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http://syndicam.com/cartoons/may-2011/9771428
My Shakespeare Uncle (GVS) was born in 1900. He was the eldest of four brothers of whom my Father was the youngest, born in 1914...Father's birth centenary coming up soon.
GVS grew up in the seaside village Krishnapatnam which now has a huge big port. The village is sandwiched between the Buckingham Canal and Bay of Bengal. So GVS learned swimming in all its strokes. But not cycling...there were no pushbikes then in his village.
I stayed with GVS for my Pre-University year in the small town Nidubrole. I was 14 then. His two married daughters and his widowed mom were staying with him there for most of that year. Our house had an open roof on which GVS used to spend most evenings walking to and fro and mentally composing his Songs and Sonnets and the like.
One evening when I returned home after spending time with my friends, I was welcomed by my cousins with a loud smile on their faces. And my grannie too was smiling in her veiled saffron sari.
I then came to know from them that GVS had stopped his oscillations on the roof and called out to his mom and looked down and said in dead earnest:
"Look, Amma! This boy whom his father deposited in my care and trust is doing dangerous things, for which, don't hold ME responsible"
Grannie and his two daughters were terrified by this Shakespearean warning that sounded like:
"Beware the Ides of March!"
And after being asked what exactly 'this boy' has been doing, GVS replied:
"He is learning CYCLING...I just saw him doing half-pedal rides around the street corner on a borrowed bike"
That was a classic anticlimax...
By the time Father grew to his schooling 14 years later than GVS, the family had quit the village and settled in the district headquarters town, Nellore, for English Education. So, Father never learned swimming but picked up cycling alright.
And one day when I returned home from school in Muthukur after spending time with my friends, it was my mom's turn to grin...apparently Father came home, removed his shirt, and warned his wife disowning all responsibility for her only son because spies told him that he was learning SWIMMING in the village pond.
In the late 1980s when I was at IIT KGP trying to work out portions of Weinberg's tome Gravity and Cosmology, I was commanded by our Director to keep it aside and work on the two huge floppy diskettes called Spacetime Software gifted to me by Ed Taylor of MIT. The Diro simply asked me in writing to give him a demo on it.
There was only one first gen IBM PC XT (without a hard disk) in our Dept, that too in Prof BKM's custody in his room. As I took those diskettes to him and asked him to show me what to do with them on his weird instrument, BKM tried to be as helpful as Mr KVL was with my friend NP when NP bought his first scooter.
Apparently when an earlier faculty member SSC approached KVL to teach him how to drive his new Chetak, KVL was all helpful and sat behind SSC and told him what to do. And SSC did it scrupulously with the result that both of them were in the ditch under the Chetak in a few seconds. And KVL bruised himself enough to take leave for a week. So, KVL's wife forbade her hubby giving live scooter demos to his future students.
So, when my friend NP's turn came, KVL got up on the scooter and put NP on his pillion and drove the vehicle all around the campus, giving a running commentary about clutch and gear and foot brake and engine oil and low and high beam headlights; and got down. And asked NP to get up and GO! And NP was about to drive straight into the roadside ruminating cow...
So was BKM's demo to me...
Then I went to Thackers and asked him if he has any simple material on how to use PC XT. And Mohinder Thacker shoved a 300-page tome on me @ a posh Rs 80. I brought the book home and started reading it. By the time I came to CHKDSK on Page 4, I got fed up and closed it and threw it aside.
I went to BKM again and bored him stiff till he taught me the few commands like the 'Ctrl Alt Del' combo that I needed...but, as you know, they invented the virus before they made the diskettes...
A decade later, I learned Word from my son on my own office PC with Windows 95 and a color monitor.
He is now trying to teach me Skype but I resist it with all my energy...
Old dogs and new tricks...
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My Shakespeare Uncle (GVS) was born in 1900. He was the eldest of four brothers of whom my Father was the youngest, born in 1914...Father's birth centenary coming up soon.
GVS grew up in the seaside village Krishnapatnam which now has a huge big port. The village is sandwiched between the Buckingham Canal and Bay of Bengal. So GVS learned swimming in all its strokes. But not cycling...there were no pushbikes then in his village.
I stayed with GVS for my Pre-University year in the small town Nidubrole. I was 14 then. His two married daughters and his widowed mom were staying with him there for most of that year. Our house had an open roof on which GVS used to spend most evenings walking to and fro and mentally composing his Songs and Sonnets and the like.
One evening when I returned home after spending time with my friends, I was welcomed by my cousins with a loud smile on their faces. And my grannie too was smiling in her veiled saffron sari.
I then came to know from them that GVS had stopped his oscillations on the roof and called out to his mom and looked down and said in dead earnest:
"Look, Amma! This boy whom his father deposited in my care and trust is doing dangerous things, for which, don't hold ME responsible"
Grannie and his two daughters were terrified by this Shakespearean warning that sounded like:
"Beware the Ides of March!"
And after being asked what exactly 'this boy' has been doing, GVS replied:
"He is learning CYCLING...I just saw him doing half-pedal rides around the street corner on a borrowed bike"
That was a classic anticlimax...
By the time Father grew to his schooling 14 years later than GVS, the family had quit the village and settled in the district headquarters town, Nellore, for English Education. So, Father never learned swimming but picked up cycling alright.
And one day when I returned home from school in Muthukur after spending time with my friends, it was my mom's turn to grin...apparently Father came home, removed his shirt, and warned his wife disowning all responsibility for her only son because spies told him that he was learning SWIMMING in the village pond.
In the late 1980s when I was at IIT KGP trying to work out portions of Weinberg's tome Gravity and Cosmology, I was commanded by our Director to keep it aside and work on the two huge floppy diskettes called Spacetime Software gifted to me by Ed Taylor of MIT. The Diro simply asked me in writing to give him a demo on it.
There was only one first gen IBM PC XT (without a hard disk) in our Dept, that too in Prof BKM's custody in his room. As I took those diskettes to him and asked him to show me what to do with them on his weird instrument, BKM tried to be as helpful as Mr KVL was with my friend NP when NP bought his first scooter.
Apparently when an earlier faculty member SSC approached KVL to teach him how to drive his new Chetak, KVL was all helpful and sat behind SSC and told him what to do. And SSC did it scrupulously with the result that both of them were in the ditch under the Chetak in a few seconds. And KVL bruised himself enough to take leave for a week. So, KVL's wife forbade her hubby giving live scooter demos to his future students.
So, when my friend NP's turn came, KVL got up on the scooter and put NP on his pillion and drove the vehicle all around the campus, giving a running commentary about clutch and gear and foot brake and engine oil and low and high beam headlights; and got down. And asked NP to get up and GO! And NP was about to drive straight into the roadside ruminating cow...
So was BKM's demo to me...
Then I went to Thackers and asked him if he has any simple material on how to use PC XT. And Mohinder Thacker shoved a 300-page tome on me @ a posh Rs 80. I brought the book home and started reading it. By the time I came to CHKDSK on Page 4, I got fed up and closed it and threw it aside.
I went to BKM again and bored him stiff till he taught me the few commands like the 'Ctrl Alt Del' combo that I needed...but, as you know, they invented the virus before they made the diskettes...
A decade later, I learned Word from my son on my own office PC with Windows 95 and a color monitor.
He is now trying to teach me Skype but I resist it with all my energy...
Old dogs and new tricks...
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