Walter Mitty Syndrome - Repeat Telecast

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Tourists_in_horse_cart.JPG/800px-Tourists_in_horse_cart.JPG

Hyderabad is at a height of 1800 ft above sea level. And our apartment complex is on top of what are fancifully called Madhavapuri Hills in suburbia. And we live on the 7th floor. And our flat has four balconies. Drag your chair and sit in any one of them and you are literally in a poor man's hill station. And monsoon here is cool, cloudy, breezy and dry with occasional downpours. And for a retired soul, nothing could be more thrilling.

For about three years we were living in downtown Hyderabad off the posh Banjara Hills on their downward slope. And in the ground floor. And it was gloomy, dark, stuffy and the narrow roads were flooded with (d)rain water. I was practically marooned and bottled up for the four monsoon months. But the land prices there are three times here...a rich man's hell station.

The other evening around 8 PM I was sitting in our balcony and gathering wool. It was cloudy, moonless, starless, and breezy. And I watched a lone blinking airplane below the clouds flying its languid course horizon to horizon. 

And called out to Ishani (2.7), for, I knew that one of our fantasy sessions was overdue.

She came running and watched the twinkling star wandering lonely like one of those Wordsworth things. Then I put her in the pilot's seat and myself in the copilot's. And taught her how to taxi on the runway, pull up the joystick, vroom, level off, turn, nose down, land, brake, halt, get down triumphantly, and of course all about seat belts and parachutes and stuff. And to take care that the plane is fully fueled before take-off since there are no petrol pumps up there...

And just watching the starry wonder in her eyes was bliss...have a girl grandkid if you wish to enjoy your retired life.

I recall only one fantasy session of my boyhood that lasted months and months...the rest were stupid and ephemeral by comparison.

I was 10 then and we were living in the town of Kadapa...it was then spelled Cuddapah charmingly. My Uncle (who later became an MD) was a house surgeon in the District HQ Hospital there and my didi was hospitalized for ten days recovering from her appendectomy. There were no rickshaws then in that town. The only mode of transport was what we called jhatka (tanga), a horse-drawn carriage. And we hired one for the whole of ten days and it was my pleasure to share the seat beside the driver's during our to and fro trips carrying tiffin, lunch and dinner for my mom who was stationed there...our home was about 2 miles away...

As I watched the driver's commands and controls over his horse, I became fascinated...pulling the rein rightward for a right turn, leftward for a left turn, pulling hard for braking, using his joystick as throttle, cracking his whip in the air for fun, shouting hai, hai, hai as a horn, using his legs for tickling, the tak tak tak tak of the musical hoofs...the entire ride was simply adorable...and I wished my Father would buy me a horse and a cart for my living...like Ishani finally went and asked her dad to buy her a REAL airplane...  

I never had a more enduring fantasy than that...

Certainly not in Physics or English.

I am told that for every published author in English there are a hundred fantasizing souls pestering them.

Listen to Thurber:

...These pieces have usually been written in a gay, carefree vacation mood, and it is a sound rule to avoid self-expression at such a time, since it leads to over-emphasis, underlining, unnecessary quotation marks, and the odd notion that everything that happens is funny. The American housewife, possibly a a result of what might be called the 'Blandings Influence', also seems to believe that amusement is inherent in everything that goes wrong about the house and in everybody that comes to fix it. My own experience has not been that fortunate. In my view, a carpenter named Twippley is likely to be as dull as a professor named Tweedle, and I think we are safe in setting this up as a standing rule...

Or RKN:

...We always question the bonafides of the man who tells us unpleasant facts. On the surface it is all very well to say, "I want an honest criticism that will help me, not blind compliment." I wish people would mean it. In my experience I have met only one person who took my views literally and tore up the story that he had brought to me for an opinion. He could very well have turned round and said, "The stories you write up are no better. I see no reason to accept your judgement," but he tore up the manuscript into minute bits and scattered them out of the window, and turned his attention to other things immediately, and later became a distinguished anthropologist. His book on the subject, a respectable demy size volume priced at thirty shillings, is about to be published by a famous press...

For the rest of us there is always the blogspot...

...Posted by Ishani

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Raakhi Relatives - Repeat Telecast

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http://www.astrosage.com/festival/images/raksha-bandhan-12072012-2.jpg

For many years I was addicted to Deccan Chronicle reading it cover to cover and using its tidbits as grist to my blogmill. But, for the past one year, I never even opened it...just glance at the headlines and toss it aside. The reason is that India has become dull and boring...no longer newsworthy...more and more ministers and judges trooping to jail like so many winged ants to the nearest street lamp.

But this morning there was this piquant front page item:

"I am not his illegitimate child, he is my illegitimate father"
It refers to the Delhi High Court verdict that a senior politician (87), a colorful ex-Governor of AP to boot, who tried hard (unsuccessfully) to evade a DNA test, was indeed the biological father of the claimant in what is alleged to be India's first paternity suit...no pun intended on 'suit'.

What struck me most was that, while an illegitimate son has a simple and provocative name, an illegitimate father doesn't seem to have a popular buzz-word for him.

I wish to propose an adjective that covers all such reluctant relations...if my suggestion is accepted, the 87-year-young senior politician referred to above could be called:

"Raakhi Father"

Raakhi festival is round the corner and I am reminded of the significance of Rakshabandhan. While it is trite for a sister to tie a raakhi round her biological brother's wrist giving him love in return for protection, it is the non-DNA siblings that provide legendary legitimacy between 'illegitimate' brothers and sisters. 

Everyone knows that Rukhsana, the wedded wife of Alexander the Great, was scared that her hubby would be killed by his enemy king Porus, and so the night before the great battle she slipped into the tent of Porus and tied a raakhi round his wrist and asked her illegitimate brother not to kill her legitimate husband...thus Porus became the Raakhi Brother of Rukhsana.

Much before that, Draupadi tied her hankie round the bleeding wrist of Krishna and became his Raakhi sister. And Rukmini and Satyabhama were bitterly jealous of Draupadi till Krishna asked them to go and comb the tresses of his Raakhi sister, and they found every strand of her hair singing: "Krishna, Krishna, Krishna..." like so many buzzing mosquitoes on the lawn of our Faculty Hostel at KGP.

Indeed it was at KGP that I first heard the terms: 

Raakhi Brother and Raakhi Sister

Everyone knows that biological brothers and sisters studying at the same Institute avoid each other like plague...they don't want to be seen together. Not so the Raakhi Brothers and Sisters. The vow of mutual love and protection binds them together. By the time they reach Final Year they would be seen strolling side by side along Road # 5 with the ogling night-owls on the famed trees as their only companions...a thing DNA siblings never do.

I would like the adjective Raakhi to cover the entire spectrum of such reluctant relations.

For instance, Kunti can be termed the Raakhi Mother of Karna. 

...and Drona the Raakhi Guru of Ekalavya.

...and RKN's Raju the Raakhi Saint.

...and that gallant ex-president of the US his Intern's Raakhi Lover.

...and the celebrity alumnus of  IIT KGP who became a multimillionaire but turned out to be slippery as an eel a Raakhi Donor.

...and Prof GSS (may his soul rest in peace!) who was so blushing shy whenever I mentioned the G S Sanyal School of Telecommunications a Raakhi Acceptor.

...and our President of the INC our Raakhi PM.

...and our PM our Raakhi Economist.

...and...you know who...our nation's most eligible Raakhi Bridegroom.   

...and like him, Julius Caesar, who according to Mark Antony, refused crown not once, not twice, but thrice, the Raakhi King.

...and, finally, this old chap in Hyderabad who wakes up every morning swearing he would stop blogging forthwith, only to dump his vow by late evening, our Raakhi Blogger.  



...Posted by Ishani

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Certified Kates - Repeat Telecast

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http://lowres.cartoonstock.com/-guru-mountain-mountain_top-enlighten-enlightened-rman8027_low.jpg

Ishani returned from school yesterday in cloud nine with a 'wild surmise' in her eyes. She was carrying in her hands a gorgeous A4 size document she couldn't read, printed in color on photo-quality paper. It had her school's name, logo, her name, a couple of hand-written flowers and stars and the remark: 'Excellent' penned in by her teacher and signed off with a flourish. Apparently it is her first hard-won Certificate (her Birth Certificate was won by others). She had been for the past week or so practicing 'Ba Ba Black Sheep' at home. And the Certificate was for her Recitation at school. And I was as pleased and tickled as only a non-playing granpa could be. 

But I was sorry too. She started going to her nursery classes just a month and half back, of which a month was spent in what KGPians call 'Orientation' (of the nice kind). And already she is into what I called the Great Indian Rat Race:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2014/10/great-indian-rat-race-girr-repeat.html


My apprehensions proved right...today Ishani's mom told me that another mom of nodding acquaintance held her up and asked:

"How many stars did Ishani get?"

My mom once told me that when her co-daughter-in-law (my Shakespeare Uncle's wife) died in 1940 a HUNDRED people attended her last journey because her husband (my Uncle) was at the pinnacle of his glory as a teacher. But when he himself died in 1970, hardly half a dozen people were present, because he had retired 15 years ago and was quietly forgotten...he lost the Great Indian Last Race badly to his wife...sigh!

Our family Purohit under whose auspices I performed all the thirteen days' obsequies of my Father (under my mom's strict supervision) told me pensively a year before he died:

"I must have helped a HUNDRED souls to reach Heaven...but my son is an ass, and I am sure he won't spend the time and money to see me off properly"

I consoled him:

"Surely you will reach Heaven a HUNDRED times, don't worry!"

I myself wrote a Will attested by two eminent witnesses stating that I will certainly reach Heaven a THOUSAND times (that is roughly the number of recos I doled out) and so my son should dispense with all mumbo-jumbo which would only try to pull me back...and the Rs 1,00,000 or more he saves thereby should be enjoyed by him and his family.

India is the land of tigers, peacocks, snakes, camels, ivory, pearls, temples and Certificates. 

The list of Certificates is unending...by a rough count I guess everyone of my generation had to get a hundred Certificates signed by Gazetted Officers or their equivalents during their lifetime. I still have to submit my Life Certificate every November. And now that I have 'property'  (House on the Hill) jointly with my son, my son has to get several NOC's (No-Objection Certificates) for getting things like Electricity Bill transferred in his name which is required as his Residence Proof which is required for his opening a new Savings Bank Account which is required for the renewal of his Passport which calls for a Police Verification Certificate which requires him to find out which Police Station his new residence comes under, which requires inquiries in several Police Stations each of who pretend ignorance unless they are in a good mood to help which requires...you know...

Of all the Certificates we had to get in the 1960s, the queerest was a thing called Migration Certificate. Don't think it had anything to do with getting a Green Card or Migratory Birds. It had to be collected from our University and submitted whenever we wanted to join a college under a different University. I guess it is now abandoned, much to the regret of clerks. Because, at the last count, the conservative state of AP itself has more than 50 Universities, many of them in Greater Hyderabad itself, and some are deemed if not doomed and damned.

The next weird Certificate is the Obsolescence Certificate. Let me give an example. I became uppish when I got a CSIR Research Scholarship stipend of Rs 250 pm in 1963 at Vizagh and bought a second hand radio set @ Rs 100. And took it with me to KGP in 1965. And was trying to listen to Radio Ceylon which was out of reach. So I had to make do with its nascent clone called Vividh Bharati by AIR. Although I had an indoor antenna, friends warned me that I better go to the KGP GPO and get a License Book issued by paying the hefty annual fees of Rs 10 before sleuths of the WB P&T catch me. Which I did after three attempts. And they said I had to get it renewed every year to escape heavy penalties. Which I did for a couple of years. And then my set croaked and the Repairwala said no point spending good money on a dead set...you get a better set with that money. Which I thought of doing. Then I was told that I had to get a separate license book for the new set (which had the maker's id number perhaps). That meant paying licenses for the dead set and the new one. And if I had to escape penalties, I had to visit the GPO and fill up a form saying my set is dead and give my Qrs No. And then their Technical Officer would make a sly visit to my Qrs and issue a Condemned Set Certificate if he is in a good mood.

I abandoned the whole idea and kept quiet. But by then the pocket transistor revolution caught on and the AIR abandoned its License Fees. But the mother of AIR in the UK by name BBC still survives on its License Fees:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/whoweare/licencefee/

You may ask why her Daughter, AIR, which is no less grasping, said 'hands up' and let go.

The answer is contained in the  "gps Law of Large Numbers":

"When the expenditure incurred in collecting exceeds ten times the revenue collected, it is time to stop and look for other more profitable avenues of revenue"

...Like Birth and Death Certificates which were unknown in my Father's time.



...Posted by Ishani

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Great Indian Rat Race (GIRR) - Repeat Telecast

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Ishani is now ten months old.

I can see that she has already outgrown her toy-world and is eager to participate in the real world. Well, she likes her toys...but just that they are her property and nothing more. 

Her great moment is when her mother tucks Ishani into her left hip with a left hand vice-grip and cooks with her right hand. The smells and sounds of the Indian kitchen (whistle of the pressure cooker, whir of the mixer-grinder, cling-clang-cling-clang of the ladle stirring up the vegetable in the frying pan, the sudden subdue of the hectic noise when water is poured into the hissing pan....) simply fascinate her. She knows that this is life for real, unlike her toy-kitchen-set.

When she is leased into my lap for a couple of minutes while I am blogging, she knows that things happen when the keyboard is punched; and into my bed while I read a book, that books are great Silencers.

In short she is investigating the household.

And when I dress up, she knows that it is now the turn of the wide world outside full of cars, autos, kids, stray dogs, the hustle and bustle of city life.

She enjoys it immensely.

But then, our watchman stops us and tries in vain to befriend her, and in a great impulse of chivalry he blesses her:

"Study well and become a Collector!"

Collector is the South Indian aliter for District Magistrate (DM).

The DM was and is (till recently) the symbol of ultimate power over his subjects in the district under his command for the nonce (he can round you up for Election Duties). My MD Physician-Uncle reputed for his prowess not only in diagnosis and treatment but also for his lectures in his Medical College, and ruled over the biggest and best hospital in our region, wished he were a Collector...Reason: 

"When the Collector is ill, his PA rings me up and it is I who has to go to his Bungalow in the JEEP he sends, not the other way round"

And then even before we cross the threshold of our Apartment Complex, our Retired Chief Engineer wags his finger at li'l Ishani and says: 

"You have to outshine your parents and grandparents and become the Best Engineer in the US (like my cousin's grandson)"

So poor li'l Ishani is firmly into the GIRR even before she can lisp.

I can only wish that, like her tell-tale gran'pa, she would try hard to be herself rather than try to scale unending heights set for her by uncaring others (I know it is impossible, just trying to be inspirational for a change).

My Ph D Guide SDM of the Freedom Movement whose aim in life was to prove to the world that Indians have no less native intelligence than the westerners was keenly looking forward to the day India would become a free country.

And within 3 years of that Tryst With Destiny he discovered that all that happened was that our Brown Sahibs flushed the White Sahibs away with a deluge of our age-old brown values.

And then he had the opportunity to sail for England in the mid-fifties. He was a poor judge of persons (he told me he thought I was a HNB spy) and worldly affairs but his insights were phenomenally sound at times. He told me that the moment he set foot on the British soil: 

"I could smell it in the air that this is a country that has been free for a thousand years (unlike India that has been a slave for that same period)"

Unfortunately he never set foot on the US soil, so I didn't have his reaction to it ...but I remember the quip of Churchill when Roosevelt appealed that Indians be granted freedom: 

"Which Indians are you talking about - the Brown millions under our benign British Rule multiplying by leaps and bounds or the Red millions you annihilated?" 

Talking of GIRR, I liked the one about the wife of the Hyderabadi Beggar who complained that their neighbor is bringing 200 Rupees everyday, double of what her husband nets. HB retorts: 

"What can I do? Only one of my legs is lost to Polio and so I stand on the other leg the whole day at one place, while that chap lost both his legs in a railway accident and got a wheel-cart so he can roam and beg all over the place"

This reminds me of the very convincing plea of Das Babu, our sweet Life Insurance Agent at KGP asking my friend to take a Double-Accident-Benefit Policy:

"Jodi apnaar ekta tong bhangley ek lakha taka paaben; jodi dutoyee bhangley....taholey aaro besh bhalo....dui lakha taka paaben!"

("If you lose one leg you get 1 lakh Rupees; if both your legs are gone...it is all the more better...you get 2 lakh Rupees!)

Long Live GIRR!!!



...Posted by Ishani

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Something Attempted, Something Done - Repeat Telecast

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http://www.online-literature.com/authorpics/henry_longfellow.jpg

I don't have to repeat ad nauseam that I am an ardent admirer of my Guide SDM...all you have to do is to type SDM in my blogspot's Search Module and you will have at least a couple of hundred posts with his name in them.

But I can't call him handsome...he was no Gregory Peck.

But there were moments when he exuded immense glee, rubbing his hands, narrating how he got it finally after a herculean effort, and said:

"Something Attempted, Something Done"

At that moment his face looked radiantly handsome and it was a pleasure to watch his childlike triumphal gestures.

There is no ugliness in Nature. 

And none in human faces either when they talk about something that interests and excites them like that:

"Keats shouting with delight as some passage of especial energy struck his imagination" 

that I was talking about the other day.

In the 1960s at KGP there was for a short while a Lecturer in the EE Dept, Prof Raghavendran. He was about 5 years older to me and was of average height, average weight, average complexion, but his all hair went prematurely gray, he had protruding teeth, and certainly not handsome as the term goes. He never did his Ph D but all his students were unanimous that he was the best young teacher in EE. And I had the good fortune of making friends with him. And at that time I was trying to learn and teach Circuit Analysis to our Physics students...a backbone awfully neglected in our popular Electronics books but very nicely dealt with in EE books like LePage and Seely.

And whenever I got stuck I used to go to his room or canteen and ask him to explain to me some concept that baffled me. And it was lovely to watch his face beam and turn beautiful as he talked excitedly about what he knew like the back of his hand. And he was very widely read outside his subject too. It was he who asked me to buy and read that paperback in Thackers called Three Men in a Boat...I must have read it half a dozen times since. And he warned me not to read any other book by Jerome K Jerome...saying it would be a disappointing come-down.

Coming back to the SDM quote above, the other day I found it also quoted by Bertie Wooster, of all people...he must have picked it up from his Jeeves:

"If I ever felt that something attempted, something done had earned a night's repose, it was when I got back to my flat and shoved my feet up on the mantelpiece and started to absorb the cup of tea which Jeeves had brought in..."  

And that made me Google it. And I discovered that it occurs in Longfellow's poem, The Village Blacksmith. Here is the relevant stanza:

Toiling,--rejoicing,--sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.

SDM mentioned that it occurs in Jim Corbett...very likely...but I couldn't locate it.

Talking of Village Blacksmiths, I guess none of my young readers has ever seen the really huge bellows made of what looked like buffalo-skin. There was a rope attached to it and a worker was hired to pull it up and down...like a gigantic bicycle pump:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/A_blacksmith_in_front_of_his_fire_with_one_hand_on_a_chain_attached_to_the_bellows.jpg

I am no blacksmith....but I am a blogsmith alright.

I know very well the everyday feeling:

Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose

Good Night! 

...Posted by Ishani

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Himalayan Modesty - Repeat Telecast

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This morning I woke up recalling, for no apparent reason, a quote of Jim Corbett that stuck in the deep recesses of my memory for 40 odd years. And I picked up my ancient Peacock Paperback covered with a thick transparency sheet, with the head of an eminently whiskered tiger on its cover page. The pages have turned brown but not yet brittle and within a few minutes I could locate the quote I wanted:


...If the greatest happiness one can experience is the sudden cessation of great pain, then the second greatest happiness is undoubtedly the sudden cessation of great fear. One short hour previously it would have taken wild elephants to have dragged from their homes and camps the men who now, singing and shouting, were converging in every direction, singly and in groups, on the path leading to Thak. Some of the men of this rapidly growing crowd went up the path to help carry in the tigress, while others accompanied me on my way to camp, and would have carried me had I permitted them. Progress was slow, for frequent halts had to be made to allow each group of new arrivals to express their gratitude in their own particular way. This gave the party carrying the tigress time to catch us up, and we entered the village together. I will not attempt to describe the welcome my men and I received, or the scenes I witnessed at Chuka that night, for having lived the greater part of my life in the jungles I have not the ability to paint word-pictures...


Look at that!...just look at that modesty...Jim Corbett saying: 

"I have not the ability to paint word-pictures"

Well, Jimmy doesn't need my testimonial. But here is an incident I remember after 30 years.

My wife grew up in the household of her granpa who was an Executive Engineer during the British Rule and was associated with the Tungabhadra Dam Project...a grand old gentleman of 75 when I saw him first. He not only educated my wife through her MBBS and MD at Tirupati, but was solely responsible for getting her married to an unknown chap with an unknown face from an unknown place called IIT KGP.

One evening a few months after our marriage he had this terrific urge to travel to KGP and see for himself how his fond granddaughter was being treated by her new husband. He packed his tooth brush and sat in the general compartment of the next available train (Janata Express) from TPT to KGP, all alone...a journey of 36 hours and more. And bribed the TTE to get a 3-tier berth along the way. 

And like a good boy I received him at KGP station past midnight, made arrangements for his rest in the very nice Retiring Room there, and in general wore my best-behavior mask...much was at stake because he brought along with him an Application Form for the Post of Lady Medical Officer in a god-forsaken place in remote AP...filled in by him and waiting to be signed by his granddaughter.

His stay was supposed to be for a week but it got extended by another week because he very much liked our nest (Qrs C1-97) and the Central Library which was the first place I showed him off at KGP.  Within a couple of days of arriving, he tore off the Application Form he brought along with him telling me that he had lost his wife when he was 36...and doesn't want to separate me from my wife whom I married when I was all of 36...

And during his stay there he asked me if I have any good books to beguile his ample leisure. I opened my wardrobe-cum-book-case and asked him to help himself to my meager fare. And I was watching him read half a dozen books that caught his eye. And while leaving, he asked me if he could borrow another half dozen books and take them with him to TPT, promising he wouldn't lose them nor lend them nor soil them. 

I demurred but agreed.

And was watching with interest which books he would pick up. And found, along with the RKN's and Sherlock Holmes' and  Wodehouses, he took with him the lone Jim Corbett  book:  

"Man-Eaters of Kumaon" 

And I said:

“But I have seen you reading Corbett's book here”

“Well, I read it twice but want to read it a couple more times”



...Posted by Ishani

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Wild Surmise - Repeat Telecast

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http://www.adventuresbydisney.com/media/abd/north-america/grand-canyon-vacations/grand-canyon-rim-view-1260x540-170121946.jpg

Speaking of 'wild surmise' as I was yesterday:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2014/10/poetic-license-repeat-telecast.html

here is our Autocrat's description of it:


...Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it...


And here is RKN's:


...On the whole my memories of America are happy ones. I enjoy them in retrospect. If I were to maintain a single outstanding experience, it would be my visit to the Grand Canyon. To call it a visit is not right; a better word would be 'pilgrimage'---I understood why certain areas of the canyon's outcrops have been named after the temples of Brahma, Shiva and Zoroaster. I spent a day at the canyon. At dawn or a little before, I left my room at El Tavaro before other guests woke up, then took myself to a seat on the brink of the canyon. It was still dark under a starry sky. At that hour the whole scheme acquired a different dimension and a strange, indescribable quality. Far down below, the Colorado River wound its course, muffled and softened. The wind roared in the valley; as the stars gradually vanished a faint light appeared on the horizon. At first there was absolute, enveloping darkness. But if you kept looking on, contours gently emerged, little by little, as if at the beginning of creation itself. The Grand Canyon seemed to me not a geological object, but some cosmic creature spanning the horizons. I felt a thrill more mystic than physical, and that sensation has unfadingly remained with me all through the years. At any moment I can relive that ecstasy. For me the word 'immortal' has a meaning now...


I guess that is as close to poetry as RKN ever got in his writings.

Scientists, at least physicists, must have experienced this 'wild surmise' at the brink of their arduous efforts on the edge of fruition.

We have Oppenhimer's famous quote from Bhagavad Gita while witnessing the first man-made fission bomb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3sbh5NxaAk

And we have the feelings of the astronauts when they first saw our earth as a tiny blue sphere hanging out there...our 'home'...e.g.:

...The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended  like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round  meant until I saw Earth from space....
 

...Aleksei Leonov, USSR

 

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/astronauts.html

But of course, most of us are not that fortunate to have wild surmises on such spiritual scales...but we do have our tiny moments when some such feeling touches us tangentially, if that...

As I said in an earlier post:

 http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2011/02/propitiation.html

my Father used to seat me on his tummy when I was a kid of 3 or 4 and say:

"I have only one wish for you to fulfill...take me to Kashi (Benares) once in my lifetime."

When he was a kid, he had heard of Kashi from one of his run-away uncles called Kashi Mama and dreamed of it from then on. It took me 40 years to fulfill his wish. I escorted him (and my mom) on their pilgrimage to Gaya, Kashi, and Prayag. We reached Kashi pretty late in the night and checked into a Guest House booked for us by my friend NP. 

Next morning, we traveled in a rickshaw to the Assi Ghat as advised by our host and took a boat and reached Dashashwamedh Ghat after a half hour of ghat-viewing. And I was slyly watching my Father's face as he read out the names of one ghat after the other as we passed them...and as we reached the end of our boat-ride and got down to meet Lord Vishwanath, his voice was trilling and eyes full of tears...it almost looked like the end of his life's inner journey to him.

Many students from moffusil schools and colleges told me that when they cleared IIT JEE after an arduous struggle and entered IIT KGP, their feeling was indescribable...bola jabe naa, sir!

Well, I went to KGP from a full-fledged University with awesome buildings spread over many square miles, so the scale was not a factor. But, the first time I entered its Central Library, it was a revelation. Many magazines whose titles were sweet hearsay like Punch, Life, Time, Newsweek, New Yorker, Scientific American were lying scattered on the tables like so many vegetables in Balai Dukan. And as I turned left, there was a sort of lectern. It held biggish Webster Volumes I and II with light strings to hold them in place, and it was there for you to flip through standing...I almost felt like stealing the whole ensemble and take it home.  

I thought, like Montmorency, I reached Heaven.

...Posted by Ishani

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Poetic License - Repeat Telecast

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http://www.michellehenry.fr/Keats.jpg

Mani Shankar Aiyar is reported to have said that all the Shakespeare he knew he learned from Jeeves. 

Wodehouse books have a lot of Keats too. For the past couple of weeks I have been re-reading my Wodehouse Collection after sixty good years as a sort of Mood Elevator from Sid Mukherjee's Cancer Biography Book, "Emperor of All Maladies"... an eminently readable tome...but not exactly funny.

I recall reading the lovely phrase 'wild surmise' in one of my Wodehouse books first; and I chanced to find it in The Inimitable Jeeves the other day:

"Claude and Eustace looked at each other, like those chappies in the poem, with a wild surmise"

I often vigorously flip pages in my books to search and find a particular phrase or idiom that I want to use, quote, or enjoy. Naturally in novels like PGW's which don't have an Index, the task would be like the needle and the haystack. But the job is considerably simplified since I happen to precisely remember which side of the book...left or right, and which half...top or bottom, I saw the thing occur. For instance, when I was talking to Aniket about the reference to JCB in Sommerfeld's Optics, I recalled it occurred in one of the left hand footnotes in the first edition of the book I read at the Central Library half a century ago. I never asked my friends but this must be a fairly common trait in readers.

Coming back to the 'wild surmise', it occurs in the sonnet, "On First looking Into Chapman's Homer" by Keats. Wiki tells me the striking story behind this poem:

'...Chapman's vigorous and earthy paraphrase (1616) was put before Keats by Charles Cowden Clarke, a friend from his days as a pupil at a boarding school in Enfield Town.^[1] They sat up together till daylight to read it: "Keats shouting with delight as some passage of especial energy struck his imagination." At ten o'clock the next morning, Mr. Clarke found the sonnet on his breakfast-table.'

I can't resist quoting the poem...a thing I rarely do:

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

 

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
 Round many western islands have I been
 Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
 That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
 When a new planet swims into his ken;
 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
 He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
 Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Those last four lines in short refer to the emotions of one who first saw the huge Pacific Ocean that he so longed to see and toiled so much for his first glimpse. 

I always associated Cortez with the Pacific Ocean. Like King Canute with his disobedient beach waves. But apparently it was not Cortez but a chap called Balboa that "star'd at the Pacific with eagle eyes". 

Here is Wiki on Keats' charming poetic license:

'...In point of historical fact, it was Vasco Núñez de Balboa's expedition which were the first Europeans to see the Pacific, but Keats chose to focus on Hernán Cortés; "Darien" refers to the Darién province of Panama. Keats had been reading William Robertson's History of America and apparently conflated two scenes there described: Balboa's finding of the Pacific and Cortés's first view of the Valley of Mexico. 

The Balboa passage: 

"At length the Indians assured them, that from the top of the next mountain they should discover the ocean which was the object of their wishes. When, with infinite toil, they had climbed up the greater part of the steep ascent, Balboa commanded his men to halt, and advanced alone to the summit, that he might be the first who should enjoy a spectacle which he had so long desired. As soon as he beheld the South Sea stretching in endless prospect below him, he fell on his knees, and lifting up his hands to Heaven, returned thanks to God, who had conducted him to a discovery so beneficial to his country, and so honourable to himself. His followers, observing his transports of joy, rushed forward to join in his wonder, exultation, and gratitude" (Vol. III).

John Keats simply remembered the image, rather than the actual historical facts. Charles Clarke noticed the error immediately, but Keats chose to leave it in, presumably because historical accuracy would have necessitated an unwanted extra syllable in the line...'

'An unwanted extra syllable' in his name cost Balboa his Pacific Discovery and the "wild surmise" of his men in the eyes of lay readers like me...

SIGH!!!

...Posted by Ishani

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