Nuanced Hierarchies

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Genesis tells us that God made man in His own image. So, I guess all of us ought to be more or less equal.

But a song of my childhood tells me that we in India have 33 crore gods (give or take a million). We revel in variety. And each of these keeps releasing his models endlessly. So, none of us is congruent with any other.

When I was teleported from my University to the 'glorified engineering college' called IIT KGP, I was an ignoramus and was absolutely bewildered by the implicit hierarchies in the system.

Soon, one evening after dinner, half a dozen of us were sitting in the lawn of Gokhale Hall and I was trying to get friendly with the veterans. There was this gent who was silent and I thought I would try to be pleasant with him. And said:

"That is a great watch on your wrist"

Bang he quipped:

"You must be wondering why a mere Civil Engineer like me should flaunt such an expensive watch!"

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And then there was this Lecturer (permanent, Rs 400-950), S, who accompanied me Associate Lecturer (permanent, Rs 375-625) and a Teacher Trainee, A, (3-year contract, Rs 400 consolidated) to the Nair Canteen. The consolidated bill came to about Rs 20, a whopping amount those days.

The Teacher Trainee rushed to the Counter to pay the bill, a gesture of goodwill and hospitality.

S then turned to me and remarked:

"It doesn't look nice that a Teacher Trainee should rush to pay the bill for us Lecturers"

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This morning I talked about Basudeb Ghosh, the newly joined English Lecturer in our Faculty Hostel:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/10/unigenius.html

On the second or third day of our acquaintance, we were talking, and I said something about nuances.

He was surprised and exclaimed:

"How come an Engineer like you knows the word, 'nuance'!"

I had to reply: "I am no engineer but a physics teacher"

He then nodded his head approvingly.

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The other day here in our My Home Jewel Township, I drove to the nearby Petrol Pump to fill up the tank of my toy car before another Hyderabad Bundh hits us. On my way back, there was this sudden unanticipated cloud burst and I spotted a lone fiftyish lady stranded under a kerb tree and looking for a lift obviously.

I stopped my car and she ran in and jumped into the front seat beside me, after having a look at my gray hair.

The drive was less than 3 minutes and the first friendly question she asked was:

"What is your surname?"

I was a little taken aback since she was not interested in my name; and guessed she must be from a Telugu Brahmin family. And for the sake of politeness, I asked:

"What is yours?"

"Bulusu"

"You must be from Kakinada?"

"How do you know???"

"I have Bulusu friends from Kakinada"

And I asked her:

"Do you know of ABuNiCha?"

She smiled and said rather contritely:

"Yes, my father taught us"

Her Rose Quartz Block arrived and she thanked me and jumped out saying that she would visit our Turquoise Block home.

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Here is the funda of ABuNiCha that my Bulusu friends taught me:

A century or so ago, a quartet of Telugu Brahmin families forgathered and decided that they are the best of the lot among the other thousand surnames and spread the Word. They turned out to have the surnames:

A for Akella, Bu for Bulusu, Ni for Nishthala, and Cha for Chavali.

Sadly I don't belong there.

I was wondering why four...generally it is three, like the "3 Idiots". Our Autocrat has an explanation for the threesome we always turn up with in our writings, like the Trinity in Hinduism: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva; or in Christianity: Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. He says it is because of the 3 dimensions we live in: length, breadth and height.

But of course Autocrat died before Einstein and Minkowski added the fourth dimension Time...so our Telugu Pundits seem to have anticipated the Theory of Relativity.

It could also be due to our 4 Vedas: Rig, Yajur, Saama and Atharva.

My UP Brahmin friend, Tyagi, told us the significance of UP Pundit surnames:

Dubey (Dwivedi...master of 2 vedas)

Tiwari (Trivedi...master of 3 vedas)

Choubey (Chaturvedi...master of all 4 vedas)

I then asked him what about the chap who mastered only one veda.

He said he didn't know. I told him I happen to know:

"Bedi"

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