Friday, March 20, 2009
Proof of Rebirth Theory
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Composed after watching Laloo Prasad Yadavjee teaching journalists how to milk a buffalo:
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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.
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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).
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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:
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