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My baptism into the adult world of mathematics and measurement happened on a train journey from Kurichedu to Tirupati with a night-halt at Guntur where my cousin Kittappa's father was a government official and my mother's brother just joined the Cooperative Department (I didn't know then and don't know now what a Cooperative Department is).
Neither Father nor I knew then that, like for RKN, all mathematics was 'higher mathematics' for both of us. I used to get beat up by him for not getting my profit-loss problems right in the exams, and later on he used to run away whenever I mentioned the proof of Pythagoras Theorem or the quadratic equation. English was our common love, first and last, boy and man.
For ten years and more Father was working happily as a Science Assistant in a school at B R Palem, very close to the rice bowl of Nellore. Suddenly he got promoted at a young age as HM and was sent, as an ordeal by fire, to Kurichedu for a year. This village was on the interior outskirts of the vast Nellore District in an arid zone where folks never ate rice but only super-hard rotis made of millets. For that year we lived in a mud house with mud walls and a roof without parapet walls. And to go to Kurichedu from Nellore, we had to go by a bus run on a coal-fired steam engine at the back.
I was 7 then and still in my Elementary (Primary) School. The first escape from Kurichedu came during our Dasara Vacation and Father promised to take us to the holy temple town of Tirupati in a train...the first train journey for me. And it was quite eventful. As soon as I saw the chugging steam engine, I asked Father:
"It looks much smaller than the engines I used to see steaming past our Babayya garu's house at Nellore. Why?"
And he replied:
"This train runs on meter gauge. Nellore trains run on broad gauge"
"What is meter?"
"It is slightly bigger than a yard. That is the width of this track"
"Are there other gauges also?"
"Yes, there is a narrow gauge smaller than meter gauge. Toy trains run on it to hill stations like Ooty"
That was great as far as it went. But neither Father then, nor I till now, knew that there is another gauge for what it is worth called standard gauge. Apparently Calcutta trams and Delhi metro trains as well as the upcoming Hyderabad Metro (hold your breath) run on this standard gauge.
Anyway, on a wayside station, Father got down from the train for getting some idlis for my mom and for me and my three sisters (another three were in the offing at Muthukur later on). And the train started and left the station but there was no trace of Father. And I started crying. My mom tried to console me saying:
"Don't worry...he must have boarded another compartment behind us, running to catch the train at the last minute. He will come in the next station"
"But why?"
"Well, that is his style (taraha)"
He did return at the next station but I lost all my interest in idlis.
A few stations later, when it was getting evenfall, our train stopped in a no-man's land. And didn't start even after ten minutes. Streams of passengers were walking to the engine and returning, saying:
"It seems that the water in the boiler is over and the train won't be starting tonight"
And again I started crying.
Eventually however, Father joined the crowd of passengers and I found a long line of able-bodied men passing on buckets of water to the engine driver from a nearby pond (no doubt dirty...but steam engines made in Britain didn't care apparently). Father returned sweating all over and said:
"The engine will start in an hour after water starts boiling"
Mom asked him:
"Where did you get all those buckets?"
"Some from passengers and others from a nearby hamlet"
We reached, in a horse-drawn tonga...tak tuk tak tuk, very late at night at Kittappa's house by when all our hosts went to bed, wondering. The charcoal fire in their house must have been re-ignited to steam our welcome food...all of us were starving.
The meter gauge train journey from Guntur to Tirupati was much pleasanter. On a stretch when our train was making top speed, chughchughchugh, Father told me how to estimate the speed of our train. He asked me to look out at the telegraph poles running beside the track, backwards:
"Notice the markings on them in black on white patches. You will see eventually, 78, 78/1, 78/2...up to 78/23 and then a big 79. See?"
"Yes, I see"
"Start looking at the poles from 80 while I look at my wrist watch. And shout when you get 81. Ok?"
"Ok...Yes, 81 just now"
"The train is running at 30 miles per hour"
I thought Father was a wizard till he explained:
"There are 24 poles laid out in a mile. That's all"
That was not all...I was but a kid.
I don't know how many poles there are now in a kilometer which is not commensurate with a mile. I also don't know if they had to relay all those poles and if it was worth the trouble.
Much later when I was in my Third Form (Class VIII) at Muthukur, Father one day gifted me a small book in big print with the title:
"King Arthur and his Knights"
That remains the best gift book I ever got till now. It had many pictures of King Arthur and his knights on horseback in their full metal chain armor and steel helmets with a peak, holding swords or spears. And unforgettable names like King Arthur's castle, Camelot, his knights, Lancelot and Galahad, his wife, Guinevere, the sword Excalibur he pulled out from the stone in which it was stuck, the Lady of the Lake, the Holy Grail, and such highly romantic stuff. I was delirious with fevered imagination.
And one of those days, Father asked me to go to the only book shop in Muthukur and fetch one quire of foolscap paper. I didn't hear the 'quire' well enough since the 'foolscap' captured all my fancy. To this day I don't know why fool and why cap...and why this watermark.
I went to the shop and asked the chap there:
"Give me a squire of foolscap paper"
And he laughed uproariously saying:
"We don't have squares and triangle papers. You mean, one quire?"
Obviously he had never heard of squires and knights. But the joke was on me alright.
After reaching home and cornering Father, I got to know all about dozens, quires, reams and bales and their conversion factors.
It was all of 2 decades before I heard again of a ream of paper. Shyama Banerjee, my typist at IIT KGP, asked me:
"How many pages is your Ph D thesis?"
"About 170"
"How many copies?"
"Five"
"Arrey baba...only JK Bond 5.6 can give you five copies. Get me 2 reams from Calcutta"
That is a different story told elsewhere:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/05/shyama-o-shaymali.html
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...I don't think years have improved my outlook or equipment in regard to mathematics, although as a grown-up I am not supposed to give out my real feelings in the matter. I have to keep up appearances before youngsters. So that the other day when I found my nephew (who has evidently imbibed my tradition in mathematics) literally in tears, sitting at his desk and chasing an elusive sum, I told him patronisingly, "Well, there is no use shedding tears over mathematics. If you read the sum correctly and think it over calmly, I am sure you will get the answer. The thing is you must not be in a hurry. You must be very calm, I tell you. At your age, do you know how we were managing it?" And I told him what I fully knew to be a cock-and-bull story about my prowess and industry in the subject. He asked, "Won't you help me do this sum?" I looked at it critically. It was something about profit and loss. As I gazed at the sum, the answer suddenly flashed on my mind. I casually turned to the last page to see if my answer was correct. It wasn't. I gently put down the book, telling the boy, "Well, of course, I can do this sum, but you know, my 'working' will be different; it won't be much use to you. You must do it in the way it has been taught in your school; moreover, you must learn to depend on your own effort. Otherwise you will not learn." I hastily moved out of the pale of mathematics.
...RKN
My baptism into the adult world of mathematics and measurement happened on a train journey from Kurichedu to Tirupati with a night-halt at Guntur where my cousin Kittappa's father was a government official and my mother's brother just joined the Cooperative Department (I didn't know then and don't know now what a Cooperative Department is).
Neither Father nor I knew then that, like for RKN, all mathematics was 'higher mathematics' for both of us. I used to get beat up by him for not getting my profit-loss problems right in the exams, and later on he used to run away whenever I mentioned the proof of Pythagoras Theorem or the quadratic equation. English was our common love, first and last, boy and man.
For ten years and more Father was working happily as a Science Assistant in a school at B R Palem, very close to the rice bowl of Nellore. Suddenly he got promoted at a young age as HM and was sent, as an ordeal by fire, to Kurichedu for a year. This village was on the interior outskirts of the vast Nellore District in an arid zone where folks never ate rice but only super-hard rotis made of millets. For that year we lived in a mud house with mud walls and a roof without parapet walls. And to go to Kurichedu from Nellore, we had to go by a bus run on a coal-fired steam engine at the back.
I was 7 then and still in my Elementary (Primary) School. The first escape from Kurichedu came during our Dasara Vacation and Father promised to take us to the holy temple town of Tirupati in a train...the first train journey for me. And it was quite eventful. As soon as I saw the chugging steam engine, I asked Father:
"It looks much smaller than the engines I used to see steaming past our Babayya garu's house at Nellore. Why?"
And he replied:
"This train runs on meter gauge. Nellore trains run on broad gauge"
"What is meter?"
"It is slightly bigger than a yard. That is the width of this track"
"Are there other gauges also?"
"Yes, there is a narrow gauge smaller than meter gauge. Toy trains run on it to hill stations like Ooty"
That was great as far as it went. But neither Father then, nor I till now, knew that there is another gauge for what it is worth called standard gauge. Apparently Calcutta trams and Delhi metro trains as well as the upcoming Hyderabad Metro (hold your breath) run on this standard gauge.
Anyway, on a wayside station, Father got down from the train for getting some idlis for my mom and for me and my three sisters (another three were in the offing at Muthukur later on). And the train started and left the station but there was no trace of Father. And I started crying. My mom tried to console me saying:
"Don't worry...he must have boarded another compartment behind us, running to catch the train at the last minute. He will come in the next station"
"But why?"
"Well, that is his style (taraha)"
He did return at the next station but I lost all my interest in idlis.
A few stations later, when it was getting evenfall, our train stopped in a no-man's land. And didn't start even after ten minutes. Streams of passengers were walking to the engine and returning, saying:
"It seems that the water in the boiler is over and the train won't be starting tonight"
And again I started crying.
Eventually however, Father joined the crowd of passengers and I found a long line of able-bodied men passing on buckets of water to the engine driver from a nearby pond (no doubt dirty...but steam engines made in Britain didn't care apparently). Father returned sweating all over and said:
"The engine will start in an hour after water starts boiling"
Mom asked him:
"Where did you get all those buckets?"
"Some from passengers and others from a nearby hamlet"
We reached, in a horse-drawn tonga...tak tuk tak tuk, very late at night at Kittappa's house by when all our hosts went to bed, wondering. The charcoal fire in their house must have been re-ignited to steam our welcome food...all of us were starving.
The meter gauge train journey from Guntur to Tirupati was much pleasanter. On a stretch when our train was making top speed, chughchughchugh, Father told me how to estimate the speed of our train. He asked me to look out at the telegraph poles running beside the track, backwards:
"Notice the markings on them in black on white patches. You will see eventually, 78, 78/1, 78/2...up to 78/23 and then a big 79. See?"
"Yes, I see"
"Start looking at the poles from 80 while I look at my wrist watch. And shout when you get 81. Ok?"
"Ok...Yes, 81 just now"
"The train is running at 30 miles per hour"
I thought Father was a wizard till he explained:
"There are 24 poles laid out in a mile. That's all"
That was not all...I was but a kid.
I don't know how many poles there are now in a kilometer which is not commensurate with a mile. I also don't know if they had to relay all those poles and if it was worth the trouble.
Much later when I was in my Third Form (Class VIII) at Muthukur, Father one day gifted me a small book in big print with the title:
"King Arthur and his Knights"
That remains the best gift book I ever got till now. It had many pictures of King Arthur and his knights on horseback in their full metal chain armor and steel helmets with a peak, holding swords or spears. And unforgettable names like King Arthur's castle, Camelot, his knights, Lancelot and Galahad, his wife, Guinevere, the sword Excalibur he pulled out from the stone in which it was stuck, the Lady of the Lake, the Holy Grail, and such highly romantic stuff. I was delirious with fevered imagination.
And one of those days, Father asked me to go to the only book shop in Muthukur and fetch one quire of foolscap paper. I didn't hear the 'quire' well enough since the 'foolscap' captured all my fancy. To this day I don't know why fool and why cap...and why this watermark.
I went to the shop and asked the chap there:
"Give me a squire of foolscap paper"
And he laughed uproariously saying:
"We don't have squares and triangle papers. You mean, one quire?"
Obviously he had never heard of squires and knights. But the joke was on me alright.
After reaching home and cornering Father, I got to know all about dozens, quires, reams and bales and their conversion factors.
It was all of 2 decades before I heard again of a ream of paper. Shyama Banerjee, my typist at IIT KGP, asked me:
"How many pages is your Ph D thesis?"
"About 170"
"How many copies?"
"Five"
"Arrey baba...only JK Bond 5.6 can give you five copies. Get me 2 reams from Calcutta"
That is a different story told elsewhere:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/05/shyama-o-shaymali.html
...posted by Ishani
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I very well remember that visit.
ReplyDeleteIt looks as if it happened yesterday !
How time flies !