=========================================================================
Genesis tells us that God made man in His own image. So, I guess all of us ought to be more or less equal.
But a song of my childhood tells me that we in India have 33 crore gods (give or take a million). We revel in variety. And each of these keeps releasing his models endlessly. So, none of us is congruent with any other.
When I was teleported from my University to the 'glorified engineering college' called IIT KGP, I was an ignoramus and was absolutely bewildered by the implicit hierarchies in the system.
Soon, one evening after dinner, half a dozen of us were sitting in the lawn of Gokhale Hall and I was trying to get friendly with the veterans. There was this gent who was silent and I thought I would try to be pleasant with him. And said:
"That is a great watch on your wrist"
Bang he quipped:
"You must be wondering why a mere Civil Engineer like me should flaunt such an expensive watch!"
***************************************************************************************************************
And then there was this Lecturer (permanent, Rs 400-950), S, who accompanied me Associate Lecturer (permanent, Rs 375-625) and a Teacher Trainee, A, (3-year contract, Rs 400 consolidated) to the Nair Canteen. The consolidated bill came to about Rs 20, a whopping amount those days.
The Teacher Trainee rushed to the Counter to pay the bill, a gesture of goodwill and hospitality.
S then turned to me and remarked:
"It doesn't look nice that a Teacher Trainee should rush to pay the bill for us Lecturers"
***************************************************************************************************************
This morning I talked about Basudeb Ghosh, the newly joined English Lecturer in our Faculty Hostel:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/10/unigenius.html
On the second or third day of our acquaintance, we were talking, and I said something about nuances.
He was surprised and exclaimed:
"How come an Engineer like you knows the word, 'nuance'!"
I had to reply: "I am no engineer but a physics teacher"
He then nodded his head approvingly.
************************************************************************************************************
The other day here in our My Home Jewel Township, I drove to the nearby Petrol Pump to fill up the tank of my toy car before another Hyderabad Bundh hits us. On my way back, there was this sudden unanticipated cloud burst and I spotted a lone fiftyish lady stranded under a kerb tree and looking for a lift obviously.
I stopped my car and she ran in and jumped into the front seat beside me, after having a look at my gray hair.
The drive was less than 3 minutes and the first friendly question she asked was:
"What is your surname?"
I was a little taken aback since she was not interested in my name; and guessed she must be from a Telugu Brahmin family. And for the sake of politeness, I asked:
"What is yours?"
"Bulusu"
"You must be from Kakinada?"
"How do you know???"
"I have Bulusu friends from Kakinada"
And I asked her:
"Do you know of ABuNiCha?"
She smiled and said rather contritely:
"Yes, my father taught us"
Her Rose Quartz Block arrived and she thanked me and jumped out saying that she would visit our Turquoise Block home.
***************************************************************************************************************
Here is the funda of ABuNiCha that my Bulusu friends taught me:
A century or so ago, a quartet of Telugu Brahmin families forgathered and decided that they are the best of the lot among the other thousand surnames and spread the Word. They turned out to have the surnames:
A for Akella, Bu for Bulusu, Ni for Nishthala, and Cha for Chavali.
Sadly I don't belong there.
I was wondering why four...generally it is three, like the "3 Idiots". Our Autocrat has an explanation for the threesome we always turn up with in our writings, like the Trinity in Hinduism: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva; or in Christianity: Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. He says it is because of the 3 dimensions we live in: length, breadth and height.
But of course Autocrat died before Einstein and Minkowski added the fourth dimension Time...so our Telugu Pundits seem to have anticipated the Theory of Relativity.
It could also be due to our 4 Vedas: Rig, Yajur, Saama and Atharva.
My UP Brahmin friend, Tyagi, told us the significance of UP Pundit surnames:
Dubey (Dwivedi...master of 2 vedas)
Tiwari (Trivedi...master of 3 vedas)
Choubey (Chaturvedi...master of all 4 vedas)
I then asked him what about the chap who mastered only one veda.
He said he didn't know. I told him I happen to know:
"Bedi"
=========================================================================
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Unigenius
==========================================================================
One evening around 1972 while I was basking on the lawn bench of our crazy Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP, a tall and stocky gentleman arrived in a rickshaw and asked me the way to the Manager's Office. That was the beginning of a one-sided admiration for me in the couple of years he stayed with us.
I got to know that he was BG, a new Lecturer in English. It was also evident that he was a chain smoker and a boozelover.
Since I was sort of a fixture on that lawn bench every evening and an equally dedicated smoker, we got to know each other quickly. He was a topper in English at the Calcutta University. I have seen many toppers but not everyone is a BG. Love for English language and literature and an enormous appetite for speaking it were written all over his frame. He would ask me who my favorite author was and when at random I say Bernard Shaw, he would ask me which play of his I liked best, and when I at random say Pygmalion, he would recite pages and pages of its dialogue with gusto and relish to my utter astonishment.
The next day it could be Nirad Chaudhuri...the next Robert Frost. It went on and on. And when I ask (rarely) his favorite author, he would invariably declare without any hesitation: John Donne (I never heard his name before) and would recite his poem going..."For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love..."
As RK left our Hostel by then, I turned out to be his only admirer there. In fact I was simply stunned and dumbfounded by his scholarship and his enthu for English. And we used to go for short after-dinner walks peppered with his recitations from Milton to Auden. But the best time to catch him was when he was half-drunk and would tear his colleagues to pieces one by one by name for their perceived utter ignorance. A couple of pegs more and he would go to sleep on the floor...
Quite obviously he was soon very unpopular in his Department.
But, Narayana notwithstanding, IIT students have always been discerning customers right till I retired in 2005...Infosys database must be post-2005 {;-}
So, within a few weeks of his joining, he was a roaring idol of all students and he was all over the Hall Functions as Judge, Speaker, Moderator, Raconteur and Bigbasher of small minds. Students of all years and all Halls loved him to distraction.
I was naturally curious what such a chap was doing in an IIT...he should have been a Professor of Calcutta University or JU.
In general he was very secretive about his career, but you know, a little ethyl spirit opens up bottled emotions and I gathered that he had offers from CU and JU for a faculty position...the only requirement was that he should write something...anything...of 30 pages...it could be an original piece of prose, poetry, analysis, review...any damn thing of just 30 pages..and he could walk in...
He never could write...
He told me that whenever he starts writing a couple of sentences for submission, he would tear them up as not to his liking, not up to the standard of his literary heroes, fifth rate, unpublishable, mean...
And he would sink into deep depression and booze heavily...
In the couple of years of his stay at KGP, he descended into that abyss known only to frustrated souls.
One fine morning he left KGP as suddenly as he arrived and no one knew where he went.
And pretty soon I left the Faculty Hostel and discreet inquiries of his whereabouts from his Departmental Colleagues gave me only the relieved reply:
"BG, who?"
===========================================================================
One evening around 1972 while I was basking on the lawn bench of our crazy Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP, a tall and stocky gentleman arrived in a rickshaw and asked me the way to the Manager's Office. That was the beginning of a one-sided admiration for me in the couple of years he stayed with us.
I got to know that he was BG, a new Lecturer in English. It was also evident that he was a chain smoker and a boozelover.
Since I was sort of a fixture on that lawn bench every evening and an equally dedicated smoker, we got to know each other quickly. He was a topper in English at the Calcutta University. I have seen many toppers but not everyone is a BG. Love for English language and literature and an enormous appetite for speaking it were written all over his frame. He would ask me who my favorite author was and when at random I say Bernard Shaw, he would ask me which play of his I liked best, and when I at random say Pygmalion, he would recite pages and pages of its dialogue with gusto and relish to my utter astonishment.
The next day it could be Nirad Chaudhuri...the next Robert Frost. It went on and on. And when I ask (rarely) his favorite author, he would invariably declare without any hesitation: John Donne (I never heard his name before) and would recite his poem going..."For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love..."
As RK left our Hostel by then, I turned out to be his only admirer there. In fact I was simply stunned and dumbfounded by his scholarship and his enthu for English. And we used to go for short after-dinner walks peppered with his recitations from Milton to Auden. But the best time to catch him was when he was half-drunk and would tear his colleagues to pieces one by one by name for their perceived utter ignorance. A couple of pegs more and he would go to sleep on the floor...
Quite obviously he was soon very unpopular in his Department.
But, Narayana notwithstanding, IIT students have always been discerning customers right till I retired in 2005...Infosys database must be post-2005 {;-}
So, within a few weeks of his joining, he was a roaring idol of all students and he was all over the Hall Functions as Judge, Speaker, Moderator, Raconteur and Bigbasher of small minds. Students of all years and all Halls loved him to distraction.
I was naturally curious what such a chap was doing in an IIT...he should have been a Professor of Calcutta University or JU.
In general he was very secretive about his career, but you know, a little ethyl spirit opens up bottled emotions and I gathered that he had offers from CU and JU for a faculty position...the only requirement was that he should write something...anything...of 30 pages...it could be an original piece of prose, poetry, analysis, review...any damn thing of just 30 pages..and he could walk in...
He never could write...
He told me that whenever he starts writing a couple of sentences for submission, he would tear them up as not to his liking, not up to the standard of his literary heroes, fifth rate, unpublishable, mean...
And he would sink into deep depression and booze heavily...
In the couple of years of his stay at KGP, he descended into that abyss known only to frustrated souls.
One fine morning he left KGP as suddenly as he arrived and no one knew where he went.
And pretty soon I left the Faculty Hostel and discreet inquiries of his whereabouts from his Departmental Colleagues gave me only the relieved reply:
"BG, who?"
===========================================================================
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Grand Delusions
****************************************************************************************************
During the four decades I stayed at KGP, I must have made at least four hundred trips from IIT Campus to Gole Bazaar via the short-cut Railway Maidan, first on push bike, then on scooter and later on car.
The one invariant sight I never missed was this:
While stepping into the Railway Town from the Maidan, there was a telephone line on which were perched about a dozen Indian Crows. Right below the line there was a culvert on which were sitting and gabbing half a dozen Railway Pensioners with their walking sticks and protective head and chest-gear.
I can easily decipher what the crows were crowing because I read my Mark Twain...they are past masters at commenting:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2008/06/best-prose-piece-i-ever-readmark-twain.html
And they were commenting on the inanities uttered by the old wags seated below; and punctuating their comments by deftly aimed droppings.
Now that I myself am a Pensioner, I know what the old buddies were indulging in.
First they reminisce about the Good Old Days. They would start by agreeing unanimously that corruption was unheard of in the Indian Railways while they were at its helm. This would be illustrated by everyone citing an instance or two when they were offered sumptuous bribes for postings, berths and bills but they not only resisted the temptation but complained to the ACB. The gent from the RPF would keep silent.
Then they would also agree that life was far better and more disciplined and trains were running on time when the British were ruling us. And a couple would pine for their British bosses and would emphatically say that if they had their way, they would invite the British back home on a red carpet.
Then they would pass a comment on that passing young girl of the Railway School dressed in jeans and tops. They would agree that during their golden days, all girls were modest and were wearing saris from the age when they enter high school. And were demure and not brash and were hardly talking to boys or teachers. (But they would all lock their radars till the young thing goes out of sight.)
Then one of them complains of cold and everyone starts talking about their individual ailments to their hearts' content. Sugar levels, BP readings, Chest X-rays, ECGs, housemaid's knees, and general disinclination to work a la Jerome K. And they would all recall how efficient and courteous was the Railway Hospital when Dr Kohili was heading it; and NOW...
And then they exchange the latest news of their grandkids born last year in the US.
And boast how wonderfully each of their kids are doing in their jobs in the US despite being denied admission in the IIT...they were all convinced that the IIT System is faulty...it doesn't recognize true merit.
And once the topic boils down to IIT KGP, they get all incensed about the lack of a quota for the Railway Children despite the Indian Railways going out of its way to open the Hijli Station exclusively for the construction of IIT in the early 1950s...but for the Railways, IIT KGP would never have come up...
...Posted by Ishani
***********************************************************************************************************************
During the four decades I stayed at KGP, I must have made at least four hundred trips from IIT Campus to Gole Bazaar via the short-cut Railway Maidan, first on push bike, then on scooter and later on car.
The one invariant sight I never missed was this:
While stepping into the Railway Town from the Maidan, there was a telephone line on which were perched about a dozen Indian Crows. Right below the line there was a culvert on which were sitting and gabbing half a dozen Railway Pensioners with their walking sticks and protective head and chest-gear.
I can easily decipher what the crows were crowing because I read my Mark Twain...they are past masters at commenting:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2008/06/best-prose-piece-i-ever-readmark-twain.html
And they were commenting on the inanities uttered by the old wags seated below; and punctuating their comments by deftly aimed droppings.
Now that I myself am a Pensioner, I know what the old buddies were indulging in.
First they reminisce about the Good Old Days. They would start by agreeing unanimously that corruption was unheard of in the Indian Railways while they were at its helm. This would be illustrated by everyone citing an instance or two when they were offered sumptuous bribes for postings, berths and bills but they not only resisted the temptation but complained to the ACB. The gent from the RPF would keep silent.
Then they would also agree that life was far better and more disciplined and trains were running on time when the British were ruling us. And a couple would pine for their British bosses and would emphatically say that if they had their way, they would invite the British back home on a red carpet.
Then they would pass a comment on that passing young girl of the Railway School dressed in jeans and tops. They would agree that during their golden days, all girls were modest and were wearing saris from the age when they enter high school. And were demure and not brash and were hardly talking to boys or teachers. (But they would all lock their radars till the young thing goes out of sight.)
Then one of them complains of cold and everyone starts talking about their individual ailments to their hearts' content. Sugar levels, BP readings, Chest X-rays, ECGs, housemaid's knees, and general disinclination to work a la Jerome K. And they would all recall how efficient and courteous was the Railway Hospital when Dr Kohili was heading it; and NOW...
And then they exchange the latest news of their grandkids born last year in the US.
And boast how wonderfully each of their kids are doing in their jobs in the US despite being denied admission in the IIT...they were all convinced that the IIT System is faulty...it doesn't recognize true merit.
And once the topic boils down to IIT KGP, they get all incensed about the lack of a quota for the Railway Children despite the Indian Railways going out of its way to open the Hijli Station exclusively for the construction of IIT in the early 1950s...but for the Railways, IIT KGP would never have come up...
...Posted by Ishani
***********************************************************************************************************************
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Plumbering
==========================================================================
I first heard this magic word: "Plumbering" from my sister while she was describing her trials, travails and tribulations with the Plumber of their apartment block.
I liked the word...it is badly needed.
Plumbing is the Works...plumbering is the havoc a dedicated plumber can wreak with his plumbing.
Like tinkering, tailoring, sailoring and soldiering...sorry!
There is yet another word with even more conjugations:
commenting, commentating and commentatoring.
*************************************************************************************************************
One morning while I was staying alone in Qrs C1-97 at IIT KGP, which had its own weird plumbing, the bathroom tap broke and fell down on the floor. And precious water was gushing all over the floor. There was no way I could close it. So, I ran to the Plumbering Section and pleaded with the Supervisor to send one of his plumbers (all of who were smoking beedies and waiting for their 'duty roster'). The Supervisor brusquely pointed to the Complaints Register.
An hour later, this chap came on his ancient push-bike with his bag and baggage and entered the swimming bathroom; and rebuked me:
"You wrote that the tap is broken, so I brought a new tap. But what is broken is the bibcock...don't you know the difference?", saying which he biked back.
So, ignorance of English and her nuances is unpardonable.
***************************************************************************************************************
My son's wedding muhurat was at an auspicious and convenient 9 AM in Nellore. And as you may know, the 'bandwidth' of the muhurat is just 5 minutes...the planets would drift away...'planet' means 'wanderer', as I was told by my English Teacher.
And my 85-year old Mom very much wanted to witness the rare occasion and be the MC. And she was staying at my said sister's apartment. And she got up early for her ablutions and Puja and entered the bathroom in good time. But, she took the support of the water pipe for getting up from her toilet seat. And the pipe broke and all hell broke loose with it. The 'check' valve was on top of the 6-floor apartment block, and the finding and closing it took so much time that she missed the muhurat to the discomfiture of all.
**************************************************************************************************************
When he joined his IT Firm in Hyderabad, my son was staying alone for a while on the first floor of an old and dilapidated apartment block. One day he returned 'home' at midnight to find all the floors of all the rooms in his apartment flooded with water sprinkled with cockroaches, leavings of cooked vegetables and garbage....
I am told that first floors are prone to this type of hilarity. Next morning when he paid an 'emergency' sum of Rs 1000 to the Plumber to clear the whole damn works, he was gifted with tennis balls, broken toys, and pebbles and stones that choked the drainage pipe.
We bought our apartment on the 6th floor of the Nile Valley...cleverly.
***************************************************************************************************************
I read that the whole human body is governed by the flow of blood and with the heart as the main pump and blood vessels of various girths it is nothing but an elaborate system of plumbing. The heart not only is a pump but also an elaborate 'sewage recycling' mechanism.
By the way, sewage is different than sewerage...
I happened to see a video of this system when my friend had to undergo a heart bypass. It is an amazing experience. It showed the 'pump' going lub-dub each second, and blood squirting and spurting everywhere...and failing in some choked pipes.
Bypass surgery is nothing but plumbering.
***************************************************************************************************************
In Hyderabad I watch many trucks bearing the bold legend: GHMWSSB.
I got to know that the acronym stands for:
Greater Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board.
Nice, isn't it? The same Board is in charge of both the Arteries and Veins of Hyderabad. Is it any wonder there is a thorough mix-up in its Plumbering Lines?
*****************************************************************************************************************
DC Hyderabad Edition, Page 2 News Report titled:
"...The veterinary department and the etymological cell of the GHMC handle the dogs and mosquito menace respectively..."
===========================================================================
I first heard this magic word: "Plumbering" from my sister while she was describing her trials, travails and tribulations with the Plumber of their apartment block.
I liked the word...it is badly needed.
Plumbing is the Works...plumbering is the havoc a dedicated plumber can wreak with his plumbing.
Like tinkering, tailoring, sailoring and soldiering...sorry!
There is yet another word with even more conjugations:
commenting, commentating and commentatoring.
*************************************************************************************************************
One morning while I was staying alone in Qrs C1-97 at IIT KGP, which had its own weird plumbing, the bathroom tap broke and fell down on the floor. And precious water was gushing all over the floor. There was no way I could close it. So, I ran to the Plumbering Section and pleaded with the Supervisor to send one of his plumbers (all of who were smoking beedies and waiting for their 'duty roster'). The Supervisor brusquely pointed to the Complaints Register.
An hour later, this chap came on his ancient push-bike with his bag and baggage and entered the swimming bathroom; and rebuked me:
"You wrote that the tap is broken, so I brought a new tap. But what is broken is the bibcock...don't you know the difference?", saying which he biked back.
So, ignorance of English and her nuances is unpardonable.
***************************************************************************************************************
My son's wedding muhurat was at an auspicious and convenient 9 AM in Nellore. And as you may know, the 'bandwidth' of the muhurat is just 5 minutes...the planets would drift away...'planet' means 'wanderer', as I was told by my English Teacher.
And my 85-year old Mom very much wanted to witness the rare occasion and be the MC. And she was staying at my said sister's apartment. And she got up early for her ablutions and Puja and entered the bathroom in good time. But, she took the support of the water pipe for getting up from her toilet seat. And the pipe broke and all hell broke loose with it. The 'check' valve was on top of the 6-floor apartment block, and the finding and closing it took so much time that she missed the muhurat to the discomfiture of all.
**************************************************************************************************************
When he joined his IT Firm in Hyderabad, my son was staying alone for a while on the first floor of an old and dilapidated apartment block. One day he returned 'home' at midnight to find all the floors of all the rooms in his apartment flooded with water sprinkled with cockroaches, leavings of cooked vegetables and garbage....
I am told that first floors are prone to this type of hilarity. Next morning when he paid an 'emergency' sum of Rs 1000 to the Plumber to clear the whole damn works, he was gifted with tennis balls, broken toys, and pebbles and stones that choked the drainage pipe.
We bought our apartment on the 6th floor of the Nile Valley...cleverly.
***************************************************************************************************************
I read that the whole human body is governed by the flow of blood and with the heart as the main pump and blood vessels of various girths it is nothing but an elaborate system of plumbing. The heart not only is a pump but also an elaborate 'sewage recycling' mechanism.
By the way, sewage is different than sewerage...
I happened to see a video of this system when my friend had to undergo a heart bypass. It is an amazing experience. It showed the 'pump' going lub-dub each second, and blood squirting and spurting everywhere...and failing in some choked pipes.
Bypass surgery is nothing but plumbering.
***************************************************************************************************************
In Hyderabad I watch many trucks bearing the bold legend: GHMWSSB.
I got to know that the acronym stands for:
Greater Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board.
Nice, isn't it? The same Board is in charge of both the Arteries and Veins of Hyderabad. Is it any wonder there is a thorough mix-up in its Plumbering Lines?
*****************************************************************************************************************
What's that again?
DC Hyderabad Edition, Page 2 News Report titled:
Rodents on a rampage in city, residents worried
"...The veterinary department and the etymological cell of the GHMC handle the dogs and mosquito menace respectively..."
===========================================================================
Monday, October 3, 2011
Enthu &c
==========================================================================
Saswat writes:
"...One of the first words one learns of when one joins the IITs is "enthu". Starting from the time when we joined the halls till we graduated, we were always asked by the seniors to keep our "enthu" high and then, in turn, we asked our juniors to do the same. Except, during those 4-5 years, what this "enthu" exactly entailed and implied was never very clear. Did it just mean helping out the seniors with hall activities, or did it mean participating actively in the OP rituals, or did it mean keeping our CGPAs high, or did it mean mandatory participation in inter-Hall competitions? Or did it mean all of these?
And the last two days at the panIIT were all about this "enthu". We all get busy with our lives, doing whatever it is that we do. And in the process the intensity of the "enthu" loses a bit of its sharpness. The panIIT conference was all about resharpening the enthu...."
***************************************************************************************************************
Coming from a Village School where we were taught condensed Shakespeare by Charles Lamb, the only new English word I learned at my University was: "bore". And we used it almost daily, many times over.
And the first two words I overheard from students at IIT KGP were the ones mentioned by Saswat:
"enthu" and "funda"
I must admit I use these words in my blogs fairly regularly.
"Enthu" is of course doing the same thing but with a "lusty oomph"
I guess the opposite of "enthu" is my University's: "bore". And KGP, without its students and their "enthu" is a veritable bore.
"Funda" is of course the short for "fundamentals". But it comes with adjectives:
"nil-funda" and high-funda"
"Fundoo!!!" is altogether different (note the exclamation marks)
The other word I learned soon after joining KGP was "tempo"; not to be confused with the luggage carrier in AP. As a newcomer, I used to watch Inter-Hall Football and the one constant feature was what we now call "cheerleaders"... bunches of Hallmates banging drums and tins shouting: "RK ka tampo high high!" and then going round the Campus beating bigger and more noisy drums dressed or undressed suitably.
Saswat, a couple of years junior to Indra, was in my Room one day when I was e-chatting with Indra at Princeton who was asking nervously who got the "Illu" award and dancing when I told him it was his good old Azad Hall. Saswat was mystified how a chap who left KGP should be so attached to his old Hall at IIT. Today of course Saswat is talking proudly about, "one of my Lalloo hallmates". I guess that is part of Hall Tempo.
Soon after joining KGP, I learned that students there are sharply divided into two incongruous groups: "guys" and "ghoonks". I had heard about guys but not the other variety and had to ask. Apparently guys are typically dressed in jeans and T-shirts (a new term to me) and the attitude that went with that sort of attire. Ghoonks are bespectacled bookworms having no interest in anything else and had to be helped out in social occasions like Hall Days (another new term to me). Ghoonks were probably akin to what nowadays are called: "nerds"
It was received wisdom that the B C Roy Gold Medal went to a guy while the PGM went to a ghoonk. There were of course a couple of "schizo-cases" when both were bagged by the same guy (ghoonk). They were exceptions rather than the rule. I taught one of them in his First Year (Siddharth Chatterjee) and it was a pleasure.
Any "funda" on the etymology of "ghoonk"? Is it a corruption of "goon"?
One day I was bewildered to hear someone speak of a Professor as DOSA. The only dosa I knew being the South Indian hot-cake. I was told it was the abbreviation of the newly created Dean of Students Affairs.
My son taught me what a SODA is. I thought of the welcome dilution drink, but he said it referred to the: "Son of DOSA"
During the 1960s there were very few diversions for the students and so they used to attend their classes. And when they didn't like their Teacher, they didn't "mass-cut" but made the Teacher miserable by catcalls, whistles, jumping on benches and booing; especially if they were Second Years...a notoriously rowdy crowd...just out of the first Year "OP" and on the right end now.
Later on, into the 1980s, there were no "mass-cuts" but "solo-cuts"...I guess the culture changed dramatically with the invention of "segregation" of the freshers. I am sure Arjun Malhotra and his incoming batchmates of 1965 would have been scandalized by this notion of segregation...I do not know if it served the intended purpose but surely they lost one year of residing in the same Hall right from the start...perhaps the "Hall Tempo" was that much diluted...but no!...there were street fights with hockey sticks as recently as 2001 over which tree belonged to which Hall during Gymkhana Elections (Saswat! Ask your junior Columbia KGPian {;-} privately).
There were also a couple of abiding nicknames for teachers:
Chota-Mota...no one knew his real name...
Bomchat (of chemistry) was the younger brother of our Ram-da (physics). He had a booming voice and was universally liked by First Years as the Best Chemistry Teacher...Dharam Vir mentioned him in his Tribune article:
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030322/windows/main3.htm
O tempora! O mores!!
===========================================================================
Saswat writes:
"...One of the first words one learns of when one joins the IITs is "enthu". Starting from the time when we joined the halls till we graduated, we were always asked by the seniors to keep our "enthu" high and then, in turn, we asked our juniors to do the same. Except, during those 4-5 years, what this "enthu" exactly entailed and implied was never very clear. Did it just mean helping out the seniors with hall activities, or did it mean participating actively in the OP rituals, or did it mean keeping our CGPAs high, or did it mean mandatory participation in inter-Hall competitions? Or did it mean all of these?
Later, many years after I had left IIT, when I met a firm's CEO (an ex-IITKGPian) in 2008, he kept associating the panIIT event with the word "enthu" a lot. Even though he was obviously a very busy person, running the firm in the US and its subsidiary in Chennai (and, in the process, employing hundreds of people), he was very excited about meeting an IIT-junior and gave me "funda" and asked me that I should attend the next panIIT. And he told me that we (as in the IITians) must keep our "enthu" high. It was sort of funny, it had been a while since I had heard the word.
***************************************************************************************************************
Coming from a Village School where we were taught condensed Shakespeare by Charles Lamb, the only new English word I learned at my University was: "bore". And we used it almost daily, many times over.
And the first two words I overheard from students at IIT KGP were the ones mentioned by Saswat:
"enthu" and "funda"
I must admit I use these words in my blogs fairly regularly.
"Enthu" is of course doing the same thing but with a "lusty oomph"
I guess the opposite of "enthu" is my University's: "bore". And KGP, without its students and their "enthu" is a veritable bore.
"Funda" is of course the short for "fundamentals". But it comes with adjectives:
"nil-funda" and high-funda"
"Fundoo!!!" is altogether different (note the exclamation marks)
The other word I learned soon after joining KGP was "tempo"; not to be confused with the luggage carrier in AP. As a newcomer, I used to watch Inter-Hall Football and the one constant feature was what we now call "cheerleaders"... bunches of Hallmates banging drums and tins shouting: "RK ka tampo high high!" and then going round the Campus beating bigger and more noisy drums dressed or undressed suitably.
Saswat, a couple of years junior to Indra, was in my Room one day when I was e-chatting with Indra at Princeton who was asking nervously who got the "Illu" award and dancing when I told him it was his good old Azad Hall. Saswat was mystified how a chap who left KGP should be so attached to his old Hall at IIT. Today of course Saswat is talking proudly about, "one of my Lalloo hallmates". I guess that is part of Hall Tempo.
Soon after joining KGP, I learned that students there are sharply divided into two incongruous groups: "guys" and "ghoonks". I had heard about guys but not the other variety and had to ask. Apparently guys are typically dressed in jeans and T-shirts (a new term to me) and the attitude that went with that sort of attire. Ghoonks are bespectacled bookworms having no interest in anything else and had to be helped out in social occasions like Hall Days (another new term to me). Ghoonks were probably akin to what nowadays are called: "nerds"
It was received wisdom that the B C Roy Gold Medal went to a guy while the PGM went to a ghoonk. There were of course a couple of "schizo-cases" when both were bagged by the same guy (ghoonk). They were exceptions rather than the rule. I taught one of them in his First Year (Siddharth Chatterjee) and it was a pleasure.
Any "funda" on the etymology of "ghoonk"? Is it a corruption of "goon"?
One day I was bewildered to hear someone speak of a Professor as DOSA. The only dosa I knew being the South Indian hot-cake. I was told it was the abbreviation of the newly created Dean of Students Affairs.
My son taught me what a SODA is. I thought of the welcome dilution drink, but he said it referred to the: "Son of DOSA"
During the 1960s there were very few diversions for the students and so they used to attend their classes. And when they didn't like their Teacher, they didn't "mass-cut" but made the Teacher miserable by catcalls, whistles, jumping on benches and booing; especially if they were Second Years...a notoriously rowdy crowd...just out of the first Year "OP" and on the right end now.
Later on, into the 1980s, there were no "mass-cuts" but "solo-cuts"...I guess the culture changed dramatically with the invention of "segregation" of the freshers. I am sure Arjun Malhotra and his incoming batchmates of 1965 would have been scandalized by this notion of segregation...I do not know if it served the intended purpose but surely they lost one year of residing in the same Hall right from the start...perhaps the "Hall Tempo" was that much diluted...but no!...there were street fights with hockey sticks as recently as 2001 over which tree belonged to which Hall during Gymkhana Elections (Saswat! Ask your junior Columbia KGPian {;-} privately).
There were also a couple of abiding nicknames for teachers:
Chota-Mota...no one knew his real name...
Bomchat (of chemistry) was the younger brother of our Ram-da (physics). He had a booming voice and was universally liked by First Years as the Best Chemistry Teacher...Dharam Vir mentioned him in his Tribune article:
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030322/windows/main3.htm
O tempora! O mores!!
===========================================================================
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Woodpeckers - 2
==========================================================================
After living for two decades in Qrs C1-97 and when all doors and windows stopped closing if open and opening if closed, we moved to the best Qrs at IIT: Qrs B-140 where we lived for over a decade till my retirement... a 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom affair.
As soon as we moved in, we found there was a lone bathroom attached to the Guest Bedroom, in which there was a Designer Western Toilet. It was so tiny that I was sure my predecessor there, Prof KVR of the 'Protocol' fame, a rotund figure a la Piloo Modi, could never have been able to squeeze in. And after squeezing in, and turning back, I noticed a huge mirror screwed up on the door, not up the wash basin, but way above the commode...you can only fantasize about the choice of its location...
So, I decided to unscrew it from the door and screw it back on the wall of the Guest Bedroom (so-called...it was supposed to be my Study...but by then I was too old to study).
I didn't know that unscrewing a 20-year-old rusted mirror and screwing it back elsewhere could be a hazardous task. So, I took my screw-driver and by main force succeeded in taking it out. And when I tried to screw it back on the wall, all hell broke loose, and one hard turn of the screw-driver cracked it with a discomforting 'phut'.
By then there was this Carpenter in the Tech Market, who was young and efficient but known to be abrupt. I took the mirror with its gaping semicircular chip off to him and asked him if he could kindly fix it on my wall, after cutting it to size. He looked hard at me and said that he was not into house-calls and spat on the Tech Market Wall his mouthful of 'the blood of them beetles they chew' (as the wise Japanese tourist to Cal explained to the horror-stricken Yankee tourist).
It was already 8 PM and I was forlorn. And I appealed mutely to the Father Carpenter who took pity on me and asked me to go to the DVC glass shop and get the damn thing cut to size with the diamond-cutter and then bring it back; which I did. By the time I returned, the Father seemed to have coaxed his Son, since the Son ordered me to take him on my pillion quick...he has lots of pending work in his Shop.
With a few expert drills and soothing screwings he did the job in 2 minutes flat and ordered me to drop him back in the Tech Market.
I was mighty pleased watching him at work and asked him how much should I pay him for his house-call and expertise (I was looking at a round Rs 100).
He then emitted one more grunt, refused payment, and rebuked me:
"Hom oisa admi nahin hain jo aapki musibat mey faida uthainge!"
rendered loosely as:
"I am not the sort who would capitalize on your trouble"
It was then that I recalled that in some communities a broken mirror in a new house is an evil omen...nothing horrible happened to me though...other than a car loan and a house loan both at a whopping 14% interest which I couldn't fully repay by the time I retired...
****************************************************************************************************************
And then the other day we took possession of our Nile Valley Apartment and were looking for a Hyderabadi Carpenter who would do the wood work in our 3 bedrooms, Hall and kitchen.
And we were referred to the best carpenter in the locality, Mr Reddy.
One phone call brought him to our doorstep. I answered the door bell and in walked a tall gentleman with a designer bag in his hand and announced himself as the renowned Reddy Carpenter. I couldn't believe my eyes...he was so different than the gloomy Sardarjee or the glib IIT carpenter RD or the Tech Market Despot.
He took his seat on the sofa and after my son and D-i-L presented themselves, he took out a laptop from his bag and went about giving demos of various designs...a virtual tour of the interiors after he would be through. My son and D-i-L had done a lot of home work and so decided on which of the things they liked best, in a couple of hours.
And then he quoted his price after making some complicated calculations on his compu... after some haggling it came to a cool Rs 3 lakhs. And he wanted the money in 3 installments of 1 lakh each. And he was averse to check or draft but wanted crisp thousand rupee notes.
My son had only credit cards and internet banking and he hardly withdraws or carries cash.
The first lakh was easy...he went in and collected all the sundry dollar and euro notes he saved up on his dozen and more Business Trips and a rough calculation came to over a lakh in the latest rupee exchange rate.
All he had to do was ring up an Exchange Guy who presented himself at our home with wads of thousand rupee notes stuffed into his bulging pockets. And in 15 minutes the Exchange was through and the Reddy Sir was paid.
And within a week, he brought a minitruckful of about a hundred machine-cut plywood sheets of various sizes...Jaswant Singh of Gole Bazaar would have fainted.
And after dumping them in our Nile Valley he asked for the next lakh in cash in 2 days.
That was when I had to withdraw a lakh of rupees from our Savings Bank Account in the high-end SR Nagar Branch of SBI. I didn't want to go there and encash a check, because all the seven queues would be 25 long and I can' stand that long. Of course there was a separate line for Senior Citizens and Ladies, but by now you know that I don't like to be seen as either in public...as I told Aniket, I am an evergreen teenager at heart.
So, we decided to draw the amount from an ATM, and I rang up the Relationship Manager (relationship???) to find out the upper limit of cash I can draw in a day.
He replied at once: "40K if yours is a Mastro Card and 50K if it is a Visa Card"
I pulled out my Card to look and you guessed it right...Murphy's Law...it was a Mastro...
That meant I needed 3 trips to the ATM in 3 days...
And then there was this Hyderabad Bandh:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/09/atm.html
===========================================================================
After living for two decades in Qrs C1-97 and when all doors and windows stopped closing if open and opening if closed, we moved to the best Qrs at IIT: Qrs B-140 where we lived for over a decade till my retirement... a 3-bedroom, 3-bathroom affair.
As soon as we moved in, we found there was a lone bathroom attached to the Guest Bedroom, in which there was a Designer Western Toilet. It was so tiny that I was sure my predecessor there, Prof KVR of the 'Protocol' fame, a rotund figure a la Piloo Modi, could never have been able to squeeze in. And after squeezing in, and turning back, I noticed a huge mirror screwed up on the door, not up the wash basin, but way above the commode...you can only fantasize about the choice of its location...
So, I decided to unscrew it from the door and screw it back on the wall of the Guest Bedroom (so-called...it was supposed to be my Study...but by then I was too old to study).
I didn't know that unscrewing a 20-year-old rusted mirror and screwing it back elsewhere could be a hazardous task. So, I took my screw-driver and by main force succeeded in taking it out. And when I tried to screw it back on the wall, all hell broke loose, and one hard turn of the screw-driver cracked it with a discomforting 'phut'.
By then there was this Carpenter in the Tech Market, who was young and efficient but known to be abrupt. I took the mirror with its gaping semicircular chip off to him and asked him if he could kindly fix it on my wall, after cutting it to size. He looked hard at me and said that he was not into house-calls and spat on the Tech Market Wall his mouthful of 'the blood of them beetles they chew' (as the wise Japanese tourist to Cal explained to the horror-stricken Yankee tourist).
It was already 8 PM and I was forlorn. And I appealed mutely to the Father Carpenter who took pity on me and asked me to go to the DVC glass shop and get the damn thing cut to size with the diamond-cutter and then bring it back; which I did. By the time I returned, the Father seemed to have coaxed his Son, since the Son ordered me to take him on my pillion quick...he has lots of pending work in his Shop.
With a few expert drills and soothing screwings he did the job in 2 minutes flat and ordered me to drop him back in the Tech Market.
I was mighty pleased watching him at work and asked him how much should I pay him for his house-call and expertise (I was looking at a round Rs 100).
He then emitted one more grunt, refused payment, and rebuked me:
"Hom oisa admi nahin hain jo aapki musibat mey faida uthainge!"
rendered loosely as:
"I am not the sort who would capitalize on your trouble"
It was then that I recalled that in some communities a broken mirror in a new house is an evil omen...nothing horrible happened to me though...other than a car loan and a house loan both at a whopping 14% interest which I couldn't fully repay by the time I retired...
****************************************************************************************************************
And then the other day we took possession of our Nile Valley Apartment and were looking for a Hyderabadi Carpenter who would do the wood work in our 3 bedrooms, Hall and kitchen.
And we were referred to the best carpenter in the locality, Mr Reddy.
One phone call brought him to our doorstep. I answered the door bell and in walked a tall gentleman with a designer bag in his hand and announced himself as the renowned Reddy Carpenter. I couldn't believe my eyes...he was so different than the gloomy Sardarjee or the glib IIT carpenter RD or the Tech Market Despot.
He took his seat on the sofa and after my son and D-i-L presented themselves, he took out a laptop from his bag and went about giving demos of various designs...a virtual tour of the interiors after he would be through. My son and D-i-L had done a lot of home work and so decided on which of the things they liked best, in a couple of hours.
And then he quoted his price after making some complicated calculations on his compu... after some haggling it came to a cool Rs 3 lakhs. And he wanted the money in 3 installments of 1 lakh each. And he was averse to check or draft but wanted crisp thousand rupee notes.
My son had only credit cards and internet banking and he hardly withdraws or carries cash.
The first lakh was easy...he went in and collected all the sundry dollar and euro notes he saved up on his dozen and more Business Trips and a rough calculation came to over a lakh in the latest rupee exchange rate.
All he had to do was ring up an Exchange Guy who presented himself at our home with wads of thousand rupee notes stuffed into his bulging pockets. And in 15 minutes the Exchange was through and the Reddy Sir was paid.
And within a week, he brought a minitruckful of about a hundred machine-cut plywood sheets of various sizes...Jaswant Singh of Gole Bazaar would have fainted.
And after dumping them in our Nile Valley he asked for the next lakh in cash in 2 days.
That was when I had to withdraw a lakh of rupees from our Savings Bank Account in the high-end SR Nagar Branch of SBI. I didn't want to go there and encash a check, because all the seven queues would be 25 long and I can' stand that long. Of course there was a separate line for Senior Citizens and Ladies, but by now you know that I don't like to be seen as either in public...as I told Aniket, I am an evergreen teenager at heart.
So, we decided to draw the amount from an ATM, and I rang up the Relationship Manager (relationship???) to find out the upper limit of cash I can draw in a day.
He replied at once: "40K if yours is a Mastro Card and 50K if it is a Visa Card"
I pulled out my Card to look and you guessed it right...Murphy's Law...it was a Mastro...
That meant I needed 3 trips to the ATM in 3 days...
And then there was this Hyderabad Bandh:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/09/atm.html
Happy Gandhi Jayanti!
===========================================================================
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Woodpeckers - 1
==========================================================================
Over half a century I had interacted with four carpenters, each quite different from the other.
A few years after I joined KGP, my friend got married and was setting up 'home'. That meant a sofa set, a dining set and a double bed pronto. Inquiries revealed that the best carpenter in Gole Bazaar was Jaswant Singh presiding over his Cabinet Mart.
We pedaled to Gole Bazaar and entered the Holy Presence. For, he was unlike the run-of-the-mill jovial Sardarjee. He was fiftyish, sullen, gruff and looked at us like a Government Official disturbed in his chai pani by intruders.
When we announced that we were from IIT, he grimaced as if we were too poor to afford his seasoned teak handcarved beauties. He then beckoned one of his assistants to show us around his huge stock of teak planks all left on umpteen attics for seasoning over years. But that is all...there were no exhibits. You order and then he will make them and supply. You just trust him.
And the prices he quoted were double the next nearest. And you would be too scared to haggle. And he would levy the 6% Sales Tax and insist on giving receipts. You have to pay and take them.
But when the furniture arrived, one after the other, over a month or more, you would cuddle them as lovingly as if they were your babies...the finish, the curves, the Decolam tops, the whole thing would be dreamy.
And they have lasted half a century just as they were when they were bought and you are sure they will last another. A totally exhilarating experience.
And we were told that knowing folks would ship them to the US and sell them at fifty times their cost...handmade furniture is expensive there.
Jaswant Singh's eldest son was our Physics student about whom I wrote in:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/09/lincolns-precept.html
His younger sons acquired his business and kept it up...I bought a king-size single cot for my son from JS Junior and it is as good as new here in Hyderabad.
*************************************************************************************************************
Then there was this Ratneswar Das, an IIT Employee in the Carpentry Section. The good thing about him was that he was approachable and didn't scowl at you. That is about all.
In our Qrs C1- 97, there was this back door exit to the garden. I was unlucky that whoever made that door was a misanthrope and was in a hurry. It must have been made of raw mango wood and left there to the elements. Sun, rain and cold had such ticklish nonlinear warping on it that if the door closes in winter, it won't in summer. And in rains, it closes at the top but leaves a gaping slit at the bottom.
RD would come in, inspect it, and ask us to choose once for all whether we want the bottom open or the top. The choice is delicate and personal...if it is open at the bottom, snakes would be your visiting professors; and if you close it at the bottom, the top would be inviting bats to fly in.
We chose the bats.
This reminds me of the sorry tale of my close Bengali friend who narrated to me his howling 'first night' experience. He came from North Calcutta...maybe the Five Point Crossing (not Someone ;-)). He owned a chateau from generations down and he was most attached to it. But his bride hailed from the posh and mod New Alipore in South Cal.
And his mom insisted that their suhag raat be held in their ancestral home, like hers and her predecessors...
And when the pourparlers were through, more or less, he heard a scream and a faint from his best half. When she came to by and by, she jumped up and asked him:
"What are they...those black things hanging upside down from the wooden ceiling?"
And when he said they were just harmless house-bats and tried explaining how they use ultrasonar principle to navigate blindly over ceiling fans, cots and bridal couples, she fainted again...
********************************************************************************************
To be continued tomorrow...
**********************************************************************************************************
Full Page Advertisement in DC by the Shipping Corporation of India (Golden Jubilee):
==========================================================================
Over half a century I had interacted with four carpenters, each quite different from the other.
A few years after I joined KGP, my friend got married and was setting up 'home'. That meant a sofa set, a dining set and a double bed pronto. Inquiries revealed that the best carpenter in Gole Bazaar was Jaswant Singh presiding over his Cabinet Mart.
We pedaled to Gole Bazaar and entered the Holy Presence. For, he was unlike the run-of-the-mill jovial Sardarjee. He was fiftyish, sullen, gruff and looked at us like a Government Official disturbed in his chai pani by intruders.
When we announced that we were from IIT, he grimaced as if we were too poor to afford his seasoned teak handcarved beauties. He then beckoned one of his assistants to show us around his huge stock of teak planks all left on umpteen attics for seasoning over years. But that is all...there were no exhibits. You order and then he will make them and supply. You just trust him.
And the prices he quoted were double the next nearest. And you would be too scared to haggle. And he would levy the 6% Sales Tax and insist on giving receipts. You have to pay and take them.
But when the furniture arrived, one after the other, over a month or more, you would cuddle them as lovingly as if they were your babies...the finish, the curves, the Decolam tops, the whole thing would be dreamy.
And they have lasted half a century just as they were when they were bought and you are sure they will last another. A totally exhilarating experience.
And we were told that knowing folks would ship them to the US and sell them at fifty times their cost...handmade furniture is expensive there.
Jaswant Singh's eldest son was our Physics student about whom I wrote in:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/09/lincolns-precept.html
His younger sons acquired his business and kept it up...I bought a king-size single cot for my son from JS Junior and it is as good as new here in Hyderabad.
*************************************************************************************************************
Then there was this Ratneswar Das, an IIT Employee in the Carpentry Section. The good thing about him was that he was approachable and didn't scowl at you. That is about all.
In our Qrs C1- 97, there was this back door exit to the garden. I was unlucky that whoever made that door was a misanthrope and was in a hurry. It must have been made of raw mango wood and left there to the elements. Sun, rain and cold had such ticklish nonlinear warping on it that if the door closes in winter, it won't in summer. And in rains, it closes at the top but leaves a gaping slit at the bottom.
RD would come in, inspect it, and ask us to choose once for all whether we want the bottom open or the top. The choice is delicate and personal...if it is open at the bottom, snakes would be your visiting professors; and if you close it at the bottom, the top would be inviting bats to fly in.
We chose the bats.
This reminds me of the sorry tale of my close Bengali friend who narrated to me his howling 'first night' experience. He came from North Calcutta...maybe the Five Point Crossing (not Someone ;-)). He owned a chateau from generations down and he was most attached to it. But his bride hailed from the posh and mod New Alipore in South Cal.
And his mom insisted that their suhag raat be held in their ancestral home, like hers and her predecessors...
And when the pourparlers were through, more or less, he heard a scream and a faint from his best half. When she came to by and by, she jumped up and asked him:
"What are they...those black things hanging upside down from the wooden ceiling?"
And when he said they were just harmless house-bats and tried explaining how they use ultrasonar principle to navigate blindly over ceiling fans, cots and bridal couples, she fainted again...
********************************************************************************************
To be continued tomorrow...
**********************************************************************************************************
Tailpiece
Full Page Advertisement in DC by the Shipping Corporation of India (Golden Jubilee):
Valedictory Ceremony
of the Golden Jubilee Celebration
& Release of the Coffee Table Book
by Dr Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister of India
of the Golden Jubilee Celebration
& Release of the Coffee Table Book
by Dr Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister of India
gps: Didn't know that our beloved PM is writing Coffee Table Books!
==========================================================================
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