Nil-Knowledge

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Wise men have said that Half-Knowledge is dangerous.

This implies that Full-Knowledge and Nil-Knowledge are benign.

Everyone thinks that Full-Knowledge is best. But often, Nil-Knowledge is even better. Because it is impossible for anyone to have Full-Knowledge in all subjects that concern us; whereas it is a breeze to have Nil-Knowledge. But not nowadays when we are constantly bombarded with information on all subjects day in and night out. Newspaper Supplements (like vitamin supplements), TV Specials and Internet are the main culprits (apart from Mr Know-All friends).

As long back as a century ago, Jerome K Jerome did the near-fatal thing of reading a medical do-it-yourself book. And discovered that he had symptoms of all the listed diseases except the housemaid's knee (which exception he resented). And his doctor, after examining him, prescribed strict abstention from specialist's books.

Books and Internet give you information which is as different from knowledge as a recipe is from the dish.

My psychiatrist once warned me not to browse the net for diagnosis and treatment...my favorite was Harvard Medical School's website. He was right. In general, no two sets of symptoms are absolutely alike just as no two bodies are congruent...not even Siamese Twins'. And the treatment differs heavily on the so-called extraneous factors like teeth.

I recall the story of a patient who had unremitting headache and bouts of fever that didn't respond to any antibiotic or painkiller. She was brought, at last, to my MD Uncle at Vizagh. Apparently, he asked her to open her mouth (like Yashoda did to Krishna) and asked her to get her left upper molar extracted. She recovered in a jiffy...all her suffering went away with her left upper molar.

There is a Sanskrit saying that goes: "Prishtha thadanad dantha bhangah" (a kick on the arse resulting in tooth extraction). I mean, most 'systems' we deal with are extremely complex entities.

Take Bajaj Chetak scooter for instance. I bought one in 1984 and used it till 2004 and sold it too.

Just because I got the first mark in my Hons Exam in Heat Engines and had by heart the PVT diagrams of the Carnot, Otto, Disel, Rankine Cycles (information) it doesn't mean that I can repair a scooter when it fails on the road. That requires Billoo near Harry's, who would smile away at the mention of Second Law of Thermodynmics. He taught me when to tilt the damn thing to the Engine Side and when to the Toolkit Side (the Chetak Manual on its first page divides the scooter into these two horribly asymmetric halves).

Once there were these two new and young faculty members of the ME Dept at KGP (I met them in the 3-hour exercise in futility called Invigilation and coached them). They were both specialists in Heat Engines. One evening while I was crossing the Railway Maidan on my way to Gole Bazaar I saw the two on the wayside with their brand new gleaming Chetak with its flaps open. They were fiddling with it. I thought that maybe they were playing with it. But after half an hour when I was on my return from Gole Bazaar (after buying a pacifying sari to my wife), I found them still there fiddling with what they called was the fuel-line. I parked my Chetak under the tree and asked the usual May I Help You. I promised I wouldn't meddle with its innards. I asked them which side they tilted their scooter and they replied to the Engine Side. I at once tilted it to the Toolkit Side and kept it there for half a minute and then asked them to kickstart it...it went boisterously alive.

One noon I was waiting at St Agnes School with my Chetak to retrieve my infant son from Ms Mary's Class. And when he duly arrived, I kicked the starter rather jubilantly and the starter pedal got stuck like that monkey's tail in the groove. I then took a stone and hit it down with all my force...nothing happened. Then my friend RSS (who arrived to retrieve his dot product) tried to help with a bigger stone. The pedal refused to oblige like the biblical Balaam's Ass. I then asked RSS to please fetch Billoo telling him my misery. Billo arrived with a hammer and gave the pedal a light blow in the upward direction against all commonsense. The damn thing got released and all was hunky-dory. I asked Billoo how much is his fees and he smiled it away; and offered me his hammer to be kept in my toolkit for future bouts of misbehavior. God takes care of Good Samaritans like Billoo as I came to know that his son (a great cricketer) got a job in IIT Gymkhana.

Anyway, I wanted to advise my readers that it is imperative to strictly bypass pages dealing with the following subjects and attain blissful Nil-Knowledge in them:

1. Health...stents, cabbages, sclerosis, yoga, art of dying, slimmos, blue pills...

2. Money...shares, debentures, futures, bourses, bonds, equities, inequities...

3. Motor Vehicles...spark plugs, shafts (crank and otherwise), clutch plates, oils (gear, engine, coolant, brake), radiator...

4. Computers...cookies, downloads, uploads, java, mal-aysia, cloud, rain, hail...

5. String Theory...heterotic, neurotic, branes, brawns, brains...

Cheers!



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