Salah Darling

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The most serious side-effect of marriage is that you tend to acquire sundry In-Laws. It is a Package Deal. Let me explain by an example:

I am nowadays hooked to Knorr's Classic Thick Tomato Soup. I just love it. Every night before she goes to bed, my wife opens one packet and makes about 4 cups of the soup. I heat them in the microwave oven as and when I like to imbibe them. I buy them by the dozen at my Marwari Uncle's Corner Store. He always keeps a stock ready for me.

Its MRP (inclusive of all taxes) is printed as Rs 35. On its top there is a bold legend: "FREE Soupy Noodles worth Rs 15 with this pack". None in our household likes those soupy needles. So, I tell my Marwari Uncle to keep the packet of FREE Soupy Noodles for himself and reduce the said amount of Rs 15 from Rs 35 and charge me Rs 20 only per packet. He looks aghast at me as if he is facing a good old bum for the first time. And he clicks his tongue and calls his wife. She takes over and tries to explain the arithmetic of sales in the modern world. Anyway, these days he knocks off Rs 7 from each packet and must be making a neat profit of Rs 15 on the whole deal.

No such haggling is allowed on your In-Laws...

I am happy I am not a Bengali. Raam-da (Prof RGC) who was fourteen years older to me and with whom I shared office for a couple of years used to always come for work in spotless Dhoti-Punjabi. Every year there came a day when he was having tilak on his forehead and he was flaunting a new shirt-and-pants-outfit. And he used to explain to me proudly that it was Jamai Shashti when the good old son-in-law is feted and dressed up properly.

Fortunately there is no such custom in our family; so it is bliss...

Of all my In-laws, my Salah Saheb (SS) is special. He is seven years younger to my wife who is seven years younger to me (I verified just now). So that makes it 14 years. When I acquired my hard-earned wife, he was just out of college having passed B Sc (Physics) from some Marathwada University (they were in Jalgaon). Much against my will, I had to go there to drop my wife for her Delivery as is the custom in our parts (Also, I couldn't entrust the job to our good old BCR Hospital at KGP). SS met me at the station and announced that he got a job as a Clerk in SBI at the tender age of 20 and he took it up, leaving Physics for good. I congratulated him appropriately (he now owns three or four houses in Vijayawada and Hyderabad unlike me).

And when the time came for me to leave for KGP, the kid brought a bora (gunny sack) and handed it over to me as a gift. He explained that he has sold all his Chemistry, Math and English books to a second-hand bookshop but he kept back his Physics Texts and Notes for my edification. By then I was already 15 years old as a Physics Teacher at KGP and he knew it. But that is what he is. And he took out his text books one by one and proudly announced their titles: Atomic Physics by J B Rajam, Properties of Matter by D S Mathur, Practical Physics by T B Tiwari....

And he lugged the bora all the way to the station and parked it neatly under the seat of my Sleeper Berth. It was rather unfortunate that someone stole it by the time I reached KGP 36 hours later.

A good decade later he visited our home at KGP for a couple of days on his way to Cal on an official visit. As you know by now, I am a keen reader of minds, and so I knew it would be fun to escort him to my best friend NP's Qrs to exhibit my potluck Salah Darling. NP has a way with him and is never ill at ease in small talk...he makes (or tries to make) every guest of his comfortable.

Here is a sliver of their conversation:

NP: Which train did you come by?

SS: Coromandel Express

NP: Very nice train...

SS: What is nice about it? It has very few stops and no Dining Car. And it reaches all Meals Stations at ugly times after their canteens are closed. I had to practically starve

NP: Yes, that is true...Madras Mail is still the best

SS: Most horrible train...it stops everywhere and there is no concept of reservation...folks get in and get out as if it is a Passenger Train

NP: I am told you work in SBI...I have all my accounts there

SS: Too bad to keep all your eggs in one basket. And it is no fun to work as a Branch Manager there. A couple of decades ago the Management came up with a Scheme called Visesh Customer. Anyone who has FDs worth Rs 5 lakhs or more were given a booklet with great diagrams showing him as a Rajah who is to be received ceremonially by the Branch Manager at the Gate and escorted and seated in his Office and all his transactions done my the Branch Manager personally. Nowadays every paan shop owner has Rs 5 lakhs FDs but still they haven't changed the Rules.

NP: I guess Private Banks like the ICICI are more up-to-date in such matters

SS: Don't talk to me about ICICI...all its employees are mere Salesmen....

I guess I have given the drift of the dialogue...till today I have been racking my brains to describe the Personality of my Salah Darling in one pithy English word....but all words failed me.

Apart from that, he really is a darling...never troubles me...and never reads my blogs...


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Humor on Wings

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At last I have acquired a Permanent Address. We moved into our 'own home sweet home' in Hyderabad.

And this morning I triumphantly walked to the Reception Desk of our upcoming Township manned by a sweet thing (on her cell phone) and managed to catch her glassy eye. And asked her: "Could you please give me my Permanent Postal Address?" And she scowled a bit and did several passes with her mouse (on cell phone all the while), took an A-4 paper, scrolled up and down, and wrote it with a blunt pencil and passed it on to me asking me to sort of get lost and not disturb her (still cooing on her phone).

Recently a much-respected Professor at IIT-M wrote me: "Your (Ishani) books have provided me several hours of joy." And my several committed American Bloggees (as opposed to Bloggers) have said similar kind things from time to time.

So, let us suppose (just suppose) that my US Audience (as we writers call them) want to say ThanQ to good old gps in kind and wish to send me a gift check for $1 (one dollar only...I don't accept more than a dollar each) as their tax-deductible donation to the Guide Dog (Seeing-Eye Dog) that I am proposing to buy to help me cross our doggone streets of Hyderabad. And you want to send it by post or courier. You will then need my India Post Address. It is a different matter that I can't really cash your check...my SBI charges me $5 as Transaction Fees...so I have to keep your check as a fond goodwill memento. Still, here it is. But if you happen to have a hyper-masculine handwriting like Ed Taylor, with one-inch high letters, then you have to enclose your tiny gift check in a B0 size envelope (1000 mm x 1414 mm):

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G. P. Sastry
F/O Sreenivas Shreenath
# 7615
Janapriya Nile Valley Project
Survey Nos. 341, 342
Near Luxor Park
Branch PO: Ameenpur
Main PO: RC Puram
Mandal- Patancheru
District: Medak
Hyderabad (A.P.)
PIN: 502 032
India
Cell: deleted

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Best of Luck!

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Wish Fulfilments

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Pratik once told me that it is easy to please DB and get from him whatever you want...just praise Gel'fand, SDM and Group Theory.

He also added it is not easy to please gps that way...implying that I am a complex character. Maybe he is right in the worldly sense. I am certainly not taken in by guile and wile...I have seen enough my lifetime, so I am immune to them.

But I guess I am like a child in Physics. Physics was never my profession. Teaching certainly was. Indeed the best moments in my life are those spent in the class rooms and labs at IIT KGP...particularly student labs.

When I was in my first year at AU, somehow the wise professors there thought that we better start Physics with Sound (of all things) from a tome by A B Wood. It started with underdamped, critically damped and overdamped mechanical oscillations, done without using complex numbers, in a horrible way. And we never had an experiment on this topic. Since then I had a dream...like Martin Luther King Jr...to watch these oscillations go smoothly over from one end to the other as the damping increased continuously. And I was afraid to ask anyone, thinking it is such a trivial thing and I would be humiliated. And it took 40 years for me to watch them on the oscilloscope in the 4th Year Lab at KGP. As soon as I was made lab-in-charge for a semester, that was the first experiment I set up using the simplest series RLC circuit. And as the pot is turned slowly, my dream came true on the screen of the oscilloscope. Am I not a simpleton in Physics?

Again we were taught Physical Optics from a book full of lovely photographs by Jenkins & White (otherwise a misleading book). Then I had another dream...to watch the diffraction pattern of a single slit going over from the geometrical optics limit via Fresnel Diffraction to Fraunhofer Diffraction. And I was too timid to ask. It took another 40 years and a simple He-Ne laser and an optical bench and a cardboard screen in the same 4th year Lab. It was like a child watching the rainbow for the first time.

Again, that book on Optics had several photos of the rings in the Michelson and Fabry-Perot interferometers. We had neither of these in our AU Labs. And I found them both in the 4th Year Lab at KGP the day I joined there. A leap of joy!

Lastly, when MLM dumped an optical bench measurement of the speed of light using German Technology in the 4th Year Lab asking us to commission it, I didn't sleep the whole night before we opened it. When the thing worked like a charm next morning, my joy knew no bounds.

All these are trivial for one with an imagination...but for a simpleton like me they were profound experiences.

At the end of the day I am happy with my 'short and simple annals' of my Physics at IIT KGP.

And I have consistently refused to serve as an 'expert' in Physics...the last invitation just a 3 days ago. Don't want to spoil my fun.

I am sure Pratik will agree.


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Mediqueer

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Well, to me it looked like a Breakathon...I was lying down and thinking that I haven't touched my laptop (they call it 'system' in Hyderabad) for more than a month. But I see now it is not even ten days (and nights mostly).

Many things happened...good, better and best. Nothing bad ever happens to me...KGP trains one to think positive...otherwise none can survive in that jungle.

The best thing that happened was Common Cold. Long ago Varun sent me the link to Ogden Nash's panegyric to it:

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/common-cold/

The essence of humor is in gross under- and over-statements. Ogden Nash for once has been understating. He missed the essential point of Common Cold: you get no sympathy at all. The only relieving feature is that you take revenge by transmitting it to your near and dear and far and feared, and pass on gleeful advice.

My most interesting friend in our Faculty Hostel at KGP, who figured in more than one of these blogs, is Rathin-da. Both his kids turned out to be KGPhians and even more interesting than him. Like many in KGP, he was a victim of asthma, in rather a mild form. It is the trees, flowers and spores in that Campus that take their toll on about 10% of its population, from infants to graybeards.

Rathin-da spent most of monsoon, winter and spring with a muffler wrapped around his head and neck. And when he used to walk along the corridors, we knew he was approaching or receding or staying put by the Doppler Effect of his signature throat-clearance. And when we asked:

"What happened to you, Rathin-da, you look unwell?"

he would clear his throat and say:

"I caught hold of cold"

See the positive KGP I referred to above...cold didn't catch him; he caught hold of it firmly and possibly swallowed it...

There is something cussed about medicare in India...everything good gets banned here about two or three decades after they ban them in the US (and export them to India, that is Bharat).

My earliest recollection of one of the good things in my life, when I was about 3, was a chocolate-colored-and-wrapped toffee called Brooklax. My Father was rather addicted to it and used to try and hide himself from me, unsuccessfully, once a month or so, and used to unwrap it. Its lovely scent used to wake me up from my slumber and I used to rush to him and beg for a bite, which he allowed grudgingly.

It just disappeared from the Indian Market by the time India won her Independence. I Googled for it just now and there are only two relevant entries...one from Namibia and the other from Guyana.

And we were raised on good old castor oil instead. It was unrefined and cheap and was so foul-smelling that one spoon of it did the trick. Then they said it is addictive and so discouraged it. Addictive it sure is...I know of grown-up Software Professionals in Hyderabad who have to start the day with it so they can rush to their share-auto-cab just in time.

So, we were weaned away from it. The latest study tells us that it the ONLY thing that can kill not only living amoebae but also root out the family, eggs, larvae, sperm and all (for a week). The battle between amoebae and castor oil is like that between Israel and Palestine...it goes on merrily.

Then there was this cheapest thing called Enteroquinol. Every doctor used to prescribe it and everyone Down South used to carry strips of them in their pockets. They said it got banned in the US and so went into the black market in India. DB's B-i-L was working for the firm that used to manufacture it and when he visited KGP, I asked him about it...and he promised to gift me a thousand tablets free...the entire lot cost around Rs 10 or so for the manufacturer.

Then there was a tablet called Codopyrin that I always used to carry in my wallet. It worked like a charm against fever, headache, cold, cough...everything but bachelorhood. They said it got banned in the US and so spurious lookalikes like Goodpyrin were floating around palmed off on unsuspecting folks like me...they used to come with nail-heads embedded in them...I never knew why.

They then said pure and simple Aspirin is good not only for fever but also for heart-ache...I don't see it now in the market. It was replaced by a safe drug called Paracetamol generically. Now they say it is banned (like good old Brufen) because it kills the liver or kidney or whatever like a slow poison. And we were happy with the combo Combiflam, which we are now told kills kidney or liver or whatever...

Then they said antihistamines work wonders for Common Cold..but now they are discouraged since they may effect my brain by clotting it.

So, I decided not to take any drug at all...and here I am, like good old Rathin-da...who got Admission and fabulous Schol into Berkeley in 1963, but decided to join IIT KGP as a Teacher-Trainee in ChE instead.


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Cheating

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We were talking of how smart Ishani has grown...she is just 2.

Her dad, who wasn't even talking articulately at that age, narrated her latest:

He was lying on his bed and opened a packet of Sone Papri and started munching. Ishani arrived, saw it, and asked him for a bite. He said, since she has already had her fill, she should get her mom's permission. She ran to the threshold of the kitchen and shouted:

"Mom, can I please have a bite of Sone Papri?"

And ran back.

"Did you ask your mom?"

"Yes!"

"What did she say?"

"OK"

So far, it is fine. Only thing is she didn't know her dad knew that her mom was not in the kitchen but in the bathroom.

This is what I call feminine artfulness...no boy can ever do it so subtly...he would throw a tantrum most likely.

MSS used to tell me there is no harm in cheating others. But when one starts cheating oneself, the sky is the limit before he is dumped on the ground. Kings and Dictators, who routinely surround themselves with admirers fall into this trap and lose their balance, judgment, and their kingdoms.

Those who write their memoirs and autobiographies also start believing in what they recall with pleasure and nostalgia. They color the events so subtly they start firmly believing what they wrote.

Also Bloggers...

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Shamik, who apparently is very unhappy with my English, sent me this clip to improve it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJgfMVx130E&feature=BFa&list=HL1326801795&lf=mh_lolz


Thanx Shamik!

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Surfeit

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Surfeit is: 'too much of a good thing'

Like for instance the feeling Gandhari must have had when she came out of anesthesia and the Sister exhibited her prodigal progeny...a clean century of them. Even with a lone Ishani and with a grannie and a granpa to take turns, her mom is exhausted by 9 PM.

I guess about a dozen is just right. There was this Punch Cartoon showing this American Journo stationed in a Gulf Country waiting in front of about 40 barricaded cribs for the Sister to arrive and display to him his newborn in the 5th row. He was joined by a beaming Sheikh and asks him which one is his:

"The first 3 rows"

One of my KGP 'nephews' (he used to 'uncle' me) had a sweet tooth. One day he overindulged in khejud gud rasogollas and his tummy turned. When I went to see him the next day, he said sweetly that the sight of any sweet revolts him.

While we were at KGP, my son and I were always playing and horsing around all the time (it continues). My poor wife was outnumbered 2 to 1 by the male population and every once in a while she used to complain: "I am getting bored seeing your two faces all the time." That was hint for us to take our scooter out and go away. Within an hour she would be desperately waiting in the verandah for us two to arrive back.

There is this canonical cartoon of Thurber in which this man is sitting snugly in his sofa with his hands folded on his doubled up legs, and this woman in another sofa nearby with her hands closing her ears. The caption reads:

"With You I Have Known Peace, Lida, and Now You Say You're Going Crazy"

It was like that for me with SDM who used to talk and talk for hours together on totally irrelevant things. After working with him for my Degree, I found him trying to incite and induce and interest me to join him in another problem of his in Molecular Spectroscopy (having to do with solving a Lame' Equation, or was it Hill's Equation?). I ran away like that 'nephew' of mine. For five long years SDM didn't let me read anything...calculating and writing up, calculating and writing up...I was just dying to read and read and read...

During my long stay at IIT KGP, I was solving and storing my solutions to all the UG problems in Resnick-Halliday, Irodov, Verma et al just for kicks. When I retired, I gave away most Physics books but brought my Solution Manuals safe thinking that I will mint money by joining one or more Tutorial Colleges thriving in every street of Hyderabad. Also to pass time 'fruitfully'.

Word spread and I got a phone call from Dilsukh Nagar (20 km from our apartment) inviting me to come and join their Coaching School. I went in a bus, since I had not by then the courage to drive my Maruti on the streets of Hyderabad. It took one whole hour and I couldn't breathe because folks were breathing down my standing neck. I stayed put in the same bus and returned home without 'attending' the School.

Next day, I was asked what happened and I said it was too far for me to commute. The Prince then said they are opening a new branch a stone's throw from my apartment in SR Nagar and I am invited. I duly got a call and walked down and met the new Prince. He was cordiality personified and looked at my gray hair and said he didn't want to trouble me with taking classes since there are youngsters to do it; it is enough if I set Model Question Papers (one each every week) for IIT JEE, IIIT, AICTE, EAMCET and a couple of others and dumped their syllabi in my lap. It so happens that I always loved taking classes and hated setting question papers. I said Thanx and sank into Depression for the next two years.

After recovering enough of my senses, I had a look at my Solution Manuals, and they turned my stomach like those khejud gud rasogollas. I sold them as raddi and bought old volumes of PGW with the money I got.

And here I am, blogging like the Devil for the past three years.

I guess I am a born story-teller. The kick I get in composing and posting a fairy tale like say Waxworks is infinitely pleasanter than that Paper in Journal of Physics that gave me my promotions. It is titled bombastically as:

"Electrodynamics of doubly anisotropic media with non-parallel principal axes of permittivity and permeability"

No one (including my Ph D examiners) read it through...


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Missing Stair Gambit

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'Don't you like this suit, Jeeves?' I said coldly.

'Oh, yes, sir.'

'Well, what don't you like about it?'

'It is a very nice suit, sir.'

'Well, what's wrong with it? Out with it, dash it!'

'If I might make the suggestion, sir, a simple brown or blue, with a hint of some quiet twill -'

'What absolute rot!'

'Very good, sir.'

'Perfectly blithering, my dear man!'

'As you say, sir.'

I felt as if I stepped on the place where the last stair ought to have been, but wasn't. I felt defiant, if you know what I mean, and there didn't seem anything to defy.

......PGW in Carry on, Jeeves

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That is a lovely example of what I learned the hard way to practice with everyone around... family, friends, colleagues, bosses...and...yes, wife.

Nowadays no one seems to like being contradicted. And no one likes to appear to lose an argument in public.

So it is always a better bet to put forward your view and keep shut. Let them who oppose you win the argument for the day. After a good night's sleep, they would come back and put forward your argument with a spin on it with ifs and buts to make it look as if it were their own.

Let them have their pleasure...you may lose face for a day but you will win peace; and they know they lost the argument.

Talking of ifs and buts, Physics is replete with them. So, any blunt statement in Physics can be contradicted immediately if you wish to do so perversely.

Suppose someone says: "Energy is always conserved," rightly in the given context. You can always say: "Not in virtual processes." Or, "EM energy flows in the direction of the Poynting Vector"; "Not in left-handed materials." Or, "It happens in all crystals."; "Not in quasicrystals." Or, "It is true in all geometries"; "Not in fractal geometries."

The list is endless.

I had to often defend well-meaning HoDs in their arguments with first-year students...after their first year, they never argue ;-)

As I said in some earlier post, Prof KVR was once chased by a freshman in the Phy corridor and Prof KVR stopped me and said accusingly:

"This fellow is saying that the electric field outside an infinite uniformly charged conducting plate is constant everywhere!!!"

I had to save his face by asking the student to first bring an infinite conducting plate to the lab and then we will see. The student caught the glint in my eye and became one of my best Project Students five years later.

I had to somewhat save my own face in a long-distance telephonic argument I had picked up with Pratik five good years after I retired. Pratik said, rightly in the context of the diagram which showed a string wound around a cylinder, "No cylinder of mass M and radius R can have a moment of inertia more than MR^2, whatever its mass distribution." But then I had my ego to salvage and rang him up 3 minutes later and asked him, "What if the string is wound around a groovy cylinder like a pulley or a spool or a yo-yo?" Pratik laughed and was sportive enough to agree.

Everyone at KGP knew that I was the local expert in obfuscation, prevarication, modification, manipulation, equivocation and justification...Pratik was new and honest.

Not only in Physics, but the game can also be played, I am told, in Pure Mathematics. Ask Feynman and his Princeton Math grad colleagues.

Returning from Vishwabharati, where SDM was HoD of the Math Dept after his retirement from KGP, DB told me exploding with laughter that SDM was complaining to him that the young faculty there were always contradicting whatever he asserts, say, about the Point of Accumulation, one of his favorite topics, by saying:

"It doesn't happen so in Topology"

They had quickly discovered that SDM knew no Topology...

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Hidden Variables

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Warning: This post is only for simpleton adult males

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RKN was advised by his senior not to apply for a degree in Eng Lit if he wanted to enjoy literature and he wisely took the advice and tore up his application form.

Otherwise he would have to answer questions like:

"What is the hidden significance of Atticus killing the mad dog?"

I am told that there is no unique answer to this. They range from the mad dog symbolizing racism, vicious alive or dead...to Atticus being in love with his maid, and killing the mad dog symbolizes killing his libido.

Take your pick.

When I read this gripping novel in my twenties at KGP, it never occurred to me that there is anything hidden in this wonderful episode that changes the attitude of his kids to him and makes them proud of their old daddy.

Phew!

We had a Shaw Play called Candida as our prescribed drama in our University. It is about a silly love triangle between an old and stuffy parson called Morell, a young and goofy poet called Marchbanks and Morell's wife Candida who wants to be enigmatic, but fails. The play was as good or as bad as any of Shaw, full of arguments and stuff. Marchbanks, the idiot, thinks that Candida ought to be in love with him and his poetry rather than her old and shopworn hubby, but in the final scene he is disillusioned and leaves, saying enigmatically that he finally has a secret in his heart that is far more important than Candida to him. And the standard university question we had to answer was:

"What is the secret in the poet's heart?"

Can anything be worse than this? I asked our beautiful Lady Teacher: "Ma'am, what is your answer to this question?" And she almost blushed as if she were Candida and I the young poet.

Thurber, bless his soul, tears this sort of idiocy to pieces in his piece: "What Cocktail Party?" It is a spoof on the hidden meanings in Eliot's laboriously intriguing play of that name. Thurber describes the spurious discussions on it in an actual cocktail party of literary folks. And when Grace Sheldon corners him saying:

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'You still haven't told me what you think of The Cocktail Party.'

I laughed a laugh that was not actually a laugh.

'What don't you think it means, then? she put in helpfully.

I circled around this for a moment. 'Do you mean what Eliot is intentionally not saying, or what he just happens to have not said?' I asked, with enormous tidiness. She looked bewildered and I tried to clear it up for her, and for me. 'Let me put it this way,' I said. 'No playwright has ever deliberately said, "Kings wear oysters in their shoes". This line has not been left out, however, in the sense that it has been rejected. It is certainly not what Eliot is not saying. If we charged him with it, he might quite properly reply, "I would never not say that!' '

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Aniket, long long ago showed me his M Sc Project Thesis, on the first inner page of which was an Eliot quote. I then remembered this Thurber piece, and xeroxed it and gave him and Kedar a copy each. A couple of months later, we were being feted by Kedar Khares in his Bombay home and I chanced upon a Thurber book in his bookshelf borrowed from a Library. I fancied there was a connection.

Symbolism is the bread'n'butter vocation of psychoanalysts Freud on. There was this Readers Digest joke that a psychoanalyst draws a straight line on the board and asks his patient:

"What is the meaning of this?"

"Sex"

He then draws a circle, an ellipse, a parabola and a hyperbola and asks the same question and gets the same answer.

"Can't you see anything other than sex?"

"Can't you draw anything other than sex?"

And then there is this female reporter interviewing the Vice President of Boots & Soots about the sexual harassment prevailing in their firm.

The MCP says bluntly:

"If I get a beautiful secretary working for me I would certainly love to patao her"

"What if you get an ugly secretary?"

The VP thinks for a moment and says:

"Why, I would love to patao her too!"



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Mediators & Moderators

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Listen to some words of worldly wisdom from Thurber (of all people):

"...Speaking of puppies, as I was a while back, I feel that I should warn inexperienced dog-owners who have discovered to their surprise and dismay a dozen puppies in a hall closet or under the floors of the barn, not to give them away. Sell them or keep them, but don't give them away. Sixty percent of persons who are given a dog for nothing bring him back sooner or later and plump him into the reluctant and unprepared lap of his former owner. The people say that they are going to Florida and can't take the dog, or that he doesn't want to go; or they point out he eats first editions or lace curtains or spinets, or he doesn't see eye to eye with them in the matter of housebreaking, or that he makes disparaging remarks under his breath about their friends. Anyway, they bring him back and you are stuck with him---and maybe six others. But if you charge ten or even five dollars for pups the new owners don't dare return them. They are afraid to ask for their money back because they believe you might think they are hard up and need the five or ten dollars. Furthermore, when a mischievous puppy is returned to its former owner it invariably behaves beautifully, and the person who brought it back is likely to be regarded as an imbecile or a dog hater or both...."

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Now listen to some words of worldly wisdom from gps (of all people):

Shakespeare said: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" or some such thing.

I say: "Neither a (selfless) mediator nor a moderator be...you will get it from both the sides, like the ass that came in the way of two fighting rams"

Human relations (except between Teachers and their UG students who got Ex grades) are fraught.

The day after my parents celebrated their Golden Wedding Jubilee, I heard my Father mutter: "I was not told that you are such a nag" to which she retorted: "I was not told that you are such a kanjoos makkhichoos"

Thirty years after my own marriage, my mother apparently accused my sister who acted as mediator of our alliance: "You didn't tell me that my would be D-i-L doesn't take bath before entering her kitchen". And my sweet wife, on learning this, told me: "I was not told that craziness runs in your family" (she was referring to my precious Depression). To smoothen ruffled feathers, I agreed with my wife that my sister was solely at fault (poor chump!)

If you want to mediate, be professional and charge the parties at every turn. Before Matrimonial Websites came up, our good old Purohit used to be the match-maker. He would charge both the parties for every effort of his, in the name of preparing (suitable) horoscopes and making several (mythical) trips to and fro. If the alliance clicks, sky is the limit...it is taken for granted that he would perform the wedding ceremony pocketing cash at every turn from both sides. If the couple fight irreparably after a few years, he would help getting the divorce decree, mediating custody of kids and settling alimony; and finding new alliances for both the parties, all for a premium. "The show must go on!" was his motto.

Before online sites caught on, Hyderabad streets were full of stickers on every lamp post giving the mobile numbers of professional brokers who help in rentals and sale and purchase of property. When we had to move from a tiny 2-bedroom affair in SR Nagar to a suitable 3-bedroom apartment in view of the impending marriage of my son, I just rang up one number and a young chap on his ancient mobike landed up at my place in minutes and asked me where I want to go, how big a house I want and how much rent I could afford. And he pocketed Rs 300 assuring me it would be a cakewalk. And seated me precariously on his pillion seat and took off. The first landlord he showed me (he too employed him) asked me: "How many are there in your family?" "3 right now and my son would soon get married and then it is 4" "And then the kids will come, no? Sorry!"

And the young broker took me to two other such stupid chaps and told me he would return tomorrow. And tomorrow when I rang him up, he never answered...300 for three attempts.

We got our lovely 3-bedroom apartment near Banjara Hills through our IIT KGP connections...it is said that an elephant fetches the same amount whether it is alive or dead...after his death, the ivory can be smuggled out. Likewise, IIT Professors are worth the same whether they are in service or retired or hopefully dead...

I doubt if there is anything called an 'honest broker'...Angad went to Sri Lanka to mediate between Lord Raam and Sri Raavan, but of course he was Raam's man. Krishna went to Hastinapuri to broker Peace between Pandavas and Kauravas, but Gandhari accused him (rightly) of promising War to Draupadi before he set forth (she wanted her share of blood).

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Mediators and Moderators are familiar to Modern Physics too. I am told that when two charges interact, they do it not through vacuum but with the help of mediating photons (virtual or real). And of course, all those graphite rods and swimming pools of heavy water are supposed to 'moderate' nuclear fission so it doesn't go crazy...till a tsunami strikes.

My project Student, Porus, was facing his Project Viva on frame-dragging and was simplistically comparing it with the swimming pool vortices that led Schiff (like Archimedes) to jump out of the Stanford swimming pool in the nood when he got that satellite gyro idea. And Prof GDN asked him, rather teasingly, "What is new about swimming pool vortices?...Everyone has seen them". And Porus smiled condescendingly and answered: "In the pool it is the water that mediates, while in the Stanford Gyro Experiment, it is the Spacetime!"

TBG, who was sitting beside me, turned to me with wide eyes and exclaimed sotto voce: "ki darun uttar diyecche...sir ke silent kore phelechey!" and marked 100/100 in his chit.

That is the power of jargon!


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Pattern Recognition

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Just back from the 'Naming Ceremony' of the infant granddaughter of our Landlords (a wonderful couple).

Like Birbal said to Akbar and proved that everyone in his kingdom is a doctor, I can say and prove that everyone in India is an expert in Pattern Recognition. There were about 30 couples invited to the function. Since the infant was in the lap of her mom, the males quietly gathered together and started eating and drinking. Not so the ladies. Everyone of them had a close look at the poor kid, dumped their gifts on her mom's lap and said:

"She looks so cute...exactly like her mom"

I think that is an accepted way of starting the conversation. I am sure on their way back home, the guests would quarrel, males saying she looks like her dad and females insisting otherwise. A days-old infant has only her complexion to show off...features are so malleable and ductile that all predictions are wild guesses...one has to wait at least a couple of years for the kid to show her true colors ;-)

Not only the home-maker ladies with lots of time to spare, but our ever busy Gynei Doctor AM at the Care Hospital also did it. My D-i-L was under her expert care till her seventh month of pregnancy when she shifted to her mom's place at Nellore for her delivery. As soon as they returned to Hyderabad in Ishani's fifth month, we all trooped into Dr AM's chamber to show off our God's gift along with a sumptuous gift for AM. As soon as she saw Ishani, she swept everyone aside, had a close look at the dot product, said Ooh Aah and pronounced (rightly):

"She has her dad's complexion and her mom's delicate features"

I don't know if they teach Pattern Recognition in their MD course.

When my own son was born, he had the fairest complexion of his mom and so everyone said that he looks exactly like her mom. It took the Printer Nikhilesh Bhattacharjee of IIT KGP to say when he met me that my son is my topo but for his skin color. Twelve years on, Saswat said, "I should have noticed at KGP, but I didn't...Sonoo looks exactly like you"

Some consolation there!

I first met my wife before meeting her parents in our marriage ceremony. As soon as I saw her father, it struck me that my wife is his topo. And my D-i-L is a topo of her father...Strange!...This cross-resemblance is said to be lucky in our culture.

Coming to identical twins, the first pair I saw was when I went to Dr Chawla's house where we were invited for the first birthday of his twin sons. Both the mini-sardars were in their separate cradles and not only looked alike but behaved exactly the same. When one started crying (for no reason at all), the other picked up as if on cue and it was a stereo all through.

Once there was a student AB in my Physics Class in their 4th year. He borrowed my Panofsky and Phillips and was delaying its return. One evening I was going to the CL and found him walking back. i stopped him and demanded: "How many times I have to remind you...bring my book tomorrow positively". And the chap started smiling knowingly and wanted to continue his game, but I smelt a rat and he said: "Sir, I am the twin of your student and I am in the 4th year EE". I was feeling a fool and said sorry and asked him what his name was. And he said: "AB". I say, this is too much! Then on, whenever I used to meet one of them (they were never seen together on the KGP roads), I used to ask: "Are you yourself or your twin?" That was confusing enough for them to come up with the right answer for this objective question. I guess they are the ideal candidates to verify the Twin Paradox... launch them right away.

Identical Particles is a tough topic in Physics. I once entered his room and found SDM with the Group Theory book by Hamermesh open on his lap. It was open at the chapter on Symmetric Groups. On seeing me, SDM gave one of his trademark smiles (indicating that he was happy with himself) and said:

"Looks like Hamermesh never understood Young Tables and Gel'fand Patterns. They have worlds within worlds in them"

Bread'n'Butter physicists are like Synge's carpenters: when they see spin-half particles they apply FD Stats and when they see whole-number spin things they apply BE Stats blindly without asking why. And of course most of them like me never heard of Symmetric Groups and Young Diagrams happily.

When asked, they say: "It works, no?" and leave it at that.

I sometimes miss SDM and his naughty smile alright.

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Tailpiece

When they said quarks come in a variety of colors and flavors, I was delighted...color always fascinates me. And I could see not only their colors in my feverish imagination, but also hear them jostling and quarking for space inside our tiny protons. But a few month ago I was told by KGPhians that they discovered electrons also have colors...purple, jade and crimson. But in my bones I was always convinced that electrons are white and positrons black, and was mortified by this new color scheme...till I was told that it all was a lark.

There ought to be a limit to bluffing, no?

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Travelbugged

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I hate travel...always hated it. There are two reasons for it.

One, I am too lazy...like Mycroft Holmes...whose life was like a tram car running to and fro on rails between his home and workplace. In my case most of my life was spent traveling between my Qrs and Institute at IIT KGP.

Second, I am blessed with a terrific imagination. Very pixy. Once KK (Junior) gifted me a sumptuous coffee table book titled something like: Earth from Space. It had about 30 color photos of various lands and seas and mountains taken by astronauts hurling in a satellite around the Earth...the fertile greens, long rivers like the Nile, oceans, Alps and such. Whoever visited my home and looked at the pics went hoo-haa about them. But, it was all too familiar to me. I had already seen them in my mind's eye in more detail.

The few tourist sites I had been to willy-nilly were all a disappointment. When I read about them, the pics I had in mind were far more beautiful and serene. For instance, I had to perforce visit Benares to immerse my Father's ashes in the Ganga since he was so fond of the city and its bent river. If you had been there you would have noticed, unless you are a frenzied devotee, the difference between the coffee table photos (say of Raghu Rai) and the truth...if you look closely enough.

I was fortunate that I didn't read about IIT KGP before I landed there seeking a job. It looked beautiful and I stayed there like a Lotus Eater.

I also read about an equally lazy boy who, at the age of 17, traveled to his dreamland (a hill-temple town in Tamilnadu) and stayed put there for his next 53 years without stirring even for a minute. I at once took him as my spiritual Guru. The Guru must always appeal to the devotee's ideals.

But I had to travel once a year from KGP to my hometown at Gudur, where my parents stayed...I rarely went to my in-laws' place...they were visiting me regularly ;-) The entire experience of the Howrah-Madras Mail was miserable. The 3-tier compartment where I was forced to reside for a day and a half was verily a prison for me. When I got the lower berth, I was always unfortunate to have a chap in the middle berth who slept for 24 hours (he ate on the berth sleeping) and so I could never sit down and enjoy the Passing Show. On the other hand when I got the middle berth, the one in the lower berth was shouting at me whenever I slept. And when I got the upper berth and went up, I could never come down because half a dozen strangers always used to sit and play cards on my seat below.

Luckily my wife shares my abhorrence to travel...two couch potatoes...stereo system. That is what I call Dame Luck.

I have known a childless working couple who never had Quality Time together all their working lives. After their retirement, the hubby wanted to spend the rest of his life on his couch watching the sitcoms. He hated travel like me. She, on the other hand, wanted to tour every place in India with her hubby in the tow, since they had too much pension for two, not to talk of a huge bank balance. Whenever I happened to meet the hubby alone, he used to cry buckets on my shoulders. The chap could never put his foot down...sad! Last I heard they crossed over to Nepal (of all places). And she has booked air tickets to Manas Sarovar, he cried.

I did travel in the air half a dozen times...at stretches of two hours. I was happy that there were no middle and upper berths, but that was about all. It was misery. The regular drill of the so-called air-hostesses showing how to jump into the sea when 'we all fall down' was scary. I was always imagining it and feeling dead...I don't know swimming...not that it helps. Train travel has this blessing that my suit case (for whatever it was worth) was with me. But not so when I was in the air...they used to snatch it from me and dump it in the hold and I could never retrieve it in its first pass from the belt...since I am, as you know, a born woolgatherer. I just can't imagine how chaps (like my son) are happy enough to be continuously airborne for 15 hours and more across Alps or Atlantic. Beats me hollow...it takes all sorts...

Religious tourism is the worst. After my first visit to South Indian Hindu Temples, the crowd, the slippery floor full of coconut water, the dingy sanctum sanctorum, the sweating priests, the ushers acting as pushers...I stopped entering the inner works of temples...I sit down outside the main gate and pray in my mind's eye, till my wife and her cousins return.

I hope the Hades to which I rightly deserve to be committed has no crowded temples at least...the ones who hounded them here below are already ensconced in Heaven choke-a-bloc with their favorite shrines.

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Stalkathons

DC, Tuesday, 10 January, Front Page:

Center wants a new law, 7 years in jail for stalkers

Stalking, the legal definition:

# Repeatedly following the woman from place to place

# Repeatedly contacting through mails, fax etc

# Loitering or watching the house or workplace of the woman.

...There is no penal provision defining the offence of stalking in the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which has led to serious sexual assaults on women...

gps: Yes, it is high time. I have been reading, of late, maniacal stalkers hurting and blinding or even acidifying women they stalk.

They deserve exemplary punishment.

But, as a matter of sociological history, I can propose an explanation for the lack of penal provision in the IPC for this offense so far. In the Nehruvian Socialistic Pattern of Society in the 1950s of our youth, women had by and large no workplace other than their kitchens. Unlike now when they are happily emancipated.

Those were the eons of romantic films like Madhumathi, Chori Chori and Sri 420. They all ended up happily unlike the gory films of these days which are filled with violence.

Stalking was certainly there...but it ended in happy marriages.

And it was not one-sided like now.

I even know a close friend of mine who had to flee overnight from the balmy sun'n'sea'n'sand of Visakhapatnam beaches to the Junglemahal of Midnapore District (there were no East and West Midnapore Dists then).

He was stalked back...

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God of Big Things

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For several decades I used to teach a Course on Relativity & EM in the Autumn Semester of 4th year for Physics Majors at IIT KGP. The JEE kids were by then having three IIT years under their belts and were bullish, rather...they knew how the System works. The new lateral entry students from Calcutta and its suburbs were eager to take the bulls by their horns. All of them had some Relativity in their tummies.

After cleaning the board, washing hands, sitting down and signing the Registration Forms (largely a formality), taking Roll Call (to pass more time), I used to ask them to name a physical object they see everyday that travels several times the speed of light.

There would be a stunned silence as if they have at last met a genuine crackpot after a lot of struggle to enter IIT.

And I had to ask them to calculate the speed of the star Sirius, about five light-years away, they see going round the Earth everyday in 24 hours, as an example.

And they would feel cheated and protest that Sirius stays where it is; it is the Earth that goes round itself in 24 hours.

And I would ask how do they know it without looking at the Heavens.

They would heave a sigh of relief and shout: Foucault's Pendulum!

And I would ask if the said pendulum works like it does if there were no stars and no nothing in the Heavens except us.

Another silence.

Then I would ask if they heard of Newton's Ice Bucket Experiment. By now they are on their guard. I say I never understood it. And don't even know if it was a Thought Experiment or one of those IV Year Lab's thoughtless experiments.

And I give them Games for the day.

Newton was the Father of Mechanics and his Mechanics became so famous after predicting the entire solar system's gross movements and made the right predictions that God was said to be a Mechanical Engineer. But Newton knew better that there were deeper waters in his Gravity. For instance, if our Sun were to explode suddenly with all its innards flying away in bits and pieces scattered all over the Universe, how soon would the tides in our Hooghly river turn? His answer was: Instantly...Gravity is an action-at-a-distance thing and its influences are felt with infinite speed.

His revolutionary predecessor, Galileo, did his famous experiment with lanterns and decided that speed of light for all practical purposes is infinite. Well, they found it was finite soon enough. And soon they also found, as you know, that it it travels as a wave. Then everyone invented their own Aether, with monstrous but unseen properties. God, the Mechanical Engineer, came up with fantastic models of His Aether, with an intricate web of wheels and gears to explain that light has also all sorts of weird polarizations.

Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution took place and God had to also know a bit of Thermodynamics. And Entropy. He became a Heat Engineer. But still, Mechanical, because there was what was called the Kinetic Theory of gases and later, solids, too.

Maxwell came up and showed that there is really no immediate need for Aether since light could as well travel in vacuum without all those gears...replaced by fields. And Einstein rubbished Aether altogether.

By now God became a Modern Physicist.

And then the QM thing came up and those fields became quantized and Particles became Fields and Fields became Particles in an incestuous mess.

Then there was a short sane period when God was abandoned and Physicists turned Buddhist. You know, Buddha was agnostic. When asked if God exists, he kept silent. When asked if God doesn't exist, he kept silent. But his Eight-Fold Way was in fashion and esoteric concepts like everything existing in everything else and all of them lifting themselves by their Boot Straps were in vogue during my fragile youth.

Last I heard was that the Universe is filled with Strings and Branes of all sorts, still unseen, because they hide themselves in as many as a couple of dozen dimensions or more the merrier.

God nowadays is that Mathematician able to tackle all those weird integrals in so many dimensions, with a Special Paper on Topology, maybe.

Looks like God also is subject to Darwin's Theory of Evolution, Struggle for His Existence, Natural Selection, and Survival of the Fittest.

We do need a God, no? Despite our Dirac? He looks so cute...


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Joie de Vivre

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There is a photo the other day in DC (9 Jan, Page 3) with the title: THEY LIKE TO MOVE IT.

It shows a mixed crowd of youth shaking several legs. The girl in the foreground is dressed (like many others) in black jeans and green tops with the message: TWISTS 'N' TURNS in white lettering. Her legs are apart in what we used to call the: 'Stand at Ease' pose in our Drill Class (hated). Her left arm is akimbo and the right bent at the elbow and hand touching her head 'turned left'. And there is a black wrist band. And this default smile on her map. And a hundred others following her lead.

The caption reads:

"A group of youngsters take part in a flash mob organised by 'Spirit of Hyderabad' at People's Plaza in Hyderabad on Sunday. A flash mob is a sudden gathering of people in a public place to perform a seemingly pointless act for a brief time in which others join."

An old fog like me should not bitch about the newfangled antics of today's youth. But the word: "Spirit" looks askance.

Anyway, as soon as I saw the photo and read the caption, I recalled the French phrase: "joie de vivre" which was in a prose piece in our University. Our Teacher insisted that the phrase is native to the French and can't be translated truly. And he gave the meek literal translation: "joy of living". Nowadays girls and boys come to my door, press the bell and ask me to join their Art of Living: "Vivre D'art" (?). And I generally ask them: "What about the Arthritis of the Living?"

Jokes apart, there IS a thing called Joy of (just) Living. I mean, a joy not induced by drugs, dopes and Ecstasy, not to talk of the Spirits of Hyderabad about which there is a furor nowadays because they are selling at 30% more than their MRP (they have a captive market). This Joy is induced by the mere air one breathes...not the polluted air of Hyderabad, but of the Jungles of the Himalayan foothills upon which Jim Corbett repeatedly exults. That was more than a century ago. The animals, the birds, the butterflies and even the trees in their natural habitats are the best evidence of this inexplicable joy.

Well, I lived sixty years ago in our Village which heard of no pollution. And I was witness to this Joy whenever the resident troop of monkeys used to visit our para. There were about a dozen of all ages and sexes and they reveled in their antics: "The Spirit of Muthukur": gambol, jump, break a branch here, pluck a fruit there, snatch a banana from that kitchen, bare fangs at kids, scratch themselves and their kith and kin relentlessly, leaving a memory behind.

There was this wonderful piece with color pics in the Chandamama of our childhood:

After Raavan was killed with all his ten heads intact (his joie de vivre was in his navel) and Vibhishan was crowned in Sri Lanka, Lord Raam's thoughts turned to his native Ayodhya on the banks of the now-polluted Sarayu. And he took only one piece of Raavan's equipment; the Pushpak Viman, the jet plane with the provision that there is always one seat left however many board it. And invited everyone of his helpers to board and travel to Ayodhya to revel in his Crowning Ceremony that was held up for 14 long years. And the joy of his troop of monkeys knew no bounds.

During the ceremonial feast, the monkey warriors were all seated on the floor (as we all used to, in our childhood) waiting for the service to begin. And as they began their dinner, one monkey, while handling his nut, happened to slip it up and launch it in the air like a projectile reaching the maximum height of about 3 feet. That was it! Spirit of Ayodhya! The monkey got enraged by the antics of the nut and himself jumped up 4 feet to rival it. His neighbor got into the act and jumped 5 feet and so on. And everyone of them in the line joined the "seemingly pointless act".

There was pandemonium and Angad tried to restore order, but as it always happens with joie de vivre, he too joined the act. And so did Hanuman. And their King Sugriv.

Laxman, the joyless younger brother of Raam (he didn't sleep for 14 years...his wife Urmila did it for him too) got angry and was about to 'shoot at sight'. Raam got the news and ran in to prevent any mayhem and gave a brief and pointed speech as to the Code of Conduct and the DC (not the newspaper but the dreaded Disciplinary Committee). Nothing happened. They all were asking for Sita to appear before them and feed them...for, it was she who ought to be most grateful to the warriors who released her from her prison under that Ashok Tree.

So, Sita arrived bedecked in all her jewelery and started serving them laddus one by one. And they all sat down meekly and one by one picked their laddus from her hands demurely and delicately without touching her...there is a Code of Conduct in the monkey kingdom too...

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Last night about 8 PM Ishani was playing pranks with me and my wife on our bed and delighting us with her joie de vivre. All of a sudden she stopped, jumped down from our bed, and started running to the Drawing Room, mumbling:

"kolavari di is coming!"

"Where?"

"TV"

Another piece of joie de vivre, that video!


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Parkinson's Law

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My first decade at IIT KGP was my best, in many ways. IIT and most of its students were in their mid-teens and most of us teachers were in our twenties. It was all a comfy small affair. There were only about 25 Full Professors in all, most of them HoDs and aspirants. There was no statutory position of a Deputy Director. When the Director was out of station, IIT was on auto-pilot: the senior-most Prof took care. There were no Deans. The post of HoD was irrotational and powerful. Our own HoD, HNB, was our father figure.

For me it was the decade of most learning and enjoyment. I was learning from students on one side (by their questions) and SDM on the other; like a dholak. I was a bachelor living in a crazy Faculty Hostel and the CL was a friendly place. I was too junior to be entrusted with any Administrative Post and happy enough to be administered. And my best moments were in the tiny Tutorial Rooms adjacent to the Director's Office. The strength of the Tut Class never exceeded 12.

It all changed rather suddenly over a couple of years around 1977. The Class strength almost doubled. HoD became rotational. New buildings cropped up everywhere, one for each Engg Dept. There was a Deputy Director with his Office adjacent to the Diro's Office. One by one several Deans were created. And they all needed Office Space near the Power Center. So, the homely Tut Rooms were taken over by the Deans. And the Tut Classes were suddenly shifted to the Ground Floor of the S Block in the Main Building which was earlier occupied by the Dept of Architecture (which acquired its own new building and perhaps another feather in its cap...Town Planning). While vacating, I guess they shifted their furniture too, like I am soon going to do.

That was the time when HNB called me one day and thrust an unwilling Time Table-in-Charge position on me, which was earlier adorned by Prof STA, who passed on all the Files to me. And one of them was truly boisterous...I kept it with me for a long while.

STA wrote to the Dean (UG) asking for blackboards and student chairs with khata-rests instead of arm rests and fully armed Teachers' Chairs for the new Tutorial Rooms. The application was duly 'forwarded and strongly recommended' by the HoD with a noting that since the new batch of students would be arriving soon after the summer vacation, the matter was URGENT.

Dean (UG) forwarded it to the Professor-in-Charge of Furniture, who asked the Foreman for his comments.

The Foreman quoted several obstacles like shortage of funds, shortage of manpower, shortage of student chairs, shortage of wood in the market and shortage of time.

The Prof-in-Charge suggested that extra Teachers Chairs with arm-rests on both sides were available in so and such Dept and they could be used instead. The Dean sent the file back to the HoD and he to STA, who strongly protested that Tutorial Classes were supposed to be the place where Teachers take rest and students work, as opposed to the Lecture Classes, and so Teachers' Chairs for students would be as inappropriate as the other way round.

The File went back to the Dean who passed it on to the DD asking for immediate grant of funds, manpower, wood and such.

DD wrote back saying that everything could be arranged except perhaps Time. And he was pushing the matter as hard as he can to the Diro.

And by the way he asked if it is a nice idea at all to have chairs for teachers in the Tutorial Classes...Tut Teachers are supposed to go round and see how their students are solving the problems, give them tips, and watch that they are not copying from each other or last year's khatas.

This curious noting had a history of sorts. During Invigilation, one day, DD walked stealthily into the Raman Auditorium to see if Teachers were really invigilating or taking it easy gossiping in their chairs. Word spread, however, much like in Halls during OP, when lookouts were posted on the roofs.

All teachers got up from their chairs and got busy 'invigilating'; except my volatile friend who appears in an earlier blog: something about someone residing permanently inside the mosquito net in his hostel room. Let us call him Dr G. He was absorbed in a Sherlock Holmes novel that he brought with him to while away a tedious afternoon. And he didn't notice the DD approach him till the DD tore away the novel from his hands and tossed it aside. And Dr G was not one to be trifled with. He got up from his chair and took the DD by his arm and shouted: "How dare you insult me in front of my students?" And Opinion was divided...and Dr G won the battle, at least morally, and DD had to withdraw in a huff.

And from the next day, Teachers' Chairs were removed from the Exam Halls...but where there is a will, they say, there is a way...

I myself had to take the Tut Class that year in the new premises; and students were happily sitting in Teachers' Chairs and doing their problems with their khatas on their laps.

And I was dozing in the lone students' chair I stole from a room upstairs...


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Waxworks

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A couple of days back I cheated on my blog and didn't compose a single word; instead I copy-pasted a tall tale from Mark Twain. Because I got busy. This is how:

Over the past couple of years my folks started complaining that I am becoming more and more 'hearing-impaired'. I told them it is not MY problem...I am fine and have no complaints.

My son then told me off and said they had to shout louder and louder to get my attention. I said they are welcome. And he insisted he takes me to the latest Hearing Clinic where everything is computerized and it makes X-Y plots of my hearing vs frequency and corrects it frequency-wise by a chip which is implanted in a practically invisible mini-battery-operated hearing device @ Rs 35,000 (only) if you are happy with base metal and up to Rs 1 lakh if you want gold and platinum (like the good old false teeth).

Good that I pretended not to hear him...

I was then reminded of the ear-trumpet Mr. Wardle's mother was happily using when Mr. Wardle tried to introduce Mr. Pickwick to her eminence:

"Mr. Pickwick, mother," said Mr. Wardle at the very top of his voice.

"Ah!" said the old lady shaking her head; "I can't hear you."

"Mr. Pickwick, grandma!" screamed both the young ladies together.

"Ah!" exclaimed the old lady. "Well, it don't much matter. He don't care for an old 'ooman like me, I daresay."

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But over the last week or so, there was this new sensation whenever I turned my head...the right ear felt like I was shaking a bottle of coke...gurgling and bubbling and frothing sounds emanating inwardly...nothing high-sounding you know. And there was this premonition that ear-pain may shoot any time now. That was the time for action. I asked my son for the nearest ENT chap and he browsed the web on his mobile and gave me the address; and felt sorry he couldn't escort me there since he has a Customer Meeting with his American clients (who don't, as of now, believe in working night-shifts). I said, no problem, I will take care of myself exemplarily.

The Receptionist was busy on her cell phone and was waving away everyone approaching her to come after an hour since the Surgeon is in the OT. Everyone left but me...I sat down and browsed web on MY ancient cell phone, maybe 1G or even 0G. Go to GPRS and type Google and it will go into coma and after five good minutes suddenly wake up....great time-pass.

As expected, the Surgeon, a young chap my son's age, came out in 15 minutes. And I entered and explained my complaint as graphically as I could. He dismissed all my tall talk and ordered me to turn my right ear to him. And shone a torch light. And recoiled in horror. And he turned my head the other side...the left ear didn't disappoint him either.

He then recovered his voice and cried that both my ears were filled to the brim with good old wax. And asked me how I managed to collect it. I said I take shower at least half a dozen times a day (I didn't tell him that my head gets hot every other hour due to intense inner activity...like the engine of my old Maruti).

He asked me how is my hearing...I said I have no problem, since I got to be an expert at lip-reading...four-letter words like Reco and five-letter ones like Grade...over the last four decades at KGP. And anything context-sensitive is peanuts for me to make out.

He then looked outside the window and saw my Maruti and asked me how I could drive in Hyderabad city with such mounds of wax in my both ears. I said I am blind too in the right eye and maybe they compensate...

He then prescribed a Wax-Melter bottle and asked me to pour three drops of the thing thrice a day in each ear. He said in three days the wax would melt and then he will clean the ears on Tuesday evening (tomorrow). I asked him why not clean them right away and he said he could, but it would pain like hell...I jumped up and ran home like a surprised jackrabbit.

Ishani was waiting for me and I gave her the immense pleasure of watching the Wax-Melting Operation for the first time (for both of us). SDM used to spread the word that gps's Algebra is kachcha...but my Arithmetic is sound. I quickly calculated, like the Inverter we are going to buy that gives 'support' for three fans and three tubes for three hours...and poured nine drops in each ear and we both slept.

Ishani and I woke up after three good hours. And I felt a strange sensation in both the ears that things are about to fall down like hail. I asked her to quickly fetch a crucible from her mom's kitchen which she did running with excitement.

One by one mini-stones were dropping out whichever side I turned. I collected them with tweezers and dropped them gently in the crucible, after examining their shape and explaining to her that this one is like Shiv Ling, the other like Ganeshjee, and the third like Hanuman sans tail...her joy knew no bounds and she was screaming with delight...

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I was then reminded of a story told by my friend at KGP...unlike me, he is too honest to fib.

He was flying from Cal to Delhi the other day and was in the aisle seat with a serious-looking neighbor in the window seat. And found that every few minutes, his neighbor was picking his nose and collecting the output in a glass petri dish. My friend got annoyed at first but after an hour got curious and asked him what the idea was.

He was told that his neighbor was a Scientist D in an R&D Lab, was an experimental physicist with lots of patents in bio-instrumentation and recently won a Project for Rs 50 lakhs for devising mini-capacitors using organic dielectrics and he has already collected about 40 grams of the specimen and as soon as it becomes a round 50 grams, he would make a series of investigations on its dielectric properties like Cole-Cole Plot.

My friend asked him why can't the regular ones like paper and ceramic be used. The Scientist explained to him that these devices he is making are for implanting in the brain and heart, like say, pacemakers (Mrs KVR used to call them charmingly: 'Spacemakers'). And any fool can understand that Rejection is the main problem with these inorganic external implants but one's own body parts are never rejected...

And he said: "Excuse me!" and picked his nose...

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My son rushed home at midnight and asked me:

"Dad! How did it go?"

"Fine; but stop bawling!"


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Literary Matters

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Pratik's Take on Parashuram:

"...In fact I don't like social messages in novels and stories. In this regard my ideal is Conan Doyle. The reading should be for sheer entertainment, at least for me... I like the messages separately in essay form. Among Bengalis my favourite essayist is Parashuram. In Hindi I liked a person called Rambriksh Benipuri. And in English we are becoming acquainted with the `Autocrat' through your blogs.

Parashuram was always appealing for his rationality. His childhood was spent in Darbhanga / Bihar and he did not know any Bengali till the age of fifteen or so when he passed the Entrance examination; Hindi was like his mother tongue.

I don't think Bengal has produced any bigger `Pundit' than him be it language / literature or science he was a true master. There was this friendly war between Tagore and Acharya P. C. Ray whether Parashuram should pursue Literature or Science. He always hid himself from limelight. Shy and introvert, very very reluctant to attend any felicitation ceremonies and public meetings but very particular in replying his letters in self made envelopes using a self made ink..."

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I first heard of Parashuram from DB who was his devotee, sort of; and he was a 'Basu' too ;-) DB used to tell me tall tales about his own wacky ancestor Ramram Basu, the leading light of early Bengali Literature, whose crafty business acumen would have been the envy of today's luminaries who are landing up in the cooler like so many moths on the hot shade of our good old hurricane lantern. But of course he used it against our British rulers.

And it was Shyamal who gifted me the English translation. I didn't know Parashuram started learning Bengali in his teens. I think it is an advantage...most of us learned English at that age.

Parashuram was awarded Padmabhushan in 1956, Google tells me. Saswat was in India last month and he called me up and we had long chats for a couple of hours. He said his father wonders why RKN was not awarded the Nobel. Such is the admiration our generation have for RKN. Of all his works, I like Next Sunday best. It is the first collection of his 'personal essays' that appeared weekly in the Hindu in the 1950s...our teens, and so we relate to those period pieces best.

Of course I agree heartily with Pratik that reading should be for pleasure, and any message therein should be woven so subtly that it is not loud; and should be between the author and his reader (sorry for the masculine gender).

The litmus test of a book you love is that you should reread it. I read the Autocrat five times in as many decades at regular intervals. Very few 'connoisseurs' to whom I passed on my copy (including Edwin who gifted me a gilt-edged copy of 1885 vintage bought from the Harvard Square) could proceed beyond the third page. So, it is a matter of a very very personal taste.

By the way, it is the second round that matters most in many things. Great writers like Harper Lee (To Kill a Mocking Bird) and J D Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)...I read both the books...couldn't come up with a second bestseller...I don't now why.

I was always very careful about my Second Lecture to a new batch...the first is pourparlers...

The Madame in one of Maugham's (?) stories instructs her new recruit: "It is the second innings that hooks a customer...not the first...always keep something in store" or something like that...

Sorry for mixing up instruction in Physics and the Physical...

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My friend NP quotes in re The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

"...However, when Lyrical Ballads was reprinted, Wordsworth included it despite Coleridge's objections, writing:

The Poem of my Friend has indeed great defects; first, that the principal person has no distinct character, either in his profession of Mariner, or as a human being who having been long under the control of supernatural impressions might be supposed himself to partake of something supernatural; secondly, that he does not act, but is continually acted upon; thirdly, that the events having no necessary connection do not produce each other; and lastly, that the imagery is somewhat too laboriously accumulated. Yet the Poem contains many delicate touches of passion, and indeed the passion is every where true to nature, a great number of the stanzas present beautiful images, and are expressed with unusual felicity of language; and the versification, though the metre is itself unfit for long poems, is harmonious and artfully varied, exhibiting the utmost powers of that metre, and every variety of which it is capable. It therefore appeared to me that these several merits (the first of which, namely that of the passion, is of the highest kind) gave to the Poem a value which is not often possessed by better Poems.

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As you all know, it is my favorite poem...when Pratik was sharing the fourth year lab classes with me for three long hours, I used to hold him first 'by the hand' and then 'by the eye' and talk talk talk as if:

"..I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach..."

It is now seven years that I left KGP but still I hold him, now, 'by the blog' ;-)

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True Tale of a Fake Reco

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http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2895/pg2895.txt

Following the Equator
by
Mark Twain

A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War it began to appear that
Memphis, Tennessee, was going to be a great tobacco entrepot--the wise
could see the signs of it.  At that time Memphis had a wharf boat, of
course.  There was a paved sloping wharf, for the accommodation of
freight, but the steamers landed on the outside of the wharfboat, and all
loading and unloading was done across it, between steamer and shore.  A
number of wharfboat clerks were needed, and part of the time, every day,
they were very busy, and part of the time tediously idle.  They were
boiling over with youth and spirits, and they had to make the intervals
of idleness endurable in some way; and as a rule, they did it by
contriving practical jokes and playing them upon each other.

The favorite butt for the jokes was Ed Jackson, because he played none
himself, and was easy game for other people's--for he always believed
whatever was told him.

One day he told the others his scheme for his holiday.  He was not going
fishing or hunting this time--no, he had thought out a better plan.  Out
of his $40 a month he had saved enough for his purpose, in an economical
way, and he was going to have a look at New York.

It was a great and surprising idea.  It meant travel--immense travel--in
those days it meant seeing the world; it was the equivalent of a voyage
around it in ours.  At first the other youths thought his mind was
affected, but when they found that he was in earnest, the next thing to
be thought of was, what sort of opportunity this venture might afford for
a practical joke.

The young men studied over the matter, then held a secret consultation
and made a plan.  The idea was, that one of the conspirators should offer
Ed a letter of introduction to Commodore Vanderbilt, and trick him into
delivering it.  It would be easy to do this.  But what would Ed do when
he got back to Memphis?  That was a serious matter.  He was good-hearted,
and had always taken the jokes patiently; but they had been jokes which
did not humiliate him, did not bring him to shame; whereas, this would be
a cruel one in that way, and to play it was to meddle with fire; for with
all his good nature, Ed was a Southerner--and the English of that was,
that when he came back he would kill as many of the conspirators as he
could before falling himself.  However, the chances must be taken--it
wouldn't do to waste such a joke as that.

So the letter was prepared with great care and elaboration.  It was
signed Alfred Fairchild, and was written in an easy and friendly spirit.
It stated that the bearer was the bosom friend of the writer's son, and
was of good parts and sterling character, and it begged the Commodore to
be kind to the young stranger for the writer's sake.  It went on to say,
"You may have forgotten me, in this long stretch of time, but you will
easily call me back out of your boyhood memories when I remind you of how
we robbed old Stevenson's orchard that night; and how, while he was
chasing down the road after us, we cut across the field and doubled back
and sold his own apples to his own cook for a hat-full of doughnuts; and
the time that we----" and so forth and so on, bringing in names of
imaginary comrades, and detailing all sorts of wild and absurd and, of
course, wholly imaginary schoolboy pranks and adventures, but putting
them into lively and telling shape.

With all gravity Ed was asked if he would like to have a letter to
Commodore Vanderbilt, the great millionaire.  It was expected that the
question would astonish Ed, and it did.

"What?  Do you know that extraordinary man?"

"No; but my father does.  They were schoolboys together.  And if you
like, I'll write and ask father.  I know he'll be glad to give it to you
for my sake."

Ed could not find words capable of expressing his gratitude and delight.
The three days passed, and the letter was put into his bands.  He started
on his trip, still pouring out his thanks while he shook good-bye all
around.  And when he was out of sight his comrades let fly their laughter
in a storm of happy satisfaction--and then quieted down, and were less
happy, less satisfied.  For the old doubts as to the wisdom of this
deception began to intrude again.

Arrived in New York, Ed found his way to Commodore Vanderbilt's business
quarters, and was ushered into a large anteroom, where a score of people
were patiently awaiting their turn for a two-minute interview with the
millionaire in his private office.  A servant asked for Ed's card, and
got the letter instead.  Ed was sent for a moment later, and found Mr.
Vanderbilt alone, with the letter--open--in his hand.

"Pray sit down, Mr. --er--"

"Jackson."

"Ah--sit down, Mr. Jackson.  By the opening sentences it seems to be a
letter from an old friend.  Allow me--I will run my eye through it.  He
says he says--why, who is it?" He turned the sheet and found the
signature.  "Alfred Fairchild--hm--Fairchild--I don't recall the name.
But that is nothing--a thousand names have gone from me.  He says--he
says-hm-hmoh, dear, but it's good!  Oh, it's rare!  I don't quite
remember it, but I seem to it'll all come back to me presently.  He says
--he says--hm--hm-oh, but that was a game!  Oh, spl-endid!  How it
carries me back!  It's all dim, of course it's a long time ago--and the
names--some of the names are wavery and indistinct--but sho', I know it
happened--I can feel it! and lord, how it warms my heart, and brings
back my lost youth!  Well, well, well, I've got to come back into this
work-a-day world now--business presses and people are waiting--I'll keep
the rest for bed to-night, and live my youth over again.  And you'll
thank Fairchild for me when you see him--I used to call him Alf, I think
--and you'll give him my gratitude for--what this letter has done for the
tired spirit of a hard-worked man; and tell him there isn't anything that
I can do for him or any friend of his that I won't do.  And as for you,
my lad, you are my guest; you can't stop at any hotel in New York.  Sit.
where you are a little while, till I get through with these people, then
we'll go home.  I'll take care of you, my boy--make yourself easy as to
that."

Ed stayed a week, and had an immense time--and never suspected that the
Commodore's shrewd eye was on him, and that he was daily being weighed
and measured and analyzed and tried and tested.

Yes, he had an immense time; and never wrote home, but saved it all up to
tell when he should get back.  Twice, with proper modesty and decency, he
proposed to end his visit, but the Commodore said, "No--wait; leave it to
me; I'll tell you when to go."

In those days the Commodore was making some of those vast combinations of
his--consolidations of warring odds and ends of railroads into harmonious
systems, and concentrations of floating and rudderless commerce in
effective centers--and among other things his farseeing eye had detected
the convergence of that huge tobacco-commerce, already spoken of, toward
Memphis, and he had resolved to set his grasp upon it and make it his
own.

The week came to an end.  Then the Commodore said:

"Now you can start home.  But first we will have some more talk about
that tobacco matter.  I know you now.  I know your abilities as well as
you know them yourself--perhaps better.  You understand that tobacco
matter; you understand that I am going to take possession of it, and you
also understand the plans which I have matured for doing it.  What I want
is a man who knows my mind, and is qualified to represent me in Memphis,
and be in supreme command of that important business--and I appoint you."

"Me!"

"Yes.  Your salary will be high--of course-for you are representing me.
Later you will earn increases of it, and will get them.  You will need a
small army of assistants; choose them yourself--and carefully.  Take no
man for friendship's sake; but, all things being equal, take the man you
know, take your friend, in preference to the stranger."  After some
further talk under this head, the Commodore said:

"Good-bye, my boy, and thank Alf for me, for sending you to me."

When Ed reached Memphis he rushed down to the wharf in a fever to tell
his great news and thank the boys over and over again for thinking to
give him the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt.  It happened to be one of those
idle times.  Blazing hot noonday, and no sign of life on the wharf.  But
as Ed threaded his way among the freight piles, he saw a white linen
figure stretched in slumber upon a pile of grain-sacks under an awning,
and said to himself, "That's one of them," and hastened his step; next,
he said, "It's Charley--it's Fairchild good"; and the next moment laid an
affectionate hand on the sleeper's shoulder.  The eyes opened lazily,
took one glance, the face blanched, the form whirled itself from the
sack-pile, and in an instant Ed was alone and Fairchild was flying for
the wharf-boat like the wind!

Ed was dazed, stupefied.  Was Fairchild crazy?  What could be the meaning
of this?  He started slow and dreamily down toward the wharf-boat; turned
the corner of a freight-pile and came suddenly upon two of the boys.
They were lightly laughing over some pleasant matter; they heard his
step, and glanced up just as he discovered them; the laugh died abruptly;
and before Ed could speak they were off, and sailing over barrels and
bales like hunted deer.  Again Ed was paralyzed.  Had the boys all gone
mad?  What could be the explanation of this extraordinary conduct?  And
so, dreaming along, he reached the wharf-boat, and stepped aboard--
nothing
but silence there, and vacancy.  He crossed the deck, turned the corner
to go down the outer guard, heard a fervent--

"O lord!" and saw a white linen form plunge overboard.

The youth came up coughing and strangling, and cried out--

"Go 'way from here!  You let me alone.  I didn't do it, I swear I
didn't!"

"Didn't do what?"

"Give you the----"

"Never mind what you didn't do--come out of that!  What makes you all act
so?  What have I done?"

"You?  Why you haven't done anything.  But----"

"Well, then, what have you got against me?  What do you all treat me so
for?"

"I--er--but haven't you got anything against us?"

"Of course not.  What put such a thing into your head?"

"Honor bright--you haven't?

"Honor bright."

"Swear it!"

"I don't know what in the world you mean, but I swear it, anyway."

"And you'll shake hands with me?"

"Goodness knows I'll be glad to!  Why, I'm just starving to shake hands
with somebody!"

The swimmer muttered, "Hang him, he smelt a rat and never delivered the
letter!--but it's all right, I'm not going to fetch up the subject."  And
he crawled out and came dripping and draining to shake hands.  First one
and then another of the conspirators showed up cautiously--armed to the
teeth--took in the amicable situation, then ventured warily forward and
joined the love-feast.

And to Ed's eager inquiry as to what made them act as they had been
acting, they answered evasively, and pretended that they had put it up as
a joke, to see what he would do.  It was the best explanation they could
invent at such short notice.  And each said to himself, "He never
delivered that letter, and the joke is on us, if he only knew it or we
were dull enough to come out and tell."

Then, of course, they wanted to know all about the trip; and he said--

"Come right up on the boiler deck and order the drinks--it's my treat.
I'm going to tell you all about it.  And to-night it's my treat again
--and we'll have oysters and a time!"

When the drinks were brought and cigars lighted, Ed said:

"Well, when I delivered the letter to Mr. Vanderbilt----"

"Great Scott!"

"Gracious, how you scared me.  What's the matter?"

"Oh--er--nothing.  Nothing--it was a tack in the chair-seat," said one.

"But you all said it.  However, no matter.  When I delivered the
letter----"

"Did you deliver it?"  And they looked at each other as people might who
thought that maybe they were dreaming.

Then they settled to listening; and as the story deepened and its marvels
grew, the amazement of it made them dumb, and the interest of it took
their breath.  They hardly uttered a whisper during two hours, but sat
like petrifactions and drank in the immortal romance.  At last the tale
was ended, and Ed said--

"And it's all owing to you, boys, and you'll never find me ungrateful
--bless your hearts, the best friends a fellow ever had!  You'll all have
places; I want every one of you.  I know you--I know you 'by the back,'
as the gamblers say.  You're jokers, and all that, but you're sterling,
with the hallmark on.  And Charley Fairchild, you shall be my first
assistant and right hand, because of your first-class ability, and
because you got me the letter, and for your father's sake who wrote it
for me, and to please Mr. Vanderbilt, who said it would!  And here's to
that great man--drink hearty!"

Yes, when the Moment comes, the Man appears--even if he is a thousand
miles away, and has to be discovered by a practical joke.

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