- Varun N. Achar said...
-
Dear Prof. Sastry-gaaru,
In the course of my (ongoing) reading of Vyaasa's wonderful Bhaarata, I am now come to the part where a sage named Brhadasva narrates to the Paandavas in exile (minus Arjuna, who is busy sporting with his father in Amaraavati!) the pathetic tale of Nala and Damayanti.
Two sections in this narration were eerily reminiscent of Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Although the stories are quite different, there is one short episode in Damayanti's (mis)adventure strikingly similar to the mariner's. You know how the crew hails the mariner's deed in a time of good fortune but curses the same when plunged into misfortune?
Similarly, Damayanti runs into a caravan of merchants, whose first words to her are: "O blessed one, who art thou, and whose? What seekest thou in woods? Seeing thee here we have been terrified. Art thou human? Tell us truly, O blessed one if thou art the goddess of this wood or of this mountain or of the points of the heaven. We seek thy protection. Art thou a female Yaksha, or a female Rakshasa, or a celestial damsel? O thou of faultless features, do thou bless us wholly and protect us. And, O blessed one, do thou so act that this caravan may soon go hence in prosperity and that the welfare of all of us may be secured."
- By and by, the caravan, now housing Damayanti as a refugee, suffer a stroke of ill luck in the form of an elephant stampede. At this, some of the traders begin to resent Damayanti, saying: "That maniac-like woman who came amongst this mighty caravan in guise that was strange and scarcely human, alas, it is by her that this dreadful illusion had been pre-arranged. Of a certainty, she is a terrible Rakshasa or a Yaksha or a Pisacha woman. All this evil is her work, what need of doubts? If we again see that wicked destroyer of merchants, that giver of innumerable woes, we shall certainly slay that injurer of ours, with stones, and dust, and grass, and wood, and cuffs."
- Just found this mildly fascinating, and wanted to share it with you and your readers.
- Best regards,
- Varun
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Varun's Take
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Wikiflicks
=========================================================
This morning I had a surprise phone call from an unknown landline number of KGP.
It turned out to be Professor B K Mathur, Dean (Planning), IIT KGP.
It felt great to hear his voice...we have known each other for 30 years at Phy Dept at KGP. Both of us were fixtures in the 4th Year Lab, where I was largely a Guest Artist and he the innovator. He was responsible for setting up most of the Electronic Experiments and upgrading them constantly. I am most indebted to him for suggesting the Text Books by Malvino that revolutionized Electronics Teaching. We also collaborated in writing up one Note in AJP.
Prof BKM said that he is now in-charge of compiling write-ups for the Commemoratory Volume for the upcoming Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.
And he started saying that he is asked to collect brief write-ups on 'Eminent Teachers of IIT KGP' (does it ring a bell?).
I was almost on the point of demurring like Eddington and asking: "Who is the third?" {;-}
However he said SDM is a good candidate and could I supply a brief write-up on SDM (he had seen SDM...perhaps the only surviving soul among the Faculty of KGP to do so).
I then told him that Saswat, Aniket & Co have recently launched a Wiki-Article on SDM.
He felt happy that his job is now reduced to copy-paste.
And I was relieved, like RKN, that I don't have to write a 'few' words on SDM after writing thousands of them:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/03/precise-precis.html
************************************************************************************************************
Talking of Bizarre Coincidences:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/03/bizarre-coincidences.html
here is the most bizarre that happened yesterday and remains an unsolved puzzle worth Sherlock Holmes or even his dada.
My wife's Airtel mobile phone rang and when she picked it up, a female voice asked: "Is it Prabhakara Sastry?"
My wife passed on her phone to me and the excited female said: "Hullo! You have forgotten your cell phone here".
On pressing for details she said that she is Mrs Madhav Rao and that I can pick up my phone from her residence on my return trip from the Spectacle Shop.
And I could only say that it seemed a wrong call and that my cell phone is very much with me, I am innocent of any Mrs Madhav Rao (my wife was getting curiouser and curiouser) and that I didn't need to change my spectacles (cataract can't be cured by a change of specs).
She put her phone down.
We were mystified: one can understand that Hyderbad (unlike IIT KGP) is replete with all sorts of Prabhakara Sastrys, but that this Mrs Madhav Rao's friend should have a phone number matching my wife's Airtel Number is unthinkable (aren't cell phone numbers unique?).
The only possibility is that that Prabhakara Sastry's phone number must be similar to my wife's, except for a digit or two which she punched wrongly and got me cold.
Say, what are the odds? Looks like it is spooky.
****************************************************************************************************
Reading the post Bizarre Coincidences, Aniket wrote:
"What are the chances of me running into you on the Calcutta Metro? Today, a gentleman with a close resemblance to you sat opposite to me on my way back home from work."
I had to reply:
"Fairly high. I have a commonplace face and was accosted by dozens of strangers: "Hey! How are you?" only to be met with a wan smile.
But a friend of mine in the Faculty Hostel in 1970, Priyabrata Ghoshdastidar, left KGP and when he stepped into my Qrs after 30 years he looked such a spitting image of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya that I was startled".
***************************************************************************************
And Varun wrote:
"Oh god, the mistaken look: happens much too often with me".
*****************************************************************************
In my third year Degree at AU, Waltair, a few of us appeared for Interview for the coveted BARC Training School Pre-Selection with a whopping Scholarship of Rs 100 a month. The Principal was one of the Selection Committee Members (ex-officio).
As I was in dire need of money (as ever), I met our Principal the next day in his Office with great trepidation asking if I was selected.
He beamed and said: "Yes, yes"
And a moment later: "Are you not Kameswara Rao?"
*****************************************************************************************************
Iron Curtain days of USSR: Midnight:
This chap was woken up by the hefty regulation boots of the dreaded KGB kicking his front door...(that got typed as KGP)...
He opens with his heart in his throat and peers.
"Dobrovskey?"
"Upstairs...upstairs"
==========================================================
This morning I had a surprise phone call from an unknown landline number of KGP.
It turned out to be Professor B K Mathur, Dean (Planning), IIT KGP.
It felt great to hear his voice...we have known each other for 30 years at Phy Dept at KGP. Both of us were fixtures in the 4th Year Lab, where I was largely a Guest Artist and he the innovator. He was responsible for setting up most of the Electronic Experiments and upgrading them constantly. I am most indebted to him for suggesting the Text Books by Malvino that revolutionized Electronics Teaching. We also collaborated in writing up one Note in AJP.
Prof BKM said that he is now in-charge of compiling write-ups for the Commemoratory Volume for the upcoming Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.
And he started saying that he is asked to collect brief write-ups on 'Eminent Teachers of IIT KGP' (does it ring a bell?).
I was almost on the point of demurring like Eddington and asking: "Who is the third?" {;-}
However he said SDM is a good candidate and could I supply a brief write-up on SDM (he had seen SDM...perhaps the only surviving soul among the Faculty of KGP to do so).
I then told him that Saswat, Aniket & Co have recently launched a Wiki-Article on SDM.
He felt happy that his job is now reduced to copy-paste.
And I was relieved, like RKN, that I don't have to write a 'few' words on SDM after writing thousands of them:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/03/precise-precis.html
************************************************************************************************************
Talking of Bizarre Coincidences:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/03/bizarre-coincidences.html
here is the most bizarre that happened yesterday and remains an unsolved puzzle worth Sherlock Holmes or even his dada.
My wife's Airtel mobile phone rang and when she picked it up, a female voice asked: "Is it Prabhakara Sastry?"
My wife passed on her phone to me and the excited female said: "Hullo! You have forgotten your cell phone here".
On pressing for details she said that she is Mrs Madhav Rao and that I can pick up my phone from her residence on my return trip from the Spectacle Shop.
And I could only say that it seemed a wrong call and that my cell phone is very much with me, I am innocent of any Mrs Madhav Rao (my wife was getting curiouser and curiouser) and that I didn't need to change my spectacles (cataract can't be cured by a change of specs).
She put her phone down.
We were mystified: one can understand that Hyderbad (unlike IIT KGP) is replete with all sorts of Prabhakara Sastrys, but that this Mrs Madhav Rao's friend should have a phone number matching my wife's Airtel Number is unthinkable (aren't cell phone numbers unique?).
The only possibility is that that Prabhakara Sastry's phone number must be similar to my wife's, except for a digit or two which she punched wrongly and got me cold.
Say, what are the odds? Looks like it is spooky.
****************************************************************************************************
Reading the post Bizarre Coincidences, Aniket wrote:
"What are the chances of me running into you on the Calcutta Metro? Today, a gentleman with a close resemblance to you sat opposite to me on my way back home from work."
I had to reply:
"Fairly high. I have a commonplace face and was accosted by dozens of strangers: "Hey! How are you?" only to be met with a wan smile.
But a friend of mine in the Faculty Hostel in 1970, Priyabrata Ghoshdastidar, left KGP and when he stepped into my Qrs after 30 years he looked such a spitting image of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya that I was startled".
***************************************************************************************
And Varun wrote:
"Oh god, the mistaken look: happens much too often with me".
*****************************************************************************
In my third year Degree at AU, Waltair, a few of us appeared for Interview for the coveted BARC Training School Pre-Selection with a whopping Scholarship of Rs 100 a month. The Principal was one of the Selection Committee Members (ex-officio).
As I was in dire need of money (as ever), I met our Principal the next day in his Office with great trepidation asking if I was selected.
He beamed and said: "Yes, yes"
And a moment later: "Are you not Kameswara Rao?"
*****************************************************************************************************
Last Laugh
Iron Curtain days of USSR: Midnight:
This chap was woken up by the hefty regulation boots of the dreaded KGB kicking his front door...(that got typed as KGP)...
He opens with his heart in his throat and peers.
"Dobrovskey?"
"Upstairs...upstairs"
==========================================================
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Games Old Men Play
===========================================================
Here is a game I often play...typically:
Ask anyone who has seen him and they will agree with my boast that my son is a handsome youth @ 30...he inherited his glowing fair skin from his mom, good height (almost 6') from his paternal ancestors, and his toothy smile from his gran'pa.
On the other hand I inherited my puny physique from my maternal side. At 68 I am dark, average height, grumpy and gray-haired (whatever is left of it).
This noon when our local Supermarket was devoid of customers, we both went in for some shopping and, after entering, we split, he with his basket and I for my Sprite.
Fetching my bottle and sipping it I moved over to the cash counter manned by a short dour girl of around 20 and started chatting her up: about the heat and dust of Hyderabad, the unavailability of Knorr Thick Tomato Soup, poor quality of beans and in general bitching...
She was obviously sullen and unresponsive, saying 'ya' or 'ok' or just nodding her unwilling head about various axes...
Suddenly her face brightened, an inviting glow replacing the bored gloom, and shaking me off as it were.
I knew at once that my son has finished his shopping and was standing behind me with his basket full of goodies.
And I recalled with pleasure our Autocrat's lines:
Here is a game I often play...typically:
Ask anyone who has seen him and they will agree with my boast that my son is a handsome youth @ 30...he inherited his glowing fair skin from his mom, good height (almost 6') from his paternal ancestors, and his toothy smile from his gran'pa.
On the other hand I inherited my puny physique from my maternal side. At 68 I am dark, average height, grumpy and gray-haired (whatever is left of it).
This noon when our local Supermarket was devoid of customers, we both went in for some shopping and, after entering, we split, he with his basket and I for my Sprite.
Fetching my bottle and sipping it I moved over to the cash counter manned by a short dour girl of around 20 and started chatting her up: about the heat and dust of Hyderabad, the unavailability of Knorr Thick Tomato Soup, poor quality of beans and in general bitching...
She was obviously sullen and unresponsive, saying 'ya' or 'ok' or just nodding her unwilling head about various axes...
Suddenly her face brightened, an inviting glow replacing the bored gloom, and shaking me off as it were.
I knew at once that my son has finished his shopping and was standing behind me with his basket full of goodies.
And I recalled with pleasure our Autocrat's lines:
Sweet was her smile, --- not for me;
Alas when woman looks too kind,
Just turn your foolish head and see, ---
Some youth is walking close behind!
===========================================================
Alas when woman looks too kind,
Just turn your foolish head and see, ---
Some youth is walking close behind!
Friday, March 25, 2011
Prayer of Ancient Mariner
Prayer
| The self-same moment I could pray; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea.
|
| Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole! To Mary Queen the praise be given! She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, That slid into my soul. | |
|
|
|
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
...........Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Acta Mechanica
=======================================================
All my childhood ambitions were petty and mechanical...I achieved all of them save one.
None artistic, intellectual or literary.
For instance I never tried singing, dancing, drawing, painting, writing, discussing or debating.
As for modern art, I always thought it was an elaborate exercise in conning...to me all those cubism, primitivism, surrealism and stuff sounded like vegetarianism or hinduism if not 'organ'ism. My friend Edwin Taylor was an inveterate museum-hopper and used to take his annual holiday in Europe...no wonder the benign Autocrat said 150 years ago: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris" (he did his Degrees in Medicine in Paris and so ought to know).
As for music, I am the Personification of RKN's Non-Musical Man, one of his best prose pieces in Next Sunday. I tried sitting in Classical Music Concerts, both Carnatic and Hindusthani (to say nothing of Rabindra Sangeet or Beethoven Symphonies); and my attention span was at best 5 long minutes...and then I scamper to Harry's cement bench for a leisurely session of woolgathering. Give me some light classical filmy music of Manna Dey or the baritone of Hemanta-da (there is no escape from Bongs wherever you go) and I am pleased as punch.
****************************************************************************************************
The earliest ambition of mine was to drive a thin steel wheel of about a meter diameter with a steel 'hooked guide' along the streets of my seaside village Muthukur. I borrowed one from my friend and 'did' it in 5 minutes without training.
My father could fling my spinning top (latthoo) in the air and catch it on his palm...that took a couple of days.
Yo-yo came much later and I had to spend days and nights mastering it.
After I left my village to a proper town I begged one of my friends to teach me how to ride his 24" heavy push-bike when my leg- height was much less than that; and he demonstrated what he called charmingly: "half-pedal" (instead of sitting on the seat which was too high, he inserted his right leg within the frame and drove away in a half-standing posture). It took 2 days and 20 tumbles and 30 bruises, but I just DID it...as that T-shirt slogan said.
Starting a leg-driven sewing machine took 2 years in Jaansaheb's dukan much to my profound regret later on when I broke his precious bobbin and had to embark on a futile life-long career in teaching ....
Much later I learned to drive my friend NP's Bajaj Chetak and then Maruti 800 after much fretting and fuming...the damned clutch is a negative device...to put the vehicle in motion you have to 'let it out' slowly instead of 'pushing it' slowly, I don't know why...I can only be thankful that the throttle is not designed like the clutch {;-}
Meanwhile I mastered the craft of soldering electronic components at my University on my own...our Demonstrator was damn good at it but he never let out the technique...yes, there is a technique! Many of my older students in my 4th Year Lab recall their frustration when they came to me with their 'data' for signature and I used to go to their Table, pull out all their soldered components one by one with a mere flick of the finger and they had to admit that their data was 'pressure-cooked'. Unlike my Demon-strator at AU, I used to teach them the 'right' way but they couldn't care less because they were sure that Cosmology or String theory didn't need soldering...just 'pressure-cooking' {;-}
****************************************************************************************************
The lamentable exception was 'swimming'.
One evening when I was a kid of 3, I was standing by the side of a half-filled cement water tank and slowly by and by started trying to reach the water by bending over the wall of the tank which was half my height...and took a fearsome tumble with head dipping in water and legs dangling skywards. Some uncle of mine retrieved me, much to my shame and chagrin...I mean the retrieval...it was touch and go.
Since then I had a healthy fear of water and was convinced that I am not a mildly amphibious animal like a dog or a goat.
But the ambition persisted since all my friends were merrily swimming in the village pond and showed off several of their tricks like effortlessly standing in 20 feet of water without drowning.
So, when I was a good 12 years old I begged a senior of mine to teach me swimming. He took me to the village pond, both of us walking in till I was neck-deep, and suddenly he thrust my head into the water and refused to let go, saying that this was his first Lesson. I hit him here and there with my legs and feet till he let go; and ran like a bat out of Hell to my home stark naked and as wet as an angry hen.
I suppose this unfulfilled ambition of mine will make me come back here on Earth pretty soon after I get my ticket and visa to the Great Teachers Heaven....I mean I learned then and there from my swimming 'lesson' that dipping a student's head in deep waters all of a sudden will only make him flee Physics as a career...and switch over to Banking and Finance which work on a similar principle applied to 'customers'.
Not so Landau.
The great teacher that he was, I am told he used to shove his graduate students into the whirlpool of Theoretical Physics by giving them a Problem each and asking them to come up with the Solution in 24 hours...much like SDM...the survivors stick around and the rest go to Civil Engineering...
========================================================
All my childhood ambitions were petty and mechanical...I achieved all of them save one.
None artistic, intellectual or literary.
For instance I never tried singing, dancing, drawing, painting, writing, discussing or debating.
As for modern art, I always thought it was an elaborate exercise in conning...to me all those cubism, primitivism, surrealism and stuff sounded like vegetarianism or hinduism if not 'organ'ism. My friend Edwin Taylor was an inveterate museum-hopper and used to take his annual holiday in Europe...no wonder the benign Autocrat said 150 years ago: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris" (he did his Degrees in Medicine in Paris and so ought to know).
As for music, I am the Personification of RKN's Non-Musical Man, one of his best prose pieces in Next Sunday. I tried sitting in Classical Music Concerts, both Carnatic and Hindusthani (to say nothing of Rabindra Sangeet or Beethoven Symphonies); and my attention span was at best 5 long minutes...and then I scamper to Harry's cement bench for a leisurely session of woolgathering. Give me some light classical filmy music of Manna Dey or the baritone of Hemanta-da (there is no escape from Bongs wherever you go) and I am pleased as punch.
****************************************************************************************************
The earliest ambition of mine was to drive a thin steel wheel of about a meter diameter with a steel 'hooked guide' along the streets of my seaside village Muthukur. I borrowed one from my friend and 'did' it in 5 minutes without training.
My father could fling my spinning top (latthoo) in the air and catch it on his palm...that took a couple of days.
Yo-yo came much later and I had to spend days and nights mastering it.
After I left my village to a proper town I begged one of my friends to teach me how to ride his 24" heavy push-bike when my leg- height was much less than that; and he demonstrated what he called charmingly: "half-pedal" (instead of sitting on the seat which was too high, he inserted his right leg within the frame and drove away in a half-standing posture). It took 2 days and 20 tumbles and 30 bruises, but I just DID it...as that T-shirt slogan said.
Starting a leg-driven sewing machine took 2 years in Jaansaheb's dukan much to my profound regret later on when I broke his precious bobbin and had to embark on a futile life-long career in teaching ....
Much later I learned to drive my friend NP's Bajaj Chetak and then Maruti 800 after much fretting and fuming...the damned clutch is a negative device...to put the vehicle in motion you have to 'let it out' slowly instead of 'pushing it' slowly, I don't know why...I can only be thankful that the throttle is not designed like the clutch {;-}
Meanwhile I mastered the craft of soldering electronic components at my University on my own...our Demonstrator was damn good at it but he never let out the technique...yes, there is a technique! Many of my older students in my 4th Year Lab recall their frustration when they came to me with their 'data' for signature and I used to go to their Table, pull out all their soldered components one by one with a mere flick of the finger and they had to admit that their data was 'pressure-cooked'. Unlike my Demon-strator at AU, I used to teach them the 'right' way but they couldn't care less because they were sure that Cosmology or String theory didn't need soldering...just 'pressure-cooking' {;-}
****************************************************************************************************
The lamentable exception was 'swimming'.
One evening when I was a kid of 3, I was standing by the side of a half-filled cement water tank and slowly by and by started trying to reach the water by bending over the wall of the tank which was half my height...and took a fearsome tumble with head dipping in water and legs dangling skywards. Some uncle of mine retrieved me, much to my shame and chagrin...I mean the retrieval...it was touch and go.
Since then I had a healthy fear of water and was convinced that I am not a mildly amphibious animal like a dog or a goat.
But the ambition persisted since all my friends were merrily swimming in the village pond and showed off several of their tricks like effortlessly standing in 20 feet of water without drowning.
So, when I was a good 12 years old I begged a senior of mine to teach me swimming. He took me to the village pond, both of us walking in till I was neck-deep, and suddenly he thrust my head into the water and refused to let go, saying that this was his first Lesson. I hit him here and there with my legs and feet till he let go; and ran like a bat out of Hell to my home stark naked and as wet as an angry hen.
I suppose this unfulfilled ambition of mine will make me come back here on Earth pretty soon after I get my ticket and visa to the Great Teachers Heaven....I mean I learned then and there from my swimming 'lesson' that dipping a student's head in deep waters all of a sudden will only make him flee Physics as a career...and switch over to Banking and Finance which work on a similar principle applied to 'customers'.
Not so Landau.
The great teacher that he was, I am told he used to shove his graduate students into the whirlpool of Theoretical Physics by giving them a Problem each and asking them to come up with the Solution in 24 hours...much like SDM...the survivors stick around and the rest go to Civil Engineering...
========================================================
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Precise Pre'cis
=============================================================
The other day Supratim sent me this wonderful Pascal Quote:
"I apologize for writing such a long letter but I didn't have time to write you a short one"
How true!
My Guru SDM used to take days to write Abstracts of his Papers: polishing them, burnishing them and chiseling them, while the body of the paper itself had an inevitable natural flow that didn't take much effort or time.
Sculpture is said to be a Negative Art....take a stone and just chisel away the unwanted parts!
Likewise pre'cis writing is a negative enterprise.
My most-cited Paper in AJP which that wordsmith Edwin Taylor termed: Flickering Bulb Paradox took an entire decade to formulate. Once formulated, the calculation took a couple of hours, the writing of the Body of the Paper took a day, but the Abstract took a week.
Now that I have posted about 500 Pieces on my blogspot, I think I can talk about the technology involved in the daily blogging of Light Pieces.
Unlike a seriously thought-out dissertation that has a logical sequence carrying the author and reader along, a light easy-to-read Piece is tough to write.
To keep the reader interest alive despite lack of a coherent story line or a logical sequence, one has to take recourse to mild verbal or syntactic surprises in every third sentence.
And elaborate on trivia while inserting quietly a semi-serious notion.
And humor is a tricky business. If one is not crafty and careful, he is likely to step on the corns of someone or the other: quite an embarrassingly painful situation.
And of course reader-time is of the essence and whatever one writes in a light vein has to be a precise pre'cis.
=============================================================
The other day Supratim sent me this wonderful Pascal Quote:
"I apologize for writing such a long letter but I didn't have time to write you a short one"
How true!
My Guru SDM used to take days to write Abstracts of his Papers: polishing them, burnishing them and chiseling them, while the body of the paper itself had an inevitable natural flow that didn't take much effort or time.
Sculpture is said to be a Negative Art....take a stone and just chisel away the unwanted parts!
Likewise pre'cis writing is a negative enterprise.
My most-cited Paper in AJP which that wordsmith Edwin Taylor termed: Flickering Bulb Paradox took an entire decade to formulate. Once formulated, the calculation took a couple of hours, the writing of the Body of the Paper took a day, but the Abstract took a week.
Now that I have posted about 500 Pieces on my blogspot, I think I can talk about the technology involved in the daily blogging of Light Pieces.
Unlike a seriously thought-out dissertation that has a logical sequence carrying the author and reader along, a light easy-to-read Piece is tough to write.
To keep the reader interest alive despite lack of a coherent story line or a logical sequence, one has to take recourse to mild verbal or syntactic surprises in every third sentence.
And elaborate on trivia while inserting quietly a semi-serious notion.
And humor is a tricky business. If one is not crafty and careful, he is likely to step on the corns of someone or the other: quite an embarrassingly painful situation.
And of course reader-time is of the essence and whatever one writes in a light vein has to be a precise pre'cis.
=============================================================
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Wedding-Guest
==============================================================
Just back from a Wedding Feast.
Whenever I attend a wedding as a guest I recall the enchanting opening and closing lines of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the longest and most remarkable poem by Coleridge:
***********************************************************************************************
A few years before my retirement, a young and brand-new Faculty Member called Pratik by everyone entered my Fourth Year Lab.....'my' because I was promoted to a brand-new Position called Lifetime Guide & Adviser of the said lab for reasons that are as amusing as the naughtiest boy in the School being promoted as School Pupil Leader.
As soon as he sat down in the chair opposite and radiated his trademark smile I knew like the hoary hairy Ancient Mariner: "That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me".
I continued to harangue him for an entire semester.
This never happened before except with my students.
Apparently the feeling was mutual: He wrote in his Foreword to the latest Ishani booklet that the moment he saw me he knew that here is the ultimate nut.
But it is not strictly reciprocal...he did hear a lot about me from my students who migrated to Bhubaneswar...while I never heard of him before seeing him.
Altogether, the advantage was mine because, if you hear earlier about someone, you are already biased and your judgment will not be objective...you find the man either above or below your preconceived mental picture...like Reading & Seeing or Seeing & Looking, we have Hearing & Seeing.
So, by and by I seem to have told him that I am like that Ancient Mariner and asked him to read that poem.
He went home, picked up the text from his vast Home Library and started reading it. And when the storm scene came in the poem, there was a huge Nor'wester at KGP and the lights blew off...Bizarre Coincidences happen to Pratik alright.
Reverting to Hearing & Seeing, students are under a similar disadvantage because they get to hear from their seniors lots of stories about their nutty teachers and form a false opinion and have to painfully readjust when they See the chap in their classroom.
Indra wrote that he was told I was a grumpy chap (and perhaps a student of Feynman to boot) and so avoided me till he got to see me in their classroom. And had to reverse his opinion within 'five minutes', as he boasted. I asked how come and he said that IIT students are very smart and at once grade their teachers by their body language and comfort level in the Classroom.
I am sure he is flattering himself; for, I generally take an entire class hour to grade 'who is who' among the students in my very First Lecture Class if the strength of the class is 20 or less, and as many as two class hours if it is a Jumbo Class of 350 or more {;-}
===============================================================
Just back from a Wedding Feast.
Whenever I attend a wedding as a guest I recall the enchanting opening and closing lines of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the longest and most remarkable poem by Coleridge:
***********************************************************************************************
- He holds him with his glittering eye--
- The Wedding-Guest stood still,
- And listens like a three years' child:
- The Mariner hath his will.
- The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
- He cannot choose but hear;
- And thus spake on that ancient man,
- The bright-eyed Mariner.
- I pass, like night, from land to land;
- I have strange power of speech;
- That moment that his face I see,
- I know the man that must hear me:
- To him my tale I teach.
A few years before my retirement, a young and brand-new Faculty Member called Pratik by everyone entered my Fourth Year Lab.....'my' because I was promoted to a brand-new Position called Lifetime Guide & Adviser of the said lab for reasons that are as amusing as the naughtiest boy in the School being promoted as School Pupil Leader.
As soon as he sat down in the chair opposite and radiated his trademark smile I knew like the hoary hairy Ancient Mariner: "That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me".
I continued to harangue him for an entire semester.
This never happened before except with my students.
Apparently the feeling was mutual: He wrote in his Foreword to the latest Ishani booklet that the moment he saw me he knew that here is the ultimate nut.
But it is not strictly reciprocal...he did hear a lot about me from my students who migrated to Bhubaneswar...while I never heard of him before seeing him.
Altogether, the advantage was mine because, if you hear earlier about someone, you are already biased and your judgment will not be objective...you find the man either above or below your preconceived mental picture...like Reading & Seeing or Seeing & Looking, we have Hearing & Seeing.
So, by and by I seem to have told him that I am like that Ancient Mariner and asked him to read that poem.
He went home, picked up the text from his vast Home Library and started reading it. And when the storm scene came in the poem, there was a huge Nor'wester at KGP and the lights blew off...Bizarre Coincidences happen to Pratik alright.
Reverting to Hearing & Seeing, students are under a similar disadvantage because they get to hear from their seniors lots of stories about their nutty teachers and form a false opinion and have to painfully readjust when they See the chap in their classroom.
Indra wrote that he was told I was a grumpy chap (and perhaps a student of Feynman to boot) and so avoided me till he got to see me in their classroom. And had to reverse his opinion within 'five minutes', as he boasted. I asked how come and he said that IIT students are very smart and at once grade their teachers by their body language and comfort level in the Classroom.
I am sure he is flattering himself; for, I generally take an entire class hour to grade 'who is who' among the students in my very First Lecture Class if the strength of the class is 20 or less, and as many as two class hours if it is a Jumbo Class of 350 or more {;-}
===============================================================
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Milky Ways - 3
============================================================== 
Milk during our times was whole and full of fat (cream). It is doubtless tasty but it tends to form a sticky layer that adheres to the vessel. We had shiny bronze vessels, and removing the sticky layer and cleaning the vessel using powdered brick and coconut fiber was a Herculean task.
It took a decade for stainless steel and another decade for Vim and yet another decade for cooking gas and refrigerators to appear in our village markets and solve all Milky Way problems.
Vim I guess is predominantly, if not exclusively, just washing soda, i.e. Sodium Carbonate.
The industrial production of washing soda (soda ash) was revolutionized by Ernest Solvay who couldn't go to the University because of pleurisy (he could spell it though unlike that pneumonia, p silent like in Psmith). His trick was to use ammonia as a facilitator to combine brine from sea water and limestone from quarries; but for pleurisy he would just have been yet another Chemistry Prof.
But his love of Physics and Chemistry was undying and after making his billions he instituted triennial Solvay Conferences.
The first one in 1911 and the fifth in 1927 were hugely successful and famous.
Have your fill to your heart's content by clicking on the nostalgic group photos here:
=========================================================
Friday, March 20, 2009
Proof of Rebirth Theory
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Composed after watching Laloo Prasad Yadavjee teaching journalists how to milk a buffalo:
*****************************************************************************************************
Anyone who thinks that milking a buffalo is child's play is an innocent ignoramous city-slicker.
In my early teens my friend in our village invited me to try my hand at it, with regrettable consequences. First the buffalo doesn't like a stranger fiddling with her private parts. Next, she can guess that the chap who has been smuggled between her hind legs is a novice and so would be in a playful mood. Next you will soon come to know that it is not the force or torque that yield results but 'technique'. And if you make a nuisance of yourself you will be kicked left and right.
So, a Laloo born to cattle is needed as your teacher. And you can take your revenge on him by asking him to try his hand at Java.
******************************************************************************************************
The Indo-Gangetic plains comprising Bihar, UP, Punjab and Haryana (the cow and buffalo belt) are special. Folks who are born there can really get addicted to milk and perhaps get a high on it.
In my Interview for the glamorous Post of Associate Lecturer at IIT KGP in 1965 that changed the course of many lives with deplorable consequences as Amalendu put it {;-}, there was this Senior Professor of Architecture Dr V N Prasad acting as DD. He was from the heartland of Bihar. And in his Qrs he had a fleet of buffaloes, much against the Conduct Rules that are thrown at lesser mortals.
When asked, he would say that the wealth of a Bihari is judged by the number of milch-cattle in his farm; and that was it. Not that he and his small family needed that many liters of milk; no! Mrs Prasad deemed it her privilege to 'supply' good and wholesome milk to the residents of that desolate campus in Bengal which is notorious for splitting milk as proudly as splitting atoms in such huge quantities that her children suffer milk-deprived malnutrition (they more than make it up with hilsa though, which is unthinkable in Bihar).
When he was promoted to the top position of Director, we thought he would now give up milk-supply. No, Mrs D used to take the short-cut through the bushland and weak fences to herself supply pots of milk to the kitchen of our Faculty Hostel (you will please note in that sentence that though I can split neither milk nor atoms I revel in splitting infinitives with as much elan as splitting hairs).
***************************************************************************************************
MSS (who taught me UG Physics at KGP) never completed his Ph D because he took umbrage at the type of Experimental Physics that went on during his times; and he was too old to join SDM who alone could have satisfied his rigor mortis.
So, he was denied all promotions but he didn't care tuppence and was happy to read and teach Physics. But there comes a time in a closed campus when ultimately family pressure from the wife and kids begin to get on one's nerves.
So, one day MSS declared to his wife that he would give her so much money that she wouldn't know what to do with it; and started JEE Coaching in his Qrs (again forbidden by the 52 Conduct Rules that we were supposed to have read but never did).
Within a year he had to hold four or five sections each day since he couldn't refuse any Campus Professor's wife who would approach Mrs MSS to plead with her husband to oblige.
And when I went to draw my meager salary from SBI every month without fail, my friend behind the Cash Counter used to ask me to request MSS to appear before his window once in a while...
After buying gold for his wife and 3 cute daughters till they said: "Enough is Enough!", MSS said it was time for him to fulfill his lifelong ambition to have a cattle shed surfeit with milch-buffaloes...and MSS was also into Teachers Special alongside milk...killing two buffaloes with one stone...
*********************************************************************************************************
The biggest trouble with milk in our childhood was that it had to be boiled (some of my classmates used to boast that they sucked it raw from the teats of their cows but I don't believe them...although child Krishna did it to kill the demoness Putana sent by his fond Kangsa Uncle).
Composed after watching Laloo Prasad Yadavjee teaching journalists how to milk a buffalo:
Take a look at Laloo
Photo-milking his buffaloo;
So much wit and grist!
Could anyone hope to get
And beget it at one GO?
Photo-milking his buffaloo;
So much wit and grist!
Could anyone hope to get
And beget it at one GO?
*****************************************************************************************************
Anyone who thinks that milking a buffalo is child's play is an innocent ignoramous city-slicker.
In my early teens my friend in our village invited me to try my hand at it, with regrettable consequences. First the buffalo doesn't like a stranger fiddling with her private parts. Next, she can guess that the chap who has been smuggled between her hind legs is a novice and so would be in a playful mood. Next you will soon come to know that it is not the force or torque that yield results but 'technique'. And if you make a nuisance of yourself you will be kicked left and right.
So, a Laloo born to cattle is needed as your teacher. And you can take your revenge on him by asking him to try his hand at Java.
******************************************************************************************************
The Indo-Gangetic plains comprising Bihar, UP, Punjab and Haryana (the cow and buffalo belt) are special. Folks who are born there can really get addicted to milk and perhaps get a high on it.
In my Interview for the glamorous Post of Associate Lecturer at IIT KGP in 1965 that changed the course of many lives with deplorable consequences as Amalendu put it {;-}, there was this Senior Professor of Architecture Dr V N Prasad acting as DD. He was from the heartland of Bihar. And in his Qrs he had a fleet of buffaloes, much against the Conduct Rules that are thrown at lesser mortals.
When asked, he would say that the wealth of a Bihari is judged by the number of milch-cattle in his farm; and that was it. Not that he and his small family needed that many liters of milk; no! Mrs Prasad deemed it her privilege to 'supply' good and wholesome milk to the residents of that desolate campus in Bengal which is notorious for splitting milk as proudly as splitting atoms in such huge quantities that her children suffer milk-deprived malnutrition (they more than make it up with hilsa though, which is unthinkable in Bihar).
When he was promoted to the top position of Director, we thought he would now give up milk-supply. No, Mrs D used to take the short-cut through the bushland and weak fences to herself supply pots of milk to the kitchen of our Faculty Hostel (you will please note in that sentence that though I can split neither milk nor atoms I revel in splitting infinitives with as much elan as splitting hairs).
***************************************************************************************************
MSS (who taught me UG Physics at KGP) never completed his Ph D because he took umbrage at the type of Experimental Physics that went on during his times; and he was too old to join SDM who alone could have satisfied his rigor mortis.
So, he was denied all promotions but he didn't care tuppence and was happy to read and teach Physics. But there comes a time in a closed campus when ultimately family pressure from the wife and kids begin to get on one's nerves.
So, one day MSS declared to his wife that he would give her so much money that she wouldn't know what to do with it; and started JEE Coaching in his Qrs (again forbidden by the 52 Conduct Rules that we were supposed to have read but never did).
Within a year he had to hold four or five sections each day since he couldn't refuse any Campus Professor's wife who would approach Mrs MSS to plead with her husband to oblige.
And when I went to draw my meager salary from SBI every month without fail, my friend behind the Cash Counter used to ask me to request MSS to appear before his window once in a while...
After buying gold for his wife and 3 cute daughters till they said: "Enough is Enough!", MSS said it was time for him to fulfill his lifelong ambition to have a cattle shed surfeit with milch-buffaloes...and MSS was also into Teachers Special alongside milk...killing two buffaloes with one stone...
*********************************************************************************************************
The biggest trouble with milk in our childhood was that it had to be boiled (some of my classmates used to boast that they sucked it raw from the teats of their cows but I don't believe them...although child Krishna did it to kill the demoness Putana sent by his fond Kangsa Uncle).
Milk during our times was whole and full of fat (cream). It is doubtless tasty but it tends to form a sticky layer that adheres to the vessel. We had shiny bronze vessels, and removing the sticky layer and cleaning the vessel using powdered brick and coconut fiber was a Herculean task.
It took a decade for stainless steel and another decade for Vim and yet another decade for cooking gas and refrigerators to appear in our village markets and solve all Milky Way problems.
Vim I guess is predominantly, if not exclusively, just washing soda, i.e. Sodium Carbonate.
The industrial production of washing soda (soda ash) was revolutionized by Ernest Solvay who couldn't go to the University because of pleurisy (he could spell it though unlike that pneumonia, p silent like in Psmith). His trick was to use ammonia as a facilitator to combine brine from sea water and limestone from quarries; but for pleurisy he would just have been yet another Chemistry Prof.
But his love of Physics and Chemistry was undying and after making his billions he instituted triennial Solvay Conferences.
The first one in 1911 and the fifth in 1927 were hugely successful and famous.
Have your fill to your heart's content by clicking on the nostalgic group photos here:
=========================================================
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Milky Ways - 2
==========================================================
Milk and I never agreed...we just nod when we meet and part grimly like Buddha-da and Mamata-di.
This is because the first among my many humiliations in my long life was due to an embarrassing encounter with milk at the tender age of 8.
We had an AP chulha in our village home. It was made of iron and shaped like a huge wine glass with a side-hole at its bottom for the draft of air entering from below and running upwards through its narrow neck which was covered by an iron grating to hold charcoal. It had a pair of cute ear-rings for lifting and carrying...with age it got deaf first on one side and then both sides and housewives had to improvise using hearing aids..
After loading the charcoal above the neck to its brim, it was lit up by placing old newspaper pieces or cloth soaked in kerosene and fanning.
Once the charcoal caught fire you had no control over it.
One morning my mother placed a bronze vessel half-filled with milk on her chulha, lit it and asked me to see that the boiling milk did not spill over and douse the fire (wet chulha with wet coal is a curse for housewives); and she went away on some other urgent household errand.
But she didn't tell me how.
So, I applied my Theoretical Physics brain (premonition) and whenever a film formed and surged upwards angrily I poured in a spoon or two of cold water to cool the damn thing.
By the time mom returned, the vessel was full to the brim with diluted unboiled milk.
She simply said (prophetically): "You will come to no good".
Since then I avoid facing boiling milk and run away round and round in circles like Montmorency around the hot tea-kettle whose spout he grabbed by his mouth, offended by its uppish nonchalance emitting steam with a hissing sound and lifting up its lid into a James Watt dance.
******************************************************************************************************
There are however two occasions when AP womenfolk deliberately let the boiling milk to overflow and douse the chulha (they too 'come to no good' by and large).
1. On the morning of Ratha Saptami
This comes in early Spring (in February or so) when the Sun-God (mercifully) starts retreating from His southward dip and not get lost down South bitterly.
To please and felicitate Him, a vessel full of fresh cow's milk {;-} is kept in the Sun on a chula till it boils over and douses the fire; and then the vessel is re- placed on the secret second chulha brought down from the attic.
Payas is made and offered to our Sun-God who is destined to forever ride on his chariot pulled by seven horses along his annual zodiacal tour, driven by Anur, a chap with no legs at all.
Some fancy stuff!
On the ground a mini-chariot is made of tender beans punctured by sharp broomsticks arranged in a lattice, and Sun-God is duly worshiped.
Another queer Ratha Saptami ritual is to fetch a number of broad jilledu leaves plucked from wayside bushes (when they are nipped they yield a milky juice...coincidentally) at dawn. Father used to strip and stand me, place two leaves one on each shoulder, two more on the outstretched palms, two on the feet, and one on my dumb head making 7 in all!). And place some rice mixed with haldi and kumkum on each leaf.
And pour buckets of water drawn from our well on my head. And chant the magic rhyme:
Milk and I never agreed...we just nod when we meet and part grimly like Buddha-da and Mamata-di.
This is because the first among my many humiliations in my long life was due to an embarrassing encounter with milk at the tender age of 8.
We had an AP chulha in our village home. It was made of iron and shaped like a huge wine glass with a side-hole at its bottom for the draft of air entering from below and running upwards through its narrow neck which was covered by an iron grating to hold charcoal. It had a pair of cute ear-rings for lifting and carrying...with age it got deaf first on one side and then both sides and housewives had to improvise using hearing aids..
After loading the charcoal above the neck to its brim, it was lit up by placing old newspaper pieces or cloth soaked in kerosene and fanning.
Once the charcoal caught fire you had no control over it.
One morning my mother placed a bronze vessel half-filled with milk on her chulha, lit it and asked me to see that the boiling milk did not spill over and douse the fire (wet chulha with wet coal is a curse for housewives); and she went away on some other urgent household errand.
But she didn't tell me how.
So, I applied my Theoretical Physics brain (premonition) and whenever a film formed and surged upwards angrily I poured in a spoon or two of cold water to cool the damn thing.
By the time mom returned, the vessel was full to the brim with diluted unboiled milk.
She simply said (prophetically): "You will come to no good".
Since then I avoid facing boiling milk and run away round and round in circles like Montmorency around the hot tea-kettle whose spout he grabbed by his mouth, offended by its uppish nonchalance emitting steam with a hissing sound and lifting up its lid into a James Watt dance.
******************************************************************************************************
There are however two occasions when AP womenfolk deliberately let the boiling milk to overflow and douse the chulha (they too 'come to no good' by and large).
1. On the morning of Ratha Saptami
This comes in early Spring (in February or so) when the Sun-God (mercifully) starts retreating from His southward dip and not get lost down South bitterly.
To please and felicitate Him, a vessel full of fresh cow's milk {;-} is kept in the Sun on a chula till it boils over and douses the fire; and then the vessel is re- placed on the secret second chulha brought down from the attic.
Payas is made and offered to our Sun-God who is destined to forever ride on his chariot pulled by seven horses along his annual zodiacal tour, driven by Anur, a chap with no legs at all.
Some fancy stuff!
On the ground a mini-chariot is made of tender beans punctured by sharp broomsticks arranged in a lattice, and Sun-God is duly worshiped.
Another queer Ratha Saptami ritual is to fetch a number of broad jilledu leaves plucked from wayside bushes (when they are nipped they yield a milky juice...coincidentally) at dawn. Father used to strip and stand me, place two leaves one on each shoulder, two more on the outstretched palms, two on the feet, and one on my dumb head making 7 in all!). And place some rice mixed with haldi and kumkum on each leaf.
And pour buckets of water drawn from our well on my head. And chant the magic rhyme:
Sapta Sapta mahasapta,
Saptadveepa vasundhara
Saptarkaparnamaadaya
Saptami! Ratha Saptami!
===========================================================
Saptadveepa vasundhara
Saptarkaparnamaadaya
Saptami! Ratha Saptami!
************************************************************************
2. House-Warming
When we shift home to a new one, the first thing our womenfolk do is to boil milk till it spills over their chulha in their new kitchen as a Sanctifier, and do Puja thereafter.
Some heathen custom...
We didn't have no chulha in our mod kitchen and had to borow one from our hospitable landlady recently.
*************************************************************************************************
Talking of shifting house, the only sweet fruit of bitter labor is that some long-lost relic of long years gone by surfaces from nowhere and carries you into stupid nostalgia.
Just now my son retrieved and gave me a file he has kept safe all of eight years.
When I turned 60 (anyone can do it with some luck), some students past and present and younger colleagues celebrated the august (I was born in August) occasion by compiling a few write-ups on their good-old gps.
Most of them read like fond Obits...they were in a hurry...
All of them were from Physics folks except one from the highly respected Professor and HoD of Mechanical Engineering, Amalendu Mukherjee.
It was a little latecomer and ran like this:
**************************************************************************************
Dear Sastry Garu:
Ever since I came in your time and space my life has not been the same. You taught me how to look at both life and science. You banished lots of murky fog and unshackled me from dwarfing chains of self-glorification. You taught me how to learn and unlearn. I came to you whenever I had problems in my life and in science and always wondered to whom do you go.......
When we shift home to a new one, the first thing our womenfolk do is to boil milk till it spills over their chulha in their new kitchen as a Sanctifier, and do Puja thereafter.
Some heathen custom...
We didn't have no chulha in our mod kitchen and had to borow one from our hospitable landlady recently.
*************************************************************************************************
Talking of shifting house, the only sweet fruit of bitter labor is that some long-lost relic of long years gone by surfaces from nowhere and carries you into stupid nostalgia.
Just now my son retrieved and gave me a file he has kept safe all of eight years.
When I turned 60 (anyone can do it with some luck), some students past and present and younger colleagues celebrated the august (I was born in August) occasion by compiling a few write-ups on their good-old gps.
Most of them read like fond Obits...they were in a hurry...
All of them were from Physics folks except one from the highly respected Professor and HoD of Mechanical Engineering, Amalendu Mukherjee.
It was a little latecomer and ran like this:
**************************************************************************************
Dear Sastry Garu:
Ever since I came in your time and space my life has not been the same. You taught me how to look at both life and science. You banished lots of murky fog and unshackled me from dwarfing chains of self-glorification. You taught me how to learn and unlearn. I came to you whenever I had problems in my life and in science and always wondered to whom do you go.......
Answer by gps:
To my psychiatrist Dr G. Prasada Rao
To my psychiatrist Dr G. Prasada Rao
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Milky Ways - 1
=======================================================================
In our seaside village in the early 1950s there was no power.
The entire village slept within an hour of sunset and woke up at dawn. Most of us slept in the open round the year except in the rainy months of November and December.
Our tiny house had a flat roof but no regular staircase. But there was an improvised one for the bold but not the beautiful...rungs of a makeshift ladder made up of rods jutting from the outer wall at intervals of two feet for armhold and holes in the brickwork in between for foothold.
Once we monkeyed up onto the roof it was like sitting in the midst of Birla Planetarium...under a glorious sky.
In summer months we saw the delightful Southern Cross (Crux), the constellation closest to the South Pole, just above the horizon. This was missing at KGP and the entire North India.
Milky Way was again a favorite companion.
I wonder why it is called Milky Way....it was more like the grainy sabudana payas.
*************************************************************************************************************
Anyway, this blog is not about the Milky Way in the splendid Heavens but about milk itself, cow's and buffalo's, and the waywardness thereof.
In our village those days, cows were driven to the three nukkads where they were milked in front of you. Buffaloes were a rarity. No longer now. Cows have been replaced by fat buffaloes which I suppose are more efficient and economical and ugly enough to epitomize Market Economy
At KGP there was this whimsy that cow's milk is good for the brain and the heart. So, Prof IKK who had poor health (due to chain-smoking) used to get it every morning from a gowala outside the Campus.
One morning the milkman was away and his chokra baccha was doing his dad's duty.
IKK was in a talkative mood and asked the 'son of a milkman' how many cows his father has.
"Gayya thodi hai hamara paas!; eh sab powderse bantha hai jo pappa har maina laathe hai Kolkaththa se aur haldi milathe hai"
****************************************************************************************************
My most miserable experience with milk at KGP was when I wanted to make coffee in my Room in our Faculty Hostel since I was a late riser and used to routinely miss the breakfast hour in our Mess.
In a fit of enthusiasm I bought a tin of Milkmaid condensed milk from the Tech Market along with other paraphernalia.
And tried to open its sealed top with a pen-knife and a screwdriver...the only tools I had at my disposal.
That futile attempt is best described by Jerome K Jerome when his Three Famous Men in that Boat tried to open their pineapple tin:
********************************************************************************************************
"...Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out.
While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup.
Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.
It was George's straw hat that saved his life that day. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter's evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time. Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.
After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it with the mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand. We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every form known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it.
Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it. There was one great dent across the top that had the appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the river, and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead...."
http://www.fullbooks.com/Three-Men-in-a-Boat-by-Jerome-K-Jerome3.html
*******************************************************************************************************
More milk tales tomorrow.......
=============================================================
In our seaside village in the early 1950s there was no power.
The entire village slept within an hour of sunset and woke up at dawn. Most of us slept in the open round the year except in the rainy months of November and December.
Our tiny house had a flat roof but no regular staircase. But there was an improvised one for the bold but not the beautiful...rungs of a makeshift ladder made up of rods jutting from the outer wall at intervals of two feet for armhold and holes in the brickwork in between for foothold.
Once we monkeyed up onto the roof it was like sitting in the midst of Birla Planetarium...under a glorious sky.
In summer months we saw the delightful Southern Cross (Crux), the constellation closest to the South Pole, just above the horizon. This was missing at KGP and the entire North India.
Milky Way was again a favorite companion.
I wonder why it is called Milky Way....it was more like the grainy sabudana payas.
*************************************************************************************************************
Anyway, this blog is not about the Milky Way in the splendid Heavens but about milk itself, cow's and buffalo's, and the waywardness thereof.
In our village those days, cows were driven to the three nukkads where they were milked in front of you. Buffaloes were a rarity. No longer now. Cows have been replaced by fat buffaloes which I suppose are more efficient and economical and ugly enough to epitomize Market Economy
At KGP there was this whimsy that cow's milk is good for the brain and the heart. So, Prof IKK who had poor health (due to chain-smoking) used to get it every morning from a gowala outside the Campus.
One morning the milkman was away and his chokra baccha was doing his dad's duty.
IKK was in a talkative mood and asked the 'son of a milkman' how many cows his father has.
"Gayya thodi hai hamara paas!; eh sab powderse bantha hai jo pappa har maina laathe hai Kolkaththa se aur haldi milathe hai"
****************************************************************************************************
My most miserable experience with milk at KGP was when I wanted to make coffee in my Room in our Faculty Hostel since I was a late riser and used to routinely miss the breakfast hour in our Mess.
In a fit of enthusiasm I bought a tin of Milkmaid condensed milk from the Tech Market along with other paraphernalia.
And tried to open its sealed top with a pen-knife and a screwdriver...the only tools I had at my disposal.
That futile attempt is best described by Jerome K Jerome when his Three Famous Men in that Boat tried to open their pineapple tin:
********************************************************************************************************
"...Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out.
While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup.
Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.
It was George's straw hat that saved his life that day. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter's evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time. Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.
After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it with the mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand. We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every form known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it.
Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it. There was one great dent across the top that had the appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the river, and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead...."
http://www.fullbooks.com/Three-Men-in-a-Boat-by-Jerome-K-Jerome3.html
*******************************************************************************************************
More milk tales tomorrow.......
=============================================================
Monday, March 14, 2011
Bizarre Coincidences
========================================================
The other day I parked my Blue Maruti Car at the Parking Lot in front of Hyderabad Central Mall and went in for a pee & show-peek. As I returned and was trying to unlock the Driver's Door I noticed a young lady in the front seat reading a glossy magazine. Since I am nowadays always lost in blog-thought (the territory is vaguely familiar), I subconsciously glance at my Number Plate so I don't barge into one of the few wrong Blue Marutis here. So, I stopped short and in typical SDM style started wondering how and why this cute girl gatecrashed into my wife's Reserved Seat.
In half a minute a handsome young man rushed in, opened the front door and buzzed off.
As it whizzed past I noticed that its Number Plate proclaimed AP XX 2517 while my own Maruti waiting for me had AP XY 2517.
Say, what are the odds like?
*****************************************************************************************************
Sometime ago, Pratik wrote to me that he was watching intently the thriller movie, Where Eagles Dare one afternoon on his home PC. All of a sudden he felt like switching to my blogspot and it opened on the latest blog: Reading and Seeing, which talked about the same Movie.
Again, one afternoon he was thinking of buying: To Kill a Mocking Bird as a gift for his daughter and on opening my blogspot, found the post: to Kill a Shooing Elephant.
*******************************************************************************************************
One day when I was living as a Reluctant Bachelor in the Faculty Hostel of IIT KGP, my friendly neighborhood Postman stopped by and handed an envelope to me. The handwriting was unfamiliar and the envelope was unusually fat and I tore it open thinking it must be one of those Resume's that I often got from strangers seeking some impossible favor or the other.
The 10 page letter started with: My Beloved Darling or some such silly thing and I was curious, naturally. After reading a few juicy sentences I realized that it was from a newly wed wife to her husband; and then my false prudery stopped me from reading any further (such stuff was decidedly unhealthy for Residents of our Asylum).
On a re-look at the address on the envelope, I discovered that it is to some other G. Prabhakara Sastry @ IIT KGP; something I could never imagine because I always thought that IIT KGP must be surfeit with one bloody gps.
Upon discreet investigation, I was told that a new gps arrived (temporarily) at the Ag E Dept as an RS.
As you can see, I was caught in a Catch-22 predicament. That gps too would be able to deduce that there is just one more gps @ KGP.
What would you have done in my place with that Love Letter?
I did the same...
*****************************************************************************************************
My friend N living at the same asylum was far luckier than me and was once invited by the father a suitable bride at Vizagh to come and have a peek at his Offering (Bride-Seeing Ceremony...a la Delhi 6...masakali masakali).
As we both were going home for our Puja Vacations, my friend asked me to break my journey at Vizagh and accompany him to the bride-marketplace just for moral support (I am told that in Bihar suitable boys are kidnapped, bound hand and foot, and married off to their daughters, particularly if they are IAS Officers or Software Professionals...no such luck for M Sc Physics Failed Experimentalists in AP).
I was willing to be the watchdog and we checked into the Ooty Hotel, spruced ourselves up and entered the lioness's den, and were going through the rigorous Selection Committee Proceedings.
At the back of my mind I was hesitant to halt at Vizagh where I had done a 7-year stint a couple of years back as a student and then an RS....because I didn't want to be accosted by my ex-colleague Ms S for reasons too complicated to dwell on here. But I calculated that the odds of our chance-meeting in a city on a half-day halt were one in a million.
Lo and Behold...within half an hour of the start of our Interview Session, who should barge in but Ms S with her newly married hubby who happened to be a close relative of the bride!
Mr and Mrs S were insistent that we two should grace their home and do an auld lang syne session.
I made some weak excuse and chickened out.
**************************************************************************************************
Japan is the only country in history to be nuked and two of its cities razed to ground (zero).
And it turned pacifist willy-nilly (Supratim!).
How come it turns out to be involved in a nuclear disaster of first waters with all possible backups turned turtle?
=========================================================
The other day I parked my Blue Maruti Car at the Parking Lot in front of Hyderabad Central Mall and went in for a pee & show-peek. As I returned and was trying to unlock the Driver's Door I noticed a young lady in the front seat reading a glossy magazine. Since I am nowadays always lost in blog-thought (the territory is vaguely familiar), I subconsciously glance at my Number Plate so I don't barge into one of the few wrong Blue Marutis here. So, I stopped short and in typical SDM style started wondering how and why this cute girl gatecrashed into my wife's Reserved Seat.
In half a minute a handsome young man rushed in, opened the front door and buzzed off.
As it whizzed past I noticed that its Number Plate proclaimed AP XX 2517 while my own Maruti waiting for me had AP XY 2517.
Say, what are the odds like?
*****************************************************************************************************
Sometime ago, Pratik wrote to me that he was watching intently the thriller movie, Where Eagles Dare one afternoon on his home PC. All of a sudden he felt like switching to my blogspot and it opened on the latest blog: Reading and Seeing, which talked about the same Movie.
Again, one afternoon he was thinking of buying: To Kill a Mocking Bird as a gift for his daughter and on opening my blogspot, found the post: to Kill a Shooing Elephant.
*******************************************************************************************************
One day when I was living as a Reluctant Bachelor in the Faculty Hostel of IIT KGP, my friendly neighborhood Postman stopped by and handed an envelope to me. The handwriting was unfamiliar and the envelope was unusually fat and I tore it open thinking it must be one of those Resume's that I often got from strangers seeking some impossible favor or the other.
The 10 page letter started with: My Beloved Darling or some such silly thing and I was curious, naturally. After reading a few juicy sentences I realized that it was from a newly wed wife to her husband; and then my false prudery stopped me from reading any further (such stuff was decidedly unhealthy for Residents of our Asylum).
On a re-look at the address on the envelope, I discovered that it is to some other G. Prabhakara Sastry @ IIT KGP; something I could never imagine because I always thought that IIT KGP must be surfeit with one bloody gps.
Upon discreet investigation, I was told that a new gps arrived (temporarily) at the Ag E Dept as an RS.
As you can see, I was caught in a Catch-22 predicament. That gps too would be able to deduce that there is just one more gps @ KGP.
What would you have done in my place with that Love Letter?
I did the same...
*****************************************************************************************************
My friend N living at the same asylum was far luckier than me and was once invited by the father a suitable bride at Vizagh to come and have a peek at his Offering (Bride-Seeing Ceremony...a la Delhi 6...masakali masakali).
As we both were going home for our Puja Vacations, my friend asked me to break my journey at Vizagh and accompany him to the bride-marketplace just for moral support (I am told that in Bihar suitable boys are kidnapped, bound hand and foot, and married off to their daughters, particularly if they are IAS Officers or Software Professionals...no such luck for M Sc Physics Failed Experimentalists in AP).
I was willing to be the watchdog and we checked into the Ooty Hotel, spruced ourselves up and entered the lioness's den, and were going through the rigorous Selection Committee Proceedings.
At the back of my mind I was hesitant to halt at Vizagh where I had done a 7-year stint a couple of years back as a student and then an RS....because I didn't want to be accosted by my ex-colleague Ms S for reasons too complicated to dwell on here. But I calculated that the odds of our chance-meeting in a city on a half-day halt were one in a million.
Lo and Behold...within half an hour of the start of our Interview Session, who should barge in but Ms S with her newly married hubby who happened to be a close relative of the bride!
Mr and Mrs S were insistent that we two should grace their home and do an auld lang syne session.
I made some weak excuse and chickened out.
**************************************************************************************************
Japan is the only country in history to be nuked and two of its cities razed to ground (zero).
And it turned pacifist willy-nilly (Supratim!).
How come it turns out to be involved in a nuclear disaster of first waters with all possible backups turned turtle?
=========================================================
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Dogged Pursuits
=======================================================
Sajan-re jhoot mat bolo
Khuda-ke paas jaana hai
Na hathi hai na ghoda hai
Waha paidal-hi jaana hai
=========================================================
Khuda-ke paas jaana hai
Na hathi hai na ghoda hai
Waha paidal-hi jaana hai
Those lyrical lines are from a Raj Kapoor - Wahida blockbuster of my youth, Teesri Khasam.
Roughly they mean:
"Stop telling guls...you've got to go meet your Maker...neither elephants nor horses carry you...you've got to walk all the way there".
Easier said than done.
***********************************************************************************************************
And then there was this fratricidal Kurukhetra War. At the beginning of the War when Arjun gets cold feet, his B-i-L Lord Krishna takes a couple of precious hours preaching the entire Gita with Cosmic Delusions, trying to encourage Arjun to commit murder and mayhem regardless. And Gita starts with the words: "Dharmakshetre Kurukshetre", meaning,
"At Kurukshetra, the Land of Just War".
But as everyone knows, what transpires is anything but a just war...all trickery and skulduggery encouraged by Krishna himself who believed apparently in the Maoist Slogan: "The fair end justifies the foul means".
And so even that Personifcation of Dharma (Dharma Raja), Yudhistir, had to utter a deafening lie: "Ashwathama hataha Kunjaraha" meaning: "Aswathama (Drona's son) is dead..I mean the elephant". The italicized last words that it was the elephant so named that died was drowned by the din of so many conspiratorial mind-blowing conchs.
By this childish artifice Yudhistir tried to escape Hell...but the Mills of God grind slowly but they grind fine..and Yudhistir had to by and by pay a small price for his half-truth...gul.
Yudhistir did much worse things like betting on his innocent but fiery wife Draupadi...but he wasn't convicted of it perhaps because like in our friendly neighborhood Saracenic culture, women those days were supposed to be the chattel of men.
Also, as our Autocrat wisely says: "Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all".
Anyway at the end of it all, the five Pandava brothers who survived the Holy War intact decide to walk up Mt Everest where a helicopter was waiting to take them to Heaven (waha paidal-hi jaana hai).
Midway they discover that a black dog was following them tirelessly, just to invigilate that they don't cheat.
One after the other, four of the brothers, in the reverse chronological order (against all Actuary Tables of our LIC) drop dead of exhaustion.
The only survivors were Yudhistir and the doggie.
Indra, the Pilot of the Heaven-bound helicopter congratulates Yudhistir on his feat and invites him to take his seat in the Business Class; but Yudhistir insists that the doggie also should be accommodated in the Economy Class ('Cattle Class' of our kicked-out Central MoS).
This pleases the doggie so immensely that he reveals himself in his true colors as Yama, the Lord of Death, and incidentally the DNA-Father of Yudhistir.
Yama, whose painful duty it is to deliver sentences, pronounces that Yudhistir may be flown to Heaven where he can cool his burning heels, but he should be routed through the Other Place, just to show what he escaped, and also as a mild punishment for his gul about that dead elephant fortuitously named Aswathama.
So goes the happy ending of the unhappy Holy War.
You may wonder why Yama, the Lord of Death, took the shape of a dog and not any other animal or bird. The short answer is: "Why not? You will raise this question whichever shape He takes"...there must be a word for this conundrum in Logic...is it syllogism?
But Yama is rather fond of dogs (like Thurber). He employs two of them called: Syama (the dark) by night and Syabala (the multicolored) by day to go around snooping whose time is up. I am not joking...look up Chandogya Upanishad VIII.13.1 or Rig Veda X.14.10-12 or Kausitaki Upanishad 1.2.2.
*************************************************************************************************************
From our good old Khairatabad Apartment we moved to this Red Fort last Friday.
My son requires 24 / 7 infallible internet connection for his job which is 'Eat your fill and take-away Home'.
At Khairatabad we had BSNL Broadband which was good enough when it didn't rain. Whenever it went phut, my intimate lineman @ BSNL who is a cell-phone call away used to run in to rectify it leaving everything else aside just to win my benign bounteous smile.
The first thing we did on Friday was to locate the Seva-Office to find out if we could transfer our BSNL connection here. They smiled and said: "NO; 3-in-1 service here is leased out exclusively to BB which gives super-efficient 24-hour (wi-fi + Cable TV + Landline Phone) dirt cheap for 20 years".
Unlike the old-maid US, ours is a nascent Baby Market Economy, kicking and thriving like Ishani, unmindful of things like Monopoly & Restrictive Trade Practices Act which are on the books as mere show pieces.
They took Rs 2600 in advance and the Boss of BB (BBB) smilingly assured us that by Saturday Evening, his Boy will come and lo! and behold! with his magic wand give us the 20/365/24/7 connection.
As you can expect, nothing happened on Saturday. On Sunday morning my son rang up BBB and got the irritated reply that we are not the only onion in his sambar and there is a long waiting line. But by repeated phone calls one of his Boys did arrive late in the evening and struggled and gave a temporary wi-fi connection saying that Cable TV and Landline will take a few more days.
But ladies want TV urgently and so on Monday morning my son could get hold of another of BBB's Boys who came and found that Cable TV requires another Device (Router) and so replaced the earlier one.
TV was blaring in all its colorful glory but my son found on Monday morning that wi-fi is gone.
Frantic phone calls elicited no response and my son was getting jittery because his new US Boss would be wondering what happened to his new PM, Shreenath, whom he recruited with such love and affection.
Phone calls by the dozen assured us that the Boy was just 15 minutes away. Several 15 minutes of tap-dancing-boys went past and by 9 PM my son wanted to go and attack whosoever was manning the so-called 24/7 BB Office.
I told my son that the Golden Rule when you are going out in a fractious mood is to take an accomplice as witness and moderator; and I offered my golden services learned the hard way in Marxist Bengal.
When we reached the BB Office it was desolate but for a bag waiting to go home inside a locked door.
My son wanted to give up the whole thing and resign but I told him that the bag was a give-away that some Boy would surely arrive.
And Mr M came duly, smoking and whistling a recent melody.
He saw us and tried to slip away; but bag is a Bag while cigar is mere smoke.
I asked my son to go home and let me handle this thing.
As Mr M opened the door I charged in and grabbed the only chair there and sat down on it saying as if his was the next move.
Mr M said that 1302 in Block 14 was not his Duty Ticket but Mr Y's.
I asked him to produce Mr Y then and there. He said Y has gone home. I then told him that I would wait in the chair and he can lock up and go home and find my dead body or Y next morning whichever is earlier.
M then said he wasn't going home but would lock up and go to 1305 in Block 12 where they were waiting for him.
I got up and said: "Chalo, let us go there".
He just didn't know how to cope with this mad old goon and had to pretend to go to Block 12 lugging his heavy bag and me following him like the Devil. He would stop every half minute and look back and I would do the same. After 6 such vain attempts to throw me off his scent, he led me to our place to my utter surprise.
Dogged Pursuit prevailed.
He then entered our Hall, and cursing me profanely under his breath, took one good hour to rectify both wi-fi and TV, and sweating, he said the Landline will take a couple more days.
I asked my wife to fetch a glass of cool Sprite, made him sit down, and told my son:
"Sonny, compose an eloquent e-mail to the Biggest Boss of BB (BBBB) giving a Glorious Reco and Testimonial for this young chap Mr M under your PM (TR) signature right away, show it to him, and post him a copy".
The glass of Sprite spilled, and as my son quickly composed his Reco and showed it to him, Mr M got up, went to the desk, and in 5 minutes got us the Landline too....
Roughly they mean:
"Stop telling guls...you've got to go meet your Maker...neither elephants nor horses carry you...you've got to walk all the way there".
Easier said than done.
***********************************************************************************************************
And then there was this fratricidal Kurukhetra War. At the beginning of the War when Arjun gets cold feet, his B-i-L Lord Krishna takes a couple of precious hours preaching the entire Gita with Cosmic Delusions, trying to encourage Arjun to commit murder and mayhem regardless. And Gita starts with the words: "Dharmakshetre Kurukshetre", meaning,
"At Kurukshetra, the Land of Just War".
But as everyone knows, what transpires is anything but a just war...all trickery and skulduggery encouraged by Krishna himself who believed apparently in the Maoist Slogan: "The fair end justifies the foul means".
And so even that Personifcation of Dharma (Dharma Raja), Yudhistir, had to utter a deafening lie: "Ashwathama hataha Kunjaraha" meaning: "Aswathama (Drona's son) is dead..I mean the elephant". The italicized last words that it was the elephant so named that died was drowned by the din of so many conspiratorial mind-blowing conchs.
By this childish artifice Yudhistir tried to escape Hell...but the Mills of God grind slowly but they grind fine..and Yudhistir had to by and by pay a small price for his half-truth...gul.
Yudhistir did much worse things like betting on his innocent but fiery wife Draupadi...but he wasn't convicted of it perhaps because like in our friendly neighborhood Saracenic culture, women those days were supposed to be the chattel of men.
Also, as our Autocrat wisely says: "Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all".
Anyway at the end of it all, the five Pandava brothers who survived the Holy War intact decide to walk up Mt Everest where a helicopter was waiting to take them to Heaven (waha paidal-hi jaana hai).
Midway they discover that a black dog was following them tirelessly, just to invigilate that they don't cheat.
One after the other, four of the brothers, in the reverse chronological order (against all Actuary Tables of our LIC) drop dead of exhaustion.
The only survivors were Yudhistir and the doggie.
Indra, the Pilot of the Heaven-bound helicopter congratulates Yudhistir on his feat and invites him to take his seat in the Business Class; but Yudhistir insists that the doggie also should be accommodated in the Economy Class ('Cattle Class' of our kicked-out Central MoS).
This pleases the doggie so immensely that he reveals himself in his true colors as Yama, the Lord of Death, and incidentally the DNA-Father of Yudhistir.
Yama, whose painful duty it is to deliver sentences, pronounces that Yudhistir may be flown to Heaven where he can cool his burning heels, but he should be routed through the Other Place, just to show what he escaped, and also as a mild punishment for his gul about that dead elephant fortuitously named Aswathama.
So goes the happy ending of the unhappy Holy War.
You may wonder why Yama, the Lord of Death, took the shape of a dog and not any other animal or bird. The short answer is: "Why not? You will raise this question whichever shape He takes"...there must be a word for this conundrum in Logic...is it syllogism?
But Yama is rather fond of dogs (like Thurber). He employs two of them called: Syama (the dark) by night and Syabala (the multicolored) by day to go around snooping whose time is up. I am not joking...look up Chandogya Upanishad VIII.13.1 or Rig Veda X.14.10-12 or Kausitaki Upanishad 1.2.2.
*************************************************************************************************************
From our good old Khairatabad Apartment we moved to this Red Fort last Friday.
My son requires 24 / 7 infallible internet connection for his job which is 'Eat your fill and take-away Home'.
At Khairatabad we had BSNL Broadband which was good enough when it didn't rain. Whenever it went phut, my intimate lineman @ BSNL who is a cell-phone call away used to run in to rectify it leaving everything else aside just to win my benign bounteous smile.
The first thing we did on Friday was to locate the Seva-Office to find out if we could transfer our BSNL connection here. They smiled and said: "NO; 3-in-1 service here is leased out exclusively to BB which gives super-efficient 24-hour (wi-fi + Cable TV + Landline Phone) dirt cheap for 20 years".
Unlike the old-maid US, ours is a nascent Baby Market Economy, kicking and thriving like Ishani, unmindful of things like Monopoly & Restrictive Trade Practices Act which are on the books as mere show pieces.
They took Rs 2600 in advance and the Boss of BB (BBB) smilingly assured us that by Saturday Evening, his Boy will come and lo! and behold! with his magic wand give us the 20/365/24/7 connection.
As you can expect, nothing happened on Saturday. On Sunday morning my son rang up BBB and got the irritated reply that we are not the only onion in his sambar and there is a long waiting line. But by repeated phone calls one of his Boys did arrive late in the evening and struggled and gave a temporary wi-fi connection saying that Cable TV and Landline will take a few more days.
But ladies want TV urgently and so on Monday morning my son could get hold of another of BBB's Boys who came and found that Cable TV requires another Device (Router) and so replaced the earlier one.
TV was blaring in all its colorful glory but my son found on Monday morning that wi-fi is gone.
Frantic phone calls elicited no response and my son was getting jittery because his new US Boss would be wondering what happened to his new PM, Shreenath, whom he recruited with such love and affection.
Phone calls by the dozen assured us that the Boy was just 15 minutes away. Several 15 minutes of tap-dancing-boys went past and by 9 PM my son wanted to go and attack whosoever was manning the so-called 24/7 BB Office.
I told my son that the Golden Rule when you are going out in a fractious mood is to take an accomplice as witness and moderator; and I offered my golden services learned the hard way in Marxist Bengal.
When we reached the BB Office it was desolate but for a bag waiting to go home inside a locked door.
My son wanted to give up the whole thing and resign but I told him that the bag was a give-away that some Boy would surely arrive.
And Mr M came duly, smoking and whistling a recent melody.
He saw us and tried to slip away; but bag is a Bag while cigar is mere smoke.
I asked my son to go home and let me handle this thing.
As Mr M opened the door I charged in and grabbed the only chair there and sat down on it saying as if his was the next move.
Mr M said that 1302 in Block 14 was not his Duty Ticket but Mr Y's.
I asked him to produce Mr Y then and there. He said Y has gone home. I then told him that I would wait in the chair and he can lock up and go home and find my dead body or Y next morning whichever is earlier.
M then said he wasn't going home but would lock up and go to 1305 in Block 12 where they were waiting for him.
I got up and said: "Chalo, let us go there".
He just didn't know how to cope with this mad old goon and had to pretend to go to Block 12 lugging his heavy bag and me following him like the Devil. He would stop every half minute and look back and I would do the same. After 6 such vain attempts to throw me off his scent, he led me to our place to my utter surprise.
Dogged Pursuit prevailed.
He then entered our Hall, and cursing me profanely under his breath, took one good hour to rectify both wi-fi and TV, and sweating, he said the Landline will take a couple more days.
I asked my wife to fetch a glass of cool Sprite, made him sit down, and told my son:
"Sonny, compose an eloquent e-mail to the Biggest Boss of BB (BBBB) giving a Glorious Reco and Testimonial for this young chap Mr M under your PM (TR) signature right away, show it to him, and post him a copy".
The glass of Sprite spilled, and as my son quickly composed his Reco and showed it to him, Mr M got up, went to the desk, and in 5 minutes got us the Landline too....
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Acknowledgmentality
==========================================================
I didn't know that 'acknowledgment' has an implicit reluctance concealed within it:
'acknowledge implies the reluctant disclosure of something one might have kept secret (he acknowledged that the child is his)' ....Webster
Ha!
******************************************************************************************
The Research Scholar's flamboyant start-up:
"It is a great pleasure to acknowledge..."
translates to:
"It has been a sustained pain in the arse to work under my Guide but for whose misguidance and nitpicking, this thesis would have been completed within two splendid years and would have been crisper and sharper".
Acknowledgments come in rainbow colors starting from the hilarious:
"But for the advent of my luscious wife and then our (unplanned) lovely kid, this thesis would have been written up a decade ago....vivaham vidya nashanam, santhanam sarvanashanam".
And then there is this tongue-in-cheek declaration from that RS whose Official Guide X has been busy globe-trotting drumming up custom while actual help was got from the post-doc Y of some other Prof Z:
"I thank Dr Y for his indispensable and invaluable help, and Professor X for being kindly cooperative.."
TRR (who went to USC for his glorious Ph D around 1989) did his M Sc Project with me on Edwin Taylor's Spacetime Software. But he had an unequal tussle with Prof KVR from Day 1 of his First Year when he started asking indelicate questions in the Class Room. And TRR was avenged by being asked to keep standing for an entire lecture hour just because he was 5 minutes late, discussing his project work with me. By then KVR however rose to be HoD. When TRR approached me for permission to write up his thesis, I smilingly asked him not to forget the default Acknowledgment to the HoD. He bristled and shot back: "What for?" and I had to tell him that HoDs can in principle have a great nuisance value if they are displeased....I mean what is wrong in pleasing and propitiating an innocent soul after tormenting him for 5 years?
While I was writing up that Joint Paper for AJP I told Edwin that the Title of our Paper on his pioneering Relativity Software contains his name. He demurred and wrote back that it would be too embarrassing to find himself on the Title of a Paper in a Journal for which he was an Editor long ago and that a mention in a significant way in the body of the paper would do.
So, body is different from head and the tail!
SDM had this fixation that he should have at least one independent Paper every year lest folks should suspect he is bloodsucking his co-workers. So, he was working on his own Paper on biaxial crystals while I was working on related problems suggested by him. By then I won his confidence and he showed me the Manuscript of his Paper that he sent out to Annals of Physics (NY). I then pointed out that his 'generalized uniaxiality condition' must appear as a Section-Head than in the text obscurely. He demurred and said that the so-called 'condition' of his relates to the particular choice of coordinates and is not a feature of the crystal. I opposed him and said it is quite independent of the choice of coordinates and is a feature of the crystal class itself.
He then asked: "Do you mean to say that it is a minor discovery of mine?" And I had to tell him: "It is a fairly major discovery of yours" and showed him how. We then parted but after an hour he was knocking the door of my Digs in our Faculty Hostel. And upon my opening the door, he entered, kept his heavy trade-mark bag on the floor and glumly uttered: "What all you said and I agreed is WRONG". I then had to ask him to be seated and show my detailed calculations to him. He heaved a huge sigh of relief but turned glum again saying;
"In that case I have to acknowledge you in my independent Paper!"
I assured him it wasn't needed because after all I was his own student. He shook his head this way and that and when the proofs arrived, he inserted a handsome Acknowledgment and showed it to me and asked:
"Do you think this will do or should I make it stronger?"
===========================================================
I didn't know that 'acknowledgment' has an implicit reluctance concealed within it:
'acknowledge implies the reluctant disclosure of something one might have kept secret (he acknowledged that the child is his)' ....Webster
Ha!
******************************************************************************************
The Research Scholar's flamboyant start-up:
"It is a great pleasure to acknowledge..."
translates to:
"It has been a sustained pain in the arse to work under my Guide but for whose misguidance and nitpicking, this thesis would have been completed within two splendid years and would have been crisper and sharper".
Acknowledgments come in rainbow colors starting from the hilarious:
"But for the advent of my luscious wife and then our (unplanned) lovely kid, this thesis would have been written up a decade ago....vivaham vidya nashanam, santhanam sarvanashanam".
And then there is this tongue-in-cheek declaration from that RS whose Official Guide X has been busy globe-trotting drumming up custom while actual help was got from the post-doc Y of some other Prof Z:
"I thank Dr Y for his indispensable and invaluable help, and Professor X for being kindly cooperative.."
TRR (who went to USC for his glorious Ph D around 1989) did his M Sc Project with me on Edwin Taylor's Spacetime Software. But he had an unequal tussle with Prof KVR from Day 1 of his First Year when he started asking indelicate questions in the Class Room. And TRR was avenged by being asked to keep standing for an entire lecture hour just because he was 5 minutes late, discussing his project work with me. By then KVR however rose to be HoD. When TRR approached me for permission to write up his thesis, I smilingly asked him not to forget the default Acknowledgment to the HoD. He bristled and shot back: "What for?" and I had to tell him that HoDs can in principle have a great nuisance value if they are displeased....I mean what is wrong in pleasing and propitiating an innocent soul after tormenting him for 5 years?
While I was writing up that Joint Paper for AJP I told Edwin that the Title of our Paper on his pioneering Relativity Software contains his name. He demurred and wrote back that it would be too embarrassing to find himself on the Title of a Paper in a Journal for which he was an Editor long ago and that a mention in a significant way in the body of the paper would do.
So, body is different from head and the tail!
SDM had this fixation that he should have at least one independent Paper every year lest folks should suspect he is bloodsucking his co-workers. So, he was working on his own Paper on biaxial crystals while I was working on related problems suggested by him. By then I won his confidence and he showed me the Manuscript of his Paper that he sent out to Annals of Physics (NY). I then pointed out that his 'generalized uniaxiality condition' must appear as a Section-Head than in the text obscurely. He demurred and said that the so-called 'condition' of his relates to the particular choice of coordinates and is not a feature of the crystal. I opposed him and said it is quite independent of the choice of coordinates and is a feature of the crystal class itself.
He then asked: "Do you mean to say that it is a minor discovery of mine?" And I had to tell him: "It is a fairly major discovery of yours" and showed him how. We then parted but after an hour he was knocking the door of my Digs in our Faculty Hostel. And upon my opening the door, he entered, kept his heavy trade-mark bag on the floor and glumly uttered: "What all you said and I agreed is WRONG". I then had to ask him to be seated and show my detailed calculations to him. He heaved a huge sigh of relief but turned glum again saying;
"In that case I have to acknowledge you in my independent Paper!"
I assured him it wasn't needed because after all I was his own student. He shook his head this way and that and when the proofs arrived, he inserted a handsome Acknowledgment and showed it to me and asked:
"Do you think this will do or should I make it stronger?"
dekha hoy nai chokshu melia
ghor hote shudhu dui pa felia
ekti dhaner shisher upor
ekti shishirbindu ||
for me it ought to read:
dekha hoyeche!
ghor hote shudhu dui pa felia
ekti dhaner shisher upor
ekti shishirbindu ||
for me it ought to read:
dekha hoyeche!
At times, an honest Acknowledgment could pull you down by a Grade, as it happened with Sumita Das, another Project Student of mine and one of the best. She took as her Seminar Topic my Flickering Bulb Paradox Manuscript, worked it out, and presented it in a Board in which I wasn't invited as an Examiner.
DB reported to me that she was hassled: "Thought Experiments are useless"...only thoughtless ones can get Ph Ds {;-}.
And she was finally asked: "Whose idea is this?". And in her childish innocence she bowed her head reverentially and said:
"The most respected Professor gps"
All she got was a handsome Acknowledgment in the Revised Version of that Paper of mine in AJP.
DB reported to me that she was hassled: "Thought Experiments are useless"...only thoughtless ones can get Ph Ds {;-}.
And she was finally asked: "Whose idea is this?". And in her childish innocence she bowed her head reverentially and said:
"The most respected Professor gps"
All she got was a handsome Acknowledgment in the Revised Version of that Paper of mine in AJP.
Tail Piece
An hour ago I got this Acknowledgment:
Dear Prof. Sastry,
Thank you (really!) for your detailed, amusing and exceedingly interesting account of your experience with Irodov and your knowledge and views of Soviet physics. It has given me some idea about it's history in Kgp at least. I will get back to you with more specific questions soon.
Regards,
Kapil Subramanian
*******************************************************************************
Note that Kapiljee felt the need to insert that bracketed word 'really' with an exclamation mark to boot; which is the Websterian theme of this blogpost.
Thank you (really!) for your detailed, amusing and exceedingly interesting account of your experience with Irodov and your knowledge and views of Soviet physics. It has given me some idea about it's history in Kgp at least. I will get back to you with more specific questions soon.
Regards,
Kapil Subramanian
*******************************************************************************
Note that Kapiljee felt the need to insert that bracketed word 'really' with an exclamation mark to boot; which is the Websterian theme of this blogpost.
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