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It is said that families that eat together stay together.
I must add a proviso...that they chat while eating...and not stay glumly brooding as if in an exam hall...well, some exam halls...
When I was a kid I used to visit my Shakespeare Uncle's place in Nellore for extended stays during our summer holidays. We were a dozen odd boys and girls of all ages between 3 and 13. And our evening meal was on the sprawling floor, all of us squatting in two rows facing each other. And our Uncle would be the Chairman heading the space at the junction of the two rows so he could keep a watch on everyone. Otherwise a jovial chap, this Uncle had a rule that no one should talk during his solemn meal. And so we were dilly-dallying and shilly-shallying over our leaf plates till he finished his meal and got up and went inside.
Then on we were like a riotous troop of monkeys after their king Sugriv quit speechifying and left. Everyone would start talking and telling stories and mimicking our elders and it was great fun and pandemonium till he came back and shouted at us...he had to prepare for his next day's lecture.
I always deemed eating (and its consequences) a necessary evil...unlike drinking and smoking which are unnecessary evils.
But not talking...either telling tall tales or just indulging in small talk about sweet and sour nothings.
Indeed when my wife and son left me alone at KGP and shifted to Hyderabad for my son's jobbing, I was loning at KGP for a year. During which I boiled some easy rice and ate it with finger chips or mango pickle. It was just lovely...minimum hassles. It is a different matter that I ended up with a rollicking hypertension...another necessary evil of old age.
I read many stories but forgot most of them. But I haven't forgotten a story narrated to me by anyone. There is a charm about listening to a live story-teller. It casts a spell on me.
One of my cousins, a good decade older to me, once visited us at our village, Muthukur, when I was a kid and regaled us with many stories acting them out. Last year, after a good 60 years, we happened to meet here at a family wedding and he was recalling his trip to Muthukur all those decades back. And said I was just a kid then and must have forgotten his visit.
I then reminded him of the story he told of one chap named Midathambouttlu (Grasshopper) and how he duped everyone cleverly posing he was an astrologer and fortune-teller. And my cousin was astonished and recalled that he heard this story when he was a kid from his uncle...
A good 40 years ago my younger sister, a decade younger to me, was staying with me in Qrs C1-97 at IIT KGP doing her One-Year PG Diploma in Physics (DIIT). That year I was busy writing up my Ph D thesis. So both of us were immersed in our studies till 8 in the evening. And then we would wind up and walk down to the Tech Market for buying vegetables for the next day. It was a leisurely fifteen minutes walk each way. We made a rule...during our outward walk, I would tell her a story and on our return walk, she would tell me a story...without repetition...
It went on for more than a couple of months after which we confined ourselves to the stories of "How was your day?" with lots of departmental gossip.
And the other day we happened to meet up here in their Grihapravesham function. After the ritual was over, we were recalling our year at KGP; and the only thing we remembered was our story-telling sessions.
I used to take care that my lecture courses at IIT KGP were more like story-telling sessions....whether they deal with Dirac Equation or 4-dimensional Green function. I mean, I was only writing symbols and an occasional figure on the blackboard...but they had an inexorably connected story-line. It called for some effort but it paid off...I made hundreds of friends in the class room.
Here is a Certificate given to me my an ex-student-turned professor at IIT KGP:
I am requesting you for this because I really like the 1st year Physics syllabus for IIT-KGP engineers, made by you. It is just superb. It has a flow - it goes from oscillation to wave to light to qm. What one learns from one topic he uses to understand the next topic..."
I can now guess how much Rev. Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) enjoyed that boat-ride with the three kid-daughters of his Vice Chancellor at Oxford:
...Posted by Ishani
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...Your blog was, to me at least, you chatting away at your heart's content one of those late evenings in your department office in KGP and Kedar or I making a futile attempt to squeeze in a word or two edgeways and instead finding ourselves trying to hang on to every word that you said....
...Aniket
It is said that families that eat together stay together.
I must add a proviso...that they chat while eating...and not stay glumly brooding as if in an exam hall...well, some exam halls...
When I was a kid I used to visit my Shakespeare Uncle's place in Nellore for extended stays during our summer holidays. We were a dozen odd boys and girls of all ages between 3 and 13. And our evening meal was on the sprawling floor, all of us squatting in two rows facing each other. And our Uncle would be the Chairman heading the space at the junction of the two rows so he could keep a watch on everyone. Otherwise a jovial chap, this Uncle had a rule that no one should talk during his solemn meal. And so we were dilly-dallying and shilly-shallying over our leaf plates till he finished his meal and got up and went inside.
Then on we were like a riotous troop of monkeys after their king Sugriv quit speechifying and left. Everyone would start talking and telling stories and mimicking our elders and it was great fun and pandemonium till he came back and shouted at us...he had to prepare for his next day's lecture.
I always deemed eating (and its consequences) a necessary evil...unlike drinking and smoking which are unnecessary evils.
But not talking...either telling tall tales or just indulging in small talk about sweet and sour nothings.
Indeed when my wife and son left me alone at KGP and shifted to Hyderabad for my son's jobbing, I was loning at KGP for a year. During which I boiled some easy rice and ate it with finger chips or mango pickle. It was just lovely...minimum hassles. It is a different matter that I ended up with a rollicking hypertension...another necessary evil of old age.
I read many stories but forgot most of them. But I haven't forgotten a story narrated to me by anyone. There is a charm about listening to a live story-teller. It casts a spell on me.
One of my cousins, a good decade older to me, once visited us at our village, Muthukur, when I was a kid and regaled us with many stories acting them out. Last year, after a good 60 years, we happened to meet here at a family wedding and he was recalling his trip to Muthukur all those decades back. And said I was just a kid then and must have forgotten his visit.
I then reminded him of the story he told of one chap named Midathambouttlu (Grasshopper) and how he duped everyone cleverly posing he was an astrologer and fortune-teller. And my cousin was astonished and recalled that he heard this story when he was a kid from his uncle...
A good 40 years ago my younger sister, a decade younger to me, was staying with me in Qrs C1-97 at IIT KGP doing her One-Year PG Diploma in Physics (DIIT). That year I was busy writing up my Ph D thesis. So both of us were immersed in our studies till 8 in the evening. And then we would wind up and walk down to the Tech Market for buying vegetables for the next day. It was a leisurely fifteen minutes walk each way. We made a rule...during our outward walk, I would tell her a story and on our return walk, she would tell me a story...without repetition...
It went on for more than a couple of months after which we confined ourselves to the stories of "How was your day?" with lots of departmental gossip.
And the other day we happened to meet up here in their Grihapravesham function. After the ritual was over, we were recalling our year at KGP; and the only thing we remembered was our story-telling sessions.
I used to take care that my lecture courses at IIT KGP were more like story-telling sessions....whether they deal with Dirac Equation or 4-dimensional Green function. I mean, I was only writing symbols and an occasional figure on the blackboard...but they had an inexorably connected story-line. It called for some effort but it paid off...I made hundreds of friends in the class room.
Here is a Certificate given to me my an ex-student-turned professor at IIT KGP:
"...I would very much like to have your suggestion on this syllabus.
I am requesting you for this because I really like the 1st year Physics syllabus for IIT-KGP engineers, made by you. It is just superb. It has a flow - it goes from oscillation to wave to light to qm. What one learns from one topic he uses to understand the next topic..."
I continue with my life-story-telling in my blogs after retirement...
Ishani is now 3 and I have great fun with her telling tall tales and stories.
Sometime ago, Anamika-di, the school-going daughter of Dipak @ UK, gifted Ishani a glossy story book called 'The Gruffalo'. It is just about a dozen pages but I never saw anything so beautiful all my life. Its color figures occupy 90% space compared to the minimal text. Ishani can't read as yet, but brings the book to me when she is in the mood and asks me to narrate its story. Then begins our fiction session...me pointing out the pictures of the woodpecker there, the butterfly here, the mushrooms there and the flowers here...as we go through the story of the clever mouse and the stupid fox, owl, snake, and the Gruffalo.
It is tough to say whether it is me or she that enjoys these sessions more...
Life has indeed been kind to me...I should admit...in a way...
The journey began at Folly Bridge near Oxford and ended five miles away in the village ofGodstow. During the trip the Reverend Dodgson told the girls a story that featured a bored little girl named Alice who goes looking for an adventure. The girls loved it, and Alice Liddell asked Dodgson to write it down for her. He began writing the manuscript of the story the next day...
...wiki
...Posted by Ishani
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