Fountain Pen Hydraulics

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Fountain Pen Hydraulics

1970: IIT KGP:

Prof MSS was the only Sardarji in the faculty when I joined IIT KGP in 1965. He was full of physics, stories, and jokes.

Once in the Dining Hall of our Faculty Hostel I was narrating a piece of salacious campus gossip.

 And Prof RSN asked me:

"Who told you this story?"

"Prof MSS"

"Then it must be true. MSS never tells lies"

That was his reputation.

Prof MSS told me that soon after his MSc results were out he joined a Patiala College as a temporary lecturer.

Soon thereafter his Principal called him to his residence. And brought out an old radio set and said:

"You are an expert in physics. My radio has stopped working for the las six months. Take it home and see what is wrong with it"

Prof MSS took it home but was not willing to open it. He was not a radio-repairer just like the rest of us in physics (barring Feynman :)

He had half a mind to take the broken set to the nearest radio-repair shop, get it repaired, pay for it himself, and deliver it to his Principal. But on second thoughts he was wise enough to abandon that preposterous idea.

So he took the old set to his Principal's residence the  next day saying:

"Sir! Please sir! My special paper in MSc was not Electronics"

'What was it?"

"Hydrodynamics"

The Principal then went in and returned with half a dozen leaky fountain pens and said:

"Take them home and see what is wrong with them"

Pretty soon Prof MSS decided to quit his lectureship in the Patiala College; and joined as a research scholar at IIT KGP under the guidance of Prof G in his Lab.

And for the next six months he was busy snapping the photographs, taking readings, calculating, and plotting graphs for the sample given by his guide.

And then he took his results to his guide who looked at them and said:

"Your results are not tallying with what I expected. Repeat your measurements carefully and come back with accurate results"

So Prof MSS was busy for the next six months, at the end of which he took his new results (which were essentially the same as the old ones) to his boss; who said:

"Your results are not tallying with what I expected. Repeat your measurements carefully and come back with accurate results"

And at the end of two years Prof MSS lost all interest with the kind of research expected of him; and never completed his PhD.

Meanwhile he got recruited as a Junior Lecturer in the department and spent his whole time learning and teaching physics.

After another decade Prof MSS was summoned by his ex-boss who was by then a Senior Professor. The gentleman then pushed a brand new text book on Elementary Electricity by a reputed author onto Prof MSS, saying:

"All the book-answers to all the problems on Kirchhoff's Laws in this book are WRONG!"

"Sir! Please sir! Can I have a look at your solutions to these problems?"

And Prof G passed on his khata to Prof MSS who soon discovered that his boss was making a consistent sign mistake. But said:

"Sir! Please sir! Kindly write to the author pointing out his mistakes in his book-answers so that he can correct them in his next edition"

...Ha! Ha!! Ha!!!

Hearing this hilarious story I asked Prof MSS why he was so unkind to his ex-boss.

"Sastrijee! Always remember that we are paid to teach our young students but not our old teachers"

:)

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