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My Guide, SDM, went to England in the 1950s to work with Dirac. Dirac then was just on the wrong side of 50 while my Boss was just on the right side of 40, maybe.
Dirac gave SDM a problem working on which for a fortnight SDM was sure it was unworkable, infeasible, and uninteresting. And said so. The two agreed to differ and, as ECGS is reported to have cracked in his relations with TIFR, both did rather well in later life, in their own way.
SDM spent the rest of his English year cooling his heels and getting frustrated. He told me that the only thing he had to show for his trip was a portable Remington typewriter, of which he was inordinately fond. I often found him in the Drawing Room of his palatial Qrs A-26, sitting on the edge of his sofa and tapping away the draft of his latest paper full of equations and Greek symbols which he inserted by hand later on. The draft went to Shyama Banerjee of the Banerjee Typing Center which alone had typewriters equipped with Greek alphabet:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/05/shyama-o-shaymali.html
When the manuscript returned to him, he would type his covering letter which had this invariant format:
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Dear Sir:
I am enclosing three copies of my manuscript titled:
"Cherenkov Radiation in Biaxial Crystals - 2"
for publication in your esteemed journal.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
S. Datta Majumdar
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When I joined SDM he was 55 and I was 25; he was a genius and I a novice. Yet, one day I made bold and asked him why 'kind' regards? Isn't 'kind' sort of condescending to the esteemed Editor as opposed to 'regards'?
And SDM smiled one of his Mona Lisa smiles and said it was just a British idiom that he liked. This 'kind regards' thing went away with SDM after his retirement and I was perhaps the only one at IIT KGP who used it in my correspondence with Editors, strictly following the SDM format in later years.
Google tells me that 'kind regards' is back in vogue, this time in Business Correspondence. But given the feverish haste of such pros, it is abbreviated to:
"WKR"
So, SDM's favorite idiom is back, in short form, just as his name out of necessity...'SDM' must have appeared a hundred times in my blogs and I couldn't very well have keyboarded his full name each time.
The "Yours sincerely" was standard Indian English then with the occasional intruder "Yours truly".
The chaps who preferred "Yours truly" also used to refer to themselves in speech cockily as: "Yours truly"...a practice I disliked. In particular, Professor X, senior to me by 25 good years, used to revel in its use in public platforms like Faculty Meetings in a mock superior way. And I hated it...just inexplicable allergy.
Well, not all that inexplicable...I had a dozen quarrels with him alright. It all started when I was a Junior Lecturer and he was a Senior Professor.
One day when my First Year Optics Exam was going on in F-127, I was called to the Exam Hall by the Exam Section saying that there were several queries. And I was bewildered because it was rather unusual. And I rushed to the Exam Hall, sweating profusely, only to find that all my students were immersed totally in their scripts, heads down and lips sealed. And I found this Prof X sitting on a chair on the dais instead of invigilating profusely.
He beckoned to me and when I went over, I found he had my Question Paper in his hands and he started saying that there were several 'mistakes' in my Question Paper. As he was about to point them out with his forefinger, I asked him if any student had raised any objection. He said, 'no', but HE had many queries.
That got my goat and I told him abruptly that, if the exam was going on smoothly, there was no need to discuss the QP then and there, and he can meet me in my Office after the exam was over. He was dumbfounded as I walked out.
That was the end of the matter.
You may think I was being intransigent. No. There is a principle involved here. All QPs of IIT KGP are archival and are in the public domain. Anyone in the world (other than the students affected) can point out mistakes they claim to have found. But the official procedure is that a complaint has to be lodged with the HoD who would appoint a competent Inquiry Committee to which alone the Paper-setter is answerable. In case he is at fault, suitable action can be taken. If not, the complainant has to apologize.
Otherwise I would be answerable to every Tom, Dick and Harry whose attitude I don't like.
I could confidently get away with my brush-off because MSS had earlier narrated to me his own experience with Prof X. One day, Prof X called MSS to his Office. On arriving there, MSS found Prof X with a standard EM text book of the First Year level open on his table at the Chapter: "Electrical Circuits".
Prof X declared to MSS (reputed to be an expert in UG Physics):
"ALL book-answers to ALL problems in this Chapter are wrong!"
MSS then asked him to show him one example worked out by Prof X in his khata. And in two minutes found that Prof X was making a consistent sign mistake in applying Kirchhoff's Laws (treacherous).
MSS, being MSS, asked Prof X to immediately write to the Author pointing out all the mistakes in that Chapter.
For, MSS was following his own Golden Rule (liked by Aniket):
"Teachers are paid to teach students but not their Senior Faculty"
QED
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Cover Picture: R. K. Narayan, A Writer's Nightmare
(book gifted by Aniket Basu, June 19, 1999)
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My Guide, SDM, went to England in the 1950s to work with Dirac. Dirac then was just on the wrong side of 50 while my Boss was just on the right side of 40, maybe.
Dirac gave SDM a problem working on which for a fortnight SDM was sure it was unworkable, infeasible, and uninteresting. And said so. The two agreed to differ and, as ECGS is reported to have cracked in his relations with TIFR, both did rather well in later life, in their own way.
SDM spent the rest of his English year cooling his heels and getting frustrated. He told me that the only thing he had to show for his trip was a portable Remington typewriter, of which he was inordinately fond. I often found him in the Drawing Room of his palatial Qrs A-26, sitting on the edge of his sofa and tapping away the draft of his latest paper full of equations and Greek symbols which he inserted by hand later on. The draft went to Shyama Banerjee of the Banerjee Typing Center which alone had typewriters equipped with Greek alphabet:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/05/shyama-o-shaymali.html
When the manuscript returned to him, he would type his covering letter which had this invariant format:
**********************************************************************************************************
Dear Sir:
I am enclosing three copies of my manuscript titled:
"Cherenkov Radiation in Biaxial Crystals - 2"
for publication in your esteemed journal.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
S. Datta Majumdar
********************************************************************************************************
When I joined SDM he was 55 and I was 25; he was a genius and I a novice. Yet, one day I made bold and asked him why 'kind' regards? Isn't 'kind' sort of condescending to the esteemed Editor as opposed to 'regards'?
And SDM smiled one of his Mona Lisa smiles and said it was just a British idiom that he liked. This 'kind regards' thing went away with SDM after his retirement and I was perhaps the only one at IIT KGP who used it in my correspondence with Editors, strictly following the SDM format in later years.
Google tells me that 'kind regards' is back in vogue, this time in Business Correspondence. But given the feverish haste of such pros, it is abbreviated to:
"WKR"
So, SDM's favorite idiom is back, in short form, just as his name out of necessity...'SDM' must have appeared a hundred times in my blogs and I couldn't very well have keyboarded his full name each time.
The "Yours sincerely" was standard Indian English then with the occasional intruder "Yours truly".
The chaps who preferred "Yours truly" also used to refer to themselves in speech cockily as: "Yours truly"...a practice I disliked. In particular, Professor X, senior to me by 25 good years, used to revel in its use in public platforms like Faculty Meetings in a mock superior way. And I hated it...just inexplicable allergy.
Well, not all that inexplicable...I had a dozen quarrels with him alright. It all started when I was a Junior Lecturer and he was a Senior Professor.
One day when my First Year Optics Exam was going on in F-127, I was called to the Exam Hall by the Exam Section saying that there were several queries. And I was bewildered because it was rather unusual. And I rushed to the Exam Hall, sweating profusely, only to find that all my students were immersed totally in their scripts, heads down and lips sealed. And I found this Prof X sitting on a chair on the dais instead of invigilating profusely.
He beckoned to me and when I went over, I found he had my Question Paper in his hands and he started saying that there were several 'mistakes' in my Question Paper. As he was about to point them out with his forefinger, I asked him if any student had raised any objection. He said, 'no', but HE had many queries.
That got my goat and I told him abruptly that, if the exam was going on smoothly, there was no need to discuss the QP then and there, and he can meet me in my Office after the exam was over. He was dumbfounded as I walked out.
That was the end of the matter.
You may think I was being intransigent. No. There is a principle involved here. All QPs of IIT KGP are archival and are in the public domain. Anyone in the world (other than the students affected) can point out mistakes they claim to have found. But the official procedure is that a complaint has to be lodged with the HoD who would appoint a competent Inquiry Committee to which alone the Paper-setter is answerable. In case he is at fault, suitable action can be taken. If not, the complainant has to apologize.
Otherwise I would be answerable to every Tom, Dick and Harry whose attitude I don't like.
I could confidently get away with my brush-off because MSS had earlier narrated to me his own experience with Prof X. One day, Prof X called MSS to his Office. On arriving there, MSS found Prof X with a standard EM text book of the First Year level open on his table at the Chapter: "Electrical Circuits".
Prof X declared to MSS (reputed to be an expert in UG Physics):
"ALL book-answers to ALL problems in this Chapter are wrong!"
MSS then asked him to show him one example worked out by Prof X in his khata. And in two minutes found that Prof X was making a consistent sign mistake in applying Kirchhoff's Laws (treacherous).
MSS, being MSS, asked Prof X to immediately write to the Author pointing out all the mistakes in that Chapter.
For, MSS was following his own Golden Rule (liked by Aniket):
"Teachers are paid to teach students but not their Senior Faculty"
QED
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