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One evening in 1985, DBs were visiting us on the lawns of our Qrs C1-97 at IIT KGP. And I happened to ask Mrs DB (MA, Eng Lit, Jadavpur University) what her favorite read was.
And she stunned me with her answer:
"Personal Column of The Statesman"
For, I had been reading The Statesman for two decades by then...and they were the glorious years of the daily...but I had never read the Personal Column on the Editorial Page.
Later on I used to browse it once in a while, but not with the dedication of Mrs DB. The items were short (the per word cost was the highest), dealt with sundry affairs like birthday greetings, bon voyages, exhibitions, club engagements, Dover Lane music fests, buy and sell of fashion accessories, puppies and kittens, and such golden trivia that must have been of especial interest to ladies born and brought up in Calcutta.
I was an avid reader of the Matrimonial Columns of the Sunday Hindu which I used to get from Madras to KGP by Tuesday. I had 5 younger sisters to marry off before I could dispose myself off.
When I retired and recovered from my horrid blues, I was reading of blog and blogosphere in the newspapers as new words and wondered what they were. And one day, I found the following definition of blog:
"a website that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer"
And I jumped up and asked my son to get me a blog for my use. For, that was precisely what I wanted....that 'personal' journal to go mad in. And my son promptly gave me one and showed me how to 'blog'. I never looked back. And before blogging fiercely, I never bothered to look at or read a sample blog, lest it cramp my own wacky style.
One friend of mine sent a clutch of my blogposts to the Now & Again Column of The Statesman without my knowledge. They did get published but I was unhappy...for 40 years I was at the mercy of Editors and Referees of Physics Journals and I now wanted to be free to acquire my own readership however limited it is. And I am happy for it.
The other day there was this Comment on Cyclic Memories - 4:
"lovely blog. reminds me of my childhood days :)"
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/08/cyclic-memories-4.html
The Commenter's name and thumbnail rang bells and I looked up her blog-history. She was on Blogger since 2006 and there were two Blogs listed under her "My Blogs", and I was curious and clicked on them and found this legend under both of them:
"No Posts"
And since I recalled by then that she was my son's IIT KGP classmate who visited us both at KGP and Hyderabad, I asked my son about this curious phenomenon of a Blogger (or Blogress...like Tigress) with Blogs but without Posts.
And he smiled and confessed he also belongs to the same set....
Of late I am turning interesting mails I get into posts on my blogspot. This is apart from the occasional Guest Column I receive.
Last night there was a 'personal' mail from Shamik who had been demurring from a Guest Column, maybe, since we never met. But of course we exchanged dozens of mails...he from Israel and France and I from Hyderabad.
So, I mailed him back asking if he has any objection if I post his mail as a Guest Column, and he graciously agreed and suggested a suitable Title.
Talking of unknown friends I recall this senti scrawl on the wall of a studentine at the IG Hall at KGP which I was visiting with family on an invitation to their Hall Day (1 bun and 1 cake and 2 cold singaras and 1 tiny packet of fried groundnuts and a lone sweet and several pleasing smiles all in exchange for 12 Good Recos):
"There are no strangers here...only friends you haven't met"
It was a fad during our school days to make pen-friends (requests published in Andhra Patrika Weekly). Since the cost of the post card was a whopping 1/32 of a Rupee, we couldn't afford to have all those thousands of Faceless Friends & Unfriends.
But IIT KGP was footing my airmail bills to my MIT-Pen-Friend Ed Taylor and so our pen-friendship flourished, and the advent of e-mail with attachments made it all so inexpensive then on. This continues for 25 years and spans realms of life beyond physics...meaning nonsense ;-)
Here is what Saswat wrote after he and his wife befriended Ed and his wife in a Boston Eatery a few weeks ago:
"It is quite surreal talking about you with Edwin. One can almost forget that the two of you have never actually physically met. The way he talks about you and how long you have known each other, it is almost like you two were in the same faculty somewhere."
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Agony Column
Talking of the Personal Column of The Statesman I am reminded of the Agony Column of The Times (London) in the Holmesian era:
"Sherlock Holmes was, as I expected, lounging about his sitting-room in his dressing-gown, reading the agony column of The Times and smoking his before-breakfast pipe, which was composed of all the plugs and dottles left from his smokes of the day before, all carefully dried and collected on the corner of the mantelpiece."
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Intellectuals
"Meanwhile, intellectuals from the Other Backward Communities and religious minorities (including this author) organised a series of meetings..."
...DC, Page 2, Sunday 23 December 2012
The writer who certifies himself an intellectual is a Professor in the Osmania University here and a regular columnist in DC.
During the 1960s at IIT KGP there was a roaring debate as to who qualifies as an 'intellectual'. Of course it was agreed that all of us Professors were intellectuals...no quarrel about it. It is a different matter with administrators like the Registrar. The then Registrar was an IAS Officer deputed to IIT KGP as a Registrar. And all of us professors agreed that IAS Officers are by no means intellectuals...they being Officers. In particular, the Registrar was dubbed a Glorified Clerk and clerks of course are not intellectuals...they are 'writers' of a different kind. The ones who write for a living, like say, Nirad Chaudhuri, were grudgingly accepted into our Intellectuals Club of those who ‘profess’ for a living.
The pay of the Registrar was much less than that of a Professor those days. Obviously they didn't like it and started acquiring Ph. D. Degrees willy-nilly. Thereafter they automatically became Intellectuals (like caterpillars turn into butterflies) and drew the same pay as Professors.
The Doctors at the B. C. Roy Hospital were certainly not intellectuals...they are 'professionals', not ‘professors’, see. And their pay was so piteous that no one joined BCRH who could run away to Cal or start a private practice. I don't know if they have since been accepted into the Intellectuals Club and draw the same glorified pay as us Professors...some of them did do their Ph. D.s alright...
I also don't know of professional politicians...but our present PM certainly qualifies as an intellectual...he has a Ph. D., no?
Can one say the same of our projected PM hailing from the land of Gandhi? I can't say. Nor the one going to be projected from the Gandhi family.
What about Gandhijee himself?
Don't be silly...he is a Mahatma...don't you know?
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