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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):
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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."
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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...
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