Current Account - 4

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"............................I have studied the growth of this tree by its
rings, and it is curious.  Three hundred and forty-two rings.
Started, therefore, about 1510.  The thickness of the rings tells
the rate at which it grew.  For five or six years the rate was
slow,--then rapid for twenty years.  A little before the year 1550
it began to grow very slowly, and so continued for about seventy
years.  In 1620 it took a new start and grew fast until 1714 then
for the most part slowly until 1786, when it started again and grew
pretty well and uniformly until within the last dozen years, when
it seems to have got on sluggishly.

Look here.  Here are some human lives laid down against the periods
of its growth, to which they corresponded.  This is Shakspeare's.
The tree was seven inches in diameter when he was born; ten inches
when he died.  A little less than ten inches when Milton was born;
seventeen when he died.  Then comes a long interval, and this
thread marks out Johnson's life, during which the tree increased
from twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter.  Here is the
span of Napoleon's career;--the tree doesn't seem to have minded
it...."

...Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 

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Strands of glory: Is Napoleon's hair worth more than Elvis'?

A lock from the French emperor's hair recently sold at auction for $13,000. How's that stack up against the collectible value of other famous follicles?

posted on July 6, 2010, at 11:59 AM

 
How much would you pay for a lock of Napoleon's hair? Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Jacques-Louis David, 1812

Everything is collectible, it seems: Even human hair. Outbidding an international field of collectors, an unnamed Londoner paid $13,000 last week to purchase a lock of Napoleon Bonaparte's hair, reportedly snipped a day after the emperor's death in 1821. For those in the know, that's a relative bargain. 

.... http://theweek.com/article/index/204652/strands-of-glory-is-napoleons-hair-worth-more-than-elvishttp://theweek.com/article/index/204652/strands-of-glory-is-napoleons-hair-worth-more-than-elvis

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Campus Life is so different than city life. We have been living in Hyderabad for the past 8 years changing apartments and locales 4 times, but we never had any curiosity about our neighbors...it was mutual...everybody is too busy...including retired bloggers...for communion with others.

At IIT KGP it was different...it was a closed society with plenty of leisure. So, whenever we changed Qrs or our neighbors did, my wife was curious about the age of her new neighborani. But of course she was too genteel to ask. So, she would float a tentative guess to me that her neighborani looks younger. 

And of course I would pooh-pooh the suggestion and exclaim:

"What the Devil!!! You look at least 5 years younger"... (more than 5 is not recommended as it would sound blatant flattery with ulterior motives).

My wife has a thing going for her...it is in her genes. Her mom who is in her due Heaven for the last three years when she was a ripe 80, had all her hair jet black always. So do her daughters.

Nowadays of course, you can dye your hair whatever color you like; like the White Knight in Alice:

 But I was thinking of a plan
   To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
   That they could not be seen.

But, as you see from the quotes above, the age and much more of a tree can be deduced from the rings on a section of her trunk. And, studying a single strand of Napoleon's hair using Neutron Activation Analysis, some have concluded that he didn't die a natural death but was arsenic-posioned;...but here is the twist...not by the Brits but  by a French General.


But I never cared for the age of my neighbor till after I retired and became a pensioner. Whenever I look at another pensioner nowadays, the thought would cross my mind if he is younger than me...and I leave it at that.


But the day I was taken to my retired GP by my son last week, I was rent with curiosity if the abrupt chap who had all his hair white and had a number of leukoderma patches here and there is younger or older to me.


He too must have the same question crossing his mind but he has an advantage: he would bluntly ask: "Name? Age?" and write them down with a flourish. 

I mean the situation is totally asymmetric...I couldn't have retorted: "Excuse me; what is yours?" without making bad things worse.


But on our fourth visit to him today, I made him blurt out his age without my asking...


And How!!!


Tell you tomorrow...

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