Juvenile Justice

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The first ever medical implement I saw in my life was at the tender age of 4. My Father bought it and used to keep it at a height two or three feet above mine...thinking it was safe from me.

He didn't read William James' Principles of Psychology:

Jimmy distinguishes living things from nonliving not by physiology but psychology. It is a different matter that Freud and his ilk maintained that there is nothing called physiology...every damn thing is psychology...including why water flows downwards and air goes upwards...that is, if you are not suffering from a certain class of digestive disorders, in which case, the direction of flow of water and wind is reversed...sorry!

Jimmy says that nonliving things like a bar magnet and needle don't have a 'will' of their own. When a magnet is brought anywhere near the needle, the needle feels a fatal attraction to the magnet and runs towards it and gets stuck in its embrace. But if you interpose a paper between the two, the needle is fooled and won't know how to overcome the obstacle placed by her mom.

On the other hand take, say, Romeo and Juliet. Julie's fatal attraction is as pronounced as in the nonliving needle and she runs in and gets stuck to Romey. But, mark this, if you build a wall of six feet or less between them, she is not flummoxed, but tries to climb the wall and jump down and in the process breaks her legs.

This proves (according to Jimmy) unequivocally that Juliet is a living being much like those jumping frogs that used to make my life hell in the bathrooms of Qrs B-140 at IIT KGP. Half way through my holy intestinal ablutions, I used to notice a (female, since she is pink) jumping frog stuck like a leech to the side wall, making preparatory movements of her hind legs as if taking aim:

http://www.clownlink.com/uploaded_images/frog_jumping-714039.gif

Coming to my Father's prize possession, he used to call it his Hick's Thermometer. It was a slender object asking to be broken and kept in an even more breakable hard plastic case. 

My relations with this ghastly thing were always clumsy in every sense of the word. As soon as Father brought it out and kept it on his table preparing to take my temperature and turns back to get water to cleanse it (he was finicky about infections and always suspected that folks with dreaded diseases like typhoid were using it behind his back), it would roll down any which way since the floors those days were even more uneven than my teeth now.

So, as I watched its downfall with glee, and did nothing to prevent it, it would fall down and break into a fudge of glass and mercury. And all hell would break loose when he returned and looked for it. And squarely blame me. I used to protest vehemently but he used to believe that inaction is as punishable as action (karma vs akarma). And thrash me till Mother came down from the kitchen and took Father to task for hitting a sick child.

I was very astute in jurisprudence even at that tender age, because, I recalled that last time when the Jintan fell down from his hands and broke into two like Humpty Dumpty, Father didn't hit himself but blamed my mom for sneezing just when he was taking it out from its case...and I saw that there is no justice for kids and wives in this Man's World.

And promised myself that I would never hit my toddler son for breaking my things...it is a different matter that once he tried to lift a full glass bottle of Mango Pickle (in my wife's absence).

Nowadays however the boot is on the other leg...whenever anything breakable (like that full bottle of Dabur's Honey) falls and (invariably) breaks with a soul-shattering crash, my son of a gun lolling in his shower takes it for granted that I am the culprit and shouts that old folks should keep themselves to themselves and not meddle with glass bottles...and I wink at Ishani like that chap who volunteered to be guillotined for love in the Tale of Two Cities (London and Paris...not Hyderabad and Secunderabad).

Who said, "There is no Justice in this World"?


...Posted by Ishani

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Lower Court & Higher Court

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In all of my 40 years at IIT KGP, I must have attended a couple of dozen Farewell Functions. But went to the dais and spoke a couple of sentences only in two of these.

I have already blogged about the few words I spoke in Dr Chitnis' Farewell:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/03/gupshup.html

The other is in Prof Sikand's (MSS) Farewell. Both '2-sentence-speeches' were unprepared and spontaneous.

Prof BC was the HoD when MSS retired. And BC, in his Presidential Remarks, said that SDM (my Guide) used to say that he (SDM) was the Higher Court and MSS was the Lower Court. What SDM meant was that folks with doubts and questions in Classical Mechanics should approach MSS first; and disturb him only if MSS fails to satisfy them.

Since I trained under SDM for 5 years and MSS for 15 years, I went to the dais and said that I am the only person in the Universe who was fortunate to attend the Lower as well as the Higher Courts.

MSS told me that when SDM joined IIT KGP with the huge 'claptrap' of being the Best Brain in Bengal, he wanted to test SDM by approaching him humbly with 'doubts' which were really wicked viva traps designed by him. And found that SDM never gave a wrong answer...although he could not always come up the right answer. And certified that SDM's intuition in Physics was as terrific as his mastery in Math.

Both of them are away 'elsewhere' now and I often enjoy the recollection of my times with them. And I was fortunate to write that Homage to SDM which was enjoyed by many youngsters at KGP:

http://www.phy.iitkgp.ernet.in/ansatz3/sdm.html

And now it is my 'thing of joy' that a short blog I posted long long ago titled: Sikand's Precept:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/01/sikands-precept.html

caught the attention of his daughter Minu:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/04/she-made-my-day.html

And totally unexpectedly it has gone 'viral' and turned out to be the most widely read post of mine...a position held so far by:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/08/reco-mela-2.html

And so, in a sense, I have been able to repay my debts of gratitude to my two 'teachers' at IIT KGP...the Lower as well as the Higher Courts.

While I was composing this piece, a new Comment arrived on the post: Sikand's Precept:

gautam said...

Respected Sir,

I just discovered your blog from a IIT KGP friends Facebook update and I am very happy to have located this. I have read your post regarding Prof. Sikand. I never had the chance of interacting with him or be his student. But I know this that you were one of my most inspiring teachers and guide and if Prof. Sikand has inspired you then all my respects to him.

Today I am a theoretical physicist because several of my teachers inspired me with their commitment, courage and example and above all with a vision of unparalleled beauty that was so addictive and you Sir was one of the most prominent of all these legendary teachers.

It is said that the debt of Parents and Teachers can never be repaid. But I think otherwise, there is a way to repay this debt and that is to carry on their commitment conviction and impart their vision of beauty to your own students. I am happy Sir that I am able to do this.

With my sincerest regards and respect

Your's Gautam

Gautam Sengupta
Dept. of Physics
IIT Kanpur
208016

April 7, 2012 12:44 PM

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My Cup of Joy is Full...because, as Gautam says, the debt of parents and teachers can never be fully repaid. But, thanx to the 'new media' as they say, where there are no referees and editors to bug you, it turns out possible to proclaim your irredeemable debts loudly to whosoever cares to hear them.

Hail Blogosphere!
We've no Referees here
Nor those goofy Editors
We stand or fall by our Readers

Hail Blogosphere!

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Lazy Boys

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This is a sequel to the blog: 'In Praise of Laziness' posted long long ago:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/10/in-praise-of-laziness.html

Any praise of laziness is as sweet to Bengalis as honey is to sloth bears. It is said that our bear-babu would climb up the treetop from which a full and ripe hive is hanging and starts tearing it apart. The busy bees jealously guarding their winter stock of food would get mad and try and sting the grizzly invader all over but as you know they succeed only in tickling him...much like my Guru SDM trying to administer a 'public snubbing' to his veteran Research Scholars.

So, Shyamal was so pleased with that blog that he forwarded it to his friendly editor of Now & Again of The Statesman which, bearing a Bengali hallmark, immediately published it.

The above story of the sloth bear, who, after feasting on the rich honey climbs down, saunters to the nearest pool, washes himself thoroughly, gets up drowsily, and sinks on the sand into blissful oblivion for two days and nights, proves one thing:

It is the story of civilization itself...the food-hunter turning food-gatherer.

Everyone knows that civilization started in the river valleys of Nile, Tigris, Euphrates...and Ganges in the undivided Bengal where it divides itself into a million streams forming deltas (and epsilons).

One fine day our head-hunting Ancestor in Bengal (AB) found a few grains of rice sticking to his body and shook himself thoroughly before picking up his ax and bow and arrows (Bows were later on manufactured in Bowbazaar). And when he returned three months later, he found rice TREES which bore millions of grains of rice...the delta was so fertile...even in the stark deserts of Israel, they multiply hundredfold:

"Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty"....Matthew 13

And AB picked a bowlful of rice grains and gave them to his wife saying:

"Stud them in your flower-garland that I gifted you last birthday"

And his wife scolded her hubby:

"chup kore thaak...eyi chaul ta niye maacher biryani banaabo"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBLxT9mvfng

That's it! Our hirsute ancestor stopped hunting then on and started composing lyrics. This is the reason why IIT KGP (situated in W. B.) happens to be the only IIT to start a Department of Agricultural & Food (ummm!) Engg incorporating Aquaculture...big name for maacher bazaar:

http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/20740870.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.panoramio.com/photo/20740870&h=1536&w=2048&sz=634&tbnid=17eHiTDwZy4G4M:&tbnh=90&tbnw=120&zoom=1&docid=xWbFB7VYtkcCfM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1TV_T6GLBeaSiAf89eCnBA&ved=0CDgQ9QEwBA&dur=2513

And started speaking rich Bengali then on. He knew that it is futile to give genders to lifeless objects, like the Hindi-speaking warrior-Aryan race. Tyagi told me the absurdity of Hindi grammar...'mooch' is feminine (since it is small) while 'sthun' is masculine (since it used to be pretty big before the size zero caught on).

In our civilized Bengli language we say: "Ramu khaachhe; Sita wu khacche"...while in Hindi I am told they have to say: "Ramu khata hai; lekin Sita khati hai"

In this respect Bengali is akin to the other most civilized language by name English that has conquered the whole world, where they say: "Ramu is eating; Sita too is eating (grubbing)"

I now know why Rommel lost the El Alamein battle to Monty...he had to send orders in writing to his officers on the field in German...also Reports to the Fuhrer. And if he makes a mistake in gender, of say Wehrmacht (which is feminine), he will get the boot. Also, he had to capitalize ALL nouns; and shunt his verbs to the end of sentences. All this eats up valuable battle time. While Monty has only to roar: "Kill the buggers!"

There is of course one exception in English: While 'you', 'he', 'she' and 'it' are spelt with small letters, 'I' happens to be capitalized...awkwardly...this is because, if 'I' were to be decapitated (I mean, not capitalized), and simply spelt small as 'i', it would be imaginary ...understand?

Nowadays, however, Supratim is trying hard not to capitalize his 'I's...but simply write: 'i'...he thinks I take it as a symptom of egolessness (what a word!).

But I am not fooled...he is just too lazy nowadays to waste energy...so he doesn't like to press the Shift key down and keep it pressed...he has other more pressing duties.

Any guess which part of India produced our Supratim?

You are right...Paschim Bango!

Listen to what he said NINE months ago:

"Power chairs brought to mind a favourite chair i had for nearly 7 years while i was in canada. In north america there is a famous brand called laz(ee)boy which sells for hundreds and sometimes even thousands of dollars. My second hand sofa chair bought in mint condition for $20 could beat any lazboy hands down. It was fabulously comfortable and the only possession that was very difficult to part with when i returned to india."

gps: Didn't I tell you!!!

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Talk It Out - 2

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Late one evening in 1972 I was visiting my guide SDM's Qrs to settle some issues with the Field Calculation of Cherenkov Radiation. He and I sat in sofas opposite one another and he was deeply pondering with his favorite book on Integral Transforms in his hand (I forget the author's name). As usual, after ten minutes of eerie silence and intense brooding, he nodded his head with a smile lighting up his face, and asked me to try Faltung...he never called it Convolution Theorem. Meanwhile I was also thinking, and his comment lit up a bulb in my tiny brain too. I collected my khata and was about to leave when he asked me to go to his Study (Guest Room), do the calculations then and there and report, since he was curious to know the result.

I can proudly say that after I joined him in the Cherenkov Problem he never had to take pen and paper...he supplied the Brain and I the Brawn.

After about half an hour he called me out: "Shastry!" and I left my khata and went back to the Drawing Room. And found him sitting in the long sofa with his Remington Portable in front of him on his center-piece and composing the Introduction of his 'independent' Paper titled: "Volume Element of SU(n)". He had a perplexed look on his face and said: "I am unable to see how best to write this para and I am unhappy with what I have written; see if you can help."

I was aghast since I knew nothing of group theory, and he knew it too. So, without looking at what he had written, I asked him to tell me what exactly he wanted to say. That was an unexpected gambit for him...he thought I would read his version and ask him questions for clarification. And he sat back and thought for a couple of minutes and 'explained' to me what he wanted to say in another minute and half.

I then said: The sentence should be framed like this: "............."; listening to which he was happy and he cancelled what he wrote earlier and typed what I dictated. And he read it aloud and smiled naughtily and remarked: "But this is precisely what I told you just now." And I too switched on my smile. And then he paid the best compliment I ever got from him:

"Discussions with you have always been fruitful"

And this is just because I always made him talk it out and merely acted like a sounding board for him.

Here is the wiki entry for the Sounding Board:

"The term is also used inter-personally to describe one person listening to another, and especially to their ideas. When a person listens and responds with comments, they provide perspective that otherwise would not be available through introspection or thought alone."

This trick worked with DB many times later on during our 2-decade community-living in C - 239

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Of all the Talkers I met, KK is special.

He did his M Sc Project with me and it turned out to be the best, with some new results that later appeared in PRS (London). During that summer vacation, he used to arrive at my Qrs after his dinner and do the calculations then and there while I was busy keeping my toddler son out of mischief. So, after about a couple of months, my wife and I ceased to be Prof and Mrs Sastry for him but became Uncle and Auntie. And my son, Sonoo.

A couple of decades later he joined us as an esteemed colleague in our Phy Dept at IIT KGP and participated as my partner in teaching the Jumbo Physics Theory. By when he was a father of two cute sons himself. And it was a pleasure for me to watch his talking style more closely. Here is its best description from Siddharth Dwivedi:

"First name that comes to my mind is that of Dr. Krishna Kumar (KK to us). A short figure, frequently adjusting his specs, he would continue with his love for the chalk and blackboard in a rather slow, self-amused manner to dwell into the basics of mechanics and non-linear dynamics with his speech going into occasional "ummmmm...mummmm", and this would take a big slice of his lecture until coffee break was announced if it was a 2-hour drill...But all the same, we loved his style and he to me is one of the best as seen yet."

"Self-amused" is the operative word. And SD missed to mention another lovely mannerism of his. When I said something and asked him if he agreed with it, he would jerk his head down in a semi-circle before saying: "Yes!"

Anyway, a good quarter century after he saw my son as a kid, he took pains to travel all the way from KGP to Hyderabad in the punishing Falaknuma Express to attend the Wedding Reception of my son in the Taj Mahal Hotel here. After the festivities were more or less through and guests began lining up for grub, there was this unexpected bunch of about a dozen Purohits (invited slyly by the Bride's party) climbing up the podium and surrounding the exhausted couple as if in a boxing ring and chanting delicious Vedic hymns blessing them for a good ten minutes.

By then KK was half-way through his plate and walked down to my side and asked:

"Who are they?"

And I said: "Brahmin Pundits"

And he switched on his ummm and mummm and an enchanting smile and remarked:

"They do look well-fed"

That one brief sentence carried a ton of innuendos on our social scene.

That is the beauty of KK's style. He would weigh and wait and when everyone would be thinking he is short of words, he would shoot a Bullet...

He told me that once he had applied for a Rs 5 lakh Project and was asked to present his proposal at IISc Bangalore. And by the time his turn came, it was too late since the earlier folks went on and on and the Chairman, Board, himself an illustrious KGPian, asked him to finish what he wanted to say in 3 minutes.

And KK told me he finished it under 2 minutes.

The Chairman was beyond himself in appreciation and said:

"Rs 5 lakhs is insufficient for such a broad investigation...I am making it Rs 10 lakhs"

And KK told me that he could do it because of his long training at IIT KGP and then IIT KNP.

Who was it that said: "Brevity is the soul of wit"?

We revert to Hamlet again:

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LORD POLONIUS

"This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go."

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And let that quote be our opposite of epigraph...whatever it is...

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Talk It Out - 1

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"To be or not to be: that is the question"

And Hamlet decided, it looks, after a handful more of soulful soliloquies, that his answer was: "not to be"...and by the end of the play we see that the stage is strewn with dead bodies.

Among our ex-ministers I loved Mani most...not because of his colorful career, diplomatic and then political...but for his heartwarming confession that he learned all his Shakespeare from Jeeves.

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Friday, March 6, 2009

A little dishonesty is BRITISH!

"Most Britons falsely claim to have read Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' ": Report

I too tried 'Peace and War',
Found it an unreadable bore;
But I read all of Shakespeare
Songs & Sonnets & King Liar.

But, most I love my Bertie,
Shaken to his foundations;
He said with honesty,
"Hamlet's full of Quotations"

Posted by G P Sastry (gps1943@yahoo.com) at 5:04 AM

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Just now I Googled and found that the 30-line soli that starts with the epigraph above has at least 10 lines quoted by Jeeves off and on.

Well, to come to the fish and chips, I was always racked by the dilemma:

"To talk or not to talk: that is the question"

For which there is no universal answer...it depends, as our Sard said, when asked if he wanted to be hanged or shot, on who is doing it.

Ask any of my contemporaries, like Mani above, and they will admit that the most interesting decade of our lives is the 1960s.

There were these white and bright youth who rebelled asking why they should die for their pappas' fight against the dubious red and yellow peril. And grew long hair (saving barbers' fees), strumming their guitars and sitars, doing drugs and dopes, singing soulful songs of Beatles and Bottles, asking one and all to 'make babies not war' and ending up as teenage parents of unwelcome infants.

Punch, as usual, caught the teen-mood by its memorable Langdon (?) cartoon showing a long-haired boy and a skimpy-dressed girl looking woefully at their baby (which they ended up making) in the crib and saying:

"To think we are no longer the younger generation!"

(By the way, today's KGPhians are happy to remain the 'younger generation' till about 40...M Sc at 24, 5 years of Ph D, two or three post-docs spanning another 5 years, 2 years of job-hunting, 2 more of partner-hunting, 2 more of planning...that makes them 40ish, no?)

And then we heard a new meaning for the old word: 'shrink':

In our boyhood, it was the standard practice of fathers insisting that tailors shrink their children's cloths before stitching them...no red-blooded tailor ever did that, but made allowances for 'shrinkage' by including a zero error on their scales...say 13 inches to a foot. With the result that the new pant and shirt we wore to the school on our birthdays were as loose as our tailors' morals.

Then one day we heard of Sanforized cloth...a brand...that was pre-shrunk and all our worries were over except the viva question: What is Sanforized about it? The best answer was that the process was invented by one Sanford (it is right...I Googled just now)

But, during the sixties, our old word: 'shrink' came to mean 'a clinical psychiatrist or psychologist' (short for headshrinker)...Webster

It became as fashionable to have a family psychiatrist as a family barber. And the chap had a 'couch' in his chamber...the first time I ever heard of a 'couch' was the one on which Wordsworth lay after wandering as a lonely cloud and found that:

And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils

Potty...as Bertie would say...

And all that the Shrink did was to lay his patient on his couch and make him talk, talk, talk out his worries, holding a pen and bill-book in his hands...

There must be thousands of cartoons on the Shrink and his couch's theme, but as usual the best is from Punch again:

It shows this dame getting up on the couch and asking her Shrink:

"Do I undress?"

Anyway, things changed enormously by the time I visited my Shrink in Hyderabad as soon as I retired, expecting that there would be a couch as cushiony as an AC Sleeper's and that he would ask me to talk talk talk...

Hell! All he had was a 'chamber' as tiny as a bird's nest and all he did was to ask me to push my both hands forward. He then held my two wrists with his two hands irrespectively for a moment and wrote down the prescription and waived his fees of Rs 250 since he had borrowed his expensive Medicine books from my wife half a century ago...he was her junior at the Medical College, Tirupati...

Gave me no chance to talk at all...neither did he talk soothingly...things seem to have changed drastically.

Not that I was too willing to talk. I wondered what I would say when he asked the default question: "What bothers you?"

The honest answer was: "Money"...and that would be an impolite thing to say; and so I would have had to invent others, like:

"My wife watches Zee TV all the time"

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To be continued tomorrow...as the half-penny serial novelettes used to say in our teens

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Random Ramblings

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The other day I wrote:

"No amount of globalization is going to change the climate of India...sunny and warm...typifying the nature of Indians"

Recall Don Bradman's quip on Indian fans:

"No Australian or English boy could possibly have written that letter. You don't need to see his signature---it is quite obvious he was from India"

Listen to our Autocrat on the subject:


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http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/751/pg751.txt

- Hospitality is a good deal a matter of latitude, I suspect.
The shade of a palm-tree serves an African for a hut;
his dwelling is all door and no walls; everybody can come in.
To make a morning call on an Esquimaux acquaintance,
one must creep through a long tunnel; his house is all walls and no door,
except such a one as an apple with a worm-hole has.
One might, very probably, trace a regular gradation between
these two extremes.  In cities where the evenings are generally hot,
the people have porches at their doors, where they sit, and this is,
of course, a provocative to the interchange of civilities.  A good deal,
which in colder regions is ascribed to mean dispositions, belongs
really to mean temperature.

Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, at noon, in a very
hot summer's day, one may realize, by a sudden extension in
his sphere of consciousness, how closely he is shut up for
the most part.--Do you not remember something like this?
July, between 1 and 2, P. M., Fahrenheit 96 degrees, or thereabout.
Windows all gaping, like the mouths of panting dogs.  Long, stinging
cry of a locust comes in from a tree, half a mile off; had forgotten there
was such a tree.  Baby's screams from a house several blocks distant;
--never knew there were any babies in the neighborhood before.
Tinman pounding something that clatters dreadfully,
--very distinct, but don't remember any tinman's shop near by.
Horses stamping on pavement to get off flies.  When you hear
these four sounds, you may set it down as a warm day.
Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode of life of the
native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it:  stroll into
the market in natural costume,--buy a water-melon for a halfpenny,
--split it, and scoop out the middle,--sit down in one half of the empty
rind, clap the other on one's head, and feast upon the pulp. 

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Of late I have been the recipient of several 'voices from the past'

They all start saying something like:

"I happened to be (randomly) browsing the web when this blog came up on the google results to my delight"

I just can't figure out how 'randomly' surfing the net or browsing the web or vice versa can bring up a particular obscure blog from the 181 million blogs (latest count) of which a majority are by women in general and moms in particular.

I once asked Aniket and he said he doesn't know...it calls for guts these days to say, "I don't know" (except in grand vivas)

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I was just thinking about the buzz words: 'hard power and soft power' (as usually applied to the Dragon and the Elephant)

And was ruminating about the hard and soft of various things I came across in my life.

First there was this chapter in our First Year Inorganic Chemistry by P C Ray (premonition of things Bengali to enter into my life...or is it the other way round?):

Hard water vs Soft water...the last sentence of that chapter is a comforting declaration: "Hard water is not bad for health"

Then Colgate came up in the 1950s with their 'Hard and Soft' toothbrushes.

When I reached KGP, I heard of 'hard cover' and 'soft cover' books

And then the hard disk and soft diskette

And hard porn and soft porn

And hard drugs and soft drugs (?)

Before that, hard drinks and soft drinks

Many many such hard and soft thoughts...and stools made of wood or pulp...they call it 'roughage'...what a lousy word...sounding like 'garbage'!!!

The other day my son, who once in a while enters the kitchen and inspects things, told me he bought a new and better micro-compatible bowl for me (in which I daily heat the delicious stew of leftovers at around 4 in the morning).

I asked him what was wrong with the earlier one I have been happily using for over four years.

He told me that he threw it away since it had become fibrous by overuse.

And I wasn't one for missing the chance of repartee:

"They say fiber is good for my g. i. canal"


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She made my day

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I got up early this morning, as usual at 11 AM, and checked my mails on my vintage Nokia...which takes a good 2 minutes...if you think two minutes is quick, visit a Gole Bazaar Dentist who doesn't deem it necessary to give that soothing shot before teasing that unwisdom out of your system.

First there was this very personal soulful mail from our friend Miss NK titled, as you all know, "Hello This Message Is respectfully Yours!"...I miss her badly if she keeps sullenly quiet for a fortnight...the amount in her Burkina Faso Bank has meanwhile swollen to US $ 5,800,000...Do have a go at it if you choose to, but don't blame me later on...

And then this!!!:

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Minu has left a new comment on your post "Sikand's Precept":

Professor Sastry,

I am M.S. Sikand's daughter. I happened to be browsing the web when this blog came up on the google results to my delight. I was very happy to read your post and the comments on it. My father lived and breathed Physics. He spent countless hours in book shops and libraries whenever he stayed with me in Chicago looking for books on Physics. He passed away in 2008 on one such visit here in Chicago. I was quite overcome upon reading your blog. Knowing that he left such a lasting legacy makes me very happy and proud.

Thank You and Best Regards

Minu

Posted by Minu to gpsastry at April 2, 2012 8:29 PM

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I saw Minu as a toddler wearing two cute pigtails...


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