Irreverence

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"Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense"

..............Mark Twain

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When I came across this Mark Twain Quote a couple of years back, I jumped with joy and felt like our Ancient Mariner:

And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea

For, from childhood I had a guilty feeling that I was not reverential enough to things, thoughts, elders and gods that was de rigueur in our orthodox AP Brahmin households.

So too in KGP.

So, when Sayan asked me to write an Article on SDM for Ansatz, I had great reservations which expressed themselves in the very opening sentence:

"This is not Homage; this is my homage, if you make allowances for my congenital irreverence. The middle vowel is ever present here, more so to apologize for lapses".

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/sudhansu-datta-majumdar-genius-who.html

...And it was an Article on a Physicist...and the History of Physics is flush with irreverence to any immutable idea...Truth in Physics (unlike Beauty) is decided (even now) by Experiments and not Gospel.

Feynman's Surely Your are Joking became a bestseller for the simple reason that lay people saw for the first time that Physicists too are warm-blooded human beings and not frighteningly cold Idols...Feynman was irreverent to everyone including himself...I guess honest irreverence is welcome in times like ours.

Somehow I like those portions of the Upanishads which are benignly atheistic, epitomized by this charming verse:

Yuktiyuktam upaadeyam vachanam baalkaadapi
Anyad trinamiva tyaajyam api uktam padmajanmanaa

meaning

The word even of a child, if reasonable, should be accepted; All else should be rejected even if it is said by the Creator

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Tailpiece

Arising out of a recent post describing the 'shaving set' of my father, this is what I confessed to Supratim a couple of hours back:

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"You will be surprised to know that I shave daily religiously although there is not much of it to shave...I just love the sensation of a clean chin. But I have never used any shaving soap or cream or stuff...out of laziness. I use tap water instead. And I never had any shaving mirror... I don't need it since I don't keep a mustache...and since my skin is tender and bleeds easily, nowadays I buy Gillette's Satin Care disposable thing (@ Rs 40 each, going good for a month), which has some lubricant within it. When I ask for it in any shop, the shopkeeper looks at me suspiciously saying it is a Ladies Special...My Shaving Kit has only this razor which smuggles itself along with my tooth brush, tooth paste and tongue cleaner"



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