============================================================================
Opposite to Bhandari's and a little away is Thackers Bookshop. Thackers is a well known name in Calcutta Book Publishing since 1864:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker%27s_Indian_Directory
The Gole Bazaar outlet confined itself to school books and stationery. Its IIT Branch in the Tech Market was then housed in a vast shed like all other shops there.
There used to be a wrought iron bench in front of the Gole Bazaar Thackers under a neem tree. On this one could find seated the Granpa Thackers...a venerable old man. I have seen and talked to about five generations of Thackers:
Granpa >> Sons >> Grandsons >> Great Granddaughter >> tiny tot (?)
All of them were pleasant to talk to and business-savvy:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/04/thackers-and-harrys.html
I noticed a trademark demeanor of Thackers: If you ask for, say, Webster, and if they have it, they would purse their lips and frown in concentration and would retrieve it for you. If they don't have it, they would smile at you almost apologetically. This is unlike the custom of Hyderabadi shopkeepers who would smile and say "hai naa!" triumphantly before fetching it for you if they have it, and frown if they don't, as if you were asking for the very moon.
My friend N told me a story narrated to him by Prof G L Sinha (ME) in the 1960s. Apparently GLS landed up in the market street of Abu Dhabi and wanted to buy a Blackbird fountain pen after he lost his during travel. And asked a shopkeeper: "Blackbird fountain pen?" and the Abu Dhabi shopkeeper smiled pleasantly. But didn't stir from his seat. After a few minutes he repeated his question and he repeated his smile. After a few more attempts, he concluded that the sales guy is a moron and visited the next shop and got a repeat smile. And since GLS was a Humboldt of an earlier generation, he concluded quickly that the Abu Dhabi custom prohibits saying "No" as inauspicious. And he was right...
This reminds me of a peculiar custom in our Andhra households during my childhood. If, say, the rice stored in the default Britannia biscuit tin is exhausted, the housewife would never tell her husband that their rice tin is "empty"...she says: "Darling, the rice tin is FULL"...implying that the rice tin has been fully gobbled up by that bloke...
By the way, Britannia is one of the few fairy tale success stories of Calcutta:
http://www.britannia.co.in/companyoverview_overview.htm
Started in 1892 in a nondescript house in Calcutta, it is now more than a hundred-crore company spreading its tentacles into dairy products among others.
At the end of that Thackers block was (and I think still is) the push bike shop labeled Motilal Vohra manned by a forbidding-looking gent. I guess his was a monopoly then. He used to store two brands of push bikes. One, the Raleigh that became Sen-Raleigh of Asansol...another antique with a history:
http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/home/leisure/archives/exhibitions/wheelsoffortune/raleighglobalpresence.htm
If you were tall and well-off, you wouldn't settle for anything less than a 24" Raleigh bike with a leather-and-spring seat and a foam seat-cover and a full-chain-cover and a spring-loaded rear carrier and full mud guards both back and front. That would cost you a whopping Rs 250.
If you were like me, you would settle for the cheap Avon cycle without frills but with mud guards (you wouldn't like to lecture without mud-guards since the moment you turn to the blackboard, your back would be a delightful sight to watch...another pleasant distraction for the bored students). That cost Rs 150...
If you were a student of PAN Complex, you would buy an n-th hand bike without anything at all but wheels and pedal and handle...and would take two passengers, like that famous American riddle:
Q: How do you carry 4 elephants in a Volkswagen Beetle?
A: 2 in the front, 2 in the back...
Myself and Prof AVKR (now late, sigh!) joined the Phy Dept in May 1965, he as an esteemed Lecturer (400-950) and me as a pathetic Associate Lecturer (375-650). He was ten years older to me and hundred times richer...which is not very rich. We were allowed to stay in the Gokhale Hall which was then reserved for Teacher Trainees, who were a breed apart...like bats they had both animal and bird features...they were attending M Tech Classes and teaching B Techs. Since Gokhale Hall was very near the Main Building, we used to walk down to our 'work-place'. But after six months we were shunted to share a Bachelor Flat (BF-1/12) near the PAN Complex but allowed to eat in the Gokhale Hall.
So, we went to Gole Bazaar's Motilal Vohra's. AVKR bought a fully equipped Raleigh and I an Avon.
The very first night we rode to Gokhale Hall for grub, we parked our cycles in one verandah each, mutually perpendicular. And after eating, I came out and found to my chagrin that my bike was missing. And I went into the Mess and cried that my bike was stolen. He jumped up, and strode out with unwashed hands, and returned to me a few seconds later muffling his grin:
"I am so sorry...but mine is not yet!"
It just so happened that he had equipped his new bike with an elephant chain and a Godrej Navtal lock while I was foolishly depending on my rim-lock.
Once bitten, twice shy...I never bought a first hand cycle then on.
Cycle and other thefts were so rampant in the KGP Campus that one very old retired Chief Engineer re-employed at IIT KGP remarked in the Dining Hall of our Faculty Hostel:
"If you bend, they will steal your balls here!"
He had lost his new bike just that day...
============================================================================
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Gole Bazaar 1960s - Rosgullas
==========================================================================
Yes, I was talking about my IAS B-i-L's visit to KGP...this is becoming a nested series of tales like Panchatantra.
It so happened that in January 1994 he was sponsored for a one-week Management Training Course at IIM, Calcutta...with full hospitality and airfare. And he offered to go to Cal via KGP halting with us for 3 days en route. But on condition that I will escort him from KGP to Cal and see him settled down in the Guest House at IIM.
I said ok.
Govt rules being what they are, he was allowed flight on his onward trip if and only if he travels one day before his Training started...every such blessed thing in the Govt had to be an emergency...but since he took leave for four days before the Training started so he could visit us, he could only travel by the Coromandel Express...funny rule isn't it...reminds one of Catch-22.
I don't know if you read the book by Joseph Heller of that name. There are several Catches in it but the most famous one goes like this:
The book is set in the midst of WW II in the European Theater. This guy was sent to Europe to fly bombers in the USAF. And he fell terribly home sick and wanted to go home for a few days to look up his wife and kids. The only leave allowed was sick-leave. And there was a good Air Force Hospital where he was posted and so any disease is cured there...other than psychiatric. So, anyone wanting home leave should demonstrate that he was mentally ill. But it had to be certified by the Chief Medical Officer of his Unit. And when he says he wants to go home away from the War Theater because of mental illness, the CMO says:
"No one wanting to return home during war is insane"
...Catch-22!
***************************************************************************************************************
So, myself and my good friend N received my B-i-L at the KGP Railway Station and impressed upon him that it finds a rare place in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the Longest Railway Platform in the World. He couldn't care less. Indeed when he came to know this feat of KGP from me, Edwin Taylor remarked:
"What kind of crazy things enter Guinness nowadays!!!"
No one seems to appreciate KGP!
Indeed, when a decade before he arrived at KGP, I happened to tell my B-i-L that the Coromandel Express doesn't halt at KGP (during its initial ego trips), he remarked at once: "That means there is none in KGP worth its halt"...he meant IAS Officers...yes indeed, the only IAS Officers around were all posted in the District Head Quarters at Midnapore. This slur on KGP would have wounded our Director who is supposed to have First Class Magisterial Powers over IIT, but that is for a later story...of VGSOM's inauguration...
It was a small problem how to engage my B-i-L for three long days in the God-forsaken Campus of IIT KGP. My friend N who was the HoD of the nascent VGSOM invited my B-i-L to give a Lecture for his MBM students...that went on swell...he talked about Management of Change...a very burning issue then what with all those new sorts of Reservations coming up.
And the next day happened to be my son's Birthday and so there was a biggish party at our home and he was the Chief Guest, offering to sponsor the Birthday Cake from the newfangled Little Sisters. All my friends came to the Bash and he was impressed with RSS and his cute family and was invited for Tea next day at their home a short distance away.
In that Tea Party Mrs RSS offered him a sweet dish which looked new to him. He liked it so much he wanted to know what it is called. I told him it is the famous Rosogolla and he rebuked me saying: "Come on...I know everything of Rosogollas...but this one is brownish". I had to tell him it is Khejur-Gud-Rosogolla made of Date Palm Molasses available only in the winter months. He loved it so much he had one more...lucky for him his wife was safely away at Madras, 1500 km away...
Anyway, I did escort him to Joka and saw him settled down safely and comfortably there. He returned my service by offering me a sumptuous lunch at IIM's Guest House. And then I told him bye bye and was about to board my bus to the far-off Howrah Station via Esplanade. It was 3 in the afternoon and since he didn't have much to do at IIM that Sunday, he offered to accompany me till Esplanade if I promise to see him off by a return bus...even IAS Officers were scared of the City of Joy and its unpredictable buses whose destinations were written only in Bengali.
So, we dropped down at Esplanade and I wanted to settle him and see him off in a return bus to Joka since it was time for me to catch the Down Steel Express.
And then, the cat was out of the bag...he asked shyly like a child of five:
"Can I have one more Khejur-Gud-Rosogolla somewhere around, please?"
And I said: "No problem, we are right in front of K C Das who split milk much before we split the atom"
So, he had a couple more of the same and he was as happy as million dollars and went back to his Joka...
And we are back to where we started...Sweet India at Gole Bazaar-1960s..
Saswat sends me this link about the Pahala Rasgullas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasgulla
===========================================================================
Yes, I was talking about my IAS B-i-L's visit to KGP...this is becoming a nested series of tales like Panchatantra.
It so happened that in January 1994 he was sponsored for a one-week Management Training Course at IIM, Calcutta...with full hospitality and airfare. And he offered to go to Cal via KGP halting with us for 3 days en route. But on condition that I will escort him from KGP to Cal and see him settled down in the Guest House at IIM.
I said ok.
Govt rules being what they are, he was allowed flight on his onward trip if and only if he travels one day before his Training started...every such blessed thing in the Govt had to be an emergency...but since he took leave for four days before the Training started so he could visit us, he could only travel by the Coromandel Express...funny rule isn't it...reminds one of Catch-22.
I don't know if you read the book by Joseph Heller of that name. There are several Catches in it but the most famous one goes like this:
The book is set in the midst of WW II in the European Theater. This guy was sent to Europe to fly bombers in the USAF. And he fell terribly home sick and wanted to go home for a few days to look up his wife and kids. The only leave allowed was sick-leave. And there was a good Air Force Hospital where he was posted and so any disease is cured there...other than psychiatric. So, anyone wanting home leave should demonstrate that he was mentally ill. But it had to be certified by the Chief Medical Officer of his Unit. And when he says he wants to go home away from the War Theater because of mental illness, the CMO says:
"No one wanting to return home during war is insane"
...Catch-22!
***************************************************************************************************************
So, myself and my good friend N received my B-i-L at the KGP Railway Station and impressed upon him that it finds a rare place in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the Longest Railway Platform in the World. He couldn't care less. Indeed when he came to know this feat of KGP from me, Edwin Taylor remarked:
"What kind of crazy things enter Guinness nowadays!!!"
No one seems to appreciate KGP!
Indeed, when a decade before he arrived at KGP, I happened to tell my B-i-L that the Coromandel Express doesn't halt at KGP (during its initial ego trips), he remarked at once: "That means there is none in KGP worth its halt"...he meant IAS Officers...yes indeed, the only IAS Officers around were all posted in the District Head Quarters at Midnapore. This slur on KGP would have wounded our Director who is supposed to have First Class Magisterial Powers over IIT, but that is for a later story...of VGSOM's inauguration...
It was a small problem how to engage my B-i-L for three long days in the God-forsaken Campus of IIT KGP. My friend N who was the HoD of the nascent VGSOM invited my B-i-L to give a Lecture for his MBM students...that went on swell...he talked about Management of Change...a very burning issue then what with all those new sorts of Reservations coming up.
And the next day happened to be my son's Birthday and so there was a biggish party at our home and he was the Chief Guest, offering to sponsor the Birthday Cake from the newfangled Little Sisters. All my friends came to the Bash and he was impressed with RSS and his cute family and was invited for Tea next day at their home a short distance away.
In that Tea Party Mrs RSS offered him a sweet dish which looked new to him. He liked it so much he wanted to know what it is called. I told him it is the famous Rosogolla and he rebuked me saying: "Come on...I know everything of Rosogollas...but this one is brownish". I had to tell him it is Khejur-Gud-Rosogolla made of Date Palm Molasses available only in the winter months. He loved it so much he had one more...lucky for him his wife was safely away at Madras, 1500 km away...
Anyway, I did escort him to Joka and saw him settled down safely and comfortably there. He returned my service by offering me a sumptuous lunch at IIM's Guest House. And then I told him bye bye and was about to board my bus to the far-off Howrah Station via Esplanade. It was 3 in the afternoon and since he didn't have much to do at IIM that Sunday, he offered to accompany me till Esplanade if I promise to see him off by a return bus...even IAS Officers were scared of the City of Joy and its unpredictable buses whose destinations were written only in Bengali.
So, we dropped down at Esplanade and I wanted to settle him and see him off in a return bus to Joka since it was time for me to catch the Down Steel Express.
And then, the cat was out of the bag...he asked shyly like a child of five:
"Can I have one more Khejur-Gud-Rosogolla somewhere around, please?"
And I said: "No problem, we are right in front of K C Das who split milk much before we split the atom"
So, he had a couple more of the same and he was as happy as million dollars and went back to his Joka...
And we are back to where we started...Sweet India at Gole Bazaar-1960s..
Postscript
Saswat sends me this link about the Pahala Rasgullas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasgulla
===========================================================================
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Gole Bazaar 1960s - Mice & Men
============================================================================
It took me a good 25 years to step into the Bhandaris. They were the sole sales people of all things Godrej and Ambassador cars. When my wife gave me an ultimatum that her shadi-silk-saris were being nicely punctured here and there by mice, I decided to buy a steel almirah for her. And my wise friend N told me to buy a Godrej one even though it is twice as expensive as local makes. He was right, as always. So, when the fourth or so Pay Commission gave me some decent arrears, I decided to spend it all on a Godrej almirah fit for queens.
Professor & Mrs N walked us into the Bhandari's where, as always, I took a comfortable seat, and after an hour paid a whopping Rs 8,500. The thing was delivered at my Qrs the next day and it was a pleasure to operate it....doors close snugly, handle turns like a knife through butter, and, don't tell others...there is a Secret Locker. 25 years on, it is now in our bedroom in Hyderabad, as good as new...not a scratch anywhere.
I was so pleased with it that when my son started his singleton career in Hyderabad, the first gift I bought him was another and better Godrej almirah (with a standing ghost-proof mirror 5 feet tall, that is more than the 3 feet mandated by that geometrical optics problem). It is now used by Ishani...girl kids are so much more enlightened...after her mom dresses her up, she runs to that almirah and gives herself finishing touches to her make-up. This is the very almirah that finds mention in Bharavi's Atonement:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/07/bharavis-atonement.html
Anyway, I got to know after a few trips to Gole Bazaar in the 1960s that there isn't a single shop in that High Street owned by a Bengali. All names were like Pujara, Thackers, Agarwal, Maheswari, Parikh, Vora, Ahuja...
Yes, there was an Umbrella Shop selling the famous Paul Brothers at the other end of the High Street and a Bengali sweetmeats shop: Sweet India, a little away.
Paul Brothers was a monopoly for a long while.
Sweet India turned into New Sweet India...but of course it remained the same old Rosogolla.
Talking of Rosogollas, I recall the visit to KGP of my eldest IAS B-i-L in 1993. He was then a Principal Secretary in the Tamilnadu Government at Madras. He was resisting a visit to KGP for the simple reason that it is not connected by Air. One had to fly to Calcutta and then undertake a painful train journey. But I convinced him that the Qrs B-140 to which I shifted recently was about the most luxurious in the Campus in the sense that it had 22 windows and two cute balconies from which you could see the horizon...not easy in his posh Annanagar home at Madras. And that tempted him...
That brings me to my shift from C1-97 to B-140, a twisted tale...
I was living in C1-97 doggedly for twenty long years and watching it crumble. My wife was asking me to shift to a better place but I told her that, lazy as I am, I would make only one shift and then stay there till retirement. And after long recces I found that B-140 was the Best Qrs in the Campus...it was a climatological marvel of architecture...warm in winter when everyone else was shivering...and cool and breezy in summer...and idyllic in monsoon since you can watch fleeting clouds and gorgeous rainbows...and in the middle floor.
Prof KVR was staying there for seventeen odd years since it was built and we used to be frequent visitors there. So, I told my wife that I will accumulate such an impeccable seniority that none could surpass me when KVR retires and his Qrs falls vacant (the House Allotment Committee had its own queer rules like everything else in a Govt Do).
When in 1993 KVR did retire and vacate his Qrs, I applied and the clerk told me I was the seniormost among the 20 odd applicants. But after a few weeks, RSS came down to my room and said sorry, my dream was shattered by Prof VVR, who was already living in a top floor of a similar block but decided to apply at the last minute for a Change of Qrs...and Rules decreed that a candidate for Change from a B Type to another B Type gets preference over promotees from C1 to B.
Sigh!
So, I spent a couple of thousand hard-earned Rupees to spruce up the C1 thing to make it livable for a lifetime and was resigned...taking solace in the Burns' line:
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry"
A month later, RSS came running to my room asking for a treat. Apparently VVRs shifted from the top floor to the middle floor and, after spending a single night in B-140, didn't like the change, and reverted to their earlier Qrs before it was allotted to anyone else...rumor had it that she had nightmares and saw ghosts...of the gps variety {;-}
I then recalled once again:
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry"
=============================================================================
It took me a good 25 years to step into the Bhandaris. They were the sole sales people of all things Godrej and Ambassador cars. When my wife gave me an ultimatum that her shadi-silk-saris were being nicely punctured here and there by mice, I decided to buy a steel almirah for her. And my wise friend N told me to buy a Godrej one even though it is twice as expensive as local makes. He was right, as always. So, when the fourth or so Pay Commission gave me some decent arrears, I decided to spend it all on a Godrej almirah fit for queens.
Professor & Mrs N walked us into the Bhandari's where, as always, I took a comfortable seat, and after an hour paid a whopping Rs 8,500. The thing was delivered at my Qrs the next day and it was a pleasure to operate it....doors close snugly, handle turns like a knife through butter, and, don't tell others...there is a Secret Locker. 25 years on, it is now in our bedroom in Hyderabad, as good as new...not a scratch anywhere.
I was so pleased with it that when my son started his singleton career in Hyderabad, the first gift I bought him was another and better Godrej almirah (with a standing ghost-proof mirror 5 feet tall, that is more than the 3 feet mandated by that geometrical optics problem). It is now used by Ishani...girl kids are so much more enlightened...after her mom dresses her up, she runs to that almirah and gives herself finishing touches to her make-up. This is the very almirah that finds mention in Bharavi's Atonement:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/07/bharavis-atonement.html
Anyway, I got to know after a few trips to Gole Bazaar in the 1960s that there isn't a single shop in that High Street owned by a Bengali. All names were like Pujara, Thackers, Agarwal, Maheswari, Parikh, Vora, Ahuja...
Yes, there was an Umbrella Shop selling the famous Paul Brothers at the other end of the High Street and a Bengali sweetmeats shop: Sweet India, a little away.
Paul Brothers was a monopoly for a long while.
Sweet India turned into New Sweet India...but of course it remained the same old Rosogolla.
Talking of Rosogollas, I recall the visit to KGP of my eldest IAS B-i-L in 1993. He was then a Principal Secretary in the Tamilnadu Government at Madras. He was resisting a visit to KGP for the simple reason that it is not connected by Air. One had to fly to Calcutta and then undertake a painful train journey. But I convinced him that the Qrs B-140 to which I shifted recently was about the most luxurious in the Campus in the sense that it had 22 windows and two cute balconies from which you could see the horizon...not easy in his posh Annanagar home at Madras. And that tempted him...
That brings me to my shift from C1-97 to B-140, a twisted tale...
I was living in C1-97 doggedly for twenty long years and watching it crumble. My wife was asking me to shift to a better place but I told her that, lazy as I am, I would make only one shift and then stay there till retirement. And after long recces I found that B-140 was the Best Qrs in the Campus...it was a climatological marvel of architecture...warm in winter when everyone else was shivering...and cool and breezy in summer...and idyllic in monsoon since you can watch fleeting clouds and gorgeous rainbows...and in the middle floor.
Prof KVR was staying there for seventeen odd years since it was built and we used to be frequent visitors there. So, I told my wife that I will accumulate such an impeccable seniority that none could surpass me when KVR retires and his Qrs falls vacant (the House Allotment Committee had its own queer rules like everything else in a Govt Do).
When in 1993 KVR did retire and vacate his Qrs, I applied and the clerk told me I was the seniormost among the 20 odd applicants. But after a few weeks, RSS came down to my room and said sorry, my dream was shattered by Prof VVR, who was already living in a top floor of a similar block but decided to apply at the last minute for a Change of Qrs...and Rules decreed that a candidate for Change from a B Type to another B Type gets preference over promotees from C1 to B.
Sigh!
So, I spent a couple of thousand hard-earned Rupees to spruce up the C1 thing to make it livable for a lifetime and was resigned...taking solace in the Burns' line:
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry"
A month later, RSS came running to my room asking for a treat. Apparently VVRs shifted from the top floor to the middle floor and, after spending a single night in B-140, didn't like the change, and reverted to their earlier Qrs before it was allotted to anyone else...rumor had it that she had nightmares and saw ghosts...of the gps variety {;-}
I then recalled once again:
"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry"
=============================================================================
Friday, October 28, 2011
Gole Bazaar 1960s - Waheeda
===========================================================================
We then hit the High Street of Gole Bazaar. Not very high though...it was hardly 100 meters long and a couple of cars wide. If there happened to be a Tata-Mercedes-Benz Truck on it, there would be a terrific traffic jam. These trucks used to come with the world famous three-pointed Benz star header. I used to look at this star transfixed in my childhood Village when I was a school-going kid. The star is supposed to officially symbolize domination of earth, sea and air, but some find in it a voodoo meaning:
http://www.richardcassaro.com/sinister-corporate-symbols
Like for instance the famous shree chakra which is supposed to have a deep hidden meaning.
The first shop that hit you remains the Bhandari Sales Corporation. I was simply scared of it...it was so posh for an urchin like me...glass windows, swivel chairs and somber looking salesmen who I thought would be offended if I peep in. Bhandari was a new title to me. Till then the only non-Andhra title I saw was on Maitrani Brothers at my University Town of Vizagh. That was equally awesome. It was a clothes store that I never dared enter. And folks told me that Maitrani is a Sindhi title. And that all Sindhi titles end with some -ni or the other.
That was a good lesson for me since our eternal PM-aspirant also has a -ni towards his title-tail...and he, I am told, is from the heart of Karachi, which nostalgia gets him into trouble whenever he goes praising the Quaid-e-Azam on foreign soil...folks born in the same town possibly love each other in their heart of hearts...they are mitas like Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman in Teesri Khasam:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU36dHb66Mk
Incidentally Waheeda Rehaman's early appearance in movies was in what we now call an Item Number in a Telugu Movie: Rojulu Marayi when she was just about 18 and I, 12:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50kQAhjkBys
The movie was the first Telugu hit that ran for 100 days and celebrated Shata Dinotsavam in the newly built Venkateswara Hall in Nellore, 12 miles from our Village. Five of us classmates pooled our meager resources and traveled on a double-bullock cart to Nellore and watched the movie from a close hand-shaking distance...the cheapest Floor Ticket @ 0.25 rupees. It was a semi-classical dance item celebrating the short and simple annals of farmers. We were sharing space with a hundred odd farm hands (all male) and all of them went crazy, and at the end of the number, they were whistling and shouting: "Once More! Once More!..." thinking that it was like a theater dance. And the richer of the crowd flung their hard-earned coins on the stage.
And today's ToI reports NaMo's Mia born in Delhi confessing red-facedly in Washington that he has Indian blood in him...he had his schooling in Karachi though...all this reminds me of the thousands of 'elementary' particles being discovered daily in the 1960s...all considered an 'incestuous mess' till the Standard Model reduced their number somewhat...
Coming back to Bhandaris, I gingerly asked Professor B C Basu of AE if Bhandari is a Bengali title. He was shocked and said:
"Are you MAD!"
BCB came from an aristocratic family in Calcutta (he was rumored to be a close nephew of Jyoti-da) and had his schooling and graduation in London. Yet, somehow or the other he was friendly with me (and still is). I was naturally curious about London and England since he was the first person I met who actually set foot in the Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. I asked him what he liked best about Englishmen. He paused for a while since I was perhaps the first person to ask him such a question.
And he said: "Their sense of humor and decency of their commoners".
And he illustrated it by an incident: An Anglo-Saxon lady was visiting London for the first time and boarded a bus. And asked the Caribbean Conductor which is the next stop. He said: Regent Street. The lady was a little dubious and quietly repeated the question to her neighbor and got the same answer.
The Conductor smiled at her and said:
"Now you have it in black and white!"
===========================================================================
We then hit the High Street of Gole Bazaar. Not very high though...it was hardly 100 meters long and a couple of cars wide. If there happened to be a Tata-Mercedes-Benz Truck on it, there would be a terrific traffic jam. These trucks used to come with the world famous three-pointed Benz star header. I used to look at this star transfixed in my childhood Village when I was a school-going kid. The star is supposed to officially symbolize domination of earth, sea and air, but some find in it a voodoo meaning:
http://www.richardcassaro.com/sinister-corporate-symbols
Like for instance the famous shree chakra which is supposed to have a deep hidden meaning.
The first shop that hit you remains the Bhandari Sales Corporation. I was simply scared of it...it was so posh for an urchin like me...glass windows, swivel chairs and somber looking salesmen who I thought would be offended if I peep in. Bhandari was a new title to me. Till then the only non-Andhra title I saw was on Maitrani Brothers at my University Town of Vizagh. That was equally awesome. It was a clothes store that I never dared enter. And folks told me that Maitrani is a Sindhi title. And that all Sindhi titles end with some -ni or the other.
That was a good lesson for me since our eternal PM-aspirant also has a -ni towards his title-tail...and he, I am told, is from the heart of Karachi, which nostalgia gets him into trouble whenever he goes praising the Quaid-e-Azam on foreign soil...folks born in the same town possibly love each other in their heart of hearts...they are mitas like Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman in Teesri Khasam:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU36dHb66Mk
Incidentally Waheeda Rehaman's early appearance in movies was in what we now call an Item Number in a Telugu Movie: Rojulu Marayi when she was just about 18 and I, 12:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50kQAhjkBys
The movie was the first Telugu hit that ran for 100 days and celebrated Shata Dinotsavam in the newly built Venkateswara Hall in Nellore, 12 miles from our Village. Five of us classmates pooled our meager resources and traveled on a double-bullock cart to Nellore and watched the movie from a close hand-shaking distance...the cheapest Floor Ticket @ 0.25 rupees. It was a semi-classical dance item celebrating the short and simple annals of farmers. We were sharing space with a hundred odd farm hands (all male) and all of them went crazy, and at the end of the number, they were whistling and shouting: "Once More! Once More!..." thinking that it was like a theater dance. And the richer of the crowd flung their hard-earned coins on the stage.
And today's ToI reports NaMo's Mia born in Delhi confessing red-facedly in Washington that he has Indian blood in him...he had his schooling in Karachi though...all this reminds me of the thousands of 'elementary' particles being discovered daily in the 1960s...all considered an 'incestuous mess' till the Standard Model reduced their number somewhat...
Coming back to Bhandaris, I gingerly asked Professor B C Basu of AE if Bhandari is a Bengali title. He was shocked and said:
"Are you MAD!"
BCB came from an aristocratic family in Calcutta (he was rumored to be a close nephew of Jyoti-da) and had his schooling and graduation in London. Yet, somehow or the other he was friendly with me (and still is). I was naturally curious about London and England since he was the first person I met who actually set foot in the Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. I asked him what he liked best about Englishmen. He paused for a while since I was perhaps the first person to ask him such a question.
And he said: "Their sense of humor and decency of their commoners".
And he illustrated it by an incident: An Anglo-Saxon lady was visiting London for the first time and boarded a bus. And asked the Caribbean Conductor which is the next stop. He said: Regent Street. The lady was a little dubious and quietly repeated the question to her neighbor and got the same answer.
The Conductor smiled at her and said:
"Now you have it in black and white!"
===========================================================================
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Gole Bazaar 1960s - Golf Course
============================================================================
When I tried settling down in the IIT Campus at KGP, the first thing I noticed was that everyone that picks up his ancient push bike in the evening and mounts it says he is going to Gole Bazaar, 5 kilometers away.
I asked what is meant by Gole Bazaar and they said it meant Circular Market, like I thought Connaught Place in Delhi or Piccadilly Circus in London. The only circus I knew was the one housing animals and acrobats and their feats that came with its touring tent to our Village. So, I asked a Londoner Visitor to our Faculty Hostel if there is any permanent circus show in Piccadilly, like the one in Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcCVw1jbwZo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aORTBRtvZmM
He just laughed...
When I first went to Gole Bazaar I found that there was no circle at all there...not even like our B C Roy Statue Lovers Circle. It had just one street and another perpendicular to it making a T-Junction. To this day I don't know how it got its circular name.
To go to Gole Bazaar you have to take a mandatory short cut through Chandmari Maidan (don't ask me what is Chandmari...I never investigated...once bitten...). It will save you a couple of kilometers. This Chandmari Maidan was a vast jungle then, all of it belonging to the Railways. And you have to precariously ride your push bike along the only zigzag trail blazed by a long-lost adventurer.
This Maidan then was famous for its committee of vultures that were housed atop half a dozen tall trees in the night and did their scavenging work during the mornings and evenings...the Maidan was a dumping ground for carcasses. We used to watch them at their efficient work...bone-clean by our return drive. Much later, as Development took place they just disappeared over a couple of years...attributed to harmful chemicals in their food chain...this meant an environmental disaster because the carcasses attracted hungry dogs not equipped to do the specialist job of vultures. It was a double whammy...the dogs got rabid while the carcasses, not cleaned bone dry, emitted foul smell and spread diseases. I don't know if the problem got solved by now.
As we crossed the Maidan, we used to see at a distance golf greens with their flagsticks and wondering what they were. One fine morning, our HoD, Professor HNB, summoned me to his Office and introduced me to his visitor as the current DRM of Railways, the Big Boss of the KGP Division. And asked me to help his son for his upcoming JEE exams.
Next evening onwards I was closeted with this tall and lean Punjabi teen, Vineet, in my room in the Faculty Hostel. We soon found out that neither of us was too serious about this JEE and so after a fretful hour of Resnick-Halliday we used to shut shop, go for tea and gossip. After 3 months, Vineet invited me to 'his' golf course in the Maidan offering to teach me golf as a return favor. I was too shy and declined...to this day I kick myself for not taking up the offer...not that I would have been a 'pro'...but because after a couple of years I started reading all the golf books of PGW and had to learn the game vicariously.
Vineet happily missed JEE by a few marks because he got into the Calcutta Marine Engineering and Research Institute (MERI) on the basis of his JEE Rank. He brought me a big bowl of sweets for not coaching him too hard, since as he said, he would then have been rotting as an Agricultural Engineer (JEE used to close there). Vineet, as he said, was made for the high seas...I am sure he is now a big gun in shipping circles. Just shows one must not drive one's kids too hard...just send them to me at Hyderabad...I will teach them how to blog one's life away...
There was no over-bridge then on the dozen or so adjacent railway tracks...there was just a manned wooden boom on either side. Since the tracks took a curve there the chaps manning the booms on either side couldn't see each other properly and so they had to use whistles or even throaty coos...and it was a often a pell-mell with cyclists stranded between tracks squeezed between two trains and hoping for the best.
The first shop we used to get soon after we survived the Railway Gate was the Bata Shoe Shop. Those were the glorious monopoly years of Bata with its ware manufactured in Batanagar near Calcutta. And we could shop there without emptying our pockets. Sadly, Bata, as every good thing industrial in Bengal, was soon mowed down by militant trade unionism...and was closed for a good many years. When I left KGP 40 years later, the Bata shop got a good enough place in Gole Bazaar, but was bereft of the welcoming chain of comfortable chairs with footstools...you had to walk around and purchase whatever was on display in heaps...sigh!
=============================================================================
When I tried settling down in the IIT Campus at KGP, the first thing I noticed was that everyone that picks up his ancient push bike in the evening and mounts it says he is going to Gole Bazaar, 5 kilometers away.
I asked what is meant by Gole Bazaar and they said it meant Circular Market, like I thought Connaught Place in Delhi or Piccadilly Circus in London. The only circus I knew was the one housing animals and acrobats and their feats that came with its touring tent to our Village. So, I asked a Londoner Visitor to our Faculty Hostel if there is any permanent circus show in Piccadilly, like the one in Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcCVw1jbwZo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aORTBRtvZmM
He just laughed...
When I first went to Gole Bazaar I found that there was no circle at all there...not even like our B C Roy Statue Lovers Circle. It had just one street and another perpendicular to it making a T-Junction. To this day I don't know how it got its circular name.
To go to Gole Bazaar you have to take a mandatory short cut through Chandmari Maidan (don't ask me what is Chandmari...I never investigated...once bitten...). It will save you a couple of kilometers. This Chandmari Maidan was a vast jungle then, all of it belonging to the Railways. And you have to precariously ride your push bike along the only zigzag trail blazed by a long-lost adventurer.
This Maidan then was famous for its committee of vultures that were housed atop half a dozen tall trees in the night and did their scavenging work during the mornings and evenings...the Maidan was a dumping ground for carcasses. We used to watch them at their efficient work...bone-clean by our return drive. Much later, as Development took place they just disappeared over a couple of years...attributed to harmful chemicals in their food chain...this meant an environmental disaster because the carcasses attracted hungry dogs not equipped to do the specialist job of vultures. It was a double whammy...the dogs got rabid while the carcasses, not cleaned bone dry, emitted foul smell and spread diseases. I don't know if the problem got solved by now.
As we crossed the Maidan, we used to see at a distance golf greens with their flagsticks and wondering what they were. One fine morning, our HoD, Professor HNB, summoned me to his Office and introduced me to his visitor as the current DRM of Railways, the Big Boss of the KGP Division. And asked me to help his son for his upcoming JEE exams.
Next evening onwards I was closeted with this tall and lean Punjabi teen, Vineet, in my room in the Faculty Hostel. We soon found out that neither of us was too serious about this JEE and so after a fretful hour of Resnick-Halliday we used to shut shop, go for tea and gossip. After 3 months, Vineet invited me to 'his' golf course in the Maidan offering to teach me golf as a return favor. I was too shy and declined...to this day I kick myself for not taking up the offer...not that I would have been a 'pro'...but because after a couple of years I started reading all the golf books of PGW and had to learn the game vicariously.
Vineet happily missed JEE by a few marks because he got into the Calcutta Marine Engineering and Research Institute (MERI) on the basis of his JEE Rank. He brought me a big bowl of sweets for not coaching him too hard, since as he said, he would then have been rotting as an Agricultural Engineer (JEE used to close there). Vineet, as he said, was made for the high seas...I am sure he is now a big gun in shipping circles. Just shows one must not drive one's kids too hard...just send them to me at Hyderabad...I will teach them how to blog one's life away...
There was no over-bridge then on the dozen or so adjacent railway tracks...there was just a manned wooden boom on either side. Since the tracks took a curve there the chaps manning the booms on either side couldn't see each other properly and so they had to use whistles or even throaty coos...and it was a often a pell-mell with cyclists stranded between tracks squeezed between two trains and hoping for the best.
The first shop we used to get soon after we survived the Railway Gate was the Bata Shoe Shop. Those were the glorious monopoly years of Bata with its ware manufactured in Batanagar near Calcutta. And we could shop there without emptying our pockets. Sadly, Bata, as every good thing industrial in Bengal, was soon mowed down by militant trade unionism...and was closed for a good many years. When I left KGP 40 years later, the Bata shop got a good enough place in Gole Bazaar, but was bereft of the welcoming chain of comfortable chairs with footstools...you had to walk around and purchase whatever was on display in heaps...sigh!
=============================================================================
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Wheat & Rice
==========================================================================
There is a very handsome front page ad on ToI today. Generally I skip ads and look for tidbits and stories. This eye-catching ad had no Khan or Dhoni or KK (the female) endorsing it. In fact there is none...and that is perhaps why it is eye-catching.
The ad is by the ITC...(100 inspiring years). It is all gold and red with a hint of green. The ad is for ITC's Aashirvad Select 100% MP Sharbati Atta. There is just the picture of the atta bag and a golden bowl with piled up golden wheat grain and a couple of golden wheat sheaves beside. The blurb goes like:
***********************************************************************************************************
At the heart of India is a land that yields gold. In the plush, fertile fields of Madhya Pradesh grows wheat that is sun-kissed to perfection and showered with just the right amount of rain. This golden harvest is called Sharbati.
Aashirvad Select is made from the finest Sharbati wheat, specially sourced through ITC's e-Choupals. Relish the softest, fluffiest rotis with a rich aroma and flavour that make every meal, a feast fit for the kings.
There is a very handsome front page ad on ToI today. Generally I skip ads and look for tidbits and stories. This eye-catching ad had no Khan or Dhoni or KK (the female) endorsing it. In fact there is none...and that is perhaps why it is eye-catching.
The ad is by the ITC...(100 inspiring years). It is all gold and red with a hint of green. The ad is for ITC's Aashirvad Select 100% MP Sharbati Atta. There is just the picture of the atta bag and a golden bowl with piled up golden wheat grain and a couple of golden wheat sheaves beside. The blurb goes like:
***********************************************************************************************************
From Fields of Gold
At the heart of India is a land that yields gold. In the plush, fertile fields of Madhya Pradesh grows wheat that is sun-kissed to perfection and showered with just the right amount of rain. This golden harvest is called Sharbati.
Aashirvad Select is made from the finest Sharbati wheat, specially sourced through ITC's e-Choupals. Relish the softest, fluffiest rotis with a rich aroma and flavour that make every meal, a feast fit for the kings.
NON-STICKY DOUGH...ABSORBS MORE WATER...SOFT & TASTY ROTIS
*************************************************************************************
But for a needless comma after 'meal', the blurb is great prose. And the pic is fabulous. It just shows that you don't need a 'star' to sponsor your every ad if only you can be innovative.
Anyway, this ad reminded me of my friend of the 1960s, Tyagi, from the heart of Western UP, and our years in the Faculty Hostel at KGP (Tyagi left for TELCO and made it big there). He used to describe to me poetically the swaying wheat fields stretching far into the horizon as far as the eye could see in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of which we read in our Class VIII Social Studies.
Coming from the Coromandel Coast (of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo) where the horizon is the Bay of Bengal touching the sky on one side and is masked by the rolling hillocks of the Eastern Ghats on the other, Tyagi's idyll was news to me. I just had a glimpse of it one morning when I was traveling to Mughal Sarai by the Neelachal Express on my way to Varanasi.
***************************************************************************************************************
Anyway, Indians of my generation can be broadly divided into two non-intersecting sets...wheat-eating and rice-eating. And when a member of one set is transplanted to the other, they cry with tears in their eyes on the Dining Table.
Tyagi (a Patelian) was one of the most even-tempered and witty guys you could ever meet. But, once on the Dining Table of our notorious Faculty Hostel known for its cooks graduating from who knows which profession, Tyagi would be the most truculent of boarders...he would refuse to touch the staple boiled rice, fling the so-called cold leatherine rotis, shout at the innocuous bearers, Narayan and Laxman, asking them to fetch the cook, bang him left and right comparing him to unspeakable specimens of humanity, summon the ever-smiling Manager, Rajan, to the Dining Hall, and in short make a scene...
This was as routine a show as the monsoon showers of KGP...with its rainbows.
Then there was another American-returned Math-Wizard from deep South, Dr P, who never dealt with any integral short of six-fold...like so many cobras in front of his tensor elements...and who spoke with none except SGH, another math-wizard from the Marathwad...they spoke in a jargon bewildering to the rest of the crowd.
Dr P used to look at the various dishes on and beside his plate as if they were offending differentials that spoilt the show. He would ask for raw rice...unknown in Bengal of those days, idli or dosa or their cousins, pick and taste tiny elements of the set on his plate, and tearfully tear the so-called rotis into bits and pieces and dump them in a heap in the center of his dining plate, ceremonially pour water on the entire grub, leave the Table in silence looking rather forlorn.
He left for Bangalore after a few weeks...and possibly lived there happily ever after...
Kipling was wrong...East and West are meeting nowadays...but I doubt if wheat and rice are even attempting...
============================================================================*************************************************************************************
But for a needless comma after 'meal', the blurb is great prose. And the pic is fabulous. It just shows that you don't need a 'star' to sponsor your every ad if only you can be innovative.
Anyway, this ad reminded me of my friend of the 1960s, Tyagi, from the heart of Western UP, and our years in the Faculty Hostel at KGP (Tyagi left for TELCO and made it big there). He used to describe to me poetically the swaying wheat fields stretching far into the horizon as far as the eye could see in the Indo-Gangetic Plains of which we read in our Class VIII Social Studies.
Coming from the Coromandel Coast (of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo) where the horizon is the Bay of Bengal touching the sky on one side and is masked by the rolling hillocks of the Eastern Ghats on the other, Tyagi's idyll was news to me. I just had a glimpse of it one morning when I was traveling to Mughal Sarai by the Neelachal Express on my way to Varanasi.
***************************************************************************************************************
Anyway, Indians of my generation can be broadly divided into two non-intersecting sets...wheat-eating and rice-eating. And when a member of one set is transplanted to the other, they cry with tears in their eyes on the Dining Table.
Tyagi (a Patelian) was one of the most even-tempered and witty guys you could ever meet. But, once on the Dining Table of our notorious Faculty Hostel known for its cooks graduating from who knows which profession, Tyagi would be the most truculent of boarders...he would refuse to touch the staple boiled rice, fling the so-called cold leatherine rotis, shout at the innocuous bearers, Narayan and Laxman, asking them to fetch the cook, bang him left and right comparing him to unspeakable specimens of humanity, summon the ever-smiling Manager, Rajan, to the Dining Hall, and in short make a scene...
This was as routine a show as the monsoon showers of KGP...with its rainbows.
Then there was another American-returned Math-Wizard from deep South, Dr P, who never dealt with any integral short of six-fold...like so many cobras in front of his tensor elements...and who spoke with none except SGH, another math-wizard from the Marathwad...they spoke in a jargon bewildering to the rest of the crowd.
Dr P used to look at the various dishes on and beside his plate as if they were offending differentials that spoilt the show. He would ask for raw rice...unknown in Bengal of those days, idli or dosa or their cousins, pick and taste tiny elements of the set on his plate, and tearfully tear the so-called rotis into bits and pieces and dump them in a heap in the center of his dining plate, ceremonially pour water on the entire grub, leave the Table in silence looking rather forlorn.
He left for Bangalore after a few weeks...and possibly lived there happily ever after...
Kipling was wrong...East and West are meeting nowadays...but I doubt if wheat and rice are even attempting...
Illu Stories...Diwali Pullout
===========================================================================
Don wants some Illu stories. Here is the best! I blogged it as a Tailpiece earlier but it bears repetition.
(Illu is the KGPian jargon for the famed Illumination & Rangoli Contest held on the night of Diwali...I have known many students, including my IG Hall niece, fetch their faraway parents to KGP to show off this pinnacle of contests):
************************************************************************************************************
It is said: "Whom God loves, die young"...so many nice people I knew are no more...but their memories stay...
This one is about Late Professor Arora who was Dean, Student Affairs, and much loved by students.
Here is Aniket's from 1994 Diwali Illumination Contest @ IIT KGP
"...We were in VS Hall then, segregated from the seniors.
Two of my friends, one of them from my alma mater, Calcutta Boys', were ogling at some of the lady visitors, and passing comments. Imagine their shock when they heard a deep voice behind them and turned to find it was Professor Arora, "Nice, isn't she?"
Professor Arora proceeded to put them at ease, and began discussing one of the women in greater detail, much to their initial embarrassment, but soon my friends joined in thinking this guy is so cool, and so on. "Nice, isn't she?" he repeated.
"Has to be - she's my wife."
*********************************************************************************************
Indra was the only one of my students who used to frankly admit that for him India has no romance. He told me that he used to pass disparaging comments when his father went about pining for his Rural Bengal childhood...the Pather Panchali nostalgia.
Incidentally I remember our West Bengal's defeated CM, the bhadralok of bhadraloks, passing a sarcastic remark on Hyderabad. He, being a 'revisionist' admirer of Industrialization (which cost him his job...didi hit him on his vitals below his Nano belt) was enthused by the IT Revolution and the Hi-Tec City brought in by Naidu; and decided to visit Hyderabad to learn the ropes, maybe. He was greatly inspired by the gleaming towers of Google, Microsoft, Oracle and a hundred others jostling one another; and the Inorbit Mall, Cyberabad:
http://inorbit.in/malls.aspx?mallid=5
Like that famous Sardarjee jumping on the strip-tease tables, he must have been super-impressed...but on being driven to the outskirts of Hyderabad, his enthusiasm trickled down seeing all those barren rocks and he was pining for the eternal greenery of the suburbia of his Calcutta. Perhaps he didn't know that rocks endure for many more centuries than greeneries (which he wished to exchange for foul-smelling industries).
This foul-smelling thing recalls a pungent comment from the ever-tongue-lashing RK (also late, unfortunately). Someone on the Dining Hall of our Faculty Hostel was singing praises of the US where from he returned a week back. The Foreign-Returned was describing vividly a totally roboted Paper Mill he saw (or imagined he saw) in the US. And he was concluding his paean by the tailpiece that they have yet to purify the emissions of the said Industry.
RK came down with the rebuke:
"Shit stinks in the US too"
This again recalls the visit the other day of our neighbor-lady who bought her My Home Apartment for a whopping Rs 75 lacs or so. She got to know that our Township had gone Hi-Tech and has an inbuilt sewage-recycling plant whose purified water is used not only for watering the plants and the upcoming trees that line our boulevards, but also are pumped up to the overhead tank meant for storing water exclusively for our shitpot-water...I mean thereon it is re-recycled and goes on like our QM Perturbation Iterations...as I wrote to Pratik recently, I saw a Paper in Phys Rev a couple or more decades back whose title said the authors have calculated Stark Effect to the 17th order of Perturbation.
And our demure neighbor lady who must have been an orthodox brahmin almost fainted on hearing about this 'pollution' in her bathroom and was taking up a signature campaign.
Where was I? My blogs are becoming like my Lectures...more side-dishes than meat.
Yes, Indra...this India-bashing kid at KGP went to Princeton (he got schols from every other good place in the US but chose Princeton). It so happened that my e-mail account just got activated then and we were in regular e-touch.
The first thing that bugged him about Americans is that they hadn't heard of Calcutta (as I said earlier). The next thing was the Americans' food...he wrote to me that these poor devils, having been deprived of haldi--mirchi-sarso-Ilish maach-masala from infancy do not know what they are missing in their bland lives.
I mean everyone has their childhood nostalgia...why blame us poor senior citizens?
Anyway, Indra was spending his first Diwali in Princeton and was apparently forlorn.
And the night after Diwali, when we were e-chatting, Indra was asking who won the Illu Contest?...who won the Illu Contest?...who won the Illu Contest?
I then rang up Arora Saheb (who was my neighbor...like they were in B-139 and we in B-140) and got to know that Azad Hall won it...
You can then imagine the absolutely reckless joy that pervaded Indra's soul...he was an Azadian...
If you don't trust me, ask Saswat who was a witness.
Saswat...please don't pass on this post to Indra...he is busy with his Second Ph D...this time in Financial Economics at MIT...I intentionally pass comments like this on Indra in my blogs because there is a totally unjust infamy that he was a 'favorite' student of mine...all my students are my favorites...some were shy...others not...
============================================================================
Don wants some Illu stories. Here is the best! I blogged it as a Tailpiece earlier but it bears repetition.
(Illu is the KGPian jargon for the famed Illumination & Rangoli Contest held on the night of Diwali...I have known many students, including my IG Hall niece, fetch their faraway parents to KGP to show off this pinnacle of contests):
************************************************************************************************************
It is said: "Whom God loves, die young"...so many nice people I knew are no more...but their memories stay...
This one is about Late Professor Arora who was Dean, Student Affairs, and much loved by students.
Here is Aniket's from 1994 Diwali Illumination Contest @ IIT KGP
"...We were in VS Hall then, segregated from the seniors.
Two of my friends, one of them from my alma mater, Calcutta Boys', were ogling at some of the lady visitors, and passing comments. Imagine their shock when they heard a deep voice behind them and turned to find it was Professor Arora, "Nice, isn't she?"
Professor Arora proceeded to put them at ease, and began discussing one of the women in greater detail, much to their initial embarrassment, but soon my friends joined in thinking this guy is so cool, and so on. "Nice, isn't she?" he repeated.
"Has to be - she's my wife."
*********************************************************************************************
Indra was the only one of my students who used to frankly admit that for him India has no romance. He told me that he used to pass disparaging comments when his father went about pining for his Rural Bengal childhood...the Pather Panchali nostalgia.
Incidentally I remember our West Bengal's defeated CM, the bhadralok of bhadraloks, passing a sarcastic remark on Hyderabad. He, being a 'revisionist' admirer of Industrialization (which cost him his job...didi hit him on his vitals below his Nano belt) was enthused by the IT Revolution and the Hi-Tec City brought in by Naidu; and decided to visit Hyderabad to learn the ropes, maybe. He was greatly inspired by the gleaming towers of Google, Microsoft, Oracle and a hundred others jostling one another; and the Inorbit Mall, Cyberabad:
http://inorbit.in/malls.aspx?mallid=5
Like that famous Sardarjee jumping on the strip-tease tables, he must have been super-impressed...but on being driven to the outskirts of Hyderabad, his enthusiasm trickled down seeing all those barren rocks and he was pining for the eternal greenery of the suburbia of his Calcutta. Perhaps he didn't know that rocks endure for many more centuries than greeneries (which he wished to exchange for foul-smelling industries).
This foul-smelling thing recalls a pungent comment from the ever-tongue-lashing RK (also late, unfortunately). Someone on the Dining Hall of our Faculty Hostel was singing praises of the US where from he returned a week back. The Foreign-Returned was describing vividly a totally roboted Paper Mill he saw (or imagined he saw) in the US. And he was concluding his paean by the tailpiece that they have yet to purify the emissions of the said Industry.
RK came down with the rebuke:
"Shit stinks in the US too"
This again recalls the visit the other day of our neighbor-lady who bought her My Home Apartment for a whopping Rs 75 lacs or so. She got to know that our Township had gone Hi-Tech and has an inbuilt sewage-recycling plant whose purified water is used not only for watering the plants and the upcoming trees that line our boulevards, but also are pumped up to the overhead tank meant for storing water exclusively for our shitpot-water...I mean thereon it is re-recycled and goes on like our QM Perturbation Iterations...as I wrote to Pratik recently, I saw a Paper in Phys Rev a couple or more decades back whose title said the authors have calculated Stark Effect to the 17th order of Perturbation.
And our demure neighbor lady who must have been an orthodox brahmin almost fainted on hearing about this 'pollution' in her bathroom and was taking up a signature campaign.
Where was I? My blogs are becoming like my Lectures...more side-dishes than meat.
Yes, Indra...this India-bashing kid at KGP went to Princeton (he got schols from every other good place in the US but chose Princeton). It so happened that my e-mail account just got activated then and we were in regular e-touch.
The first thing that bugged him about Americans is that they hadn't heard of Calcutta (as I said earlier). The next thing was the Americans' food...he wrote to me that these poor devils, having been deprived of haldi--mirchi-sarso-Ilish maach-masala from infancy do not know what they are missing in their bland lives.
I mean everyone has their childhood nostalgia...why blame us poor senior citizens?
Anyway, Indra was spending his first Diwali in Princeton and was apparently forlorn.
And the night after Diwali, when we were e-chatting, Indra was asking who won the Illu Contest?...who won the Illu Contest?...who won the Illu Contest?
I then rang up Arora Saheb (who was my neighbor...like they were in B-139 and we in B-140) and got to know that Azad Hall won it...
You can then imagine the absolutely reckless joy that pervaded Indra's soul...he was an Azadian...
If you don't trust me, ask Saswat who was a witness.
Saswat...please don't pass on this post to Indra...he is busy with his Second Ph D...this time in Financial Economics at MIT...I intentionally pass comments like this on Indra in my blogs because there is a totally unjust infamy that he was a 'favorite' student of mine...all my students are my favorites...some were shy...others not...
============================================================================
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Bedside Reading
=========================================================================
The other night we attended the marriage of my youngest niece. It was a pleasure to meet many of my cousins and relatives. About half a dozen of them (including my 85-year old Literary Uncle and his sweet wife) were talking to me about their Ishani Collection. All of them said (they have to say something nice) that the booklets are their bedside reading. I didn't press them why since I am too shy.
But I can guess.
First they are handy...just 60-65 pages. Their print is easy on the eyes and binding is good enough so they don't wear out much. There is no continuity of story...they are independent 'pieces'...one can open any page and start reading. The pieces are all short so they can finish one before they fall asleep. They are readable...none heavy and intricate. And, as Supratim implied, they are all comical...no bitching, no moralizing nor pontification...so the induced sleep is hearty...some chest-thumping!
They were asking where is the next Ishani booklet...it is overdue; and when I said I am waiting for a Foreword-Writer, they fell silent eloquently and dissolved in the crowd.
I too always read before I snooze. For long, it was one of RKN's Collections like Next Sunday. Or Thurber's. Or Lear's. Or PGW's short pieces. For a long while in my Faculty Hostel years it was Bhagavadgita in one hand and the last puff in the other...they tended to cancel each other. But nowadays it is the Deccan Chronicle or Times of India. I do have a book case, a steel and glass thing with my meager collection visible whenever I walk by it. Even their sight is satisfying...like the alluring loochies in the marriage feast beyond the reach of my fractured teeth.
Edwin wrote to me long back that he reads in his bed till his eyes 'swim', and then switch off. With me it is not the eyes...when I read, the words sound from within...and when the mind starts losing focus, I hear fictitious words that are different than on the page I am reading. Then I know it is time for my shallow sleep.
I never read Physics books in bed. But I often used to take a physics problem that was resisting; and when I woke up, the solution jumps up from the subconscious...except one which took six silly months.
*****************************************************************************************************************
Signposts
Diwali here!
And our My Home Jewel Township declared it by hanging a dozen signposts on makeshift barricades reading clumsily:
This reminded me of the hilarious piece by Bertrand Russell in Newman's World of Mathematics. It is about the Board Meeting of a Public Park that went on for hours. They were debating what is the best, clearest, and pithiest signpost asking visitors to keep their dogs on leash while they are on the grounds.
The first suggestion was something like:
"Dogs without leash are not allowed"
There was an immediate objection that the signpost should be addressed to the owners rather than the dogs since most dogs can't read English.
The next suggestion was something like:
"Leash your dog in the Park!"
The objection to this was that there may be visitors who don't own dogs, and the signpost demands that they bring one and leash it while in the Park.
And it went on...
Coming back to our Crackers Signpost....Americans with their love for the active voice would amend it as:
"Fire crackers here!"
The objection to this is that an old goon like me who hasn't bought any crackers ought to go back and buy and bring some and fire them here...
Perhaps the pithiest and kindliest would be just to capitalize the American 'here':
The other night we attended the marriage of my youngest niece. It was a pleasure to meet many of my cousins and relatives. About half a dozen of them (including my 85-year old Literary Uncle and his sweet wife) were talking to me about their Ishani Collection. All of them said (they have to say something nice) that the booklets are their bedside reading. I didn't press them why since I am too shy.
But I can guess.
First they are handy...just 60-65 pages. Their print is easy on the eyes and binding is good enough so they don't wear out much. There is no continuity of story...they are independent 'pieces'...one can open any page and start reading. The pieces are all short so they can finish one before they fall asleep. They are readable...none heavy and intricate. And, as Supratim implied, they are all comical...no bitching, no moralizing nor pontification...so the induced sleep is hearty...some chest-thumping!
They were asking where is the next Ishani booklet...it is overdue; and when I said I am waiting for a Foreword-Writer, they fell silent eloquently and dissolved in the crowd.
I too always read before I snooze. For long, it was one of RKN's Collections like Next Sunday. Or Thurber's. Or Lear's. Or PGW's short pieces. For a long while in my Faculty Hostel years it was Bhagavadgita in one hand and the last puff in the other...they tended to cancel each other. But nowadays it is the Deccan Chronicle or Times of India. I do have a book case, a steel and glass thing with my meager collection visible whenever I walk by it. Even their sight is satisfying...like the alluring loochies in the marriage feast beyond the reach of my fractured teeth.
Edwin wrote to me long back that he reads in his bed till his eyes 'swim', and then switch off. With me it is not the eyes...when I read, the words sound from within...and when the mind starts losing focus, I hear fictitious words that are different than on the page I am reading. Then I know it is time for my shallow sleep.
I never read Physics books in bed. But I often used to take a physics problem that was resisting; and when I woke up, the solution jumps up from the subconscious...except one which took six silly months.
*****************************************************************************************************************
Signposts
Diwali here!
And our My Home Jewel Township declared it by hanging a dozen signposts on makeshift barricades reading clumsily:
Designated Area for Firing Cracker
This reminded me of the hilarious piece by Bertrand Russell in Newman's World of Mathematics. It is about the Board Meeting of a Public Park that went on for hours. They were debating what is the best, clearest, and pithiest signpost asking visitors to keep their dogs on leash while they are on the grounds.
The first suggestion was something like:
"Dogs without leash are not allowed"
There was an immediate objection that the signpost should be addressed to the owners rather than the dogs since most dogs can't read English.
The next suggestion was something like:
"Leash your dog in the Park!"
The objection to this was that there may be visitors who don't own dogs, and the signpost demands that they bring one and leash it while in the Park.
And it went on...
Coming back to our Crackers Signpost....Americans with their love for the active voice would amend it as:
"Fire crackers here!"
The objection to this is that an old goon like me who hasn't bought any crackers ought to go back and buy and bring some and fire them here...
Perhaps the pithiest and kindliest would be just to capitalize the American 'here':
Fire crackers HERE!
==========================================================================Any suggestions?
The worst signpost I read at IIT KGP on the Netaji outer walls read:
The worst signpost I read at IIT KGP on the Netaji outer walls read:
Ragging is Banned
Ragging is Banal
Ragging is Bad
Ragging is Banal
Ragging is Bad
Apart from the ugly alliteration on B, it is just a statement, and not a Threat that it is supposed to be. You can edit it and have some fun. What about:
I kept the alliteration on B which our Author was fond of.
***********************************************************************
"My son is working in the Silicone Valley"
Raggers, Beware of Big Brother!
I kept the alliteration on B which our Author was fond of.
***********************************************************************
What is that again?
Proud Hyderabadi Father:
"My son is working in the Silicone Valley"
Monday, October 24, 2011
News & Views
==========================================================================
DC 23 October:
Pune:
"In a bizarre case, a bull along with its owner was 'summoned' to a police station in Pune regarding a complaint of the animal being treated 'ruthlessly' during the Ganesh immersion last month. Sandip, the bullock, was in attendance with his owner on Friday after a complaint by the police alleging ruthless treatment of the animal during the Ganesh immersion"
************************************************************************************************************
I do not know if I can comment on this delicate matter which is sub judice.
This sub judice thing comes very handy nowadays to our politicians. Most every inconvenient matter is sub judice and likely to remain so for good. They refuse to answer any (in)delicate question at all.
But the other day the Supreme Court was fuming by a statement by our erudite Law Minister. He is reported to have said that corporate honchos should not be kept in jail for too long, since it is effecting the growth of our economy adversely. He didn't say it but the wrong implication is that politicians can very well be kept there as long as the SC wishes since they are eminently expendable.
This at once drew a sarcastic comment from the august bench that they are not at all interested in playing host to the said corporate honchos or even politicians (implying that it is becoming very expensive for the Court...they tend to get unwell too soon unlike common criminals).
Anyway the reported 'ruthless' ill treatment of the said bull(ock) goes against all enlightened thought on cruelty to animals (not including man).
My learned UP friend, Tyagi, half a century ago recited a well-known verse from the celebrated Goswami Tulsidasjee (?) which goes against all wisdom, if not kindness. I forgot the exact Awadhi couplet but its sense is somewhat as follows:
"Cattle, harijans, drums and women are all beat-worthy" (I beg to be corrected).
This of course is scandalous nowadays; and I am most happy that we don't subscribe to this adage any longer.
Let us first take women.
I always speak from personal experience in my blogs, as you all know. I never beat my wife (32 years on). On the other hand, I used to get regularly kicked by her unconsciously (for her) every night. She suffers from (or enjoys) a syndrome...not RLS...but KJR (Knee Jerk Reaction). While she is in her deep sleep (within a minute of closing her eyes till a minute before opening them) she often 'kicks' her left leg in the air sideways at completely random and unpredictable intervals (if I change sides, it is the right leg that becomes active, meaning she is ambidextrous sympthaticae).
After the first few months, I devised a plan...I keep four pillows between us in our double bed.
But a few years ago, all the members of our extended family had to sleep on the floor of a Marriage Function Hall at Gudur...the muhurat was early in the morning and we had no overnight transport. As is the custom, all gents slept on the right half of the floor and ladies on the left.
This right-left business is rather rigid in our families...Lord Raam has Sita to his left in all their joint family portraits. So does Lord Shiv have Parvati on his left half. Anyway the custom is enlightened since ladies are left-leaning...I mean progressive like the inhabitants of JNU by default (Supratim!).
Coming back to our night-rest on the floor of the Function Hall...two of my six sisters (by rotation) shared sides with my slumbering wife and complained to me vehemently next morning. I offered profuse apologies on my wife's behalf...but inwardly I said: "Serves you right!" {;-}
This evening Ishani came running into our bedroom when my wife and me were relaxing and gossiping (you know about who...my sisters) and clawed up on our bed and mounted astride the boundary pillows and pretended she was driving a horse (not bull, no way). After a while she lisped: "Granpa! Why these pillows?"
I told her that they are the dividers between Hindustan and Pakistan.
That seemed to have amused her so much that she went away repeating: "Hindustan, Pakistan...Hindustan, Pakistan..."...kids know instinctively that our relations with our half-brother across are hilarious.
This morning there was this unusual news item:
Apparently, an Indian Army helicopter strayed into the Pakistani air space. The default reaction is to fire anti-aircraft missiles, or bring it down and incarcerate the pilot indefinitely and bargain the exchange rate:
1 Indian pilot = all the Pakistani prisoners in Indian jails
But surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) the matter seemed to have been settled amicably and swiftly and within five hours the Chetak helicopter with its lieutenant-colonel, two majors and a naib subedar were safely back in Kargil...Pakistan foreign affairs are now in cute hands.
Talking of planes and helicopters, we have this smug news that the world's largest passenger aircraft, A-380, from Bangkok to Dubai, made an emergency landing (the third one in a row) safely in our Shamshabad Greenfield Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (after being refused permission by Chennai). See, I told you, Hyderabad is hi-tech...
Oh, yes, I forgot... a baby girl was safely delivered on an Air India flight bound to Toronto. The delivery took place over Kazakhstan. Great news! The baby can now play ice-hockey for Canada, kickbox for Kazakhstan; and of course become the President of India.
That's all for tonight...the Invigilator is shouting: "Time up...stop writing!!!"
===========================================================================
DC 23 October:
Pune:
"In a bizarre case, a bull along with its owner was 'summoned' to a police station in Pune regarding a complaint of the animal being treated 'ruthlessly' during the Ganesh immersion last month. Sandip, the bullock, was in attendance with his owner on Friday after a complaint by the police alleging ruthless treatment of the animal during the Ganesh immersion"
************************************************************************************************************
I do not know if I can comment on this delicate matter which is sub judice.
This sub judice thing comes very handy nowadays to our politicians. Most every inconvenient matter is sub judice and likely to remain so for good. They refuse to answer any (in)delicate question at all.
But the other day the Supreme Court was fuming by a statement by our erudite Law Minister. He is reported to have said that corporate honchos should not be kept in jail for too long, since it is effecting the growth of our economy adversely. He didn't say it but the wrong implication is that politicians can very well be kept there as long as the SC wishes since they are eminently expendable.
This at once drew a sarcastic comment from the august bench that they are not at all interested in playing host to the said corporate honchos or even politicians (implying that it is becoming very expensive for the Court...they tend to get unwell too soon unlike common criminals).
Anyway the reported 'ruthless' ill treatment of the said bull(ock) goes against all enlightened thought on cruelty to animals (not including man).
My learned UP friend, Tyagi, half a century ago recited a well-known verse from the celebrated Goswami Tulsidasjee (?) which goes against all wisdom, if not kindness. I forgot the exact Awadhi couplet but its sense is somewhat as follows:
"Cattle, harijans, drums and women are all beat-worthy" (I beg to be corrected).
This of course is scandalous nowadays; and I am most happy that we don't subscribe to this adage any longer.
Let us first take women.
I always speak from personal experience in my blogs, as you all know. I never beat my wife (32 years on). On the other hand, I used to get regularly kicked by her unconsciously (for her) every night. She suffers from (or enjoys) a syndrome...not RLS...but KJR (Knee Jerk Reaction). While she is in her deep sleep (within a minute of closing her eyes till a minute before opening them) she often 'kicks' her left leg in the air sideways at completely random and unpredictable intervals (if I change sides, it is the right leg that becomes active, meaning she is ambidextrous sympthaticae).
After the first few months, I devised a plan...I keep four pillows between us in our double bed.
But a few years ago, all the members of our extended family had to sleep on the floor of a Marriage Function Hall at Gudur...the muhurat was early in the morning and we had no overnight transport. As is the custom, all gents slept on the right half of the floor and ladies on the left.
This right-left business is rather rigid in our families...Lord Raam has Sita to his left in all their joint family portraits. So does Lord Shiv have Parvati on his left half. Anyway the custom is enlightened since ladies are left-leaning...I mean progressive like the inhabitants of JNU by default (Supratim!).
Coming back to our night-rest on the floor of the Function Hall...two of my six sisters (by rotation) shared sides with my slumbering wife and complained to me vehemently next morning. I offered profuse apologies on my wife's behalf...but inwardly I said: "Serves you right!" {;-}
This evening Ishani came running into our bedroom when my wife and me were relaxing and gossiping (you know about who...my sisters) and clawed up on our bed and mounted astride the boundary pillows and pretended she was driving a horse (not bull, no way). After a while she lisped: "Granpa! Why these pillows?"
I told her that they are the dividers between Hindustan and Pakistan.
That seemed to have amused her so much that she went away repeating: "Hindustan, Pakistan...Hindustan, Pakistan..."...kids know instinctively that our relations with our half-brother across are hilarious.
This morning there was this unusual news item:
Apparently, an Indian Army helicopter strayed into the Pakistani air space. The default reaction is to fire anti-aircraft missiles, or bring it down and incarcerate the pilot indefinitely and bargain the exchange rate:
1 Indian pilot = all the Pakistani prisoners in Indian jails
But surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) the matter seemed to have been settled amicably and swiftly and within five hours the Chetak helicopter with its lieutenant-colonel, two majors and a naib subedar were safely back in Kargil...Pakistan foreign affairs are now in cute hands.
Talking of planes and helicopters, we have this smug news that the world's largest passenger aircraft, A-380, from Bangkok to Dubai, made an emergency landing (the third one in a row) safely in our Shamshabad Greenfield Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (after being refused permission by Chennai). See, I told you, Hyderabad is hi-tech...
Oh, yes, I forgot... a baby girl was safely delivered on an Air India flight bound to Toronto. The delivery took place over Kazakhstan. Great news! The baby can now play ice-hockey for Canada, kickbox for Kazakhstan; and of course become the President of India.
That's all for tonight...the Invigilator is shouting: "Time up...stop writing!!!"
===========================================================================
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Superdrivers
========================================================================
We have all heard of Superachievers and met some if we were lucky.
But this is about the few Superdrivers I met in my longish life. They have this thing in common: they are somewhat feared but much respected (by cognoscenti).
*************************************************************************************************************
The first is my Father (GRK). He was our Head Master in the newly started Village School at Muthukur during the six years of my high school.
From the Assistant Head Master to the peon, he was feared for his inviolable discipline. He was there at his desk half an hour before anyone else arrived and a couple of hours after everyone had left. The daily School Assembly was compulsory for all students, staff and peons. He would go round the classes every couple of hours to check if classes are being held and heard in silence, with a cane in hand and tongue ready to lash.
The great thing about him was the impartiality and sense of fair play and justice. Once he saw me playing truant under the cashew tree in the school, caught me by my ear, and dragged me all the way in front of everyone to my Hindi Class which I abhorred.
To this day, when I go to my native district and announce that I am the son of GRK, older folks fall reverentially silent and recall that he single-handedly changed the school-culture in the district and held records for his teaching and administrative abilities.
*************************************************************************************************************
As soon as I joined IIT KGP as a junior lecturer, there was this familiar sight in the corridors of the hallowed Main Building: a short slightly-built elderly man in dhoti and shirt would be shouting at the top of his voice, and janitors and charwomen loitering would run and pick up their brooms and pretend to be all busy. No one before, or since I guess, could instill such alertness and obedience. And in his later years, he would get respectful salutes from one and all.
He was known as Steward Sen, nothing more.
Steward Sen is also known for the Shib-Kali Temple he helped build just outside the perimeter road. And after his retirement I used to find him meditating and administering the premises of that very popular temple. And he was always in attendance during the cremations held nearby. When communication was largely by word of mouth, he had just to be let known that so and so passed away...the rest would be in his capable hands...not a pleasant task to onlookers but a boon to the bereaved...
**************************************************************************************************************
Then there was this Chief of the sprawling BNR (SER) Railway Hospital at KGP. His name is Dr. Kohili. He and his comely wife were esteemed surgeons.
I had occasion to meet and see Dr Kohili when he and his Mrs performed a rather complicated abdominal surgery on my wife. She was an in-patient there for a couple of weeks. He was fair, short and stocky. He never spoke more than a word or two, and that too softly but firmly. I found that everyone around, from doctors to nurses and ward boys, and attendants of patients stood in awe of him.
His specialty were his eyes...they gleamed and looked piercing...and everyone (including me) used to automatically come to attention, sort of, when he arrived. His arrival was heralded by hushed voices in the rather unruly Government Hospital. Folks working in night shifts used to tell me that they can't afford to take a single wink, for, he would slyly arrive alone at unpredictable hours in his late-night rounds...and legend had it that he always came in his kurta-pajamas from his adjacent Qrs with his licensed pistol in his roomy pocket.
The BNR Hospital was famously spic and span during his reign there.
And he was the only Doctor at KGP who returned his tiny consultation fee reflexively as soon as he came to know that my wife too is a medico...
****************************************************************************************************************
And finally Professor KLC (Padmashree) who presided over IIT KGP over a rare two-term Directorship (1987-97). Much is known about the way he turned IIT KGP around.
A couple of days ago, Kedar sent me the following link:
http://www.scholarsavenue.org/2011/09/12/tete-a-tete-with-prof-kl-chopra/
A month or two before he took over as our Director, I was promoted to a Professorship and was thinking of taking a much-deserved rest for a few months...no way.
It so happened that for a decade or more before that I was toying with the idea of coming up with an electrical version of the length contraction paradox that is completely and quantitatively resolvable. It resisted but I finally got it one day and sent it to AJP. It appeared in 1987. And within a few months I received a packet from Edwin Taylor at MIT enclosing an Undergraduate Project titled Flickering Bulb Paradox. It just happened that ET had developed the first Relativity Problem-Solving 'Spacetime Software' and was waiting for good problems that could be solved by it...rather like one who invented a lovely tool and was waiting for 'jobs'. ET was one of the referees for my Paper in AJP and was much taken in by its quantitative (numerical and graphical) possibilities. And he offered to send me a copy of the software as a return gift.
I didn't have access to any PC then and forgot about his offer. But one day, our HoD, Professor KVR, happened to be in our Qrs on a social visit and I showed him ET's letter (KVR was at MIT for 3 years earlier). He at once took a copy of ET's letter and forwarded it to Prof KLC. Within a day I got a letter from KLC on his official letterhead asking me to get the gift Software from ET, work on it and show it to him!!!
That encouraged me so much that I worked on it for a good while and wrote a Paper on its possibilities with my Project Student TRR. And invited KLC to the single PC XT in our makeshift Computer Lab. And he did come in, and spent more than a precious hour with ET's Spacetime Software.
I was amazed. This never happened to me or to anyone of my colleagues earlier.
Then on, almost every year, Professor KLC was tracking my work and sending handwritten messages on his personal pads asking me to continue and do more...
But for KLC, I would have relaxed...quite a few worthwhile publications came every year due to his unending encouragement.
The day he was leaving KGP, my kid son and I met him in his Bungalow to thank him (something I never did before or later).
And he continues to encourage me to this day though I left Physics and took up my lighthearted blogging...
Truly a Superdriver...and there are dozens of my younger colleagues and Research Scholars in Phy Dept whose CVs transformed overnight due to his Academic Midas Touch...
=========================================================================
We have all heard of Superachievers and met some if we were lucky.
But this is about the few Superdrivers I met in my longish life. They have this thing in common: they are somewhat feared but much respected (by cognoscenti).
*************************************************************************************************************
The first is my Father (GRK). He was our Head Master in the newly started Village School at Muthukur during the six years of my high school.
From the Assistant Head Master to the peon, he was feared for his inviolable discipline. He was there at his desk half an hour before anyone else arrived and a couple of hours after everyone had left. The daily School Assembly was compulsory for all students, staff and peons. He would go round the classes every couple of hours to check if classes are being held and heard in silence, with a cane in hand and tongue ready to lash.
The great thing about him was the impartiality and sense of fair play and justice. Once he saw me playing truant under the cashew tree in the school, caught me by my ear, and dragged me all the way in front of everyone to my Hindi Class which I abhorred.
To this day, when I go to my native district and announce that I am the son of GRK, older folks fall reverentially silent and recall that he single-handedly changed the school-culture in the district and held records for his teaching and administrative abilities.
*************************************************************************************************************
As soon as I joined IIT KGP as a junior lecturer, there was this familiar sight in the corridors of the hallowed Main Building: a short slightly-built elderly man in dhoti and shirt would be shouting at the top of his voice, and janitors and charwomen loitering would run and pick up their brooms and pretend to be all busy. No one before, or since I guess, could instill such alertness and obedience. And in his later years, he would get respectful salutes from one and all.
He was known as Steward Sen, nothing more.
Steward Sen is also known for the Shib-Kali Temple he helped build just outside the perimeter road. And after his retirement I used to find him meditating and administering the premises of that very popular temple. And he was always in attendance during the cremations held nearby. When communication was largely by word of mouth, he had just to be let known that so and so passed away...the rest would be in his capable hands...not a pleasant task to onlookers but a boon to the bereaved...
**************************************************************************************************************
Then there was this Chief of the sprawling BNR (SER) Railway Hospital at KGP. His name is Dr. Kohili. He and his comely wife were esteemed surgeons.
I had occasion to meet and see Dr Kohili when he and his Mrs performed a rather complicated abdominal surgery on my wife. She was an in-patient there for a couple of weeks. He was fair, short and stocky. He never spoke more than a word or two, and that too softly but firmly. I found that everyone around, from doctors to nurses and ward boys, and attendants of patients stood in awe of him.
His specialty were his eyes...they gleamed and looked piercing...and everyone (including me) used to automatically come to attention, sort of, when he arrived. His arrival was heralded by hushed voices in the rather unruly Government Hospital. Folks working in night shifts used to tell me that they can't afford to take a single wink, for, he would slyly arrive alone at unpredictable hours in his late-night rounds...and legend had it that he always came in his kurta-pajamas from his adjacent Qrs with his licensed pistol in his roomy pocket.
The BNR Hospital was famously spic and span during his reign there.
And he was the only Doctor at KGP who returned his tiny consultation fee reflexively as soon as he came to know that my wife too is a medico...
****************************************************************************************************************
And finally Professor KLC (Padmashree) who presided over IIT KGP over a rare two-term Directorship (1987-97). Much is known about the way he turned IIT KGP around.
A couple of days ago, Kedar sent me the following link:
http://www.scholarsavenue.org/2011/09/12/tete-a-tete-with-prof-kl-chopra/
A month or two before he took over as our Director, I was promoted to a Professorship and was thinking of taking a much-deserved rest for a few months...no way.
It so happened that for a decade or more before that I was toying with the idea of coming up with an electrical version of the length contraction paradox that is completely and quantitatively resolvable. It resisted but I finally got it one day and sent it to AJP. It appeared in 1987. And within a few months I received a packet from Edwin Taylor at MIT enclosing an Undergraduate Project titled Flickering Bulb Paradox. It just happened that ET had developed the first Relativity Problem-Solving 'Spacetime Software' and was waiting for good problems that could be solved by it...rather like one who invented a lovely tool and was waiting for 'jobs'. ET was one of the referees for my Paper in AJP and was much taken in by its quantitative (numerical and graphical) possibilities. And he offered to send me a copy of the software as a return gift.
I didn't have access to any PC then and forgot about his offer. But one day, our HoD, Professor KVR, happened to be in our Qrs on a social visit and I showed him ET's letter (KVR was at MIT for 3 years earlier). He at once took a copy of ET's letter and forwarded it to Prof KLC. Within a day I got a letter from KLC on his official letterhead asking me to get the gift Software from ET, work on it and show it to him!!!
That encouraged me so much that I worked on it for a good while and wrote a Paper on its possibilities with my Project Student TRR. And invited KLC to the single PC XT in our makeshift Computer Lab. And he did come in, and spent more than a precious hour with ET's Spacetime Software.
I was amazed. This never happened to me or to anyone of my colleagues earlier.
Then on, almost every year, Professor KLC was tracking my work and sending handwritten messages on his personal pads asking me to continue and do more...
But for KLC, I would have relaxed...quite a few worthwhile publications came every year due to his unending encouragement.
The day he was leaving KGP, my kid son and I met him in his Bungalow to thank him (something I never did before or later).
And he continues to encourage me to this day though I left Physics and took up my lighthearted blogging...
Truly a Superdriver...and there are dozens of my younger colleagues and Research Scholars in Phy Dept whose CVs transformed overnight due to his Academic Midas Touch...
=========================================================================
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Self-Realization
========================================================================
"Kiran, the wife of HCL Chairman Shiv Nadar, recently realized that her jeweler had been selling her fake gems for the last 15 years"
....DC Hyderabad Chronicle
***************************************************************************************************************
In the beginning, say till I was 20, I was always on my guard lest I am cheated. And to the best of my knowledge I was...I mean in the market place mostly...I was suspicious that the vendor is overcharging me, shoving inferior stuff, shortchanging me, and laughing behind my back.
Pretty soon I realized I was not smart enough to outsmart others.
Then on I decided that the wisest policy for me would be to take it for granted that I would be cheated, overcharged, shortchanged and stuff. I stopped bargaining, asked the vegetable seller to pick and choose the best of the lot for me, stopped counting the change but pocket whatever he dumps on me...In short trust the chap across the counter.
I didn't know nor care if he betrayed my trust, but then on I was free in my mind to think of other more interesting things...like the import of the Claussius-Mossoti Relation. That policy did and still does a lot of good to me...my folks are aghast that I don't bargain and count...but I don't think they are any better off in worldly matters except that they enjoy their shopping...good!
************************************************************************************************************
Hyderabad is special. It is known all over the world for its pearls. And whoever visits Hyderabad would like to buy some pearls to show off back home. Legend has it that not long ago, in the Old City around Charminar, push-carts filled with pearls like peanuts were sold by the measure.
The first time I took a cab from Secunderabad Station to Punjagutta, and as is my wont, sat beside the cabbie, the chap stopped midway, opened the glove compartment and took out a pearl necklace and asked me to buy it...it is THE original stuff, not the fake plastic ones from the Old City but from the posh area of Banjara Hills and he gets a small commission. I said, another time. He gave me the card of the outlet from Banjara Hills.
When I went to the Banjara Hills outlet and showed the Boss the card the cabbie gave me, he laughed and said that not only the card but the pearls the cabbie tried to shove on me were pure plastic...and he showed me the REAL pearl necklace he had just got from the deep sea; and when I was moving way, he offered a discount of 30% specially for a senior citizen like me since it was the festival season.
***************************************************************************************************************
When my son applied for the BSNL broadband, the clerk took down his home address and phone number and told him that there is a shortage of modems and he is in the queue and as soon as modems arrive, he would fit one at our home.
A week later there was a phone call asking if we registered for the BSNL broadband, since the modems have arrived and asking for driving directions to our home. Our joy knew no bounds and within an hour, a chap came down, rang the bell, and delivered a packaged modem, collected Rs 1000, gave a receipt and said that we would get the amount adjusted in our next BSNL bill.
When after another week my son phoned the BSNL counter and asked why no one is coming to fix the internet connection, he was told that BSNL modems have not yet arrived and cautioned us against buying modems from outside vendors, since they are not recognized by BSNL...
And after a month the BSNL chap did deliver HIS modem and connection. But Hyderabad is not 100% spurious...the other day, the BSNL modem conked off and my son took down the Rs 1000 modem from the attic and it is working better than the 'official' one...
*************************************************************************************************************
My policy of taking it for granted that I will be cheated has some pleasant surprises.
When I bought an Inverter costing Rs 12,000 from the shop, I asked the shopkeeper to send me an Electrician who would fix it up at my home for a fees.
After a couple of days, a chap with typical beard and skull cap arrived and started fixing it up. I asked his name and got it confirmed from the shopkeeper on phone if he was the same chap that he sent. It was the month of Ramzan and the electrician refused tea, biscuits and even water for the couple of hours he was on the job.
And when I asked him how much is his fees, he asked me to ring up the shopkeeper and he would abide by whatever he says. And the chap said: "Give him Rs 500"; which I did happily. He left pocketing the money, but arrived back at my doorstep in half an hour. I thought that he wanted more money, but I was stunned when he took out a hundred rupee note from his pocket and returned it to me.
When I asked him what was the matter, he bent his head down and muttered that his wife scolded him for overcharging a customer in the month of Ramzan and ordered that he return the hundred rupees.
I embraced him and said: "we will split half and half" and pushed a Rs 50 note into his pocket and said: "Let us keep both our wives out of our secret deal."
He smiled and went away happily...
==========================================================================
"Kiran, the wife of HCL Chairman Shiv Nadar, recently realized that her jeweler had been selling her fake gems for the last 15 years"
....DC Hyderabad Chronicle
***************************************************************************************************************
In the beginning, say till I was 20, I was always on my guard lest I am cheated. And to the best of my knowledge I was...I mean in the market place mostly...I was suspicious that the vendor is overcharging me, shoving inferior stuff, shortchanging me, and laughing behind my back.
Pretty soon I realized I was not smart enough to outsmart others.
Then on I decided that the wisest policy for me would be to take it for granted that I would be cheated, overcharged, shortchanged and stuff. I stopped bargaining, asked the vegetable seller to pick and choose the best of the lot for me, stopped counting the change but pocket whatever he dumps on me...In short trust the chap across the counter.
I didn't know nor care if he betrayed my trust, but then on I was free in my mind to think of other more interesting things...like the import of the Claussius-Mossoti Relation. That policy did and still does a lot of good to me...my folks are aghast that I don't bargain and count...but I don't think they are any better off in worldly matters except that they enjoy their shopping...good!
************************************************************************************************************
Hyderabad is special. It is known all over the world for its pearls. And whoever visits Hyderabad would like to buy some pearls to show off back home. Legend has it that not long ago, in the Old City around Charminar, push-carts filled with pearls like peanuts were sold by the measure.
The first time I took a cab from Secunderabad Station to Punjagutta, and as is my wont, sat beside the cabbie, the chap stopped midway, opened the glove compartment and took out a pearl necklace and asked me to buy it...it is THE original stuff, not the fake plastic ones from the Old City but from the posh area of Banjara Hills and he gets a small commission. I said, another time. He gave me the card of the outlet from Banjara Hills.
When I went to the Banjara Hills outlet and showed the Boss the card the cabbie gave me, he laughed and said that not only the card but the pearls the cabbie tried to shove on me were pure plastic...and he showed me the REAL pearl necklace he had just got from the deep sea; and when I was moving way, he offered a discount of 30% specially for a senior citizen like me since it was the festival season.
***************************************************************************************************************
When my son applied for the BSNL broadband, the clerk took down his home address and phone number and told him that there is a shortage of modems and he is in the queue and as soon as modems arrive, he would fit one at our home.
A week later there was a phone call asking if we registered for the BSNL broadband, since the modems have arrived and asking for driving directions to our home. Our joy knew no bounds and within an hour, a chap came down, rang the bell, and delivered a packaged modem, collected Rs 1000, gave a receipt and said that we would get the amount adjusted in our next BSNL bill.
When after another week my son phoned the BSNL counter and asked why no one is coming to fix the internet connection, he was told that BSNL modems have not yet arrived and cautioned us against buying modems from outside vendors, since they are not recognized by BSNL...
And after a month the BSNL chap did deliver HIS modem and connection. But Hyderabad is not 100% spurious...the other day, the BSNL modem conked off and my son took down the Rs 1000 modem from the attic and it is working better than the 'official' one...
*************************************************************************************************************
My policy of taking it for granted that I will be cheated has some pleasant surprises.
When I bought an Inverter costing Rs 12,000 from the shop, I asked the shopkeeper to send me an Electrician who would fix it up at my home for a fees.
After a couple of days, a chap with typical beard and skull cap arrived and started fixing it up. I asked his name and got it confirmed from the shopkeeper on phone if he was the same chap that he sent. It was the month of Ramzan and the electrician refused tea, biscuits and even water for the couple of hours he was on the job.
And when I asked him how much is his fees, he asked me to ring up the shopkeeper and he would abide by whatever he says. And the chap said: "Give him Rs 500"; which I did happily. He left pocketing the money, but arrived back at my doorstep in half an hour. I thought that he wanted more money, but I was stunned when he took out a hundred rupee note from his pocket and returned it to me.
When I asked him what was the matter, he bent his head down and muttered that his wife scolded him for overcharging a customer in the month of Ramzan and ordered that he return the hundred rupees.
I embraced him and said: "we will split half and half" and pushed a Rs 50 note into his pocket and said: "Let us keep both our wives out of our secret deal."
He smiled and went away happily...
==========================================================================
Friday, October 21, 2011
Dyshonesty
===========================================================================
I don't think I am a misanthrope.
Webster defines 'misanthrope' as 'a person who hates or distrusts humankind'. I certainly don't hate or for that matter distrust humankind, in particular, womankind. I love them all, like our Autocrat, in various 'degrees of freedom' to use a physics jargon.
I would like to call myself a dysanthrope...don't look up this word in any dictionary...I invented it just now.
Here are a few 'dys'-words from Webster that I am familiar with:
...dysentery, dysfunction, dyslexia, dysmenorrhea, dyspepsia, dystrophy...not to talk of dysprosium...
All of them have this in common: pain and abnormality.
*************************************************************************************************************
Let me clarify by an example taken from the ethereal world of academics in which I lived wily-nilly for the most part of my life.
Suppose you write a Paper for a prestigious 'phoren' journal that you think is likely to get you promotions if not awards and honors.
And you got the central idea of the Paper during a discussion with an unwitting colleague C, say. And you are debating how to acknowledge her in print.
You can be:
1. honest: State exactly how much you owe C
2. dishonest: Forget about C
3. dyshonest: Acknowledge C somewhere tucked in the midst of blanket Acknowledgments to your Diro, HoD, Roommate, Typist, Wife, Son and Neighbors...to dilute your debt. This effort is more 'painful' and 'abnormal' than 1 or 2 which are decisive.
*****************************************************************************************************************
Talking of 'dyshonest' Acknowledgments, here are a few mythical ones:
1. ABC is a young and talented faculty member. Without knowing his own abilities and aptitudes, he registers for a Ph D under Professor XYZ who is an expert in lab. But he discovers he hates labs but loves theory of which XYZ is innocent. So, he approaches his HoD showing all the theory he did without the help of anyone. HoD asks him to submit his thesis under XYZ not to make matters difficult for everyone. ABC's Acknowledgment reads:
"I am immensely grateful to my HoD but for whose encouragement this thesis would never have been written. I also thank XYZ for being kindly cooperative...bla bla..."
He gets his degree and flies away to the US.
2. TRR is apparently humiliated for 5 years as an M Sc student by his Professor KVR who had a thing against TRR's 'attitude'. And in his final year TRR does his Project under gps. By then KVR becomes the HoD. After okaying his thesis, gps asks TRR to thank the HoD also in his Acknowledgments, to avoid trouble. TRR turns around and asks: "What for?"... gps replies: "for making the facility of the computer lab available"
3. Good Old BBB is chosen as the Ph D Examiner for a thesis. But he is too busy and requests the Registry to invite his post-doc CCC as a co-examiner. The Report has the signatures of both BBB and CCC. BBB gives away the paltry honorarium of Rs 100 to CCC. And flies from the East Coast to the West to take the viva, enjoying the hospitality and making contacts.
I guess you get an idea of 'dyshonesty'...
********************************************************************************************
Someone, maybe Shakespeare himself, said there is nothing new under the sun.
Just now I Googled for 'dysanthrope' and got 884 results. And the first one, the Urban Dictionary, said it in a mouthful:
============================================================================
I don't think I am a misanthrope.
Webster defines 'misanthrope' as 'a person who hates or distrusts humankind'. I certainly don't hate or for that matter distrust humankind, in particular, womankind. I love them all, like our Autocrat, in various 'degrees of freedom' to use a physics jargon.
I would like to call myself a dysanthrope...don't look up this word in any dictionary...I invented it just now.
Here are a few 'dys'-words from Webster that I am familiar with:
...dysentery, dysfunction, dyslexia, dysmenorrhea, dyspepsia, dystrophy...not to talk of dysprosium...
All of them have this in common: pain and abnormality.
*************************************************************************************************************
Let me clarify by an example taken from the ethereal world of academics in which I lived wily-nilly for the most part of my life.
Suppose you write a Paper for a prestigious 'phoren' journal that you think is likely to get you promotions if not awards and honors.
And you got the central idea of the Paper during a discussion with an unwitting colleague C, say. And you are debating how to acknowledge her in print.
You can be:
1. honest: State exactly how much you owe C
2. dishonest: Forget about C
3. dyshonest: Acknowledge C somewhere tucked in the midst of blanket Acknowledgments to your Diro, HoD, Roommate, Typist, Wife, Son and Neighbors...to dilute your debt. This effort is more 'painful' and 'abnormal' than 1 or 2 which are decisive.
*****************************************************************************************************************
Talking of 'dyshonest' Acknowledgments, here are a few mythical ones:
1. ABC is a young and talented faculty member. Without knowing his own abilities and aptitudes, he registers for a Ph D under Professor XYZ who is an expert in lab. But he discovers he hates labs but loves theory of which XYZ is innocent. So, he approaches his HoD showing all the theory he did without the help of anyone. HoD asks him to submit his thesis under XYZ not to make matters difficult for everyone. ABC's Acknowledgment reads:
"I am immensely grateful to my HoD but for whose encouragement this thesis would never have been written. I also thank XYZ for being kindly cooperative...bla bla..."
He gets his degree and flies away to the US.
2. TRR is apparently humiliated for 5 years as an M Sc student by his Professor KVR who had a thing against TRR's 'attitude'. And in his final year TRR does his Project under gps. By then KVR becomes the HoD. After okaying his thesis, gps asks TRR to thank the HoD also in his Acknowledgments, to avoid trouble. TRR turns around and asks: "What for?"... gps replies: "for making the facility of the computer lab available"
3. Good Old BBB is chosen as the Ph D Examiner for a thesis. But he is too busy and requests the Registry to invite his post-doc CCC as a co-examiner. The Report has the signatures of both BBB and CCC. BBB gives away the paltry honorarium of Rs 100 to CCC. And flies from the East Coast to the West to take the viva, enjoying the hospitality and making contacts.
I guess you get an idea of 'dyshonesty'...
********************************************************************************************
Post Script
Someone, maybe Shakespeare himself, said there is nothing new under the sun.
Just now I Googled for 'dysanthrope' and got 884 results. And the first one, the Urban Dictionary, said it in a mouthful:
| dysanthrope | | |
| -noun: one whose interactions with humankind result in personal physical and/emotional pain Unlike a misanthrope, who simply hates people, the dysanthrope finds it painful to interact with others. | ||
============================================================================
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Life at Large Reynolds Numbers
==========================================================================
I may often sound bitchy about America and Americans but it is not true.
The only thing I have about it is that it is a childish civilization; it is like Ishani (nearly 2) to me (nearly 70) on a logarithmic scale...200 odd years of the US compared with 5000 odd of India. I can't cope with Ishani's physical vigor. I can't run after her. I have to constantly devise guileful mental games to keep her at one place and fascinated.
America is a vast continent...five or more times than our subcontinent. But its culture is all black and white like Ishani's Chota Bheem stories...good vs evil and finally the good wins, Ishani smiling and clapping when the big bad bully is busted. But every thing about India is in technicolor.
Listen to RKN in "India and America":
"...The quality of life in India is different. Despite all the deficiencies, irritations, lack of material comforts and amenities, and general confusions, Indian life builds inner strength. It is through subtle, inexplicable influences, through religion, family ties and human relationships in general...let us call them 'inputs', to use a modern term...which cumulatively sustain and lend variety and richness to existence..."
I have had uniformly excellent contacts with those half a dozen American academicians during my 4 decades at KGP. They were all so kind, and not patronizing.
When I was just a kid of 25, the book by E M Purcell: "E&M" (Vol 2 of Berkeley Physics Series) fascinated me. I bought a cheap paperback and taught portions of it...it was a perfect complement to Feynman Vol 2. And I wanted a Solutions Manual (if one existed) and wrote to Purcell on a wafer-thin Aerogramme with the IIT KGP insignia and forgot all about it. Within a few weeks I got an Air Mail packet from Purcell himself, with the 'from' and 'to' addresses in his own hand. How did I know? Inside the packet there was a 'mimeographed' booklet with the Solutions in Purcell's own hand. How did I know? On page one, he wrote a nice 'best wishes' and signed it.
My joy knew no bounds. Not just that he was an NL...I had read, during my Post-M Sc stint at my University, the path-breaking BPP Paper of 1948.
Anyway, here is a unique paper by him dedicated to Weiskopf:
http://jila.colorado.edu/perkinsgroup/Purcell_life_at_low_reynolds_number.pdf
It is titled "Life at Low Reynolds Numbers". I enjoyed it thoroughly when it appeared in AJP in 1977. Oh, well, it is about situations when a thing has to move fighting slow in a turgid heavily viscous medium...typically the thing whose single-minded swimming you and I needed for our creation {;-}
************************************************************************************************************
That brings me to the title of this post: the exact opposite...life in the highly turbulent Hyderabad traffic.
This morning I suddenly decided to go to my book binder at Khairatabad, 25 km away, and collect some books I gave for binding last Saturday. I was in no mood to call a cab for the to and fro journey which would cost Rs 1200; or my favorite autowala who would run to me by a 'missed call'..he would charge Rs 500.
I decided not to drive down in my Maruti due to the perennial parking problem in the area. And I just can't walk on those busy roads without the hint of any pedestrian sidewalks...they are all occupied by thela gadis.
So, I asked my son to drop me in the chaurastha of the Hi-Tec City on his way to his office; which he gladly did.
The famed X Roads don't have cabs, nor 'singleton' autos...all they have are 'share' autos. I have no problem, because with my gray hair, even the ladies in 'hoods with double slits' don't object to my being squeezed between them...they don't know that 70 is the most dangerous age for girls...ask Maugham...
Anyway the auto picked up and dropped at least half a dozen customers on my way to Ameerpet...beyond which they are not allowed. The chap charged me Rs 15.
I took a cup of Irani chai. And I didn't want to climb up and then down a lofty ROB (that is Road Over Bridge for you). So, I asked a 'singleton' auto to take me the other way and go to Khairatabad Colony taking a U-Turn. He wanted to go by meter...he thought I was a novice! After some haggling, he came down from Rs 50 to Rs 25.
After picking up my books and buying a few sweetmeats for Ishani (Bandar Laddus if you want to know) and some dresses, I took another 'singleton' auto @ Rs 15 to the MMTS Station (that is Multi-Modal Transport System..big name for what Bengalis call EMU..not the running Australian bird but Electric Multiple Unit).
That was the most pleasant part of the journey...the ticket is Rs 4 (four only) for a 25 km ride... India at a glance...with urchins singing their hearts out for a 'penny' and me with a hand firmly on my wallet-pocket...
I got down at Chandanagar; and another auto for Rs 20 and I was home...
The total cost was: Rs 15 + 25 + 15 + 4 + 20 = 59 (Seventy Nine only)
But what a pleasure!...RKN would have loved it...particularly because it was me all alone most of the way, to contemplate whatever pensioners contemplate....
==========================================================================
I may often sound bitchy about America and Americans but it is not true.
The only thing I have about it is that it is a childish civilization; it is like Ishani (nearly 2) to me (nearly 70) on a logarithmic scale...200 odd years of the US compared with 5000 odd of India. I can't cope with Ishani's physical vigor. I can't run after her. I have to constantly devise guileful mental games to keep her at one place and fascinated.
America is a vast continent...five or more times than our subcontinent. But its culture is all black and white like Ishani's Chota Bheem stories...good vs evil and finally the good wins, Ishani smiling and clapping when the big bad bully is busted. But every thing about India is in technicolor.
Listen to RKN in "India and America":
"...The quality of life in India is different. Despite all the deficiencies, irritations, lack of material comforts and amenities, and general confusions, Indian life builds inner strength. It is through subtle, inexplicable influences, through religion, family ties and human relationships in general...let us call them 'inputs', to use a modern term...which cumulatively sustain and lend variety and richness to existence..."
I have had uniformly excellent contacts with those half a dozen American academicians during my 4 decades at KGP. They were all so kind, and not patronizing.
When I was just a kid of 25, the book by E M Purcell: "E&M" (Vol 2 of Berkeley Physics Series) fascinated me. I bought a cheap paperback and taught portions of it...it was a perfect complement to Feynman Vol 2. And I wanted a Solutions Manual (if one existed) and wrote to Purcell on a wafer-thin Aerogramme with the IIT KGP insignia and forgot all about it. Within a few weeks I got an Air Mail packet from Purcell himself, with the 'from' and 'to' addresses in his own hand. How did I know? Inside the packet there was a 'mimeographed' booklet with the Solutions in Purcell's own hand. How did I know? On page one, he wrote a nice 'best wishes' and signed it.
My joy knew no bounds. Not just that he was an NL...I had read, during my Post-M Sc stint at my University, the path-breaking BPP Paper of 1948.
Anyway, here is a unique paper by him dedicated to Weiskopf:
http://jila.colorado.edu/perkinsgroup/Purcell_life_at_low_reynolds_number.pdf
It is titled "Life at Low Reynolds Numbers". I enjoyed it thoroughly when it appeared in AJP in 1977. Oh, well, it is about situations when a thing has to move fighting slow in a turgid heavily viscous medium...typically the thing whose single-minded swimming you and I needed for our creation {;-}
************************************************************************************************************
That brings me to the title of this post: the exact opposite...life in the highly turbulent Hyderabad traffic.
This morning I suddenly decided to go to my book binder at Khairatabad, 25 km away, and collect some books I gave for binding last Saturday. I was in no mood to call a cab for the to and fro journey which would cost Rs 1200; or my favorite autowala who would run to me by a 'missed call'..he would charge Rs 500.
I decided not to drive down in my Maruti due to the perennial parking problem in the area. And I just can't walk on those busy roads without the hint of any pedestrian sidewalks...they are all occupied by thela gadis.
So, I asked my son to drop me in the chaurastha of the Hi-Tec City on his way to his office; which he gladly did.
The famed X Roads don't have cabs, nor 'singleton' autos...all they have are 'share' autos. I have no problem, because with my gray hair, even the ladies in 'hoods with double slits' don't object to my being squeezed between them...they don't know that 70 is the most dangerous age for girls...ask Maugham...
Anyway the auto picked up and dropped at least half a dozen customers on my way to Ameerpet...beyond which they are not allowed. The chap charged me Rs 15.
I took a cup of Irani chai. And I didn't want to climb up and then down a lofty ROB (that is Road Over Bridge for you). So, I asked a 'singleton' auto to take me the other way and go to Khairatabad Colony taking a U-Turn. He wanted to go by meter...he thought I was a novice! After some haggling, he came down from Rs 50 to Rs 25.
After picking up my books and buying a few sweetmeats for Ishani (Bandar Laddus if you want to know) and some dresses, I took another 'singleton' auto @ Rs 15 to the MMTS Station (that is Multi-Modal Transport System..big name for what Bengalis call EMU..not the running Australian bird but Electric Multiple Unit).
That was the most pleasant part of the journey...the ticket is Rs 4 (four only) for a 25 km ride... India at a glance...with urchins singing their hearts out for a 'penny' and me with a hand firmly on my wallet-pocket...
I got down at Chandanagar; and another auto for Rs 20 and I was home...
The total cost was: Rs 15 + 25 + 15 + 4 + 20 = 59 (Seventy Nine only)
But what a pleasure!...RKN would have loved it...particularly because it was me all alone most of the way, to contemplate whatever pensioners contemplate....
==========================================================================
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Hassleton Inequalities
==========================================================================
"...There is a charming folklore in A P which goes like this: In the dead of the dark monsoon midnight when the Swati Constellation is at zenith in the sky, the thirsty oyster surfaces with its mouth wide open, waiting for a tiny rain drop to fall into it. Its thirst quenched, it clams up and dives down and goes hibernating. After 3 months, lo and behold, the rain drop turns into a glowing pearl of such purity and brilliance that no hi-tech-pearl-culture-technology can ever hope to match...
Moral: The chosen rain drop that finds the oyster’s waiting open mouth turns into a pearl; while its million unlucky friends miss it, slip into the water, merge into the sea, and get lost! "
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/rain-drops-and-pearls.html
**************************************************************************************************************
That was about the one in a hundred aspiring kids who get into IITs.
There is another fishy story about a Senior Professor (and a much-loved administrator) getting caught riding his scooter without a helmet and hauled into the 2-Town Police Station at KGP. When asked why he alone is caught when an unhelmeted dozen before and a dozen after him went scot-free, the Traffic Cop went poetic and stated:
"There are hundreds of fish swimming (helmetless) in the river...only the unfortunate one gets caught by the fortunate angler"
The Professor was let go with due apologies after the cop came to know from a third party who he was.
************************************************************************************************************
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9He who has ears, let him hear.”
http://niv.scripturetext.com/matthew/13.htm
**********************************************************************************
So, we are all not born equal, eh? Some are privileged and others no?
I was living in the Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP during the Indo-Pak War of September 1965. Since we were handshaking areal distance from the formidable Kalaikunda Air Base, we did see some action. Early one morning we heard earthshaking thuds from East-Pak bombers on our airbase and a scrambling of our fighters and dogfights watched by the lucky few IITians. A couple of Pak fighter planes were downed and a few adventurous Patelians scrambled onto their pushbikes and retrieved some souvenirs...like Virat's son Uttam Kumar cut off the ribbons and epaulets of Kauravas laid in slumber by Arjun as souvenirs for his kid sister Uttara.
The War was declared a Draw. But the enduring boast of the Pak Army to boost the morale of their soldiers was:
"1 Pak Soldier = 10 Indian Jawans"
And they did believe it artlessly till six years later Indirajee caught 93,000 of them with their pants down and herded them all into Dandakarnaya Forest pleasure retreats.
Thereafter, the thousand cuts started and the New Equation seems to be:
"One AK with an AK-47 = 172 or so innocent unarmed souls at CST"
*************************************************************************************************************
Sorry, but I am reminded of all this history when I saw a hilarious cartoon in DC from the International Herald Tribune in which a jubilant Palestinian Prisoner, just swapped, says:
"I did the Math: I'm worth 70 grams of Israeli Soldier"
**************************************************************************************************************
At KGP I heard it solemnly declared:
"1 occupant of the land of 5 Sindh-Tributaries = 10 Ganga-Kinarewalas"
But didn't the Great Jamuna-Kinarewala declare long ago?
===========================================================================
"...There is a charming folklore in A P which goes like this: In the dead of the dark monsoon midnight when the Swati Constellation is at zenith in the sky, the thirsty oyster surfaces with its mouth wide open, waiting for a tiny rain drop to fall into it. Its thirst quenched, it clams up and dives down and goes hibernating. After 3 months, lo and behold, the rain drop turns into a glowing pearl of such purity and brilliance that no hi-tech-pearl-culture-technology can ever hope to match...
Moral: The chosen rain drop that finds the oyster’s waiting open mouth turns into a pearl; while its million unlucky friends miss it, slip into the water, merge into the sea, and get lost! "
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/rain-drops-and-pearls.html
**************************************************************************************************************
That was about the one in a hundred aspiring kids who get into IITs.
There is another fishy story about a Senior Professor (and a much-loved administrator) getting caught riding his scooter without a helmet and hauled into the 2-Town Police Station at KGP. When asked why he alone is caught when an unhelmeted dozen before and a dozen after him went scot-free, the Traffic Cop went poetic and stated:
"There are hundreds of fish swimming (helmetless) in the river...only the unfortunate one gets caught by the fortunate angler"
The Professor was let go with due apologies after the cop came to know from a third party who he was.
************************************************************************************************************
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9He who has ears, let him hear.”
http://niv.scripturetext.com/matthew/13.htm
**********************************************************************************
So, we are all not born equal, eh? Some are privileged and others no?
I was living in the Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP during the Indo-Pak War of September 1965. Since we were handshaking areal distance from the formidable Kalaikunda Air Base, we did see some action. Early one morning we heard earthshaking thuds from East-Pak bombers on our airbase and a scrambling of our fighters and dogfights watched by the lucky few IITians. A couple of Pak fighter planes were downed and a few adventurous Patelians scrambled onto their pushbikes and retrieved some souvenirs...like Virat's son Uttam Kumar cut off the ribbons and epaulets of Kauravas laid in slumber by Arjun as souvenirs for his kid sister Uttara.
The War was declared a Draw. But the enduring boast of the Pak Army to boost the morale of their soldiers was:
"1 Pak Soldier = 10 Indian Jawans"
And they did believe it artlessly till six years later Indirajee caught 93,000 of them with their pants down and herded them all into Dandakarnaya Forest pleasure retreats.
Thereafter, the thousand cuts started and the New Equation seems to be:
"One AK with an AK-47 = 172 or so innocent unarmed souls at CST"
*************************************************************************************************************
Sorry, but I am reminded of all this history when I saw a hilarious cartoon in DC from the International Herald Tribune in which a jubilant Palestinian Prisoner, just swapped, says:
"I did the Math: I'm worth 70 grams of Israeli Soldier"
**************************************************************************************************************
At KGP I heard it solemnly declared:
"1 occupant of the land of 5 Sindh-Tributaries = 10 Ganga-Kinarewalas"
But didn't the Great Jamuna-Kinarewala declare long ago?
Bahoonaam janmanaam antey jnanawaan maam prapdyantey
Vaasudevah sarvamiti sa mahatma sudurlabhah
Vaasudevah sarvamiti sa mahatma sudurlabhah
===========================================================================
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Talk the Walk
===========================================================================
"...The true walker avoids all company. The best companion for a walk is oneself...this being a grand opportunity for sifting and anlaysing life and people and coming to a conclusion over so many matters. Here company is untenable. You might as well say you are unable to contemplate the sunset unless you have a companion chattering away on your side. The true walker, even if he has been with himself for six hours, will never say, "I have been out with the greatest bore on earth, namely myself"..."
...RKN in: The True Walker
*****************************************************************************************************************
It is well known that RKN used to take long morning and evening walks along the lanes and by-lanes of his Malgudi Mysore all by himself. But he would halt whenever he meets an acquaintance, exchange gossip, and proceed. And drop at his various mamool shops, buy a knickknack and get updates.
His walks were meant not only for his health but also to get ideas for his novels, characters and essays.
Khushwant Singh writes:
"..We saw a lot more of each other during a literary seminar organised by the East-West Centre in Hawaii. Having said our pieces and sat through discussions that followed, we went out for our evening walks, looking for a place to eat. It was the same kind of stroll as we had taken in Mysore punctuated by abrupt halts in the middle of crowded pavements till he was ready to resume walking..."
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?211789
*****************************************************************************************************
My Ph D Guide SDM for a while used to come to the Department on his ancient pushbike but on his return trips in the evening to his Qrs, he would prefer to walk, lugging his bike along, with his trademark heavy bag latched onto its carrier. And, since I used to be the last person in his Office, I had to necessarily walk beside him all the way (I had sold my third-hand pushbike to raise money for Wills Flakes).
All along, he would continue his endless one-way-talk, halting his bike many times and turning to look at me for emphasis, stop at the entrance of his Qrs and talk on and on; till his Mrs invites both of us for Tea and Loochies (all is well that ends well!)
By the time he became HoD, he used to hire a rickshaw on a monthly basis for his journeys to and fro. And along the way, he used to pick up Prof GBM (at no additional cost to the poor rickshawala). The two used to have arguments routinely.
One day when I visited his Office, he was glum; and after a while he narrated what happened that morning. Apparently, he was so upset with GBM he got so furious that he asked the rickshawala to halt near Harry's and practically pushed GBM out; and was watched in the act by the Director riding in his Staff Car...
Two Big Kids!!!
***********************************************************************************************************
Prof B joined KGP around 1968 and was putting up in our Faculty Hostel for a few months. He was a decade or more older to me and since he told us that he did his graduation at Cornell, we were duly all impressed and expected to learn much from him.
Unfortunately, Cornell didn't seem to have broadened his non-physics mind, since we all discovered early that he was a Hindi fanatic from Allahabad...(he didn't change much even after thirty KGP years...soon after he retired and settled in Allahabad, he sent 5 verses in Hindi composed by him to be put up on the Office Notice Board by a colleague from Sangam with similar views...I guess I too should send my blogs to Pratik for the same purpose...)
Those were the years when the Central Government in their unwisdom tried to make Hindi compulsory and was met with stiff resistance from Tamilnadu and Bengal. The Congress lost both these states and never recovered till now, a half century later.
As a rule I am tolerant except when someone tries to harshly impose his views on others....Majority Bullying:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/majority-bullying.html
A few days after he joined us, we were at the breakfast table (a rare event) and I was applying butter to my toast. Prof B was a few chairs away and said:
"O makkhan jara paas keejiye!"
And I kept quiet. He repeated:
"O makkhan jara paas keejiye!"
three times (like the cock crew thrice biblically).
And I replied without looking up:
"Nenu ivvanu po!"
which meant: "Get lost, I am not passing it on!"
The two Telugu bearers, Narayan and Laxman, guffawed and B's face fell.
Matters came to a head after a few days. One evening, myself and Prof PCS of EE were taking a stroll. He was one of the most widely read persons I ever met with and it was a pleasure talking to him on a walk. B joined us from nowhere and at once started talking about the 3-language formula and the Constitutional Requirement of having Hindi as the sole National Language and teaching it compulsorily from school level onwards all over India...(RKN has a few very diverting pieces on this, like: "To a Hindi Enthusiast")
That got my goat and I entered into a vicious argument (the only one I ever did) for the next two hours...we went round the Campus roads twice over...like the Lion and the Unicorn...all along Prof PCS quietly listening without uttering a single word!
That was more like: "Quack the Walk"
Myself and DB never had our name plates on our Office Wall for many years, till Prof RNP took over as furniture-in-charge; and made some lovely wooden boards. He asked us our spellings and proper pronunciation and by the time he got them fixed on our wall, we discovered that our names were in the 2-language formula...
India was shining then for a while...but no longer...not even with so many rathyatras of jeesaheb...
***********************************************************************************************************
From ToI:
"...The victim might have had interfered with the activities of the accused..."
============================================================================
"...The true walker avoids all company. The best companion for a walk is oneself...this being a grand opportunity for sifting and anlaysing life and people and coming to a conclusion over so many matters. Here company is untenable. You might as well say you are unable to contemplate the sunset unless you have a companion chattering away on your side. The true walker, even if he has been with himself for six hours, will never say, "I have been out with the greatest bore on earth, namely myself"..."
...RKN in: The True Walker
*****************************************************************************************************************
It is well known that RKN used to take long morning and evening walks along the lanes and by-lanes of his Malgudi Mysore all by himself. But he would halt whenever he meets an acquaintance, exchange gossip, and proceed. And drop at his various mamool shops, buy a knickknack and get updates.
His walks were meant not only for his health but also to get ideas for his novels, characters and essays.
Khushwant Singh writes:
"..We saw a lot more of each other during a literary seminar organised by the East-West Centre in Hawaii. Having said our pieces and sat through discussions that followed, we went out for our evening walks, looking for a place to eat. It was the same kind of stroll as we had taken in Mysore punctuated by abrupt halts in the middle of crowded pavements till he was ready to resume walking..."
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?211789
*****************************************************************************************************
My Ph D Guide SDM for a while used to come to the Department on his ancient pushbike but on his return trips in the evening to his Qrs, he would prefer to walk, lugging his bike along, with his trademark heavy bag latched onto its carrier. And, since I used to be the last person in his Office, I had to necessarily walk beside him all the way (I had sold my third-hand pushbike to raise money for Wills Flakes).
All along, he would continue his endless one-way-talk, halting his bike many times and turning to look at me for emphasis, stop at the entrance of his Qrs and talk on and on; till his Mrs invites both of us for Tea and Loochies (all is well that ends well!)
By the time he became HoD, he used to hire a rickshaw on a monthly basis for his journeys to and fro. And along the way, he used to pick up Prof GBM (at no additional cost to the poor rickshawala). The two used to have arguments routinely.
One day when I visited his Office, he was glum; and after a while he narrated what happened that morning. Apparently, he was so upset with GBM he got so furious that he asked the rickshawala to halt near Harry's and practically pushed GBM out; and was watched in the act by the Director riding in his Staff Car...
Two Big Kids!!!
***********************************************************************************************************
Prof B joined KGP around 1968 and was putting up in our Faculty Hostel for a few months. He was a decade or more older to me and since he told us that he did his graduation at Cornell, we were duly all impressed and expected to learn much from him.
Unfortunately, Cornell didn't seem to have broadened his non-physics mind, since we all discovered early that he was a Hindi fanatic from Allahabad...(he didn't change much even after thirty KGP years...soon after he retired and settled in Allahabad, he sent 5 verses in Hindi composed by him to be put up on the Office Notice Board by a colleague from Sangam with similar views...I guess I too should send my blogs to Pratik for the same purpose...)
Those were the years when the Central Government in their unwisdom tried to make Hindi compulsory and was met with stiff resistance from Tamilnadu and Bengal. The Congress lost both these states and never recovered till now, a half century later.
As a rule I am tolerant except when someone tries to harshly impose his views on others....Majority Bullying:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/majority-bullying.html
A few days after he joined us, we were at the breakfast table (a rare event) and I was applying butter to my toast. Prof B was a few chairs away and said:
"O makkhan jara paas keejiye!"
And I kept quiet. He repeated:
"O makkhan jara paas keejiye!"
three times (like the cock crew thrice biblically).
And I replied without looking up:
"Nenu ivvanu po!"
which meant: "Get lost, I am not passing it on!"
The two Telugu bearers, Narayan and Laxman, guffawed and B's face fell.
Matters came to a head after a few days. One evening, myself and Prof PCS of EE were taking a stroll. He was one of the most widely read persons I ever met with and it was a pleasure talking to him on a walk. B joined us from nowhere and at once started talking about the 3-language formula and the Constitutional Requirement of having Hindi as the sole National Language and teaching it compulsorily from school level onwards all over India...(RKN has a few very diverting pieces on this, like: "To a Hindi Enthusiast")
That got my goat and I entered into a vicious argument (the only one I ever did) for the next two hours...we went round the Campus roads twice over...like the Lion and the Unicorn...all along Prof PCS quietly listening without uttering a single word!
That was more like: "Quack the Walk"
Myself and DB never had our name plates on our Office Wall for many years, till Prof RNP took over as furniture-in-charge; and made some lovely wooden boards. He asked us our spellings and proper pronunciation and by the time he got them fixed on our wall, we discovered that our names were in the 2-language formula...
India was shining then for a while...but no longer...not even with so many rathyatras of jeesaheb...
***********************************************************************************************************
Tense Sentence
From ToI:
"...The victim might have had interfered with the activities of the accused..."
============================================================================
Monday, October 17, 2011
Chalk Technology
==========================================================================
My Father was a high school teacher...his father was a middle school teacher...his father was a street school teacher...during our benign British Rule.
So, chalk pieces were nothing new in our homes...
God! How good those chalks were! I bet our British Rulers imported them straight from Dover Cliffs. That is how British Empire ran her economy for two odd centuries. Cloth from Lancashire...after allegedly cutting the handsome hands of Bengal weavers...ask Gandhijee and his motive for khadi.
There were no scams in India then...the whole British Empire was a megascam...and they scowled at petty native scams...that's how Western Democracies run...our Yankee-Phankees were originally unwilling to export their democracies till everything went wrong with their Oil Monarchy Bedmates. They were very happy with petty dictators as long as they got their oil dirt cheap...
But the li'l brother of Sheiks revolted and used his share of pay dirt to export his own World View...hand in skirt with our own li'l sister across the border using cleverly her own dowry from both Sheiks and States...hurrying with the hounds and scurrying with the hares...
Then something nasty happened and our American friends, fed up trying to export their version of democracy, exported their e-crimes all over the world...rather successfully to their own European brethren...sparing largely our own economy...we were busy with our own homespun e-crimes and scams...we were exporting our own e-ore to our own Big Brother Bull across the Himalayas for showcasing his own version of Olympian Rule.
There is a moral law here which ought to be enshrined in the UN Charter...as soon as we get that promised heaven of a permanent seat there:
UN Law 5. something:
"No nation should be allowed to export their e-crimes, scams and Anna Campaigns to other members of the comity of nations against their will by hook or by crook"
***************************************************************************************************************
Big historical digression there...
Coming back to chalks, I lived with them all my life...I miss the chalk dust and my white collar.
Over my four decades there, IIT KGP was fighting a losing tech-battle between the blackboard and the piece of chalk.
My friend N taught me a rather cute ME design principle in the battle between the pantograph (the rhombus-shaped metal device that goes up over the engine of the electric train and couples with the zigzag power line overhead) and the standing high tension wire.
Which should be harder?
Answer: The overhead wire
Why?
As the pantograph rubs itself continually against the high tension wire, there is terrific friction between the two, and the softer of the two wears out with time. Pantograph is easy to dismantle and remantle in the workshop, unlike the power lines.
Same with the blackboard and the chalk piece in their daily battle: the blackboard is a fixture and can't easily be taken down. But chalk is cakewalk...let it break into bits and pieces...keep picking up the pieces from the floor...as simple as that...and gives you bending and stretching practice and keeps your waistline trim and slim...provided your pants don't split at the arse.
So, originally dozens of boxes of chalks were there in the Phy Office...just go pick up a box or two and take them to your room. The chalks were snow-white and used to write nicely and legibly...everyone is happy...except that the chalks were so soft that you need to carry a box or two to each Lecture Class.
So, there was a revolt and indents were placed for harder chalks...I guess they were custom-made.
These were long-lasting...one piece of chalk would do for two Lectures...only problem was that they were harder than the blackboard...so they would scratch and screech and make permanent lines and grooves on the wavy wooden board...and the chalks made no visible impression on the students even on the first bench...the ones who didn't snore.
So, wooden blackboards were replaced with green glass boards. And to add zing to the enterprise, boxes of rainbow colored chalks were made available to the teachers. Unfortunately multicolor diagrams were not exactly the domain of Physics unlike say Biology. So, I discovered, after lots of trials and bloomers, that yellow suited my stories.
The year or so of this bliss passed too soon like honeymoon.
I guess budget constraints and audit queries must have been the reason...anyway we were back to monochrome white on green.
But by now authorities realized that there ought to be a satisfactory solution to this problem. So, fresh indents were called and soft but unbreakable chalks were ordered and got. Writing with them was a pleasure and I used to look forward to the Lectures...unhealthy symptom for any teacher, or student for that matter.
There was only one catch...the chalks were so costly that rationing was ordered...and I had to go to the Phy Office before every class and beg Didi to give me a chalk or two...she would delve into the recesses of her cupboard and bring out one...and charmed quarks had to be applied to get the second...
That was the time when they offered me the Jumbo Lecture Class of hundreds of unwilling students and I jumped at the offer...no more chalks and boards...I had gone hi-tech into the OHP, Transparencies, Laser Pointer and the Milk White Cinema Screen...that is quite another hilarious story for another day...
**************************************************************************************************************
Collage from DC today:
==========================================================================
My Father was a high school teacher...his father was a middle school teacher...his father was a street school teacher...during our benign British Rule.
So, chalk pieces were nothing new in our homes...
God! How good those chalks were! I bet our British Rulers imported them straight from Dover Cliffs. That is how British Empire ran her economy for two odd centuries. Cloth from Lancashire...after allegedly cutting the handsome hands of Bengal weavers...ask Gandhijee and his motive for khadi.
There were no scams in India then...the whole British Empire was a megascam...and they scowled at petty native scams...that's how Western Democracies run...our Yankee-Phankees were originally unwilling to export their democracies till everything went wrong with their Oil Monarchy Bedmates. They were very happy with petty dictators as long as they got their oil dirt cheap...
But the li'l brother of Sheiks revolted and used his share of pay dirt to export his own World View...hand in skirt with our own li'l sister across the border using cleverly her own dowry from both Sheiks and States...hurrying with the hounds and scurrying with the hares...
Then something nasty happened and our American friends, fed up trying to export their version of democracy, exported their e-crimes all over the world...rather successfully to their own European brethren...sparing largely our own economy...we were busy with our own homespun e-crimes and scams...we were exporting our own e-ore to our own Big Brother Bull across the Himalayas for showcasing his own version of Olympian Rule.
There is a moral law here which ought to be enshrined in the UN Charter...as soon as we get that promised heaven of a permanent seat there:
UN Law 5. something:
"No nation should be allowed to export their e-crimes, scams and Anna Campaigns to other members of the comity of nations against their will by hook or by crook"
***************************************************************************************************************
Big historical digression there...
Coming back to chalks, I lived with them all my life...I miss the chalk dust and my white collar.
Over my four decades there, IIT KGP was fighting a losing tech-battle between the blackboard and the piece of chalk.
My friend N taught me a rather cute ME design principle in the battle between the pantograph (the rhombus-shaped metal device that goes up over the engine of the electric train and couples with the zigzag power line overhead) and the standing high tension wire.
Which should be harder?
Answer: The overhead wire
Why?
As the pantograph rubs itself continually against the high tension wire, there is terrific friction between the two, and the softer of the two wears out with time. Pantograph is easy to dismantle and remantle in the workshop, unlike the power lines.
Same with the blackboard and the chalk piece in their daily battle: the blackboard is a fixture and can't easily be taken down. But chalk is cakewalk...let it break into bits and pieces...keep picking up the pieces from the floor...as simple as that...and gives you bending and stretching practice and keeps your waistline trim and slim...provided your pants don't split at the arse.
So, originally dozens of boxes of chalks were there in the Phy Office...just go pick up a box or two and take them to your room. The chalks were snow-white and used to write nicely and legibly...everyone is happy...except that the chalks were so soft that you need to carry a box or two to each Lecture Class.
So, there was a revolt and indents were placed for harder chalks...I guess they were custom-made.
These were long-lasting...one piece of chalk would do for two Lectures...only problem was that they were harder than the blackboard...so they would scratch and screech and make permanent lines and grooves on the wavy wooden board...and the chalks made no visible impression on the students even on the first bench...the ones who didn't snore.
So, wooden blackboards were replaced with green glass boards. And to add zing to the enterprise, boxes of rainbow colored chalks were made available to the teachers. Unfortunately multicolor diagrams were not exactly the domain of Physics unlike say Biology. So, I discovered, after lots of trials and bloomers, that yellow suited my stories.
The year or so of this bliss passed too soon like honeymoon.
I guess budget constraints and audit queries must have been the reason...anyway we were back to monochrome white on green.
But by now authorities realized that there ought to be a satisfactory solution to this problem. So, fresh indents were called and soft but unbreakable chalks were ordered and got. Writing with them was a pleasure and I used to look forward to the Lectures...unhealthy symptom for any teacher, or student for that matter.
There was only one catch...the chalks were so costly that rationing was ordered...and I had to go to the Phy Office before every class and beg Didi to give me a chalk or two...she would delve into the recesses of her cupboard and bring out one...and charmed quarks had to be applied to get the second...
That was the time when they offered me the Jumbo Lecture Class of hundreds of unwilling students and I jumped at the offer...no more chalks and boards...I had gone hi-tech into the OHP, Transparencies, Laser Pointer and the Milk White Cinema Screen...that is quite another hilarious story for another day...
**************************************************************************************************************
Collage from DC today:
National Innovation Council
Call for Proposals
Call for Proposals
"...a section of prisoners of the Kannur jail devised the technique after they failed to damage the jammer by pouring boiling water and urinating on it.
They sought the help of an engineer who was detained in a case...as advised by the engineer, the prisoners preserved the pinch of salt provided with their meals. They formed a human pyramid to help the engineer reach the jammer that was placed at a height. The engineer placed the salt on the jammer and within a few weeks it became defunct...
Jailbirds arrange for their friends to throw cell phones over the huge wall of the prison after packing them in plastic bags."
They sought the help of an engineer who was detained in a case...as advised by the engineer, the prisoners preserved the pinch of salt provided with their meals. They formed a human pyramid to help the engineer reach the jammer that was placed at a height. The engineer placed the salt on the jammer and within a few weeks it became defunct...
Jailbirds arrange for their friends to throw cell phones over the huge wall of the prison after packing them in plastic bags."
==========================================================================
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
