Protocall - 4

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"The stone the builders rejected became the cornerstone"

......Psalm 118.22

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My Literary Uncle (BRK, 84) and his mississ (Pinnamma, 78) are the closest to me among my elder generation, for several reasons...chief of them is that they are the youngest in that gen. And so, they are more like friends. 

BRK had to stop his higher studies for the usual family reasons prevalent then and join the Post & Telegraphs Department. But literature is in his genes. So, he was always found with sophisticated books (mostly in Telugu) but didn't have time to write anything big till he retired. And then, with the encouragement of his wife, he wrote the Bhagavadgita in simple Telugu verses...simply charming. 

His elder son (BVP, 60) too joined the LIC at an early age and retired recently as the Chief in his Circle. And all of a sudden he discovered that he could draw wonderful cartoons and write lovely stories in Telugu. Within a year he published a couple of dozen cartoons and 20 prize-winning stories in many magazines.

His younger son (BRB, 50) has a flair for writing and pretty soon will surely take it up in a big way. He trained as a Physicist and then turned to Computerized Banking. 

BRK encouraged his mississ to pursue her studies privately and she is a graduate in Literature. This I didn't know till I retired.

As soon as I retired and quit Physics, I was at a loss what to do with my time, till I found I could write readable prose. The first (and my best) write-up happens to be a 17-page Homage to my Ph D Guide (SDM) whose very existence many youngsters didn't know. The essay is full of Physics jargon. So, I knew BRB (with his Physics background) would be interested, and handed him a copy when he was staying in Hyderabad five years ago.

It so happened that my Pinnamma, on a visit to her son, saw the copy and apparently read it in one siting and recommended it to her hubby, BRK. And he too devoured it. I came to know all this much later when BRK wrote me a charming letter of appreciation thanking his mississ for passing the 'Homage' on to him. I wondered how this elderly couple who have never had any physics background could read it. And they said:

"It is not necessary to understand a piece completely to enjoy it, if it is well-written"

That was an unforgettable lesson to me at 65.

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That was all by the way.

In our households, there is a nice Function called Aksharabhyasam (Initiation into Literacy). Every child in the family, arriving at age 3, is formally taught to write by the father who seats the kid in his lap. And on a slate teaches how to 'write' by overwriting the letter 'OM' with a slate-pencil. 

The function is preceded by a Puja to the Goddess of Learning, Saraswati, and the Dispeller of all obstacles, Ganeshji. Lots of friends and family members are invited to watch and later bless the child...like Ishani was recently...

I recall my own Aksharabhyasam vividly. My Father being an English Teacher would perhaps have preferred to start with ABCD...but must have been prevailed upon to stick to custom.

After the writing lesson was over, I was made to do pranam to all the elders present and take their blessings. 

It so happened that my Pinnamma, then on 12 (and unmarried), embraced me and blessed me thus:

"Study well and become an Engineer!"

Everyone laughed and quizzed her why an Engineer. And she promptly replied:

"He can then roam around in a ZEEP with a hat on and sit in style"

That was our Pre-Independance picture of an Engineer... Engineer meant a Civil Engineer supervising the construction of Roads and Buildings and Bridges and Dams, and pocketing money.

The other two branches, Mechanical and Electrical of Engineering, came below CE. Not much of mechanization or electrification was probably visible.

So, CE 'closed' first, then ME and then EE. My good friend NP once told me that an EE student defended the difficulty of his subject thus:

"We have to imagine and visualize Electric and Magnetic Fields in empty space unlike you guys who can touch and feel your cement and bricks and nuts and bolts"

By the time I joined my University in Vizagh in 1958, where instead of engineering I had to study physics (sorry Pinnamma!), the tables had turned and CE was at the bottom of the three...ME, then EE, and then CE.

In 1960, an Engineering friend who was lagging way behind in his 2nd Year and failing in many subjects met me and cried to me that he was found unfit to pursue either ME or EE or CE branches and asked to quit Engineering or:

"Get lost and join a new branch that is starting in Kakinada which has no takers"

I asked him what was that new branch called.

And he said:

"Some funny thing called Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering"

QED


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Guest Column - Phyjacking - Saswat Sarangi

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I thought I should share with you one recurring experience that I kept having in New York City. This, again, has to do with the world of Physicists in finance - or, rather, the world of Phynance as some people call it.

As you know, back in the IITs, only the crazy ones did physics. In India, in general, at least back in those days, the prestigious fields of study for undergraduates were Engineering, Medicine. Many Engineers used to follow it up with an MBA. The golden combination was, of course, IIT + IIM. I believe it is still the same. So the people I knew in Physics had to be a bit crazy. The ones who went on for grad schools in the US were the ones who thought about physics all the time and could never think of any other career (at least at that stage of their lives). But we were definitely not used to, nor did we expect to receive, the kind of limelight that our Computer Science, Electrical or Mechanical Engg friends received. Physics was our Madhu and the Physics Department was the Madhushala.
 

And then I came to New York City and soon I realized that the world is upside down here! :)
 

My favorite story of this is from the year 2006 when I was a fresh postdoc at Columbia University. As you might know, it is the right and duty of every grad student and postdoc (who are, by definition, poor) to go to every possible event in the University with free food. Knowing that this is the only way to ensure a high attendance at talks/seminars, the arrangers of the events make sure they mention the "free food" under the announcement of every event.
 

It was one such "free food and cheese and wine" announcement that stole my attention while walking across the campus. I promptly showed up at the event at 6 pm that day and looked around to see a fantastic pile of food and felt happy at the thought of not having to spend any money on the night's dinner. I immediately picked up a plate and loaded it up with food and picked up a soda. Then turned my gaze at the audience and realized that they were all students who were very well dressed - suits and ties. The 5 or 6 people on the slightly elevated podium - who were clearly non-students - were also well dressed. I quickly realized that the students were either from the Law School or the Business School and that it was some firm from downtown Manhattan doing a spiel for their annual campus recruitment.
 

I had clearly made a gaffe as none of them had started with the food yet. The correct thing to do would have been to listen to the presentations from the recruiters and then socialize with them and finally, at the end, start with food and wine. These were civilized people. Not like the scientists I had seen at Cornell where it was perfectly ok to attack the donuts before the weekly talks - where there pretty much used to be a competition between students and professors alike of who reached the auditorium first and ate the maximum number of donuts.
 

Further, to add to this awkward start, I was completely under-dressed, it seemed to me, for this event. I was wearing an old half sweater (with a slight tear) that my father had worn through the 1970s and handed down to me and which I loved to wear out of emotional attachment to it, and an old jeans and an old shirt. I must have turned red immediately after realizing how out of place I was! But leaving was not an option I was ready to take - did not want to feel like a complete loser. I decided to put on a confident look and sat down in a corner of the room, hoping that no one noticed my plate full of food and my inappropriate attire.
 

The speakers spoke about their firm. How it was better to work for them than for the usual Wall Street names like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley... I might have heard these names for the first time that day! Then, finally, this guy - in his late 40s probably -  came to speak and introduced himself as an ex-Nuclear Physicist. He was the head of some group at that firm. He spoke very well, very confident, better than everybody else. And I decided that may be I will speak a few words with him, just out of curiosity, about how life is in a "real job". Being an ex-physicist he will understand my question, I figured.

As the talk proceeded the audience had these very intelligent questions about the firm, the economy, the interest rate hikes, about Alan Greenspan (the next biggest thing to God during those halcyon days), the housing bubble and what not. I kept eating making sure I didn't make any crunchy noises as I bit the crackers with cheese. When I saw these students with their questions I felt pretty stupid and started deciding against bothering anyone with any questions.

 And soon the talk session was over. It was time to socialize. I was, of course, done with my food - any signs of my social gaffe were securely hidden in my stomach now and I felt better. Each of the speakers was immediately surrounded by these very smart looking MBA students. I kept some distance, feeling diffident. But soon the head speaker was done talking to one student and excused himself from the herd and stepped towards my direction to get some water. I decided to corner him and chat a bit before leaving for good. I was sure he would not be much interested in talking to me. Maybe I was just wasting his time, I wondered. But still I went over and said something like, "Hi. I am a Physics postdoc here at Columbia. I noticed you said you were a Physicist as well. So I am just curious how it is to do a job in finance?" And that's when his face suddenly just lit up! He immediately summoned his colleagues saying something like, "Hey guys, this guy here is a postdoc in physics! We have to recruit him. How soon can you interview with us? We want more physicists."  And many of them immediately dropped the bunch of MBAs they were talking to and came over to me.
 

This was a complete shock to me! I had heard, of course, that physicists were sought after in Wall Street. But never had I experienced this kind of attention first hand! This was just phenomenal! They dropped a bunch of MBAs like hot potatoes as soon as they heard there was a Physicist present in the room. Crazy! I was laughing incredulously the whole evening (may be it was that wine!).
 

This of course was a somewhat extreme experience that I had. Perhaps these guys were just tired of talking to MBAs all the time and wanted a change. But experiences like this have persisted. And it is just funny because we were always under the impression that Physicists had to be like sanyasis. We did our stuff for our own enjoyment. It is the Computer Science or Electronics people who had the mass sex appeal. And suddenly here I find this perception spun around! I meet my old friends from KGP, ex-Chemical Engineers or ex-Electrical Engineers with MBAs who switched to Wall Street and they wish they had done a PhD in Physics! Nothing draws the attention of Quantitative Finance divisions of Banks and Hedge Funds like the mention of a "PhD in Physics" in the resume.
 

Just yesterday my wife and I were having dinner with an Investment Banker from the biggest and most successful bank here, and he was regretting not having a Physics background as that would have helped him so much in finance!

I just find this hilarious! Never thought "fame" and "sex appeal" are so transitory and dependent on country, city, profession!

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Protocall - 3

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"Mathematics is the Queen of all sciences and the Theory of Numbers is the Queen of Mathematics"

.......Gauss or somebody

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Well, Mathematics may or may not be the Queen of all sciences but Physics is certainly their Jack...of all trades.

Jack is also called Knave and, as you know, Knave means 'a tricky and deceitful fellow' according to Webster; and Webster should know...it is his 'business' to know, especially in his online version which has about 20 ads and 20 comments on this single page, mostly by cuties:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/knave

It all started with the wily Galileo who was the Father of Smuggling of Scientific Literature. And it continues unabated.

Physics trains her students in insidiousness...sorry for that long word but I have to hedge...which brings me to hedge-funds, more of which later.

Most of the skills in Physics are imparted in their labs. Cooking for example. Everyone knows that an egg is an egg is an egg; and is hideously unpalatable in its raw form, but look at how many tasty dishes you can cook with it! I myself know about a dozen, the best is what in Bengal is called the Devil Chop:






  http://bengalicuisine.net/2010/dimer-devil-or-deviled-eggs-recipe/


After 5 or more (if you do a Ph D) years, the Physicist is fit to cook anything and everything, from lectures to ledgers.

German Chemists discovered Nuclear Fission. And kept quiet. And look at what American Physicists did with it...they made the Bomb.

They were not happy with it and so smuggled it out a la Galileo to Russia. And so the US Army couldn't bomb the whole world "into the stone age" (except her stooges...like you know...)

So they learned software programming and entered Banking Industry. This time they almost succeeded in bombing the whole of World Economy by writing such gruesome programs that their Banking Honchos couldn't follow, and didn't want to, as long as they got filthy rich. 

Then the Housing Bubble burst and all those  physics programmers lost their cushy jobs...the Banking Honchos and clever Hedge Funders didn't lose a single dollar of their stinking high bonuses...it is a different matter that ONE retired physics guy with a nose for such matters got his Nile Valley Apartment at Hyderabad dirt cheap as soon as  the bubble got pricked ;-)

And now it is the Third Coming of Physics. I hear they are into Financial Services in a big way. I hereby advise all my readers to withdraw all their funds from their Banks, keeping only their bank-lockers, buy gold ferociously and hoard it in them before the next Bubble bursts..."Forewarned is Forearmed" as my Father used to say...he did say many good things in his long life, like, "Penny Foolish, Pound Foolish".

Meanwhile physicists entered medical sciences in a bigger way. Of course every instrument and technique medicos ever used was based on physics. Take, for instance, what my MD Uncle routinely used to do to me capriciously when I was ill. He would ask me to lie down (back and forth), keep his left middle finger on my chest and tap it repeatedly with his right middle finger. I came to know that this was called 'percussion':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDhkerh6ZZk

This technique is as old as physics and bootlegging. I am told some physicists of yore used to hide the crates of their smuggled liquor underground and cover them up. And they would go out at midnight whenever they felt thirsty with a stick in their hands and tap it on the ground: 'tap..tap...tap' till they find a hollow resonant sound which they could figure out as where they hid their crates. I think dogs use this technique to find where they hid their favorite bones...I myself would have trained as a groundwater 'diviner':


  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6mJb_imQd0


Anyway, Roentgen, the discoverer of X-rays, didn't want to take a patent on his discovery saying that it would be useful in medicine for the common man.

Not the physicists of nowadays...

Go to any swank Cancer Center and you will find that all Radiation Oncology uses hard X-rays. But the manufacturers of these mega-instruments are no Roentgens...they make their fat living out of cancer patients. Not only X-rays, but Gamma Rays using isotopes, linear accelerators, positron-electron annihilation scanners (PETs), MRIs and every possible gizmo there uses physicists to develop them. And they call it: "Nuclear Medicine"

But as our Sid Mukherjee says it in 600 eloquent pages of close-print, Cancer is smarter than a bunch of physicists...genes tell...

With the result that once relapse occurs the norm is:

"3 months without treatment and 6 months with it"

The difference is in the moola that everyone makes down the line...except the patient.

I am not saying Physics is no good. It is good as far as it goes...but it goes only so far. 

Knowing that physicists never starve, my MD Uncle pushed me into Physics without my knowledge, and I am happy with it...it could have been worse...say Chemistry...it'smellodious...ask my son who got out of it as soon as he could...

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