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Respected Professor GPS:
I have very much enjoyed reading your booklets which you very kindly gave me. To some extent the descriptions of IITKGP equally hold for IITM also.
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So, all Campuses share certain features that are not very apparent in city life.
The first one is Curiosity.
Curiosity is good, if it is not aggressively overt. All progress in pure sciences is due to curiosity.
Kids are by nature curious. Here I recall a Reader's Digest joke of the 1960s.
The other day I accompanied my family to the Airport to see off our relatives who were here on a short holiday-jolly-day. And we lingered on a little in the airport after we saw them off. Then I saw a man rushing in with a huge potbelly, somewhat like this:
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And I touched my own potbelly and felt pleased. For, I have developed a pretty cute one in the past three months for one reason or the other....and people are commenting on it.
The RD joke goes like this:
A middle-aged potbellyed man was peeing against a wall. And found that he was being keenly observed from below by a 3-year-old. And he called and gave the child $1 as a gift for:
"Seeing something I haven't seen for ages"
Women are but children as far as curiosity goes...they never age.
Last year we rented a 3-bedroom flat in a posh NRI Township here housing more than 2500 families. But no one expressed any curiosity about us all those 11 months we stayed there. Except (mildly) this Marwari Lady who was often manning a nearby Uncle-Auntie-Beti provision store. And I was a regular visitor there in my good old Maruti with a sticker on the windshield announcing proudly the name of the Township (for entry and parking reasons). And I was often found by the side of my son in his sedan. And while others were buying in grams I was buying in kilos (we were a family of 5 unlike the average 2.5). And the Auntie behind the counter concluded that we were big-gun owners of that apartment which cost Rs 70,00,000...an amount I can't even dream of. Anyway she gave me special attention till after 11 months I announced one day we were quitting her neighborhood and moving to our own humble flat farther away.
And she felt cheated:
"You never told us you were tenants!"
with a spin on the word 'tenants'.
That is how cities are...curiosities are always there but subdued and inferential.
Not so in the IIT KGP Campus.
Here is an example:
Within a couple of years of my joining there, this gent, about a decade older to me, appeared to be curious about me. One fine morning he couldn't contain himself and asked me:
"Are you a Research Scholar?"
"No"
"M. Tech student?"
"No"
"A Teacher-Trainee?"
"No...I am an Associate Lecturer"
"Why didn't you tell me all these days?"
"You never asked me"
"Then you are a regular faculty...within a few decades you will be a Professor...I am only a clerk in the Accounts Section. All I can hope is to retire as an Assistant Registrar. Where are you living?"
"Faculty Hostel"
"I am coming to you next Sunday"
"Welcome...but is there any specific purpose?"
"Oh, I will bring my niece's photo and horoscope"
"Oh, sorry...I am not in the marriage market for a decade at least"
"Why?"
"Never mind..."
And then after a decade of my joining there, my sister, a decade younger to me passed her M Sc in Physics and was sitting at home at Gudur waiting for the Public Service Commission Teacher Interviews a year away. So I asked her to come over to IIT KGP and do a one-year Post-M Sc Diploma that was then offered with a huge stipend that rose to Rs 400. And she did come over and joined the course. Since she had been staying in the hostel during her M Sc in Tirupati, I thought she would like to stay in the Girls Hostel at KGP. But she declined and asked me to take a Qrs so we can stay together, cook together, and go to college together...for company.
And then I shifted to Qrs C1-97, a huge affair, from my own hostel.
And folks who saw us walking together side by side to the Institute, Tech Market and Club were curious naturally and I could sense it. But they couldn't contain themselves and I had several frontal attacks launched on me. One Professor of Mining, who caught me alone quipped:
"GP! You cheated us by not inviting us to your marriage"
And our Library Assistant, Chanda Babu, whose main avocation was LIC, found us together at the Library Issue Desk and formally congratulated us:
"Made for each other, eh?"
with a cheeky smile.
And so too the wife of an EE Professor in our neighborhood spread the false message far and wide.
I was so embarrassed that I felt like hanging a slate around my neck with the prominent legend:
"She is my SISTER!"
I am sure this would never have happened in Hyderabad.
=========================================================================
Respected Professor GPS:
I have very much enjoyed reading your booklets which you very kindly gave me. To some extent the descriptions of IITKGP equally hold for IITM also.
********************************************************************************************************
So, all Campuses share certain features that are not very apparent in city life.
The first one is Curiosity.
Curiosity is good, if it is not aggressively overt. All progress in pure sciences is due to curiosity.
Kids are by nature curious. Here I recall a Reader's Digest joke of the 1960s.
The other day I accompanied my family to the Airport to see off our relatives who were here on a short holiday-jolly-day. And we lingered on a little in the airport after we saw them off. Then I saw a man rushing in with a huge potbelly, somewhat like this:
Don't snicker.
The male potbelly is as American as apple pie,
as diverse as our great country (Girth of a Nation?)
and is cultivated with pride by the aficionado.
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/06/25/Floridian/Every_potbelly_tells_.shtml
And I touched my own potbelly and felt pleased. For, I have developed a pretty cute one in the past three months for one reason or the other....and people are commenting on it.
The RD joke goes like this:
A middle-aged potbellyed man was peeing against a wall. And found that he was being keenly observed from below by a 3-year-old. And he called and gave the child $1 as a gift for:
"Seeing something I haven't seen for ages"
Women are but children as far as curiosity goes...they never age.
Last year we rented a 3-bedroom flat in a posh NRI Township here housing more than 2500 families. But no one expressed any curiosity about us all those 11 months we stayed there. Except (mildly) this Marwari Lady who was often manning a nearby Uncle-Auntie-Beti provision store. And I was a regular visitor there in my good old Maruti with a sticker on the windshield announcing proudly the name of the Township (for entry and parking reasons). And I was often found by the side of my son in his sedan. And while others were buying in grams I was buying in kilos (we were a family of 5 unlike the average 2.5). And the Auntie behind the counter concluded that we were big-gun owners of that apartment which cost Rs 70,00,000...an amount I can't even dream of. Anyway she gave me special attention till after 11 months I announced one day we were quitting her neighborhood and moving to our own humble flat farther away.
And she felt cheated:
"You never told us you were tenants!"
with a spin on the word 'tenants'.
That is how cities are...curiosities are always there but subdued and inferential.
Not so in the IIT KGP Campus.
Here is an example:
Within a couple of years of my joining there, this gent, about a decade older to me, appeared to be curious about me. One fine morning he couldn't contain himself and asked me:
"Are you a Research Scholar?"
"No"
"M. Tech student?"
"No"
"A Teacher-Trainee?"
"No...I am an Associate Lecturer"
"Why didn't you tell me all these days?"
"You never asked me"
"Then you are a regular faculty...within a few decades you will be a Professor...I am only a clerk in the Accounts Section. All I can hope is to retire as an Assistant Registrar. Where are you living?"
"Faculty Hostel"
"I am coming to you next Sunday"
"Welcome...but is there any specific purpose?"
"Oh, I will bring my niece's photo and horoscope"
"Oh, sorry...I am not in the marriage market for a decade at least"
"Why?"
"Never mind..."
And then after a decade of my joining there, my sister, a decade younger to me passed her M Sc in Physics and was sitting at home at Gudur waiting for the Public Service Commission Teacher Interviews a year away. So I asked her to come over to IIT KGP and do a one-year Post-M Sc Diploma that was then offered with a huge stipend that rose to Rs 400. And she did come over and joined the course. Since she had been staying in the hostel during her M Sc in Tirupati, I thought she would like to stay in the Girls Hostel at KGP. But she declined and asked me to take a Qrs so we can stay together, cook together, and go to college together...for company.
And then I shifted to Qrs C1-97, a huge affair, from my own hostel.
And folks who saw us walking together side by side to the Institute, Tech Market and Club were curious naturally and I could sense it. But they couldn't contain themselves and I had several frontal attacks launched on me. One Professor of Mining, who caught me alone quipped:
"GP! You cheated us by not inviting us to your marriage"
And our Library Assistant, Chanda Babu, whose main avocation was LIC, found us together at the Library Issue Desk and formally congratulated us:
"Made for each other, eh?"
with a cheeky smile.
And so too the wife of an EE Professor in our neighborhood spread the false message far and wide.
I was so embarrassed that I felt like hanging a slate around my neck with the prominent legend:
"She is my SISTER!"
I am sure this would never have happened in Hyderabad.
=========================================================================
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