Tunnel & Total

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Tunnel Vision is as different from Total Vision as Meditation is from Woolgathering:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/03/woolgathering.html

Arjun and his eldest brother, Yudhistir, were appearing for their final endsem practical exams. Their teacher, Dron, set this question: 

"Hit the left eye of that toy bird on the top branch of that tree."

Arjun was of course the Arjun of our Arjun Awards. He was asked:

"What do you see now?"  

"The tree"

"Now?"

"The bird"

"Now?"

"Its eyes"

"Now?"

"Its left eye"

He got an Ex Grade and the PGM. Earlier, Yudhistir was asked the same questions:

"What do you see now?"

"The tree"

"Now?"

"The sky"

"Now?"

"The Earth"

"Now?"

"You, Professor!"

He got an F Grade without the benefit of Summer Quarter or Supple.

But Buddhadeva Bosu, and before him perhaps Rajsekhar Basu (Parashuram), consider Yudhistir as the central character and the hero of Mahabharat:

http://www.parabaas.com/translation/database/translations/essays/book_of_yudhisthir.html

Very interesting character, for sure. The chap was almost an imbecile always parasiting on his brothers for fighting his battles. There was only one feature he was known initially for...his mind-blowing addiction to gambling. While his brothers were acquiring more and more wives left and right, he was happy with the one-fifth he was doled out. He was the epitome of a reluctant king (rakhee king). He was happiest to lose his kingdom and go forth to the Naimisha Forest, while his wife and brothers were grumbling and waiting for a comeback. There he was the keenest student in the classes conducted by various rishis and absorbed every word of wisdom emanating from them. His brothers were bunking their classes and going forth seeking adventures and acquiring wives and weapons. His contribution to the eventual great war was confined to announcing a half-truth...gul...reluctantly again.

And then, unlike any other king, he never fought more and more battles to conquer neighboring kingdoms and anoint himself Emperor...Chakraborti. And he was the first to announce quitting his kingdom to go forth as a mendicant, followed reluctantly by his wife and brothers who died on the way. 

He was the lone survivor, to say nothing of the dog.

But, when he was asked intricate questions in Grand Vivas, like the one by Yaksha or Indra, he came out with Ex Grades. All because he had acquired, with great effort, a wholesome view of life and death and the inner meaning of the travails thereof and Dharma...indeed in South India he is always referred to as Dharma Raju...like our A B Vajpayee who introduced a new word into our political lingo..."Coalition Dharma"... a hybrid excuse for pusillanimity.

Yudhistir had acquired a Total Vision...useless no doubt for all practical purposes. As the present saw goes,

"He could never sell himself"

Perhaps he never cared to.

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I am not saying Tunnel Vision is bad...in truth "focus" is an absolute prerequisite for achievement of any sort in this world...like Arjun shooting that revolving fish single-mindedly...just imagine Yudhistir trying it out...he would have been seeing Draupadi, Drupada, and perhaps Duryodahn too and missed the fish by a mile.

Whenever I think of Tunnel Vision, I recall Nepu-da sitting on the bank of our pristine lake at IIT KGP and angling. The world was lost to him completely and vice versa. There were only two things in his world then...the fish and the worm.

Listen to Feynman:

"As I was writing these equations all over the blackboard ahead of time, Einstein came in and said pleasantly, 'Hello, I'm coming to your seminar. But first, where is the tea?'

I told him, and continued writing the equations. 

Then the time came to give the talk, and here are these monster minds in front of me, waiting! My first technical talk --- and I have this audience! I mean they would put me through the wringer! I remember very clearly seeing my hands shaking as they were pulling out my notes from a brown envelope.

But then a miracle occurred, as it has occurred again and again in my life, and it's very lucky for me: the moment I start to think about the physics, and have to concentrate on what I'm explaining, nothing else occupies my mind --- I'm completely immune to being nervous. So after I started to go, I just didn't know who was in the room. I was only explaining this idea, that's all."

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I had the most horrific experience of any Research Scholar when I joined the best teacher at AU for my Ph D program. Unfortunately for me, he had just then had a calamity in his family and lost all interest in guiding students...in fact he never came to the lab...just took his classes and ran away home on his Red Lambretta.  And all he asked me was to try to build the Spin Echo equivalent of NMR in NQR.

I was then an absolute greenhorn and didn't know how to go about it. So, I used to spend hours in the Library doing Literature Survey on NQR. I had filled up two fat khatas copying in long hand the Abstracts of a hundred papers on the subject. And gave up and quit AU and joined IIT KGP as a junior faculty. And was lost in UG teaching.

Then I was asked by HNB to join SDM and work for my Ph D. SDM never asked me to collect literature...he gave me a problem half done by him and asked me to complete it. Then another...then another...then another...

After 3 years he asked me to go to the Library and write up my Thesis...

Cart and the Horse..

That is the way to do a Ph D for us mortals...join an active working group and jump in. Literature Survey will come later on...

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Unfortunately, unlike DB, I never stuck to a subject and was worrying in my own pedestrian way to understand physics as a whole. So, I could never write a book on any topic of physics...which subject is a weirdly hyper-linked one...

Here is an account of my book-writing experience that I told KK long ago:

 

"The other day, a retired Bangalore Professor, who is running a thriving Coaching School there visited my humble hut in Hyderabad. He was 3 years senior to me at my alma mater and won all the prizes wherever he went.

He sent me a draft  of his  'New-Look Text Book in Physics' for Class X students, meant only for the 'brighter set'. And he asked me to go through it and give comments (meaning compliments) with a promise that I would be roped in if I contribute meaningfully.

By way of revenge, I gave him a copy of my 'Raadhaa Rhymes' and my 'Now & Again' essay: 'In praise of Laziness".

And forgot about it.

But Bangalore Profs are hardworking unlike me. So he was pestering me. I thought I would have a look at it and opened a page at random. It turned out to be on 'Optics' (my weak spot). Stating Snell's Laws in poetic prose, it went on to prisms, total internal reflection and a set of problems to solve.

My eyes blurred and I was back at IIT KGP for a while.

The incoming light beam turned into a set of coherent EM Waves interacting with bound electrons of the amorphous glass and setting them into forced oscillations a la Oseen - Ewald Extinction Theorem; and then into a set of photons in a coherent state scattered by electrons in glass molecules; and then on to Rayleigh, Mie, Thomson, Bragg and Compton Scatterings to pair production, annihilation, photon-photon scattering, and our Godly Hadron Collider.

I closed the book and reverted to Deccan Chronicle."

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