Condensation

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Sir Biren Mookerjee and Lady Ranu Mookerjee were the toasts of Calcutta during the early sixties (their spellings too were different from the hoi polloi).

Sir Biren was the foremost industrialist when Bengal had its generous quota. He inherited, owned and developed the Iron & Steel concern Martin-Burns (later IISCO after labor troubles invaded Cal and it was nationalized).

And about Lady Mookerjee this is what wiki says:

"...In 1925, Biren Mukherjee married Ranu Adhikari, daughter of Phani Bhusan Adhikari, a professor of philosophy of the Banaras Hindu University. Ranu, later Lady Ranu (1907- 2000) was one of the exquisite beauties of her time, one of Rabindranath Tagore's closest associates since her childhood days and later became a great connoissure (sic) of art and culture..."

Biren Babu was invited as Chief Guest for our IIT KGP Convocation a year or so after I joined there. He came down with his Lady to see IIT KGP and its worldclass faculty {;-}

During those years, Convocation was held in a make-shift pandal behind Netajee Aud and so I attended it despite my claustrophobia (there was fear of fire but I was at the edge).

Biren Babu got up to speak and in a businesslike fashion told the audience that since the 12-page document of his speech is in everyone's hands, there is no need for him to read it. And he said that he would just give the gist in two sentences.

But he took ten sentences to tell a story about gisting (sorry if you heard it before):

This King had a passionate burning desire for knowledge but no time to acquire it. So, he appoints the most well-read Pundit in his kingdom to read all the books that have ever been written (along with a book grant) and tell him the gist.

The Pundit takes a decade and goes to the King offering to teach. But the King happened to be busy and so asked the pundit to take a decade more and return..and so on...for many decades.

When he lay on his death-bed, the King remembers his Pundit and calls him in and asks him to narrate the gist of all his learning in one sentence.

The Pundit rises to the occasion and says:

"Man is born, suffers and dies"

And the King dies.

That about tells how tough it is to condense voluminous literature.

My Guru SDM used to take about 9 months on the average to solve a problem, a couple of days to write up a 15-page Paper; and then a month composing its Abstract.

Talking of Abstracts I remember AIP's advice to prospective authors:

"The Abstract must be as brief as possible but not so brief that one has to go through the Paper to crack the Abstract"

I on the other hand came to know that the probability of a Paper being accepted in a phoren journal (cateris paribus) is inversely proportional to its length (the first draft). So I used to compose the Abstract first and then start writing the Paper...something like, I am told, in the Carnatic Classical Music, the aalaap covers the boundaries of the rendering.

It always worked...the revision was broader and wider.

Nowadays the newspapers are bristling with all sorts of Judicial and semi-judicial reports on various scams and these apparently run to thousands of pages.

The latest joke (for me) is that a Reporter asked the Politician blamed squarely in the Report if she is going to quit. Upon which she says: "I will answer your question after I get a copy of the Report and go through it." The Report, I am sure, is a thousand pages long.

There is a limerick I posted long time back when I read that the Charge Sheet in a canonical scam (the wife of all scams) ran into 25 steel trunks:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/04/satyams-chest-nuts.html

There are many condensed epics like Ekashloki Ramayan (Ramayan condensed in one shlok).

But Adi Shankara does one better. He gists the hundreds of thousands of words he wrote about his Advaita in half-a-shlok (just one line):

"Brahma satyam jaganmidhya jeevo brahmaiva naaparaha"

A couple of months before I retired, I was dumped with a thankless job of 'short-listing' for written test about 1300 applications for technical posts (I was the head of a team of 3 of our Phy Faculty). Across the whole IIT there were twenty times as many applications.

Since I was no good at short-listing, I offered to 'long-list' them...going through each application of ten pages (with supporting documents) and abstracting each in half a page. It took a month for me and my unwilling colleagues. I then quit happily to Hyderabad.

Biren Babu's Pundit was gloomy, in my opinion.

If I were asked what I find most baffling of life on this planet is, I would rather go with Yagnyavalkya's answer to his other wife Moitreyee:

"Self-Love"

Thanx!

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Frogs

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10 species of frogs discovered

DC August 7

"Of the 10 new species, six are bush frogs, one a canopy bush frog, and two are associated with reeds....

...The new species have also received some interesting names.

One species is the Raorchestes agasthyaensis, after the Vedic sage Agasthya while Raorchestes manoheri is named after principal chief conservator of forests, Mr T.M. Manoharan..."

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This reminds me of the delicious piece See No Weevil by James Thurber.

Here are some extracts:

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"....The report from the Federal Register that Mr Peterson sent me contains the glad tidings , for cotton growers and Thurberia weevils, that the 1926 quarantine on the Anthronomous grandis thurberiae Pierce has been lifted. It seems that my cousin the weevil, has turned out to be a harmless insect, no more dangerous to the American cotton crop than the luna moth is to the Brazilian Air Force. I don't know who Pierce is, by the way, or how he happened to pop up in the name of the Thurber weevil, but it may be that he was the agent who kept Thurberia under surveillance for twenty-five years....

...I do not like to dwell on what happened when Thurber came home one evening, with the worried look that Mrs Thurber knew very well.

'What's the matter?' asked Mrs Thurber apprehensively, 'Have you discovered a new kind of non-flowering buzzard bush?'

He dropped into a chair, 'No,' he said. 'Do you remember that weevil I found on the Thurberia plant?'

She sighed. 'Yes,' she said, 'but I keep trying to forget it.' Her eyes brightened, 'Has it been taken suddenly extinct?' she asked hopefully.

'No, it isn't that,' he said, wearily. 'Something else has happened to it.'

'Are you going to sit there and tell me that Pierce has taken full credit for it?' she demanded. 'I always knew he would, and I told you--'

'Pierce hasn't taken credit for anything,' he said irritably. 'Thurberia has turned out to be innocuous. It's not even mischievous. Its quarantine has been lifted, if you have to know.'

His wife sat forward in her chair. 'I knew that would happen' she said. 'Don't you realize that hundreds of scientists have seen that weevil during the past hundred years, and that you were the only one foolish enough to stop and classify it? Now you've got yourself stuck with a weevil that isn't even dangerous, a weevil that lives on wild cotton, the most ordinary bush in the desert. Jane Forsythe was telling just the other day that it's as common as false fleabane. When you were out hunting for ticks and cactus and fungus, Jane's husband was discovering a beautiful golden flower--where are you going?'

Thurber had put on his hat and coat and walked to the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned and looked at his wife. 'I'm going out to discover the Thurber mealy bug,' he said coldly,' and 'when I do, I'm going to put it on the forsythia or on Mrs Forsythe, I haven't decided which yet.' And he went out and banged the door after him.

Mrs Thurber lit a cigarette and sat for a while lost in thought. It suddenly dawned on her what Belle Pierce would do when he found out that the quarantine has been lifted on the 'Thurberia Weevil'. She would make her husband drop his name from it, leaving the Thurbers stuck with Anthonmous grandis thurberiae. Their name would stand there forever, in lower case, and become the laughing stock (causus risus) of the entomological world."

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gps: I don't know what Mrs T.M. Manoharan would say to her husband, but can only surmise:

'Frog!, is it, after so many decades of selfless service to the forests, principal chief conservating them? I was dreaming of a golden deer.'...

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Those who are interested in surmising what Lopamudra would say to Sage Agasthya may consult (for the funda):

http://www.hindu-blog.com/2011/07/tumburu-theertham-at-tirumala-story-of.

and let us know.

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Laptops

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When I was about 4, my HM Father put me on his lap one night after dinner and told me the story of Dhruva in his tearful voice (dad never grew up):

Apparently, King Uttanapada had two wives (too many): Suneeti, mom of li'l Dhruva, and Suruchi, mom of li'l Uttam. As happens always (recall Dasarath) Uttanapada was partial to his younger wife and her offspring Uttam who she wanted should bypass Dhruva and be anointed Prince of Wales. And her hubby was powerless in front of her.

One day after playtime, Dhruva returned home and found Uttam Kumar seated on his father's right thigh. And Dhruva ran to him and asked to be seated on his left.

And Suruchi shooed him away.

The rest is history: The badly hurt Dhruva does intense penance and gets the Darshan of Lord Narayan himself who cuddles the kid and blesses him that after his death he would turn into the steadfast Pole Star...such was his unshakable devotion to the Lord.

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Our Telugu Teacher in School, who was a master raconteur, told us the story of Abhimanyu Vadha (the treacherous trapping of the young kid of Arjun when he was away). Apparently the coup de graceless was administered by Saindhava (aka Jayadradha, hubby of the sole sister Dussala of the Kauravas).

Next day Arjun vows to kill Saindhava in retaliation by 'taking out' his head with one of his repertoire of arrows. But his friend and chauffeur, Krishna, cautions him that whoever is responsible for landing Saindhava's head will have his head blown to pieces. And suggests that Arjun use his Paashupata Astra which miraculously multiplies itself in a geometric progression after severing its target till it reaches its set goal. And tells Arjun to guide his missile such that the head of Saindhava falls on the lap of Saindhava's father who was doing his evening prayer sitting on a hill nearby closing his eyes.

The rest is evident. The father is surprised at a head falling in his lap and drops it...two birds with one missile.

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Karna who was always envious of Arjun getting the Paashupata Astra from Shivjee wanted to get one better. So, he approaches the original Parashuram (not the Basu) and requests him to take him as his pupil.

But there is a catch: Parashuram (the Brahmin, not Kayastha) was dead against Kshatriyas and teaches only Brahmins (like me). So, Karna poses as if he is a Brahmin and gets the latest version of the missile by hook and crook from Parashuram.

But on the day Karna was to leave, his Guru asks him to let his (Parahsuram's) head rest on Karna's lap and snooze for a while. But he falls fast asleep for an hour. Meanwhile, a dracula-bug lands on Karna's thigh and starts its work.

When Parashuram wakes up and sees the stream of blood gushing and flowing from Karna's lap, he discovers that Karna has cheated him...no Brahmin can ever have such forbearance. So, he curses Karna that the misslie he gave him won't come to his rescue when he most needed it...sigh!

And he gets killed by Arjun unfairly following his chauffeur's instigation.

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And Duryodhan generously offered Draupadi his lap in public...and was assassinated by Bhim by blowing it up...

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Enough of Puranas. Let us come to Victorian London.

About a year back, I got a surprise gift from my friend and book-lover Pratik. It was new to me. Its title is: The Dairy of a Nobody. Published first in 1892, it never went out of print. It charmingly describes the ethos and mores of bourgeoisie Londoners in the Victorian Era.

Winter evenings in London, I am told, are long and gloomy. So, the after-dinner Parties had to invent ways of beguiling time by playing indoor games and gimmicks. One such is called, it seems, Cutlets, a game the author never heard of before.

Let me quote:

"...(Gowing) sat on a chair, and asked Carrie to sit on his lap, an invitation dear Carrie rightly declined.

After some species of wrangling, I sat on Gowing's knees, and Carrie sat on the edge of mine. Lupin sat on the edge of Carrie's lap, then Cummings on Lupin's, and Mrs Cummings on her husband's. We looked very ridiculous, and laughed a good deal.

Gowing then said: 'Are you a believer in the Great Mugal?'

We had to answer all together: 'Yes..oh Yes!' (three times). Gowing said: 'So am I', and suddenly got up. The result of this stupid joke was that we all fell on the ground, and poor Carrie banged her head against the corner of the fender...."

gps: Oh, well, they ruled us alright for 200 years and civilized us...

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Finally, we have our Big B singing a vastly better comic laptop song:

"Jiski bibi chhoti hai..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM3l1duDPmg


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News and Views

N: "They (the US) are living beyond their means...They are living like parasites off the global economy"...Putin

And, "Beijing scolded the US for its 'dangerously irresponsible action'..."

V: We are the angels, no? We are going to have a Lokpal (our great pal) soon.

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N: "Stem cells yield sperm in lab"

V: Carrying coal to Newcastle

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N: "India contributes $ 2 billion to the Europe bailout"

V: Hey (Parashu) Ram!



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Power Chairs

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Here is a typical news item that tickles me endlessly:

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Rail minister loses office once again

DC Correspondent, New Delhi, Aug 3:

There was nothing parliamentary about this episode even though it took place within the hallowed precincts of the Parliament House.

The Union railway minister, Mr Dinesh Trivedi, found himself unceremoniously evicted from his room in Parliament House yet again on Wednesday, prompting him to hold a meeting with the former Union railway minister and RJD leader, Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, sitting on a bench outside the room.

The squabble over who had a claim to the spacious room No 6 on the ground floor of Parliament, of course, had begun on Tuesday itself when Mr Trivedi found the Union Minister, Ms Ambika Soni's nameplate outside it instead.....

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Everyone knows that the Ministry of the only surviving Govt Monopoly and the largest Welfare State of the World (arguably) is a much coveted post. And had been adorned by the likes of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Jagjivan Ram, Lalujee, Didi and now Mr Trivedi.

Well, compared to the earlier heavyweights, the newcomer is, let us say, a bantam weight, till proven otherwise. And this is the chance for him to nip all opposition in the bud and establish himself that he is as good as his glorious predecessors.

This reminds me of a charming Chandamama Serial of the 1950s vintage:

There was a shepherd boy in Ujjain. He was once sitting on a mound of earth and tending his sheep when two leading businessmen were coming down arguing who is right. As they couldn't settle their tricky issue of business, they see the lad and in jest ask him who is right. And the boy, to their bewilderment, quotes Dharma Shastras copiously and resolves their dispute. They were awe-struck and escort him to the King Raja Bhoja'a Palace and present the latest genius. Upon which the Raja tests his knowledge of scriptures and finds that the lad is as innocent as any other.

Being himself a wise man, Bhoja asks the lad to lead them to the place where he delivered the judgment; and finding the mound, gets it dug up and lo and behold, discovers the lost and famous throne of King Vikramarka who ruled a millennium ago and who was known for his acumen (cf. Bethala puzzles).

And Bhoja, being the direct descendant of Vikramarka, orders the throne to be brought to his Court so he could enthrone himself on it on an auspicious day.

As he proceeds to climb its 16 steps, he finds that there are two saalabhanjikas (wooden damsels) on each step either side who display the power of speech.

They halt Raja Bhoja on each step and say that they will allow him to climb them if and only if he can answer viva questions they put to him. And they test him by narrating one after the other the 32 episodes in which Vikramarka reveals his acumen.

And Bhoja finally passes the tests with humility and then is allowed to display his nameplate on Room Number 6 of the Parliament House.

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Not that there is any relation to the above, but let me say that if you keep warming a seat for decades and decades, you impart your character to it, at least physically.

During my 4 decades at IIT KGP, I was shifted from Room to Room 5 times.

When I was first offered a throne-like chair with cane at the bottom and two arm rests on either side, I declined it, since I knew that so much comfort would make me drowsy.

And I sneaked into a Class Room (C-235) and juggled chairs and brought back a Student's Chair that had no left arm, and had a mini-writing desk on the right. And its bottom was solid wood (non-deformable).

And whenever I was asked to shift my Office, I carried it along like a portable cricket umpire's chair of the olden days.

And after 40 years of sitting on it, retired, without carrying it home surreptitiously.

A good 5 years later, I happened to revisit KGP and sneaked into KK's Office (they have stopped calling it Room, yours humbly) for a few minutes.

And he graciously showed me a chair in front of his vast and prodigious Table inviting me to take a seat.

Which I did.

And at once shot up in the air like a jack rabbit asked to sit on an electric chair.

And looked back and asked KK:

"Where did you get this chair; it is MINE!!!"

And KK replied he didn't exactly know, since he had been shifted here and there and he is quite pleased to carry along his own chair that suited him to a tee.

The fact of the matter is that although the bottom of the chair is non-deformable, that is not the case with your own fleshy bottom...it takes the contour of your favorite posture on the wood...and the two bottoms remember each other like two Siamese Twins separated by bad luck...

I guess the Successor to my throne in Room No C-236 had discarded it (having lugged in his / her own) and shoved it onto the verandah; and KK picked it up, although he doesn't now recall...he too is getting on after all...



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Jams & Jimies

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Q: What does a Policeman have on his bread?

A: Traffic jam

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That was a Champak PJ of my son's generation.

Talking of traffic jams, monsoon traffic in Hyderabad is exhilarating. What would be a one-hour summer commute from Secunderabad to Hi-Tech City (even with seven flyovers along the way) grows threefold after just a drizzle.

Another exhilarating news of Traffic Police is that it is now on Facebook. Whatever Hyderabad's faults, it is very tech-savvy, thanx to Naidu. Apparently, the Police will be sending you text messages on your mobile about impending jams on your route and advise you of alternate routes...frying pan to fire.

I read that one of the worst but most exhilarating traffic jams in the US happened at the Woodstock thing in mid-August 1969. They expected a 30,000 crowd and discovered that half a million were on their way all driving their jalopies (most were in their teens).

http://www.celticguitarmusic.com/woodstock.htm

Our own Pt Ravi Shankar was there performing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz8vZHLohJY

1969 and Woodstock counter-culture were the stuff my gen recalls at the Faculty Hostel at KGP.

There were several novel additions to our lingo:

flower power, baby boomer, hard rock, psychedelic, LSD, Beatles, Hippies, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix...

We heard soulful melodies like: "Blowin' in the Wind" routinely in the Lunch Time Varieties of AIR, Cal (is it still there?):

http://beemp3.com/download.php?file=1084986&song=Blowin%27+In+the+Wind

And slogans like: "Make babies, not war!"

Sure, but how?

We were no longer in our teens, but carefree bachelors nonetheless.

The few young residents in SN Hall were in the Architecture Dept. Since Humanities Dept didn't have a UG Program, Architects were the pretenders for arts and culture.

One day a staid 45-year-old Professor of Architecture whose wife was away came to our Dining Hall as a guest, and declared aloud:

"There is no hope for the world except in Hippies and Mahesh Yogi"

Absence of wife makes a man bold!

Anyway, we too had our first look at Hippies when a couple visited IIT KGP for sightseeing and were put up in our Hostel which doubled as a Guest House. All of us were stunned at what we saw, the less said the better...only they were high and huddled all the time.

And then when I next visited Chowringhee, the place was full of them...chock-a-block. The shock slowly subsided, but not before I was traveling in a sleeper compartment of Madras Mail and at the dead of the night smelt some strange, funny, sweet and nauseating odor and traced it to a Hippie couple busy at the dark bathroom corridor.

Unfortunately that smell recurred at SFs and I had to quit watching them.

And the flower power sadly coincided with the Naxalism Wave that swept Cal causing havoc to the Presidency College. Parents who used to send their brightest students to Pres Physics started thinking of IIT KGP for the first time. I guess Pres never recovered. Unfortunately, once they stepped down to the glorified Engg College in Bengal, they started looking at other IITs and the best of the lot drifted to Kanpur...the loss is theirs {;-}

Maybe Didi will bring Pres Physics back to its past glory...

I recall one of the APS Conferences being hailed Physics Woodstock...is it Hi-Tc Superconductivity...very hip...



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Stress Busters

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"As they waited, Joe Bidden nervously fingered his rosary. After the first dramatic words...Geronimo E.K.I.A....the President pursed his lips, and speaking to no one in particular said: 'We got him'."

...DC Wednesday, 3rd August Page 8

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I guess the tension was unbearable.

If you live as long as I, you would have been in several tense situations and seen many of your kith and kin in similar moments.

Each of us in time find our own solutions to bear or bust the stress.

For kids it is crying. One morning Ishani arrived at my bedside with her mom, and started fiddling with my Sprite bottle (it was warm summer). She gave it to me gesturing me naughtily to open and drink. As I lay on my back and yanked open the cap of the bottle, the liquid whizzed up like the proverbial hissing champagne fountain and the white bubbly froth spilled all over my torso. The poor kid thought I was done for and cried so suddenly and so inconsolably that we were baffled.

90% of women of all ages I have seen are no better than Ishani when it comes to coping with sudden stress...they cry...The rest make you cry.

But I have seen two grown-up men sharing the same year of birth (1914) not only cry but faint too...my dad and SDM. They were always high-strung, the former due to family worries and the latter due to research worries.

My dad was also prone to fits of violence...on his kids, students and servants when he was stressed up. And then cry and faint too. So was my MD Uncle (he included his wife in the list of his stress busters). What they needed was a portable punching bag.

I thought the mores have changed over the decades and dignitaries don't beat up people in public and make scenes in these times of child rights, woman rights, and human rights.

But no!!!

The other day, the CM of a southern state (known for its dignified Malgudi norms) went berserk when he was asked to step down and ended up beating his ministerial colleague, abusing his sons, smashing the laptop of his Party Boss and...getting away with it...and kneeling at the feet of his spiritual guru...quite like the penitent King Henry II.

For many kids (like my son) thumb-sucking is a stress buster. I saw the sonogram of a baby in the womb sucking its thumb, published in Readers Digest. My wife tells me that our son of a fun made Herculean efforts to guide his thumb to his mouth, holding his head firm with one hand as early as his 15th day. Later he became an expert and instead of catching his head, he used to catch her sari, and later a hankie expressly designed for him. My niece was holding her left ear and sucking her right thumb.

The trouble with thumb-sucking is that you can't do it in school and they get over it at least in public.

Of all adult male stress busters during our youth in Bengal, smoking was the most popular. There was no stigma attached to it; rather it was a fashion. And it could be done in private and public. At IIT KGP during my early years, 90% of Faculty were smokers, some very heavy (guess who?).

There was this non-smoker, non-violent, Professor KN Of Geology who was rightly called Father of Himalayan Geology by his students. He was a bachelor (another avenue sealed). And he was a Visiting Professor at Caltech too. And everyone was scared of his tongue-lashing (another stress buster). He was practically bald but for a wisp of hair near his forehead. And he used to fiddle with it constantly with his right forefinger. And when the stress was too much he used to pull it so hard that everyone felt that the tuft of hair would be clean pulled out. His naughty students used to say that is how he became bald...it was just calumny.

Since I am always diffident with stalwarts, I used to avoid him in the verandahs...I take the right wall smoking and he the left pulling his hair. But he was a great fan of SDM and so he knew that I was working for my Ph D under him.

One day, barely three weeks after I submitted my Thesis, I was walking to the Post Office to collect my mail, while he was returning from that ritual. Near the Bhatnagar Auditorium, he suddenly swerved to my side, stopped me and pulled his hairs mightily and said sotto voce that he saw my Report from Caltech and it is excellent. I thanked him profusely and lit up a fag and he pulled a couple of more strands and we parted...we never spoke to each other again.

I was always nervous whenever I entered the Lecture Hall whether it was a class of 60 BTech (Ch E) or 15 M Sc students (a wee nervousness before giving lectures, seminars or facing vivas or interviews is a good symptom...it shows you are keen to make it good). So I used to make an elaborate ritual of cleaning the black board with a duster (even when it was cleaned by some earlier lecturers who were secretive), washing my hands, saying "Quiet Please!" like the Wimbledon Umpire, taking roll call and giving a wan smile as if it was not all my fault...

I thought rolling beads was confined to widows of our South Indian Brahmin families. But I learned from Edwin Taylor that it is a standard custom in many Christian denominations. Not only during meditations, but many like Joe carry them in their pockets and roll them, calling them 'worry beads'. And Muslims too.

Biting nails, pulling ears, chewing hankies are routine stuff with our lady classmates...and Pres purses his lips, eh?

Now that he has stopped sucking thumbs in public, my son carries his high-end Nokia and fiddles with its keyboard constantly (it has 3G along with all its scandals). Even in board meetings secretly.

And I?

I blog...like the Devil...

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False Positions

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There was a story (surely apocryphal) doing the rounds a couple of decades back when the number of IITs was just a handful.

Apparently the Directors of all the IITs met and decided that their designation has to be revamped.

Because, when they visit Shastry Bhavan (Ministry of Education) at Delhi for a meeting wih the Minister, the PR Officer at the Front Desk smiles and directs them to the Assistant Secretary's Chamber.

Because, in the organizations directly under the Ministry, Director is a lowly post and deserved no better than an Assistant Secretary per protocol.

They had to argue their case for hours before convincing the PRO that they were not run-of-the-mill Directors of the Ministry like the Directors of Primary Education, Secondary Education, Public Instruction etc but 'different', holding First Class Magisterial Powers over their Campus Domains, like Vice Chancellors, only much better.

Next time around there is a different PRO and the story repeats.

To end it all, they decided to appeal to the Government to change their designation and suggested that, like MIT, Harvard, and Yale, they better be called Presidents.

Since nothing like that happened, my guess is that they were told that there is no position like that in the GoI, other than the President of India, which post they were convinced was purely ornamental having no real power which rests with the PM which position they didn't much like to take up.

It is good in a way that they were not called Presidents because, in the globalized Hyderabad today, there is very likely to be a one-room Raddi Shop with a President, a Vice-President (Paper) and a Vice President (Cardboard).

The entire trouble was because the first IIT @ KGP was started at 5, Esplanade East, Calcutta directly under GoI in 1950 as one of its Departments, and had to wait till 1956 to be given an autonomous status. Much nomenclatural harm was done by then.

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When I joined IIT KGP, the entry post in the Faculty was Associate Lecturer (yours truly). Then one climbs the ladder (if he doesn't fall down) up the rungs of Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Professor and later Senior Professor.

That is not all: if you are too good to be Assistant Professor but not good enough to be Professor, you are made an Associate Professor which is a purely ad-hoc post like Trishanku:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trishanku

An Associate Professor draws the same pay as a Professor but is not allowed to sit in Senate Meetings (they all craved this privilege I don't know why). If I remember right, an Associate Professor has to appear before a Board every year for 3 years and if he is not found suitable to be upgraded to the Professor Post even then, he reverts to his Assistant Professor Post (though I recall none to be that unfortunate in the 5 or so years before wisdom prevailed and Trishanku' post was abolished).

But not before matrimonial embarrassment descended on me.

It so happened that after scaling the rungs of Associate Lecturer, Lecturer, and reaching the semi-final post of Assistant Professor, I got uppish and decided to get married (it took 14 years).

The Grandfather of my bride was a retired Executive Engineer at Tirupati in AP and must have been aware of all sorts of nomenclature anomalies bugging the Government Bureaucracy. When he interviewed me, he simply asked what my Pay Scale was and when I said it was 1200-1900, he was very happy and consented to take me in.

A couple of weeks before my marriage, I got a packet of 25 Wedding Cards (gratis) of the Bride's side to be distributed to my friends and seniors at IIT KGP.

I then found to my dismay that under the bridegroom's name (spelled correctly) my designation was inserted as Associate Professor!

Obviously I had to trash them because if I distribute them among IITians they would suspect a fraud from my side: an Associate Professor at KGP, although a Trishanku, was in the 1500-2200 scale, a cut above me.

When I protested later on to the good old Executive Engineer at Tirupati about the mistake he made in my designation, he defended himself saying there is no mistake on either side, but he could hardly have printed me as an Assistant Professor, which was the Entry Level at the Veterinary College at Tirupati in our lowly (Lecturer) scale: 700-1250.

And his famous son working in that Vet College and playing host in the wedding ceremony was in the next level of Associate Professor (1200-1900) equivalent to our Assistant Professor.

The old man simply brushed me aside and said:

"I wanted everyone here to know that you are as good as my son and no less!"

Phew!!!

He could as well have printed my pay scale:

Dr. K. Rukmini Devi M.D. (fresh from the oven)

weds

Dr. G. Prabhakara Sastry Ph. D. (1200-1900)

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Tailpiece

News Item in DC today:

"...The Prakasam district superintendent of police, Mr C.S.R.K.L.N. Raju...."

I would love to meet him and take his autograph on the back of a postage stamp.

Last laugh

Banta Singh was recruited as a Police Constable at KGP and caught 3 thieves the very first day and dragged them to his Sub Inspector, who asked their names to which they replied:

Mukherjee

Banerjee

and

Chatterjee

Banta wrote the names down as Mukher, Baner, and Chatter and said:

"Saley Badmash log kartey chori hain aur apney aap ko jee, jee, jee boltey hai!"

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