Shreyaan swadharmo vigunah paradharmotsvanushthitat
Swadharmo nidhanam shreyah paradharmo bhayavahah
....Bhagavad Gita 3-35
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Better stick to your beloved profession
At the risk of stagnation
Than jump jobs for promotion
And suffer infernal frustration
....gpsastry
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Whom God has equipped with flippers should not monkey around with zippers.
....James Thurber in The Seal Who Became Famous
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During the 1960s of our glorious youth, we had to pretend that we knew all about Parkinson's Law and Peter's Principle even if we never read those bestsellers. Otherwise we risked being dubbed illiterate (even though we might have read all of Dale Carnegie's stuff between the lines so that we can 'win friends and influence people and stop worrying and start living'...never easy things to do).
The canonical illustration of Peter's Principle is that of a Wizard Automobile Mechanic who had to be promoted as Personnel Manager because he quickly scaled the ladder of Junior Mechanic, Senior Mechanic, Superior Mechanic, and was stagnating in the topmost rung as Super Mechanic. With the result that for the next 20 years he was a colossal failure and couldn't be promoted and suffered mental agony while the Firm was making losses since they couldn't find a good enough replacement for him in the Automobile Section.
I have watched several instances of Peter's Principle during my years at IIT KGP. I cite only one.
Gagan Babu was a wizard as a Mathematician. And not in Applied Mathematics which, excuse me, falls between the two stools of Mathematics & Physics. He was a foremost General Relativist, apart from other branches of Pure Mathematics. He built a School in our Mathematics Department which must be still thriving. And he was stagnating in that Department as an Assistant Professor (then just below Full Professor). For reasons that had possibly to do with the fact that IIT is an Engg Institution devoted to applications of mathematics to the real world, there was then no vacant slot for a Professor of General Relativity in the Mathematics Department. So, he was transferred to the Department of Physics and Meteorology on promotion as a Full Professor.
So far so good. SDM, basically a Physicist by long training and a Mathematician by genes left General Relativity behind him by then and was engaged fruitfully in other branches of Physics and Mathematics important for Physics. SDM was unique...he could dodge boredom every once in a while by shifting to other branches because he was, well, a Genius.
Gagan Babu, after shifting to the Phy Dept wanted to do Quantum Physics in which he had no training. QM is not a branch of Mathematics, whatever von Neumann may say. It was born in sin (unlike GR). It had to do all sorts of acrobatics to explain hundreds of conflicting experimental results in as diverse fields as Thermodynamics, Spectroscopy, Physics of Matter and Radiation and much else. No one without a mastery of Physics can hope to do worthwhile research in it or even teach it to IITians.
And Gagan Babu wanted to learn QM from Dirac's book starting at the ripe age of 50. I don't think he enjoyed his tenure in the Phy Dept for the decade he was with us as much as he did while he was in the Math Dept before he shifted.
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When I first met my son in his crib in the Maternity Ward of Jalgaon when he was all of 5 days, he was sleeping like a log. I gently poked him in his ribs. He winked and smiled knowingly and slept off, proving beyond doubt that he has my DNA all over...we are born lazy...neither he nor I ever enjoyed hard work.
And when he was admitted to the Campus KV at IIT KGP, his joy knew no bounds...most of the time they gave Games. And he was so good at that sort of a thing that he was made School Captain in his Class XI. Well, he did top in his Class X (there is a Teak Bulletin Board with his name scribbled on it in front of their Office Room to prove it). But that is simply because one doesn't need hard work to achieve it...anyone can do it if they have a good Memory and Recall. Except in Math where he had the benefit of expert coaching from our family friend Dr Mrs NP.
Class XI is so different than Class X...he was like Gagan Babu with this difference that he had to captain his school.
Like a good father, I sent him to the most popular Coaching Classes in Chemistry and Physics and tried to wash my hands off...one should never attempt to teach one's son except when the son asks for it...the Father-Son Relation is worse than Wife-Husband's. You tend to lose a friend without gaining anything. Try and teach your wife as simple a thing as Driving...
But the very first day he returned from his Chemistry Tutor's Class, he threw his Note Book on my face saying that he understood nothing. None of the material in his scribblings appeared to make any sense to me...they were all weird problems to do with gases and their combustion with other gases or some such inane stuff. By the bombastic name 'Eudiometry'...never heard of it. And the thing repeated after every class and he was apparently being insulted in public and was in tears.
I thought I was a genius in Physics which is the Mother of all Sciences. And to relieve his agony, I bought the popular problem-solving books by Sarin & Sarin and D P Agarwal and tried to flip though them nonchalantly.
Within a week I was like Gagan Babu...understood nothing except that all matter is made of atoms and molecules...which is not of much help. But there was no other way because he had the best tutor available in the Campus. Learning Chemistry at 55 and then trying to coach one's son for IIT JEE proved to be such a Herculean task that I was in tears and he was consoling me...
But I persisted...there is nothing more pitiable than persisting like a moorkho in academic matters. And time was slipping by. At the end of Class XI, both of us decided that Rosenmund Reaction was beyond both of us. And we ought to find a way out.
And then I asked how his Physics was going. He laughed and replied it was worse than Chemistry. And he was saying that he would surely fail in his compulsory School Biology also.
It was then that his Chemistry and Physics started taking a toll of my Biology...I mean married life...whatever was left of it.
Then my son and I realized that he needs one-on-one Tutors in Chemistry and Biology and one-on-two in Physics from the Horse's Mouth...he picked up a friend of his and I started coaching them in Physics...a classic instance of "two is better than one"
They both just made it through the French Window...Phew!
And he topped in his School Biology...thanx to a Wizard called Jha Sir...
And I no longer needed those unavailable blue pills...
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