Repeat Telecast

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 Hectic work, 'producing' a booklet. As William Radice said:

 "How difficult it is not to make mistakes!"


Still one should try. Meanwhile here is a repeat of an old blog for new readers:

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"When the idea of the 'booklet of bosh' (aping Edward Lear's 'Book of Bosh') took me over, I went to the neighborhood cyber-cafe chap and asked him to refer me to a printer in the Khairatabad locality (I didn't want to go to distant places, since I knew I would have to make several trips). He told me to go to Varun Printers in the gulley beside the Municipal Office.

So, I walked down to the place the same evening to find it a dingy cubby-hole manned by a sweating middle-aged chap working with a client seriously. There was no standing room. Apparently, he isn't into book-publishing….only election posters, office stationery etc. But he was working on a sleek system and the off-set printing machine looked well-oiled.

I learned early in my life not to go by mere looks...

After a few minutes' waiting, I got bold and asked him if I could get a booklet of around 50 pages got up there. He didn't look up, but asked if I have the 'stick' (the latest memory device) with me. I said no. He told me to bring it, still without looking up. I asked him if I could just have a rough estimate of the cost per copy. He looked up and sneered at me (I am not good-looking, unlike my son), and gruffly announced loudly that he is not in the habit of making 'guesses'. I replied that I would bring the damn stick in half an hour. He said he was busy and asked me to come the next morning with it.

I have a sneaking admiration for businessmen (not public servants) who are abrupt in their manner in the fiercely competitive world of Hyderabad. Means they can afford to be that!

Next morning I visited him with the stick in my pocket. He asked me when I wanted the thing to be delivered. I said within a week (the file was growing like sin and I wanted the thing to be wound up before it became a Mahabharat). He said sorry, he was busy till 10th with Election Work. I asked him to refer me to a couple of places. He did so.

One of these places turned out to be a centrally air-conditioned huge work-place oozing pretty girls with mod accents and gleaming machinery. I gave my stick to one of those 'mams' I was referred to. She was sweet as a cooing dove and gave me the sample output of my 50 pages in a few minutes. The thing looked hideous; pagination was garbled, sizing was wrong, and the thing was repulsive. I told her that I can sit down with her and get the thing edited to my satisfaction….but she cooed that that was all she can deliver…they don't do such stuff as I required.

I left the place with the stick back in my pocket and tried a couple of more places; and almost gave up. Then, the 10th of April was gone by and one evening I revisited the Varun Printers. He gave me a knowing smile and bade me sit down beside him and copied the material on his system and asked me to meet him the next day.

The next day he was not as gruff as he earlier was; apparently he went through the damn thing here and there ('sampled the limericist'!) and was intrigued. After a couple of more sittings, he was warming up to me by degrees till yesterday when he was positively 'reverential'. When the cover page was got ready, I was quite happy and so were Sonoo and Sailaja. He made it very sober and dignified (unlike the contents!).

This morning, after he met all my finicky requirements with pleasure, I asked him to put his byline on the back cover...'Printed at Varun Printers' etc as is the custom.

He was a little uneasy, but started typing. Half way through, he demurred and asked me if it was really necessary. I asked him why not. He bent his head down and murmured that the contents looked too 'political' for his good.

The chap had been going through page by page on the sly in his leisure hours!

I smirked and showed him the Foreword by an IAS. He said that he saw it...but still... I told him ok….leave it. He erased it and heaved a huge sigh of relief, and almost touched my feet for letting him off!...

That was when I went to the neighborhood stamp-maker and ordered a rubber stamp: 'for private circulation'...

P.S. Life is still full of surprises (at age 65+)!

Next day when I went to collect the copies, the owner was absconding, but I found the legend: 'Printed at Varun Printers' etc at the bottom of the back cover of each booklet in the smallest legible font.

I felt that what I wrote was not exactly 'pornography'!

Moreover, instructions were left by the printer to take permission from me to allow an extra copy to be retained by him as "SAMPLE".

The Devil won; as usual!"

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Ishani's Invite

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 Got busy!


When the Computer Revolution was knocking on the doors of India, it struck terror in the hearts of clerks in all organizations. They felt that this monster is going to eat up their jobs. Particularly in Government Organizations like Banks, Railways, LIC, Indian Airlines, and even IITs. Quite expectedly Marxist Bengal led the way in opposing the entry of computers tooth and nail. A state once known for its revolutionary zeal became the leader of status quo.

But Rajiv Gandhi and his band of Young Turks went ahead and the rest is history.


Similarly the advent of the internet was disliked and feared by the Old Print Media and even the TV. It was said that the printing industry will cease to exist and all typists and compositors will lose their jobs. 

But the number of TV channels rose exponentially and I am told the book printing industry is thriving. More books are printed, bought and perhaps read.


There is something in the hard copy that has a charm and semi-permanency.


It is said that Debendranath Tagore in his youth got disillusioned with life and wanted to end it all by drowning in the Ganga. While walking on his way, a wind blew a piece of paper that got stuck to his chest. He peeled it and read it and found in it the first verse of the Ishopanishad:

 Isavasyamidam sarvam yatkincha jagatyam jagat

Tena tyaktena bhunjeetha ma gridhah kasyavid dhanam

He turned back and the rest is history. I don't think a floppy or a pen drive would have done the trick.

In a small way I had a similar experience. When I was visiting home on a summer vacation, I happened to browse the English Text of my youngest sister and found the lovely piece, Railway Travel, by Gandhi that ended with another shlok of the same Ishopanishad:

Hiranmayena patrena satyasyapihitam mukham 

Tat tvam Pushan apavrinu satya-dharmaya drishataye

That simulated my interest both in Gandhi's writings (he writes well) and the Upanishads.

Tom Friedman wrote why it is important to take Afghan children of both sexes to school. They bring home books and dump them here and there. Their parents (of both sexes) look at the books, get curious to know what is there in them  and perhaps will get to know that there is world other than the one imposed by their fanatic leaders...by and very very by, maybe it will lead to a Flower Power (other than the poppies).

Well, to cut the cackle and bring home the horses, the fifth Ishani booklet is on its way...much delayed by this and that. To pick about 20 blogs from 350 was no joke, but it has been done. In a fortnight or so the copies will be in Ishani's hands.

She and I will be most pleased to tom-tom our stories. 

While transferring data to my new phone, all the postal addresses stored in the memory of the old phone have somehow been lost. And I find several regular readers from the US, Canada, Russia, Germany, UK, Chile, France and many more countries, in addition to India.

Ishani would love to gift her new booklet to all the regular (and irregular) readers of our blog.

So, you are kindly invited to please mail me your current postal addresses with PIN (ZIP) and phone number (if possible). You will duly receive a slim booklet. You may have read all the stories in it already, but as I said, a hard copy has a different charm.

Most welcome!

e-mail id: gps1943@yahoo.com

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Left & Right

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https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigq3T84Zs0_FQIS383rTle_eBvFt4840GCoVKXXS-yFeZHnQ4KBC-pK6Y8DZQisZDYffrIVirHs7gVgINclZ_5DsWM3N88M-geOXMzhvHwZcpLVi2oqn5haJq_5qE1WdS6qgsSVtmZ_bx9/s1600/god-cartoon1.jpg

 KGP: Late 1960s

The average family didn't have refrigerator, air-conditioner, washing machine, micro-oven, pressure cooker, cooking gas, detergents, utensil cleaners, floor mops, bathroom acids, vacuum cleaners....no nothing.

And the Qrs were vast...a gent from Calcutta came down for a visit to our Qrs C1-97 and went round the garden and exclaimed: "You have a Bungalow!!!"

And the housewives were not yet home-makers (to make a home the maker nowadays needs all those missing items listed above). So, they depended heavily on housemaids as their very own hands and legs. There was a joke that Lord Vishnu appeared in answer to a housewife's  prayers and asked her to choose between a good husband and a good housemaid. There was never any dilemma, she asked for  a good housemaid because good husbands are dime a dozen but a good housemaid is as rare as a white crow.

So, there was a terrific demand for housemaids but there was an unending supply of cheap maids who were all wives, daughters and mothers of Hall Employees living in Turipara. The husbands used to have a free meal and pack and take home the leftovers from the Hall kitchens (much before they were left over)...so food was taken care of. The meager pay the housemaids got for a full day's work was their pocket money...most of which went for the booze of their husbands and the leftovers for their dresses. Exploitation to the limit.

And then lo and behold...the Marxists took over Bengal and held sway.

And the housemaids formed a Trade Union whose Secretary was B K Mohanty's maid (the only literate among the males and females of Turipara). Every maid became a member and paid 50 paise monthly. And the Secretary wrote a Charter of Demands (called Magna Dupatta). 

Work to rule. Lightning strikes. Gheraos. Slogans. Street Processions. The works.

And the Secretary struck terror in the hearts of husbands (because their wives lost the habit of house-keeping...they never had it). 

But there was never a theft...

The whole Union thrived for a year or two till BKM's wife bought her maid out and packed her off to Bhubaneswar to work in a Minister's Bungalow as a Government Servant with pay, increments, promotions and pension.


$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Hyderabad: 2011

We were living for a year in an NRI Township. 

And we were told that if we employed an unknown maid, the Welfare Society is not responsible if she turns a thief, crook, criminal, child-lifter, and a woman of disreputable character. 

We got frightened and asked what we should do. And were told that the Society gave a license to an upcoming Company that supplied reliable maids...it was called, pompously: "Maid in India"

I went to the Company's Office and was received by a young and winsome lady (Hyderabad had no dearth of this species). 

She took my Interview asking me our floor area, number of residents, and many such questions short of my character certificate.

And said that they will send some maid or the other everyday without fail (ha!). And there was a long list of charges which toted up to a forbidding Rs 2020 per month. The maid will come only in the morning and work for 2 hours irrespective of the number of utensils, number of clothes, number of persons living in the apartment...

And the Company maids are hi-tech and can work only if you have all the items listed above...if you don't have say the vacuum cleaner or micro-oven you are ineligible. Better buy all those and come tomorrow.

And you have to pay a Security deposit of Rs 1000 which I didn't understand the logic of...

Anyway, I pretended that I have an NRI son in California, so rupees are no problem.

What is the sweetener? I asked.

She replied: "Character-certified maids only will be employed"

The first month was oh, ok. 

The second month they didn't send any maid for five days and whenever I rang up the Front Office Lady Charmer,  I got a 'busy' response.

The third month my wife's wrist watch went missing.

The fourth month my son's Canon went missing.

The fifth month the Front Office Lady went missing

The sixth month the Company went missing...

...Posted by Ishani

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Geeks & Gawks

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I knew that mechanical gadgets wear out with time invariably. Apparently they also have fatigue like my students at the end of 10 minutes of listening to me. There is a journal of ME (Elsevier) called, "Wear", in which one of my ME friends at KGP used to publish so regularly that I used to joke that he will never wear out. And his specialization was, "journal bearings", which I said was a pun on the Wear Journal bearing with him.


The epitome of a vehicle wearing smoothly over a century and blowing up all of a sudden is the Autocrat's "Deacon's Masterpiece":

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/09/autocrats-masterpiece.html

But I didn't know that purely electronic gadgets like cell phones too can wear out. They of course die a sudden death if the battery conks off, or SIM card collapses, or the chips  within burn out. But my ancient Nokia of 6 years vintage refused to die. All its functions were intact; but got slower and slower like its owner with age. 


For instance the ring tone got feebler and feebler, the speech got slurred in transmission, the battery held on like a leech but got sluggish. Very few call me or get calls from me nowadays...partly because it is such a heck of punishment for them to talk to me: 


"Hulloh, is it gps? What did you say? Say yes or no man, why are you shying away, damn it!..."


When I want to talk to anyone I feel it easier and more comfortable to text a message to him or her. Not that texting is any the less frustrating...the screen slowly gets darker and darker...but where there is a will and no hurry there is a way. I use her mostly to check my mails while lying down on my bed (22 hours a day). First she says "Loading..." and after a few seconds the screen goes dark, as if she is ashamed, and after a good while she brightens up and I feel the latest e-mail is here for me to read...but no!...she gets suspicious and asks me to log in with a password. And you know how tedious it is to type without a Qwerty keyboard. And then she goes blank again and wakes up to say, "Processing data.."...you get the hang of it, no? By then I am asleep...


Several times my son asked me throw her out and buy a new model. And I resisted. Yesterday he got wild when he called me from his Office and couldn't make out what I was saying. He dragged me to the Big C outlet nearby and asked me to sit down in the sofa minding Ishani. After a good half hour he pushed a swanky phone into my pocket...a Nokia alright...I am brand-faithful, but it was daunting, almost as if he got a girl of 20 as my mistress.

And the damn thing had so many features that I collapsed... Qwerty keyboard, 3.5 G compatibility, wi-fi, Mobile Office, Facebook, and a dozen icons peering and jeering at me. I told him the new one looks sleek enough but asked him to delete everything from the screen and instal a cute picture of Ishani, which he did in a second. He says he inserted an expansion memory card so I can store a thousand pictures and half as many videos. And I smiled like a lateral entry student to whom I was explaining how a double-beam oscilloscope works in his first lab class.

And I had a terrible sense of disorientation that is no good for my BP, cholesterol and triglycerides. Still, we KGPians don't give up so easily. I asked him to teach me how to call, receive, text, check mails, reply if possible, go to Google and to my blogspot...that is all that I needed to learn, like Keat's lines:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" - that is all

Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.

And he did in two minutes flat pressing this, that and anon buttons and dumped the phone on my lap and went away. 


That is the geeks' way of explaining things...frighten you into submission.


And I was left gawking at the damn thing.


But it is better than if I had gone to a good teacher...rather then a great teacher ;-)


He would be so happy to tell me all that he would start from what is cell about cell phones and end up with embedded system technology, by when I would be dozing.


But all it took me was 2 hours of self-help to get what I wanted, and believe me the new Nokia Asha 302 is a joy and worth every rupee of the 7500...inclusive of add-on memory and stuff.

I love her already. And checked my mails just now on her and found as expected a crazy mail from Saswat  (transferred epithet)...




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Millennial Craziness

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Yes, here we are! A thousand crazy posts!!!

There are some crazier guys like Saswat who take the trouble of toting up the number of posts displayed year-wise at the top of the Blog and complain that I am cheating. 

No, sir! I don't add and keep track...Blogger Dashboard (dash it!) does it for me; and while checking on Saswat's complaint I clicked on the 'Posts' button, I discovered that Blogger counts also the posts posted and removed and stored as Drafts for fear of antagonizing someone or the other. And if I count the ones that I deleted too, the number far exceeds 1000.  Saswat is like that guest invited to the Golden Wedding Jubilee of an old couple and, after eating meat and fish and drinking wine and vodka in exchange for sumptuous gifts to the old man, challenges the couple that they are cheating...he got hold of a copy of the 50-year-old Marriage Licence by bribing the clerk and discovered that the couple are celebrating  a couple of days too early. He will know by and by that some 'days' of marital life are so tediously halu that they can be counted as 2 if not 3.

There was never an intention to reach this weird milestone. It all started 5 years ago with Sayan egging me on to write something on SDM for their phy mag and then by fits and starts the thing became a Niagara. And whenever boredom set in and I thought of stopping writing and start reading, a handful of tyrants put their nailed boots down on my sweet corns, happily.

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I didn't know that girls as young as 2.5 can blush.


Ishani's mother tongue vocabulary is better than her dad's (his forte is slang bong). And she can speak sentences with 'suppositional' clauses. Like this that she picked up from her grannie...I quote in her Telugu syntax:


"Salt more you eat suppooose; your BP will rise"


All that is left for her to master is the subjunctive mood.


But this evening she ran into my bedroom all dressed up to kill and announced exitedly:


"Daddy is taking us to Thoothatpally!"


"Where to...where to?"


"Thoothatpally"

"Where to, where to?"

And then she blushed and ran away. Because, she hasn't yet learned to say: "K" and substitutes "Th" for it; and she is aware of it....

Women!

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About six months ago I posted a blog on our front-neighbors (aamne-saamne):


http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2011/11/hormonious-living.html

They are a very nice Bengali couple, husband working in the US for a while, wife working in Hyderabad. They have since decided to shift to the US next week. The lady dropped in to invite us for a Big-Do on the occasion of the annaprasan of their kid son. After inviting my D-i-L, she asked for me...since in this 'township' I am the only one who speaks in sketchy patchy Bengali to her (My son returns home at midnight). And after saying Dhonnabad, I asked her if they are leaving India for good...I shouldn't have done that, but these things happen. Her eyes moistened and she broke out, "Janeena, ki hobey!" ("Can't say what is in store for us"). And I blessed her, "Bhaloyi hobey, khoob bhalo thakoon!" ("Good only will happen, may you be very happy!")

Just now I peeped in at their door and the Young One came out to draw me in but I resisted saying that I don't eat...my son and D-i-L will make up for me. He then called out a younger one and introduced him to me saying that he is going to KGP for counseling to join M Tech. And I said a few nice things about KGP. And the Young One introduced me as a retired Professor from KGP and added:

"He never went to the US but knows all about it from his students"



So...our Mark Twain-Hartford-Yale conversation of six months vintage has stuck like a mudcake...


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Supartim's Favorite

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 Got busy. And the net was down whole night.


So here I am copy-pasting an earlier post.


If a piece is not worth rereading it is not worth reading.


This somehow recalls a Mark Twain Quote:


"He who doesn't read is no better than one who can't"


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 "...Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection..."

...............Rabindranath Tagore

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I woke up ringing with the Tagore lines above that we had to mug up for our Matriculation Exams...these things happen.

I was pleased that I got the blog-title for today: "Perfection"

As I said many times earlier, getting a snappy title is half the battle...thoughts and words gather throughout the day.

And my son asked me to do him a favor (guys these days are adepts at euphemisms):

I had to travel all the way to the Greenlands Axis Bank and get him his Bank Statement for the past 12 months (these hi-fi Banks don't give you good old Pass-Books if you sign in for online banking and go broke paying credit card bills).

As I entered the Flashy Bank there was a long queue (Monday yesterday was a Bank Holiday here for Telugu New Year's Day). But the Dame manning the Counter was courteous for this Senior Citizen and said that the System (another euphemism for the snazzy thing) has gone slow, so, why not sit down for half an hour.

That was fine with me to whom Time has come to a standstill after retirement.

A minute later, a young geek passed by wearing a black T-Shirt with a white-painted slogan on it (as you know I have a weakness for T-Shirt slogans and got into trouble a couple of times...).

This one read loudly:

Nobody is Perfect
And
I am Nobody

All at once my blog-title changed to: "Nobody"

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This guy is the 3rd Nobody to have crossed my path.

The first one was of course the Hero of the Tall Tale told by my Father when I was a kid: Ulysses using "Nobody" as his alias rather cleverly to escape from the clutches of Cyclops.

The second is very recent:

A few months back I got a surprise gift from Flipkart sent by Pratik: a lovely book I read in one sitting (lying).

It is titled: "The Diary of a Nobody"

It was first published in book form in 1892 and has never been out of print!

And a period piece of the Victorian Era laced with humor (it first appeared in Punch in serial form).

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Well, sorry to say, I am not a "Nobody" and so as imperfect as you are (none of you, I am sure, is a Nobody).

The other day I was browsing my Obituary File that my son retrieved and handed me (the one that had a dozen pieces by my students on my 60th Birthday long long ago).

There were indeed a couple of words dropped: 'perfect' and 'ideal'; but the Occasion rather demanded it and they can be glossed over as quid pro quo for hilarious Recos (there were none by lady-students, quite understandably).

This Striving for Perfection which the Poet mentions is, I think, a symptom of delayed childhood, like measles and whooping cough so prevalent during our time.

I distinctly recall that I considered my Father a Personification (he taught us this Figure of Speech, giving "Death, be not Proud" as a canonical example) of Perfection till I discovered that he couldn't solve a Quadratic Equation.

I then lived under my Shakespeare Uncle for a year and considered him perfect since he could quote the crazy Hamlet Soliloquies verbatim (I verified later on if he was fibbing).

Till he scolded me loudly in public for sneezing when the rickshaw carrying his darling daughter to the Railway Station was about to take off (he was as superstitious as his Calpurnia).

I then lived for 2 years with my MD Physician Uncle who was rated next only to Hippocrates in his medical prowess but otherwise he had no fancy claims of Perfection...he was a believer in Tulsidas's sound ideas about how to treat drums, harijans, cattle and women...

I then went to KGP and thought I met the Epitome of Perfection, SDM, till one evening he broke down in front of clueless me for not being invited to a silly Get-Together by Eminent Teachers of Bengal.

By then I was 30 and gave up looking for Perfection in souls brought forth by wombs (or even petri dishes).

I was never an aspirant of the Perfect Son, Husband, Father or Father-in-Law since the affected parties loudly dispute it (I fancy I am a Perfect Gran'pa though...Ishani has still to speak up).

Still, once in a while, at bed time, I worry that I need not have done what I did, or said what I said, or thought what I thought.

And I ask myself why, with one foot out of the grave, I keep worrying...

To this question, I have no answer....

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Rote Learning & Right Learning

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 "...After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized everything but they didn't know what anything meant. When they heard 'light that is reflected from a medium with an index,' they didn't know that it meant a material such as water. They didn't know that the 'direction of the light' is the direction in which you see something when you are looking at it, and so on. Everything was entirely memorized, yet nothing has been translated into meaningful words. So, if I asked, 'What is Brewster's Angle?' I'm going into the computer with the right key words. But if I say, 'Look at the water,' nothing happens -- they don't have anything under, 'Look at the water'!...."


...Feynman... "Joking"


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Rote learning is not only ok but indispensable if you want to become a Temple Pujari knowing all the vedic hymns by heart.

But not if you are squeezed into Physics Teaching willy-nilly.

I may say without any hesitation that everything we learned in our University at Vizagh comes under rote learning. The worst was to memorize the answer to the standard question: "Find out the energy levels and wave functions of a Hydrogen atom"

I almost gave up Physics trying to mug up all those horrendous separation of variables, substitutions, polynomials of the dreaded kind like the Associated Lagurre thing, but I had to mug up so I could answer that question in half an hour, leaving no step.

Then and there I decided that this is no way to teach or learn QM. I never solved the Schrodinger nor the Dirac hydrogen atom on the blackboard. It was really not necessary...I could as well have spent 4 hours drawing all the atomic orbitals on the board copying White's wonderful pictures.

I had the good fortune of teaching 100% Right Learning  to a failed student. I didn't go to any blackboard at all but made her work:

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"...Then there was this Campus Child, Ms S, my son's batchmate, who I knew was a serious student from KG onwards. And, Dr TBG (sadly no more) used to 'inherit' the EM I, EM II etc as I outgrew them. TBG himself was a Campus Boy 25 years older to her; and HE had sat through my EM Courses when HE was an IIT student. And, he religiously used to meet me before taking up my EM courses and 'Follow Me' (like in Mia Farrow's movie).

So, everything should gel, in the natural scheme of things.

But, she attended ALL his classes but failed by practically submitting blank papers in both the mid- and the end-sem exams (I was by then the Chairman of the UG Committee, and had to 'oversee' her scripts).

She got the dreaded 'F' Grade in her 3rd year.

I asked her 'why'?

She simply shrugged her shoulders, bent her head down and made a gesture that said: "Everything was going over her head".

Now, it turned out that the Old Curriculum was getting replaced by the New Curriculum (of Sayan & Somnath); and this particular Course was no longer being taught in the next semester. Which meant she would be losing a precious year if she doesn't get to 'repeat' that Course in the very next Semester.

That meant that some teacher should take that EM II Course only for HER!

Dr TBG said: 'No'.

And since I was the 'Inheritee' of TBG's EM Courses, the task naturally fell on me.

By now, you know me. Am I the one to take 3-hour Lecture Classes for a whole Semester for just ONE student? And, that too a Failed Candidate?

So, I got into applying my Least Action Principle. In our first meeting, I asked Ms S which book TBG used to follow. She said, "Griffiths" and that she did have a copy of her own. So did I. I told her we would meet only on Wednesday Afternoons. And I WON'T be lecturing, since she had already attended all of TBG's Lectures. She will bring her copy of Griffiths. I would start from Chapter I and select a dozen or so problems of increasing difficulty and mark them in her book. She will have one week to solve them in a File with PT Sheets. She would make 2 copies. Submit one to me and keep the other with her. Next Wednesday, Problems from the next Chapter will be ticked by me. Meanwhile, I would go through her last-week's work. Correct the mistakes. Honor system will be followed by both of us. And, if she can't solve any of the Problems, I would give hints, so she will try and submit them next week.

She was ENTHU itself. Both of us knew how boring it would be for us to stare at each other 3 hours every week.

I thought and dearly hoped she would start making excuses, absconding, Spring-Fest and Stomach Ache  after the first few weeks; and would meet me occasionally.

Great going for both. And I would give her a 'P' Grade and let her go.

No Chance!

She was more regular than I. Waiting in front of my Office every Wednesday Afternoon. With an ever-bulging file. And solve 90% of Griffith's Problems except the wicked 'starred' ones. She would try many her own long-winded way. And, when I pointed out short-cuts, there would be a glow in her face. And, some of the integrals, she would do simpler than my old-fashioned methods. And I had to do the 'starred' ones all over again after a lapse of many years.

Great learning experience for both of us.

And, she walked away with an 'A'.

Eyebrows were raised how an 'F' could get an 'A' all of a sudden; but by then gps was a feared fiend, and, in any case, I had her whole 'duplicate' File with me (I knew how to beat OUR SYSTEM by then).

And Ms S must be a post-doc in some good US University by now!"


http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2010/05/allergica-teacheralis.html



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Ms S was in Hyderabad the other day and my son fetched her for a Sunday lunch. We gathered that she did her Ph D at RPI, Troy and, by and by, her Thesis was selected by Springer for publication in their series: "Recognizing outstanding Ph D Research"

And she told me that she worked very very hard for my 'course' and whatever she achieved she owes it to her failing in her EM Course!!! 

Who said, 'every cloud has silver lining'...

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