Human Interest

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When I was a schoolkid in the mid nineteen fifties my HM Father used to urge me to read The Hindu for my edification and improvement of my General Knowledge as well as Good English writing.

Sad to say, it was impossible for me to read even half a column. They were so dry and uninviting for an impressionable lad.

I could understand the reason much later when I read (from Thurber?) the standard instructions to the cub reporters from their proverbial boss:

"Write a long para on how you reached the scene of action, the atmosphere, crowd, and your expectation of what would happen.

Then a short para on what happened.

Then a long para on where you went wrong, the moral, and how you reached your Office back.

Then take a sharp pair of scissors, cut the first and the last para, and submit the middle."

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By the time I graduated to University Studies, there was this first tabloid (?) of India, Blitz, in every Restaurant. It was the child of that genius R K Karanjia whose motto was:

“Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story”, an aphorism from Richard Ingrams, editor of Private Eye.

That made Blitz eminently readable...the inevitable pin-up girl on the last page helped start.

And the "human interest" stories of who, what and why.

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Same with the staid biographies, and worse, autobiographies that we were forced to read. No masala...

I guess the unexcelled Human Interest Autobiography in Science is Feynman's Surely You Are Joking. He ran into deep trouble after it was published...I read a Critical Review of the Book in AJP by a dame, and it was atrociously judgmental, to say the least..."the lady was protesting too much methinks".

But I am sure every word in it is true.

And the complaint that Feynman was a brash self-aggrandizer falls flat since in quite a few instances described, he comes a poor second.

And, personally, I learned a lot of Physics from that book.

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We had no Labs in our poor Village School. My Father used to double up as our Science Teacher and he used to often bring to the Class the apparatus needed for demos of some experiments. I recall he brought a simple pendulum and gave chance to every student in our Class to count 20 oscillations and time them on that wonder-gizmo: the stopwatch.

One Sunday morning a student brought and gave his HM a yellowish metallic coin of the early 16th Century (Krishnadeva Raya vintage) he found on the (now famous) Krishnapatnam Beach (Google gives 549,000 results).

My Father put on his white shirt and I tailed him like Nakshatraka to his Office which doubled as his Lab. He spent an hour or more with a beaker of water and his sensitive balance, took readings, calculated, and pronounced: "No gold content" and returned the coin to its crestfallen owner.

It was only much later that I learned he was using Archimedes Principle; he was well-dressed, though {;-}.

That surely was a 'human interest' Physics Experiment for me.

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The first Collection of Personal Essays I read (in 1970) was Next Sunday by RKN. I learned that these pieces were published in the Sunday Magazine of the Hindu that my Father was urging me to read. But I was too young (12) then and I couldn't have followed them.

Aniket's Foreword to Woolgathering starts: "When I laid my hands on 'A Writer's Nightmare' by R K Narayan, I was so enthralled by the personal essay I became utterly incapable of producing a single line of serious prose".

But Aniket was 16 then and was in CBS...

He also wrote a la Karanjia:

"My father who entertained us with stories at bedtime on a regular basis, always told me that for the purpose of a good narrative it was never necessary to stick to facts..."

Birds of the same feather...

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Talking of Personal Essay, for me, Blogspot has been the greatest gift I ever received...it gives unlimited space and responsible freedom for self-expression. I don't think this has ever happened in history to our fathers and forefathers.

How RKN would have loved it!

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Postscript 1:

Saswat writes that next to hounding Profs at KGP for recos, the next Nakshatraka role students have to play is for Green Card recos.

DB wanted to go to Mexico (of all places) in 1980, so he wanted his Passport. Since he was in Govt service, he had to take the signature of the then HoD who made DB visit him half a dozen times and ultimately refused to sign it; a phone call from a higher power did the trick...

I don't have a Passport...yet...but I had to get a Ration Card at KGP which was the Left Front Govt's Passport, id, Green Card, Yellow Card and Red Card...fortunately the Municipal Councilor was our ex-student....

Postscript 2:

Onomatopoeic Adjectives:

"ugly" is ugly

"awkward" is awkward

but

"lovely" is just Lovely!!!


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