Emperor's Old Clothes

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 http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/mfl/lowres/fashion-emperor_s_new_clothes-fairytales-fairy_stories-fairy_tales-secretaries-mfln4865l.jpg

...Mustafa, who was a minister in the K Karunakaran Ministry in the early 1990s, had told a news conference in Kochi yesterday that Rahul depended on a coterie close to him during the campaign and said "acting like a joker" would not help in elections.

"He (Rahul) should resign from the party. He should not continue. If he doesn't resign voluntarily, he should be removed. He acted like a joker (during the poll campaign)....," Mustafa had said....

  http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/congress-suspends-ex-kerala-minister-th-mustafa-for-calling-rahul-gandhi-a-joker_935925.html

Of course I don't agree with Mustafa at all. 

Defeat is a collective responsibility unlike victory. One should act gracefully in defeat like Churchill forgot to say:

"In war, resolution; in defeat defiance; in victory magnanimity"

I agree wholeheartedly with this guy who had graciously offered Damoji a place at the AICC venue for selling his tea. You would have thought he fell silent after the coronation of our Damoji which he had proclaimed would never happen...never.

Not for him stunned silence (ibid):

...In Nagpur, senior Congress leader and former union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar disagreed with Mustafa's assessment...

The great thing about our Mani is his absolute honesty...he once said that all the Shakespeare he ever learned was from Jeeves (like me)...

...Posted by Ishani

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Inferiority Complex

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 http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/mfl/lowres/health-beauty-inferiority_complex-inferior-inferiority-mental_states-self_esteem-mfln6457l.jpg

The born-poor and the born-rich don't have inferiority complexes.

One is busy sucking his thumb and the other the silver spoon in his mouth. Both get busy fighting their ills of deprivation and opulence.

It is the so-called 'aspirational' middle classes (like me) that subject themselves to inferiority complexes.

To borrow a figure from our Autocrat, plain water is wholesome and champagne is gorgeous. But it is that spoonful of good old wine poured into a glass of water that spoils the taste of both.

By rich and poor I don't mean only money. One can always pretend to take a scornful attitude to wealth calling it filthy lucre. 

There are many other goodies which it is not so easy to acquire and boast of and feel superior about. Like the arts...a flair for music and painting and dance. And sports and games like football and cricket. And intellectual things like literature and debating and chess and bridge.

And so on..

I didn't have any sort of complexes while I was in my school at Muthukur. I was in my preteens and lived amidst healthy mediocres like myself.

Things changed for me as soon I joined my university at the city of Vizagh. The very first day I felt different than my dozen other classmates. For one thing I didn't have any pocket money and was too poor to live in the hostels like them. And many were fluent in Convent English. And they talked of Hollywood films, cricket and the latest buzz in fashions of which I was completely unaware. 

And I became a moody recluse and I couldn't even excel them in studies since I didn't have access to good books like Wood and Newman and Rossi. I had to make do with my hurriedly taken lecture notes.

Things grew worse as soon as I joined as a junior teacher at IIT KGP. Most of my colleagues talked all the time of their glorious Presidency College and Calcutta University and in a few cases of Delhi University. And no one heard of SIIBH School at Muthukur or even AU (which they thought was an abbreviation for Allahabad University) and looked down on me when I said it stood for Andhra Unversity, Waltair (at Vizagh)...like that lady who asked:

"Smriti who?"

and is regretting now at her ample leisure.

As decades progressed there, I didn't. 

Many of my colleagues boasted of papers in Physical Review, International Conferences in Trieste (Trieste where?), and books they authored published by McGraw-Hill (which hill?), dozens of doctoral students they guided, and crores of rupees they brought as project funds (all the projects I brought out were fundless MSc projects).  

And I became morose and took to avoiding everybody and scooting to Harrys alone to sit and brood.

And I didn't have the courage to apply for promotions lest I should be rejected and shamed. They went to their interviews holding gunnysacks of bio-data.

I became even more introverted as I was not getting married even in my mid-thirties while they were all sending their kids to KV by then.

Finally, a couple of years before my retirement, a dozen odd juniors joined our department and all of them had resume's that blew my brains...post-docs in all possible prestigious foreign countries and awards and prizes.

I took to avoiding the department in daytime so that I wouldn't be noticed at all. I used to open my shop in the department late in the evening and close it past midnight.

One night just before I retired and left the place for good, a new and young and talented junior teacher, who was among the half dozen talking the tutorial of my freshman lectures, knocked and entered my office at 9 PM. And told me that he had some queries in Fresnel Diffraction problems which were to be assigned to the students. I asked him to come by my side and take his seat on the broken chair. 

And he did it with grace.

A couple of hours went by and apparently he was satisfied with my explanations. And thanked me, and before leaving, said:

"Professor Sastry, I was really scared to knock and enter your room, but in retrospect I am happy I took the courage and did it"

"Why were you scared?"

"You know, everybody in the department and institute have this feeling...wrong as it turned out now"

"What feeling?"

"Your terrific reputation"

"As what?"

"As a snob"

...Posted by Ishani

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