Hassleton Inequalities

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"...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

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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.

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“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

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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"

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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"

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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

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