Farmyard Metaphors - 12

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 http://www.wethechange.com/from-caterpillar-to-butterfly-a-new-realm-of-consciousness-for-humanity/

In the 1950s our village Muthukur was full of caterpillars...most of them black, ugly and vile.

We were fond of drumsticks and most everyone in the village had a tree or two of drumsticks in their backyards...they require no care...just plant a sapling and water it for a few days, and within a couple of years the tree grows 20 feet high and yields its bounty.

But there is a catch. 

This particular tree somehow invites hordes of caterpillars of the black and ugly sort once every five or six years. One fine morning you find that the entire tree, the trunk, the branches, and the leaves becomes a black crawling carpet. There were no pesticides then and the only thing to do was to burn the whole damn tree pouring costly kerosene on its trunk and lighting it up.

For kids it was debatable whether this ritual was more sought after than the delicious drumsticks in sambar that we fought about.

We kids had our shirts on in the sultry climate only when we went to school. As soon as we got back, we stripped ourselves to our khakhi knickers and ran out to play. 

And once in while, we found that a caterpillar or two dropped on our backs and started making its presence keenly felt. And we reflexively slapped our backs not knowing what they were hosting...and what a mess!!!

There was no Avil then and that meant itchy red spots all over our backs and at times thorny implants. But it didn't seem to matter...play was all-consuming.

Most of the trees in our backyards were hosting ugly cocoons later...thick, fibrous, and black...and these gave rise to back-winged butterflies in a couple of weeks. 

But once in a while I used to watch with awe a cocoon (chrysalis) hanging down the lovely green leaf of a kasturi (rakta karobi...red oleander) tree. It used to shine in all the colors of the rainbow in the sun light depending on which side I viewed it from. It was an awesome sight that thrilled me. I didn't then know about thin film interference colors. And one fine morning it is no longer intact...it split up and hung loose...we had enough of biology then and I knew that an iridescent butterfly had escaped its trap. 

It was only after I read Sommerfeld's Optics at IIT KGP that I knew that some butterflies have their wings coated thin enough to display all the glorious interference colors...like the soap bubbles we blew and played with.

And it was at KGP that I heard about Caterpillar Trucks, Tractors and Bulldozers.

I once assisted in drafting the Convocation Speech of our Director at IIT KGP. And I thought, after all the rigmarole of the achievements of IIT KGP during the past year, there should a para a little different.

And so I evoked the metaphor of a chrysalis for IIT KGP...students crawl into its portals raw and uncouth, and reside in their KGP Cocoon for 4 or 5 years, and fly away like colorful butterflies into more lucrative pastures.

Apparently it didn't go well...students refused to identify themselves with caterpillars crawling out of their glorious Calcutta Boys School ;)



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Moments of Truth

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 http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/d/dementia.asp

My Guide SDM went to Cambridge to work with Dirac. And after a fruitless year, he declared to whosoever was willing to listen:

"Dirac went senile at 40"

SDM was 45 then and at the peak of his productivity.

When I joined SDM he was 55, and he was 60 when he quit IIT KGP. And I was interacting with him closely. And, whenever he took more than 2 minutes to recall a formula, his face would turn pink and he would utter the words:

"Am I becoming senile?"

And when he left KGP he told me that his wish was to die while working on Physics. And his wish was granted...he died at 82 while giving finishing touches to his book on QM...an Errata for a series of printer's devils over which he fumed.

I retired at 62 and thought I would die teaching in a college. That was not to be.

As soon as I retired I sank into a severe clinical depression that lasted for two long years. And during which I lost all taste for teaching. 

During the first year of my psychosis I was unable to even read a newspaper...the mind refused to focus. Forget writing. The pills I was made to take had several side effects...slurring of speech, loss of memory, loss of the ability to crunch even simple numbers, shaking while writing, and stuff.

Slowly I did recover enough to read a few pages of PGW. And also write. 

But number crunching was beyond me for a long time.

During those days, one early morning, the milkman knocked and announced that our milk bill for the month was Rs 550. I didn't (couldn't) question him. I fetched a Rs 1000 note, handed it to him and asked him to return me Rs 250. Which he gladly did. And after two days, I sensed that I had gone wrong in my subtraction. And it was with some effort that I could squeeze from him the rest of the amount due to me.

In another couple of years I recovered enough to start blogging daily...an achievement. And publish Ishani booklets and a few pieces in the Now & Again column of The Statesman.

And later I lost my wife to cervical cancer...

And I am on 70 now.

And the fear of senile dementia is a recurring theme...I try hard to forget it ;)

And thought I should fight it like my Guide SDM did...and the other day I read that senile dementia can be deferred by giving challenges to the brain.

So, in addition to blogging, nowadays I do the daily Jumble in DC without pen and paper...all in the head. It is quite easy most of the days. The cryptic answer arrives in less than ten minutes.

Once in a while it takes half an hour or more. And I start sweating...but the answer does arrive finally.

The toughest answer that took more than half an hour the other day was:

"moment of truth"

Note that it has 13 letters in three words...but it has only 4 vowels...2 o's, one e, and one u (of all things). The rest 9 are weird consonants...as many as 3 t's and 2 m's...

I also take up another challenge...this time with our new milkman.

He would arrive duly on the evening of the 1st of every month with his register and his pocket calculator. 

And would announce that last month I took like 4 packets for 14 days, 3 packets for 7 days, 2 packets for 3 days and 1 packet for the rest of the month. And would tackle his calculator and fetch the bill in less than half a minute.

And I would ask him not to show me his answer...let me try to do it in my head. And he would be amused. And within 2 minutes I would announce my result. And he would check with his answer and is astonished...I recall Moitreyee Sinha telling me that she was hailed a 'genius!' by her American students since she could get the sine of 30 degrees without a calculator...

Moitreyee later gifted me a copy of the splendid biography of Feynman by James Gleick that I use often when I blog about Feynman. The book is titled: 'Genius'.

I am no Sakuntala Devi (sadly no more) nor Bethe nor Feynman.

But these days I am lucky...

Each packet costs Rs 18, which is 2 less than 20...I just have to double, add a zero and subtract.

Also the service charge is luckily Rs 20 again...

Let me see how long I can push this defunct brain....


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