My Computing - 1

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The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. "Where shall I begin, your Majesty?" he asked.

"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

.........Lewis Carroll

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In the beginning there was this Counting up to 100.

My mother tongue was kind to me...just learn up to 10 and the rest follows a rule without exception. English too was ok; once you cross the troublesome teens, life is easy. Although for a long time I had a doubt if 'ninety' is spelled with an 'e' or without it. And when I wrote my first diffident check for "A hundred and twenty rupees" the clerk in SBI, KGP struck it out and wrote "one hundred twenty rupees only" and asked me to sign it (they always made a horrible spelling mistake in my name alright). And he leaned towards me and whispered the Golden Rule of Banking: "There is no 'a' anywhere till you reach 'thousand'."

By the time I was asked to mug up Counting in Hindi, I developed a logical mind and said: "Satthavis, Atthavis, Navavis" and got a rap on my knuckle. This is the fruit of logic in math. I don't know why Hindiwalas should back-stab when they reach 29, 39 etc. And by the time it came to 'bavan, tirapan' I lost count and interest in all things Hindi, Hindu, Hindustani...although I admire Sushmajee's fluency in English, Hindi and Urdu (maybe Sanskrit too). But as far as English goes, I like the fluency of the Tamilandu CM of all the current lady CMs (UP & WB make no pretenses, but I guess Delhi comes close).

Then came addition, which was a breeze and I even mastered 'carrying'. Then suddenly my Father was transferred to a school in a different village and as my luck would have it, it was the Quarterly Math Exam there the day I was enrolled, and apparently they had already taught subtraction with 'borrow'. There was this question with a 'choice': "Answer any one out of the three problems below you like"...all with heavy borrowing. I jumped on the words 'you like' and made up a problem in subtraction that I liked much and wrote:

9999
8888
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1111
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The Math Teacher (who didn't yet now I was the son of his new HM) asked me to come up and turn to the Class as he exhibited my subtraction problem, with my answer script high up in his hands, turning it this way and that, so that the entire audience is regaled (much like Soniajee held up to her TV audience the Congress Manifesto with Manmohanjee's photo when a Reporter insolently asked her who was their prime ministerial candidate before the last General Elections).

I now think that ridicule I suffered at a tender age has much to do with my aversion to math. Teachers should be sensitive to students' feelings...after all, that aging bald shortsighted bespectacled math teacher (Kondal Rao) couldn't have withstood the onslaught of SDM for five years, no? I recall soon after winning his Nobel, Abdus Salam made a trip to his native village in Pakistan to pay obeisance to his high school math teacher who inspired him...any NL candidates from KGP Physics out there?...time is running out ;-)

Then came Multiplication Tables. My Father wouldn't let me go out to play in the evenings unless I recited those horrible tables up to 20 x 10 = 200. That was no problem for me, for, mugging up was in my blood. But there was this son of our Telugu Teacher, who could recite the wretched tables till 20 x 20 = 400, which rather triggered an inferiority complex in me. And what is all this fuss about? The other day I went to this Marwari Corner Shop to get my quota of a dozen packets of Knorr Classic Thick Tomato Soup with an MRP of Rs 35. And a free gift of a Noodles Packet on each worth Rs 15, which I declined. The teenage daughter manning the counter in the somnolent afternoon spoke to her mom on her cell phone and said I get a rebate of Rs 7 on each for foregoing the noodles gift packet. And when I asked how much should I pay, she instantly whipped out her pocket calculator, punched a few buttons, erased, punched again and reeled out her answer. And when I showed her my palm with the right answer scribbled on it, her eyes flashed as if to say: "Old Man, you are a GENIUS!"

It first happened to Moitreyee Sinha, Classmate of Supratim, when she went as a TA to Cincinnati a couple of decades ago. She told me that when she said offhand to her students that sin 30 = 0.5, they clapped and said: "Ma'am, you are a GENIUS!"

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An hour ago I was Googling for My Computer and got this video:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3948449/naked_and_funny_help_me_with_my_computer_2210/

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