used to his PC for so many years, asking him to mount a laptop is like asking a chap who has been riding a 24" Hercules bicycle to mount on Ishani's 3-wheeler.



And I gave up.



So, here I am in our nukkad cybercafe.



I don't like it at all.



First the several dingy cubicles.



Then you have no choice,



Then she is a stranger, everytime. Try and punch the usual buttons, and she comes up with several 'dialogue' boxes and you don't know how to shut her up. Punch on any button and she will come up with more dialogue boxes.



You then recall the famous lines: "Shut your mouth and let me love!"



And then these half-shutters and folks peering at you asking as if you are not still done with...that horrible man-on-you feeling.



All in all like visiting a wrong PC (Public Convenience) for a 3-hour love affair..for that is what a blog takes for me in new and strange environs.







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2. After quite a while, I woke up with a terrible toothache.



Tomes have been written on this subject and I don't wish to add more.



All I have to say is that it is enfeebling.



Now, all teeth don't go phut one morning unless you had terrible accident.



They go one by sad other.



Imagine you have an enormous water-tank standing on 32 columns.



Ulike Decaon's Masterpiece One-Hoss Chaise, all are never built equally strong.



First, one of them gives; and the entire load falls on the next strongest..then that gives..and the next...till just one is left...as is the case with me.



The nukkad Dentist, a young man with absolutely no experience of toothache simply asks you: "Do you want to keep it or let it go?"



This is one of those million-dollar questions...you are so attached to your half-penny that you would say: "I want to keep it".



Then he would say: "Root-Canal" as if it were just sluice-repair work.



And prescribes antibiotics and pain-killers and asks you to come after a week.



Naturally, you won't go if the swelling and pain subside.



And 3 months later the thing starts again...and you visit a different dentist since the earlier one would rebuke you..







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3. We are shifting house.



Again, this is a topic on which tomes have been written and I don't wish to add more.



Except that it takes a good month to find your bearings again in the totally new environs.



And we are going 24 kilometers away into a no-man's land.



And a terrific sublimation from a Ground-Floor Apt to the 13th Floor of a 14-Floor Gated Community Township.







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All in all a Sea-Change and a survival-threatening thing for httt://gpsatry.blogspot.com







Last couple of days I have been reading the three Ishani booklets.



My reading them is obviously totally different than yours.



I say, with all humility {;-}: "I find them damn good reading!"



There is enough accumulated material for a cute 60-page next Ishani booklet; composing and getting printed of which would be a Herculian under the circs..

Anyone out there volunteering to write a one-page (laudatory) Foreword?

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HORN OK TATA

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"Buri nazarwale' tere' muh kale' "

"nannu ventadake' naa swapna sundari"

"HORN OK TATA"

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Now, don't look at my grammar or spelling..

The above 3 are sample slogans I often see on the back of trucks in my part of the country.

The first one (from Hyderabadi Urdu) roughly translates to:

"You, who cast Evil Eyes--May your faces blacken!"

The second one means:

"Don't chase me, Oh my Dream Girl!"

There are hundreds of explanations for the last one:

"Horn OK Tata"

but I find Farooq Dhondy's most plausible.

This slogan is a relic of the single track dusty roads on which our vehicles had to ply on our so-called National Highways till everything dramatically changed for the better and India started shining for everyone but the NDA.

Indeed our transformation from the Hindu Growth Rate Country (1.1%) to an Emerging Economy (8.5%) is typified by its new world-class Highways and Airports (my son testifies that our new Hyderabad Greenfield Airport is among the best in the world; and my son is no soulful romantic of the Nehru Generation like me...he means business)

According to Dhondy, our resident truck driver asks the chap behind who wishes to overtake him to first blow his "Horn"; then wait till his right hand waves like a free-style swimmer: "Go ahead; OK!"; and as he passes by safely, his right hand turns upward waving the cheerful signal: "Ta-Ta Bye Bye Have a Nice Drive!"... no Road Rage those days like I read recently a Pilot ran his new car over his 'Scratch-Offender' coming out to apologize... just half a dozen times back and forth over his moribund torso; and the poor chap had to wait airily a whole day to get his bail...

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The very first day I shifted from my Village School to my University town, Vizagh, I learned two new and great words from my 4-year-old Convent-Going niece: "OK & Tata".

I guessed the meaning of these two golden words by intuition, too shy to ask a tiny lady.

And to this day the etymology of these remains obscure and controversial, particularly OK.

All that can be said for sure is that OK is an Americanism, while Ta-ta is British (apparently from baby-talk).

Both are flash words and for these 50 years and more have remained as popular as ever (My D-i-L brandishes these two words constantly at our one-year-old Ishani)

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But SDM was no American (he was as British as Gandhi, Nehru or Jinnah, who I doubt ever used OK in speech or writing).

One evening in 1974 when SDM and I were chatting in the Physics First Floor veranda, two of his Final Year girl students were passing by trying their best to avoid him. but they fell on his radar screen, and he asked: "How did your Exam go?"

His daughter Mampi kept quiet (the taste of the pudding is in the night at home!); while Sujata, the other kid, hastily replied: "Oa..Kay!"; and the two scampered.

He looked at me and wondered: "What funny lingo these girls talk nowadays!" and I had to translate to him that that particular "OK" meant "so-so".

For, I have noticed, at least in India, OK is a buzz-word with multiple meanings depending on how it is uttered, and in its unlimited outfits (it is like a girl dressed up in a variety of clothes):

When my son says: "Oh OK!" he means: "Now I get it!".

When my Printer asks: "OK, sir?" he means: "Any more Devils?"

When my son handed over his cell-phone to her after their tete-a-tete in the Swagat Restaurant before finally sewing up their alliance, I asked Sailaja (whom I had interviewed a couple of days earlier on the Pavement near her Office, with my wife as a spectator quark):

"Well?"

and she said somewhat resignedly:

"Hm...OK!", she meant:

"Do I really have a choice? {;-}"

When my Faculty Hostelmate RK used to wave: "Okey-Dokey" he meant: "Filching your fag..Don't Cry!"

When our QM Teacher at AU (an Experimental Spectroscopist without any delusions of grandeur) used to smile and say: "OK naa?", he meant:

"Pardon me, this is all I know; don't ask questions and you won't be told lies"

...there!..there is Humpty Dumpty's glory for you!

Finally when my Relatives born and brought up in Tamilnadu say:

"Wakey! Waakey!! Waaakey!!!"

they mean:

"Get lost now!!!"

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Thanx!

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"That woman speaks eighteen languages, and she can’t say 'No' in any of them."

...........................................Dorothy Parker

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That is our Naughty Dorothy at her vitriolic best.

But let us dismiss the sex angle implied by her in just one sentence:

Had Adam or Eve the sense to say: "No!" to the other or to the Resident Serpent of their Eden Gardens, the entire Holy Bible would have just been like this watery blog: gul tales that don't hang together.

And with that crack we pass on to weighty matters.

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It is safe to say that all tragedies, mythological as well as historical, depend crucially on the inability to say an emphatic: "No!" at the critical moment by their Heroes, Heroines or Villains.

Iliad wouldn't have been written if Paris had the courage to say: "No, Thanx!" to serve as Judge at that infamous Beauty Contest.

And the botched travels of Odyssey wouldn't have happened had Ulysses the guts to say a blunt: "No!" to join the ridiculous war for a woman (Woman is only a woman but a good cigar is SMOKE!; ask our Kipling) instead of humming and hawing and pretending to be mad...not an easy thing to do at the best of times.

The crux of Ramayan is the abduction of Sita, which wouldn't have happened if her husband or b-i-l put their feet down and said: "No!" to as illusory a thing as a Golden Deer (even Ishani can figure that out).

And the Mahabharat that culminated in a fratricidal war depended on a series of mishaps that could have been avoided by a loud: "No!"; for instance by Yudhistir to the invitation of a Gambling Game with heavily loaded dice.

Hitler would not have lost his Battle of Britain and his War had he shouted: "Nein!" to the stupid advice to stop bombing the Aircraft Factories at Coventry but bomb London instead, out of pique; and Churchill's stirring speeches like: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few"....would have been like so many silly slogans on Hyderabadi sweatshirts.

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An honest and prompt "No!" is much better than a dishonest "Yes" or a weak and meek "OK".

So many heart-wrenching divorces (with kids on both sides) could have been avoided if the guy demurred when confronted by the objective: "Wilt thou...?"; a question that should have really been topic for a 3-hour Essay.

Well, I Googled and found it is not as short and crisp as our JEE Objective questions:

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http://lordbeazy.deviantart.com/art/Wedding-Vows-Two-133576561

"Wilt thou take this woman
With all her charm and grace,
And give to her the strength she needs
Beneath that gown of lace.

Wilt thou honour this woman,
And cherish her winsome ways.
Keep alive her shining smile,
All through the autumn haze.

Wilt thou adore this woman
Who has pledged her love to you.
To keep her safe and free from harm
In all the things you do.

Wilt thou compare this woman
To a rose petal’s lightest kiss.
Recognising her inner beauty,
Satisfy her dreams of bliss.

Wilt thou forgive this woman,
As dawn forgives the night.
She never offered perfection,
Seeking only what is right.

Wilt thou lay with this woman
In the golden sands of time.
Pledge your heart and soul to her,
And in all things be sublime.

Wilt thou revere this woman,
And swear to never part.
Give to her all things she needs
With undivided heart.

Then I pronounce you man and wife
To honour each and banish strife
This is the woman thou hast chose
I give thee both a symbolic :rose: "


......................................"What the deuce, I mean to say, Bertie!"

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And then we always have the Buddhist middle path:

Instead of saying a blunt "Yes" or No", there are several devious ways out.

Once the denizens of this Earth were fed up with the inequities of the Rule of Ishwar, and decided to petition him for granting them a Democracy, like the US.

So, they urged their Holy Cow reputed for her Honesty to forward their request to Him.

When Ishwar asked our Holy Cow: "Is this what I hear true?", she nodded assent with her head up and down, but denied it by a shake of her tail; giving the Benefit of Doubt to both the Ruler and the Ruled.

Ishwar took the hint and suppressed the revolt ruthlessly: That's why we are now in this hapless state described by Dorothy herself:

"If you want to know what the Lord thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to".

Anyway, Ishwar thereupon decreed that the Holy Cow's tail (not to speak of her urine) is holier than her head. And that is why in AP, her tail is washed first and worshiped before tackling her head; and the Pradikshin (circumambulation) starts from her behind rather than her head.

And then there is this civilized Brahmin glutton who, when asked if he wanted one more laddu, would vigorously shake his right hand like the dickens but with his left forefinger point to the vacant place on his plate.

And when Feynman asks his electron: "Are you a particle or a wave?", she just smiles, like our civilized Indian ladies unlike Dorothy's blunt New Yorker Polyglots.

My Father insisted that I should say either "No, thanx!" or "Yes, thanx!" instead of just those monosyllables.

But I discovered one better:

When this Senior Pool Officer was posted in our Dept, he caught hold of me in the Lounge of our Faculty Hostel and lectured me for ten minutes how to teach Electrodynamics the Modern Way.

And at the end of his oration he looked at me as if asking my opinion and when I said: "Thanx!", he ran back to his native Ithaca.

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Symbiosis

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Our blogpost of a couple of days back: Ms Buffalo & Dr Crow:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/02/ms-buffalo-dr-crow.html


reminded me of the lovely biological phenomenon: Symbiosis:

................meaning: "a cooperative relationship": online Webster

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See: http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl

The crow pecked and pecked at every tick

That Ms. Buffalo’s tongue could not lick;

Ticks that her long tail could not flick

And ticks that her strong legs could not kick.

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Well, Symbiosis is nowadays not confined to Biology but spans all other -ologies except perhaps Topology, I don't know.

There is even a Business School of that name...

The entire Biosphere we live in on the thin rind of our minuscule planet is one incestuous mess; no doubt about it.

I often read with a smile the Evangelistic Nonlinear Dynamics Slogan:

"When a butterfly (ahem!) decides to flap his tiny wings here in Hyderabad, he may provoke the onset of a thunderstorm in an Alpine Tundra"

....Do I recall a Bengali girl named Tundra Banerjee? I wouldn't be surprised; if Ishani is fine why not Tundra?...anything can happen in Bengal....all the seasons like Basanta, Barsha, Sarat, Hemanta and Sisir are quite common first names...but I haven't heard the mid-Summer Ritu: Grishma...have you?...certainly not as common as the others...maybe because he/she could turn out to be unbearably HOT!

.......Oh, yes, now, there IS a Grishma Sen as well as Grishma Reddy...I just Googled...We had a classmate named Tanya way back in the 1950s in Vizagh, daughter of a CPI MLA (no CPM then); and every Teacher corrected her spelling as 'Tanaya'...a Bolshevik Blasphemy!..........

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So, let us examine the other '...logical' samples of Symbiosis:

I think the Author and his Literary Agent cohabit in a symbiotic relationship.... like between a race horse and his jockey....one can't flourish without the other....

Thus spake the Autocrat:

"----Apropos of horses. Do you know how important good jockeying is to authors? Judicious management; letting the public see your animal just enough, and not too much: holding him up when the market is too full of him; letting him out at just the right buying intervals; always gently feeling his mouth; never slacking and never jerking the rein;--this is what I mean by jockeying.

----When an author has a number of books out, a cunning hand will keep them all spinning; as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates; fetching each one up as he begins to 'wabble', by an advertisement, a puff, or a quotation.

----Whenever the extracts from a living author begin to multiply fast in the papers,without obvious reason, there is a new book or a new edition coming. The extracts are ground-bait..."

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In Vikram Seth's Poem: Frog and the Nightingale, the unscrupulous Frog usurps the role of the Sole Manager of the gullible Songster Nightingale and drives her to death by demanding ever MORE & MORE pop-songs day in and day out: a case of over-management (somewhat like that in the Goose who laid Golden Eggs)

Nothing so cruel and tragic ever happens in our blogs which are all sweetness and light: our Ms Buffalo happily gets rid of her Depression albeit at the expense of her lifetime's savings while our smart Psychotherapist Dr Crow loses his bed and breakfast for a few days.

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I often fancy that the Prolific Research Guide and her Team of Graduate Students bear a similar symbiotic relationship:

The Guide is like our Ms Buffalo: she constantly is victim to so many 'ticky' ideas that "her tongue can't lick and her long tail can't flick and her strong legs can't kick".

So, she is hopelessly dependent on so many young and clever birds who, with vaulting ambitions to become Dr Crows, keep pecking at and swallowing their Guide's itchy ticks; sometimes alone and at other times in collaboration.

The end result, more often than not, is a happy one like in our poem; although an over-ambitious or over-burdened Guide may end up like Vikram Seth's Nightingale, particularly if resort is taken to unbecoming short-cuts.

And once in a while some picky bird, like me, after pecking at a few ticks here and there he doesn't relish much, migrates to other more inviting Buffaloes...not a very pleasant thing...till he lands on a Big Buffalo who has so many sumptuous ticks crawling all over her, but who keeps licking, flicking and kicking constantly...

...only adroit Crows can outsmart their Big Buffaloes tick by tick and avert mishaps.

Have a Great Symbiosis!

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Looking & Seeing

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Her mom lectures 4-year old Sudha on Table Manners when she found her slurping her sambar making lip-smacking sounds.

And is pleasantly surprised that her daughter is listening with rapt attention to her eloquent speech and asks: "Well?"

And Sudha replies: "I could count only 28 but you stopped abruptly, so I don't know if you have all 32".

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I am just back from our nukkad DTDC outlet depositing an envelope to be delivered to Prof S H Rao (ex-IIT Prof of GG, senior to me by a decade) in Himayatnagar. This morning we spoke on phone after 3 years and exchanged mutual nostalgia.

SHR is a born book-lover and has the vastest collection of well-thumbed books, all of them carried from KGP to HYD after his retirement. He has recently undergone surgery for cataract in both eyes and says he is again a boy raring to read more books.

What I posted to him were clippings of my 3 Articles in the Now & Again column of The Statesman, Calcutta a year ago.

Well, books happen to be the second love of SHR...his first love remains Crossword Puzzles. As soon as he wakes up, he downloads those Times & Guardian things and solves them in 10 minutes; and then goes for his ablutions.

Not the straight & simple ones like I used to do once in a while in The Telegraph; but those with cryptic clues like:

"Girl between her parents...what a swell view!"

with the answer: "Panorama", that I dare not even attempt.

As it tuned out, I noticed that the topmost clipping of the Articles I sent had a NY Times or some such Crossword Puzzle beside my Article.

And I am sure SHR will solve it first before looking at my: "In Praise of Laziness".

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Two decades ago Prof & Mrs N had to travel all the way to Gole Bazaar after 10 PM and pay @ Rs 100 per minute to speak to their son in Georgia.

One evening a marketing guy dragged N up the roof of the ECE Building to demonstrate the latest satellite telephone, opened an umbrella-like antenna, and asked N to speak to his son.

And his son got irritated and asked why the devil he was being woken up at the dead of the night; but N, being a gizmo-lover was lured by the quality of sound which was like that in a Philharmonic Orchestra, and was tempted to buy it.

Returning home, N rushed into the kitchen and gloated that he had just now had a talk with their son in Georgia dead cheap with an equipment that has just to be installed on their own roof.

Mrs N halted her cooking and queried: "Is that so? How is he? What did he say? Did he have his dinner? When are his Qualifiers? Did he ask about me?......"

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When a Wedding card arrives, my wife just looks at the names of the bride, groom, date, time and venue.

My son would look at the quality, weight, and texture of the Card and estimate its cost.

My D-i-L looks at the stamps and peels them for her Ishani Stamp Album.

And I look for bloomers in language and printing.

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So wide is the gulf between 'looking & seeing' or 'agreeing & allowing' or 'Foreword & Aftword':

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/04/foreword-aftword.html

Good Night & Good Day!

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‘Scholars’, Nehru and Bertie

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In October 2007, "Scholars' Avenue", a Campus Magazine, published an Article on SDM and his Genius.

And editorially commented on SDM in (inter alia) the glossy prose given below.

I was quite bemused and had to read it 5 times before it drilled into my steely head. And when I finally got the hang of what it was saying, I wrote what I thought was the same matter in 2 other different styles (Nehru on Gandhi; and Bertie on Jeeves) and posted the three in this blog.

But I found a few days ago that it had got deleted.

When I mentioned this to Pratik, he immediately retrieved it from his hard disk and sent it to me. He had also wanted a 3rd piece: "What Watson would have written on Sherlock Holmes".

Any reader may post his version of Watson as a Comment that would satisfy Pratik (the toughest Examiner on my Board).

I think, apart from Pratik and Aniket, no one else had seen this and so I am posting it again (out of laziness).

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What 'Scholars' wrote about SDM:

“A man of true genius apparently sees more than his share of the visible; it is almost as if some underlying pattern, some nuanced current of reality is magically revealed to him. He is either impatient to the point of appearing rude and presumptuous, trying to figure out how to tell the story as it is and frustrated by the lack of any success in it, or has made his peace with his disproportionate gifts and has now lulled himself into a laconic semi-slumber, where from he occasionally emerges to proclaim a piece of divine clairvoyance only to recede back into himself before the dust has cleared and those looking askance have had time to pick up their jaws from the ground. Both ways, it is a silence that baffles ordinary mortals who find it impossible to understand why someone who is as close to a magician as they can hope to see in reality won't twirl his wand around himself.”

Let me try and translate it into what Nehru would have written about Gandhi:

“He saw what others failed to see. He could plunge into the depths of truth and come up with new insights and stunningly original designs. At times he would be abrupt with those of us who couldn’t follow him. Often, he blamed himself for not being lucid enough. Sometimes, he felt unequal to his own revelations and fell silent. Quite suddenly, he would arouse himself into flashes of brilliant exposition of his inspired ideas. And as he relapsed into his inner self, we would be awe-struck, dazed and bewildered. His eloquences as well as his silences were beyond us. And, we wondered why a wizard who could weave such a spell on us couldn’t bring himself to be always transparent.”

Let me now try and translate it into what Bertie Wooster would have written about Jeeves:

“Man, he is a dashed inscrutable egg! What goes on in his top beats me hollow. Say, suddenly he comes up with flashy ideas. And, weird, cocky connections. And, when I am at a loss to figure out his juicy schemes, he would scowl at me as if I were a nitwit. And, look glum brooding it were his own fault he couldn’t drill such silly stuff into his goof of a boss. And he would fall moodily dumb. And, wake up suddenly and put it across so neat that worse fish than me would go gung-ho! Dash it, why can’t he say it as such at first, instead of humming and hawing? Maybe, the devil himself possesses him at times! Right ho Jeeves, have it your way. We are here only to stand and stare while you weave your magic on all and sundry.”

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Ms Buffalo & Dr Crow

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Today is Sunday here, whatever Blogger-Clocker may say. And Sunday being our Sabbath when no secular work can be done (only religious and devotional work permitted) I decided to post a 15-year-old string of comic verses that may be new to some of you.

These were 'commissioned' by my son when he was in Class X and his English Ma'm asked them to write a Poem parodying Vikram Seths' Frog & the Nightingale which was in their text. In spite of strict admonition not to 'outsource' the Home Assignments to their parents, everyone did; and nothing happened except for some prizes that were given out.

Here it is:

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Ms. Buffalo and Dr. Crow

Once upon a time a Ms. Buffalo

Lay ruminating on a cheerful meadow.

The sun was slowly sinking in the west

And peace and drowsiness reigned in her breast.

Soon she heard bells, drum beats and songs

And there was a white cow with decorated horns.

Such pangs of jealousy in her heart grew

That Ms. Buffalo could no more chew.

“Oh, they adore her as the Goddess of Wealth

While taunting me as the Vehicle of Death!

Why! Her milk has no more protein

Nor my manure any less methane.

Yet laws get passed against her slaughter

As if she solely were the Nation’s daughter.”

Oh! How such thoughts did rack and rack!

Till a supple crow landed on her back.

The crow pecked and pecked at every tick

That Ms. Buffalo’s tongue could not lick;

Ticks that her long tail could not flick

And ticks that her strong legs could not kick.

“You are such a wonder, oh! Dr. Crow!

How you care for a poor buffalo!

No doubt you have had your fill

Without having to pay any bill.

You are truly the bird with the brains

Pray do something to allay my pains.”

Listening to Ms. Buffalo’s tale of woe,

“Come to my chambers”, said Dr. Crow;

“Yours is a strange case one in a million,

Whoever heard of a buffalo in depression?

What you need is prolonged counseling,

For each session I charge but a shilling.”

“You should get over such negative feelings”,

Said Dr. Crow in successive sittings,

“That the cow is so white while you are jet black,

Study my color; do I ever crack?

What you need is an uplifting motto,

Let ‘Black is Beautiful’ be etched on your photo.

Wallowing in mud’s no doubt a great hobby

But just consider what it does to your body!

No doubt your dream is to excel in cat-walk

But first thing to do is to reduce your bulk.

With four stomachs each loaded with cellulose

Why! You’ve quite a few tons to loose.

Vegetarianism is a mere food fad,

Look, for my tummy, nothing is bad.

You need also polish up your song

If you wish to be Miss World ere long.

A teacher is booked for my forthcoming son,

You two can sing duets; that would be fun!

Nothing can give greater nonchalance

Than, of course, a decent bank balance.

Collect spoons and ladles, coins and all

For a confirmed klepto nothing is too small.

But live starkly lest the CBI get a fix;

Look at my nest, it is just a cluster of sticks.

Plan your family, with a one-son norm

Unless you want to lose all shape and form.

Look, we keep but one egg in our nest

(Don’t tell my wife that I threw down the rest).

You might consider it a bit too early

But I’ve booked Agarwal, Brilliant and Master JEE.

Buffaloes and crows are alike these days

All of us enter into the same rat race.

Cheer up, Ms. Buffalo and pay up my money

For, I’ve taught you how to master your Destiny”.

The talks of Dr. Crow so gladdened her heart

With all her savings did Ms. Buffalo part.

But next time she went by the Doctor’s gate

Surprised was she to find him in a state;

“What’s wrong, Doc? Why are you down?

Your fine brow is lined with a frown”.

“My wife”, said Dr. Crow, “is mentally ill

Never had I to face up to such an evil.

How jolly was she when the chick came through!

Called in her friends; they all crew and crew.

She pampered her son till he went ‘cuckoo, cuckoo’

When suddenly into a rage her tempers flew.

She kicked up a row that her son was no crow.

In vain did I plead that I wasn’t in the know.

‘Foul play!’ she cried and kicked us out,

Consumed her pills and soon passed out.

A cuckoo may be dumb, but listen to her song!

I could have cashed on it all day long.

Haven’t you heard of the Frog and the Nightingale?

A crow’s wits any day can turn a frog pale.

But have you ever heard of a wife listen to her male?”

Ah, that is the end of Dr. Crow’s sad tale.

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Simple Complexes

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Listed below are some of the psychological complexes, most of which are Complex Complexes:

Freudian: Oedipus complex, Castration complex (see also Gender narcissism), Electra complex (see also penis envy)

Jungian: anima, animus, puer, senex, father, shadow

Other: God complex, Inferiority complex, Messianic complex, Napoleon complex, Persecution complex, Superiority complex

Used in Cultural Terms: "Rubik's Complex" (see Rubik's cube) , "Ostrich Complex" , "Stand Alone Complex" (see Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex)


..........http://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Complex_%28psychology%29

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........just to show how vast and fertile the Crazy Field is for a psycho-blogger.

But if you think I am going to talk about each and everyone of these in this blog, you have read your gps well but not wisely.

There are only two of the above, which ALL of us are home to.

Let us call them Simple Complexes unlike, let us say, the Napoleon Complex which I haven't met face to face with in any of my hundred odd acquaintances; not even in my erstwhile Pygmy Professor of Complex Variables @ IIT KGP who used to declare in his First Lecture:

"The subject of Complex Variables is pervaded by the Imaginary Number i: like my small i (4ft 4 inches) unlike my Capital I (Greatest Mathematician in Eastern India).

The two I am talking of are: Inferiority Complex & Superiority Complex.

If anyone says that he is totally free from these two Complexes, he is suffering from a Complex Complex like, say, God Complex or even Stand Alone Complex if not the even more obstinate Ostrich Complex (see above).

To tell you the Truth, I did meet a couple of these obscure Complex Cases: but both of them were Professional Psychiatrists, which is understandable if not excusable: they are constantly in touch (holding hands) with folks who claim they are Paid Agents of either God or the Devil or both alternately on New Moon and Full Moon (Lunar Bipolar Disorder), and so they can't decide which of the two Simple Complexes they themselves house, since both these Simple Complexes are Relative and not Absolute (Full Moon and New Moon, i.e. the other way round than their patients).

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I think I have been unusually abstruse there.

So, let me take the concrete Case of Prof X:

If he is convinced that he is vastly superior to everyone else in his Dept and it troubles him because he deserves better colleagues like in MIT, all that he has to do to get rid of this troublesome Simple Complex is to invite his M-i-L to stay with him for a week.

Now, unlike his F-i-L who rejoices that his daughter has found a good husband (as long as she doesn't return to his cozy nest for good), the M-i-L is convinced that if only she waited a little longer, her darling daughter would surely have found what she truly deserved; viz. Obama.

But one has to just ask what Obama's M-i-L feels; I am not so sure.....

Now, from the moment the said Prof X wakes up and sits at his Breakfast Table, he is under intense scrutiny...either his eyes look too small and shifty like a Giant Panda or big and roving like a Great Horned Owl.

....And the merciless scrutiny goes downwards and downwards till it reaches the Prof's club feet.

And since M-i-L's are traditionally inspoken and Prof X is not a mind-reader, being a Prof of Navel Architecture {;-}, he is always left in doubt and his mind is clouded by uncertainty and his Lectures tend to ramble and his Lab gives him back-kicks and his students tend to look out the window...and within a week his Superiority Complex is 'melted into air, into thin air' like the Spirits in those marvelous lines of Prospero I quoted a few blogs back.

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Now, let us turn to the Case of Prof Y.

He is the other way round...he feels inferior to all his Departmental Colleagues since he is condemned to take the First Year Lab all his life...since he never learned Electronics.

...All he has to do to get over his Complex, if he wishes to, is to invite his saala (b-i-l of the Lower Case) who works in the Central Services, and so, after passing his Entrance Exam at the tender age of 21, he never had the opportunity to learn anything but Central Servicing and it is easy to armtwist him by asking him to tell the first three decimals of pi which every moron ought to know in his opinion...

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After talking about the Simple Complexes and how to get rid of them within a week, we now come to the more recalcitrant Complex called the Deans Complex.

This is not a Complex residing in an individual, but in a Building or an Air-Conditioned Annexe of the Director's Office, housing generally four important Deans (the other four reside in humbler cubicles far away from the Power Center).

This Deans Complex is home to a Passing Show of VIPs (not VVIPs yet), since the term of any Dean is restricted to 3 years unless he or she gets the Lateral Arabesque or Percussive Sublimation of the celebrated Peter's Principle before that.

So, the tenants of this Complex suffer from Insomnia, Amnesia, Neurolgia, Causalgia and Xerophthalmia just to find a rhyming word..

These neurological per'fumes' tend to pervade the Aether of the Deans Complex like a Cariosus Allium Cepa, cut and left uncovered overnight in a closed kitchen; and are difficult to treat unless Fresh Oxygen-Rich air is recirculated.

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I think that should just about do for a Blog Post done in a hurry...whole day today we were looking out for a less stinking apartment than we are now living in...which sort of breeds rancor even in the most amiable soul.

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Propitiation

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Teenager: "Mom! What do I gift to my boyfriend who has everything?"

Mother: "Encouragement, dear; Encouragement!"

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Webster:

Propitiate: to gain or regain the favor or goodwill of: appease

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A couple of years back I had to visit my home-town to settle a quasi-judicial matter in the Revenue Department's Taluq Office (TO).

I located the best Lawyer in the town and entered the Grand Old Lawyer's (GOL) Chamber.

He understood what I wanted in a couple of minutes, made a phone call, and told me to go meet Subba Rao in the TO and he would do everything for me except signatures, finger-prints and digital photos (AP has gone hi-tech!).

I was very pleased at the efficiency and courtesy of GOL, pulled out the wallet from my hip pocket and asked him: "Sir, how much do I pay?"

He gave me a disarming smile and said: "But you have already PAID!"

I was wondering how; and he came up with his quip:

"You have paid me your VISIT and that's all I want from Distinguished Customers".

I was simply charmed and pumped up, went to Subba Rao; and a day later he PAID me a visit at my home with a Bill of Rs 9,256.

That 'Rayleigh End-Correction' of Rs 256 over 9000 intrigued me; and he explained that it was the Registration Charges and Stamp Fees for which I get a Receipt.

$$$$$$$$

Aside 1: This end-correction reminds me of the Geology Student who answered his viva question on the age of the Earth as 4,000,003 years; and when asked about that 3 years, he replied that their text book was 3 years old.

Aside 2: This brand-new young wife trying to cook for her new hubby and herself bought a cook-book, a digital balance, and a pocket calculator (for 'scaling'). After going by the recipe-book strictly and adding 22.7 grams of salt to the boiling sambar (stew) she sits down wiping the sweat on her worried brow; but recalls the idiom: 'salt of the earth' and gets up and sprinkles a heaped table-spoon of salt as 'scale-correction'

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Coming back to our Subba Rao, I wanted to haggle about his greedy 'Propitiation' of a hefty Rs 9,000.

He then gave out the break-up: "Rs 1000 to Sri A, 2000 to Srimati B, and ONLY 1000 to myself".

I queried about the remaining Rs 5,000.

"That goes to that Shylock GOL!"

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I often wonder that folks who try constantly to propitiate God don't have as much sense as the mom of our teenager (see above).

In every religion there are untold number of squeamish ways officially prescribed to propitiate their sundry gods, goddesses, demons, ancestors, or just God.

In my blogs I always try to avoid religious matters since they often tend to hurt someone or the other.

But I suppose I can freely talk of my own family...if they are hurt, they can always disown me, happily for everyone concerned {;-}

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An uncle of my Father whom they used to call affectionately Kashi Mama (KM) ran away from his home at Nellore about a century ago when he was in his early teens.

Their folks went around searching for him in and around and gave up all hope after about a month.

Twelve years later (that magic dozen again!) he suddenly arrived back home at Nellore to the pleasant astonishment of all.

And he was well-dressed in dhoti-jibba, religiosity poring from every corner of his beaming face and purse; and explained that he ran away to Kashi as a stowaway, spent time on platforms whenever he was thrown out from the train, but ultimately reached Kashi and became an Apprentice to a Giant Panda there, learned every 'paying' ritual in that Burning City whose 'Business is Religion' as Mark Twain wrote more than a century ago (without doubt the Bend in the Ganges at Kashi is beautiful as he admitted).

And KM was much in demand for his wild stories as well as his many rupees.

My Father was just married by then and was wistfully yearning to follow the footsteps of his KM but my mom put her foot down and so he became HM of Muthukur School, luckily for me...

KM got married to a deserving wife at Nellore, returned to Kashi (now doubly equipped: his wife could cook and feed and charge visitors while he performed a variety of obsequies pocketing rupees every two minutes). He flourished, graduated to the position of HoD of a Panda Department, grew old, declined to return to Nellore even when he was bedridden since he wanted to die at Kashi and his cremation done as per his Will in the Harishchandra Ghat so he won't have a rebirth (I fail to understand this refusal to be born again...for he had had a fairly merry time during this innings...like me...and now there are so many more IITs to choose from).

Anyways (as Americans put it) my Father used to seat me on his tummy, lying on his cot after night meals, when I was just a kid of 4, and, after he narrated his Tall Tale of KM for the umpteenth time, he would tell me that I have only one wish of his to carry out, and that was to take him once to Kashi and its famed Burning and Shining Ghats ('Kashi' means 'shining') on a pilgrimage.

It took me 40 years to be able to afford this pilgrimage from KGP in AC 2-Tier Sleeper on LTC.

But I was told by my Father and Mother that, according to their tradition, no trip to Kashi can be undertaken unless we visit Gaya first and do pinda-dan there for propitiating our ancestors of three generations.

Since Gaya was on our way to Kashi, that was fine with me. Knowledgeable people warned me that the Giant Pandas of Gaya (unlike sophisticated KGP Kabuliwalas) are unscrupulous and so we better go to the Gaya Branch of Bharat Sevashram Sangh. So, I carried a Reco in my pocket and we three got down at Gaya at 3 AM, and were immediately met with a panda-kidnapping attempt as I narrated in an earlier blog (I think it is: Conceit).

We ran and took shelter at the BSS where they gave us a Room (bath and bed).

At 7 AM the HM of the BSS in ocher robes sat in his chair and two very orderly queues formed themselves in front of him (one for the clients and the other for the servers).

I found that everyone of the clients (as well as the HM and the servers) was Bengali which fortunately my parents couldn't follow, because all of them were being asked only one question: "Which day?". Some would answer 3rd, some 7th, and the HM would match the clients with the servers and ask them to get lost.

When my turn came, I spoke in halting Bengali that I was not there to perform obsequies for a just-dead, but pinda-dan to ancestors.

He looked at me for a long second and asked me to wait aside and sent word for the only Telugu Brahmin server attached to BSS. And when that young chap arrived duly, the HM explained to me that the rituals are exactly the same and invariant whether we pay Rs 20 (minimum) or Rs 20,000 (...the remaining 19,980 would go to the server).

This Propitiation Version simply charmed me.

My Father had the largest number of ancestors of 3 generations ever (I guess it was about a hundred) and the young server was tired doing his duties; at the end of which my HM Father wanted to settle for the minimum Rs 20, but I convinced him that the young chap deserved Rs 200, and all was well since the young chap was visibly pleased.

But it was well past noon by the time this thing was over and I was in a hurry to visit Bodh Gaya in a tonga despite my parents' Brahminical reluctance.

Not that I am an adherent of Budhism, but just that I find Budha as interesting as Gandhi.

Budha drove out Brahminism from India but his followers, despite his middle-path, succumbed to Puritanism and were driven out of India, to be overtaken duly by Thugs and Pindaris.

Just like Gandhi drove out the British from India, but his followers duly succumbed to the modern version of T & P.

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Tail Piece:

The other day I got a mail from a Reputed Organization asking me to send them an urgent (propitiating) Reference Letter for an ex-student of mine who applied for a Position there.

Having been out of this business for long, I was wondering how to go about it, when I recalled Soumendu's punch line:

rastein bahut hain padh tum gulmarg se hi jana !

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