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...

=========================================================================