Banshees - Repeat Telecast

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When I was about 4 we were living in the Temple Street of our village which had about a dozen houses, ours roughly in the middle. In the evening all the kids of all the houses used to come out for play. There were apparently two lookouts on either end of the street, for, suddenly there would be a shout:

"Dimmakaay is coming!"

That was the alarm call that drove us all into our houses and hide in our kitchens. After a few minutes we used to peep out and if we found some kids back there we would also troop out and restart where we left off.

Most of us never saw this fear-figure, Dimmakaay, and none talked about him.

One evening when Dimmakaay was announced I was hurrying inside but saw my 2-year-old sister playing alone in front of our house...whatever girls play at the age of 2...I have to ask Ishani.

And I grabbed her and was running in when I stepped on a stone, fell down, and started crying. Then I saw this Dimmakaay...he was a dark, tall, mustachioed man with a red turban walking with a stout stick in his hand. I guess we feared him because our moms wanted someone to put the fear of the Devil in us so we kept quiet when his name was mentioned and drank our milk without protest.  

Seeing my plight, Dimmakaay stopped, approached me, lifted me up, kissed me roughly, entered our compound, dumped me on the ground and resumed his stout-walk. Then on, I lost all fear of him, and when other kids ran in, I used to stand where I was and smile at him.

Talking of lookouts, I am reminded of the chaps who were posted on the roofs of all Halls of Residence at IIT KGP every midnight during the OP season in the 1970s when there were no phones, cell or dull. Apparently messages in semaphore used to be transmitted from RP to Azad of the approaching Dimmakaays in their vans on spot-inspection.

And then there was this turbaned itinerant walking along the street with a stick in one hand and a leash in the other dragging his reluctant bear. That was a ghastly enough sight for us to hide again in the kitchen...why kitchen I never knew...I have to ask Ishani again.

Till one day the chap stood in front of our house apparently displaying the dance of his bear to my mom, pulling a hair from the bear's back, making up a talisman with it inside and selling it to my mom at a hefty price...apparently there is this belief that a bear's hair on a child's body would make him lose all fearful dreams and such. 

One day I peeped out and the guy called me and lifted me up the back of his bear perhaps @ Rs 0.25 extra. And all of a sudden I lost all fear of all wild animals...not that I met many. IIT KGP in the 1960s had only jackals prowling and howling in the nights in the shrub jungle that now houses the Vikramshila Complex...no nightly jackals there now I hope.

But to this day, when I walk alone in the streets of Hyderabad at night and hear the sudden bark of a stray pup, adrenaline surges, and while hairs don't stand up, it is an electrifying experience though. It may be due to the memory of the nasty dog-bite I had at 9 and the 14 painful injections around my navel on 14 successive days.

And then there was this huge tree in our Kali Temple whose trunk had the terrifying figures of two intertwined serpents embossed on it; much like those on the Staff of Hermes.


I never dared go anywhere near that tree till I reached Class X and my seniors showed me how to take a cobbler's needle and etch out on the trunk of the jamun tree the message:

I luv Radha

We were the World War II Generation and the name of Hitler was always associated with fear-figures like moms-in-law.

Father was the culprit of this association in our home...

But PGW has his own take:

...For some time Stiffy monopolized the conversation, not letting me get a word in edgeways. Women are singularly gifted in this respect. The frailest of them has the lung power of a gramophone record and the flow of speech of a Regimental Sergeant Major. I have known my Aunt Agatha to go on calling me names long after you would have supposed that both breath and  inventiveness have given out...

Now listen to Jim Corbett's Bansheee:

 ...Dansay had said that hearing the banshee brought calamity to the hearer and his family, and fearing that I would be blamed for any calamity that befell the family, I said not a word of my experience.  Danger of any kind has an attraction for everyone, including small boys, and though for many days I avoided the area in which I had heard the banshee, a day came when I was back at the edge of the heavy timber. As on the evening of the storm a wind was blowing, and after I had been standing with my back to a tree for some minutes, I again heard the scream. Restraining with difficulty my impulse to run away, I stood trembling behind the tree and after the scream had been repeated a few times, I decided to creep up and have a look at the banshee. No calamity had resulted from my hearing her and I thought if by chance she saw me now, and saw that I was a very small boy, she would not kill me; so --- with my heart beating in my throat --- I crept forward as slowly and as noiselessly as a shadow, until I saw Dansay's banshee.

In some violent storm of long ago a giant of the forest had been partly uprooted and had been prevented from crashing to the ground by falling across another and slightly smaller giant. The weight of the bigger tree had given the smaller tree a permanent bend, and when a gust of wind lifted the bigger one and then released it, it swayed back on the supporting tree. At the point of impact the wood of both trees had died and and worn as smooth as glass, and it was the friction between these two smooth surfaces that was emitting the  terrifying scream. Not until I had laid the gun on the ground and climbed the leaning tree and sat on it while the scream repeated below me, was I satisfied that I had found the the terror that was always at the back of my mind when I was alone in the jungles. From that day I date the desire I acquired of following up and getting to the bottom of every unusual thing I saw or heard in the jungles, and for this I am grateful to Dansay for, by frightening me with his banshee, he started me on compiling of many exciting and interesting jungle detective stories...



...Posted by Ishani


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Tempus Abdicatio - Repeat Telecast

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http://lowres.jantoo.com/retirement-old-age-lifetime_achievement-lifetime_achievement_award-old_man-retired-old-12261404_low.jpg

The other day I read that our greatest batsman of all time (as per records) was pissed off with an ex-cricketer who had the temerity to suggest that it is time the li'l one hangs up his boots; and came back with a bang of a couple of centuries. He is reported to have said something like: 

"I am the one who decides when I should retire"...

Bravo! Well said, champ....lucky you are not a Government Servant like I was. 

Arjun was summoned by Krishna to Dwaraka to escort the ladies and infants (who survived the Yadav holocaust) to Hastinapur before Dwaraka got swept off the India Map by an imminent tsunami. And he went there and found Krishna dead and was inconsolable. While on his way back with the said ladies and infants, his party was attacked by a band of reckless savages. And Arjun wielded his matchless Gandiv and fired all his sasthras and asthras (guided missiles, ballistic and nihilistic). But none of them reached their target...they plunked down near his feet like a golf ball teed off by a fatso beginner. 

Bowed down and bruised, he reached  Hastinapur and wept over the shoulder of his eldest brother, Yudhisthir, who calmed him down, saying:

"My dear Boy! Our time is up! It is now prudent for us to renounce our kingdom, pass the baton to youngsters waiting in the wings, don bark-robes, do a Mahaprasthan and try to attain Heaven by rock-climbing" 

Few have the good sense of Yudhisthir...

My B-i-L told me this cute story...he was into his crucial IAS Interview, all nerves, and jittery. The tough guy on the right side of the table asked him:

"Why is Ashoka called The Great?"

My B-i-L's first instinct was to go back to his school book and say:

"Because he dug many wayside wells, planted lots of trees, widened the roads..."

But his Guardian Angel shut him up in time and prompted this reply:

"Because he renounced war after his biggest victory and converted to non-violent Buddhism"

And my B-i-L was in...

Government Servants in general, and IAS chaps in particular, have these anomalous career plots looking like ramps:

 http://www.in.all.biz/img/in/catalog/middle/120271.jpeg?rrr=1

We climb our hard way up and when we reach the pinnacle of our glory we are suddenly dumped down like garbage into its bin...tough to get used to this sudden loss of power and prestige if not pelf. And we go about boring unwilling listeners with tall tales of our past glory. 

I had this miserable experience when I had to routinely listen to the repeat autobiography of a Chief Engineer that started with:

"I am a retired Chief Engineer...not a Cheap Engineer like nowadays"

And it went on and on for hours at each stretch. After the first couple of times, I used to play games with myself betting what would be his next sentence...

"I ticked off my Army Chief when he came visiting Bhutan...I never cared..."

I propose that all Government Servants should have their careers like bell-shaped Gaussian curves:

http://www.getmilked.com/comics/comics/WhereAreYouOnTheGaussianCurve.jpg

Talking of IITs, of which I know a bit, there should be a rule like in the Bhatnagar Award that the Director's post have an upper age limit of 45 at the entry point; and there should be no extension or re-employment in this post. After completing his 5-year tenure (if he can) he should be made to roll down...to DD and Dean and HoD and ToD and retire in total obscurity. 

Of course their salary should keep on increasing as on a ramp because their family responsibilities keep increasing with age. Particularly at IIT KGP where folks are in general so busy researching that they get their first kid when they are well into their furious forties...I got mine at 38...just about broke even...

In general the powers of Government Servants should follow Eliot's stanza:

This is the way their powers end

This is the way their powers end

This is the way their powers end

Not with a bang but a simper

Sorry, I seem to have gotten Eliot's lines mixed up a bit...like Alice in her 'You are old Father William'...


...Posted by Ishani


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Zeal & Zealotry - Repeat Telecast

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By now it must be clear that I am a crazy old coot:

Proof: Shamik from Lyon, France, writes: 

"I keep a count of the days in a year that have gone by from your blog post number"

gps: Just now I toted it up and got 218 for the number of days that have gone by in 2012 so far...but the blogpost number shows 224...so I must have more than made up...that, for sure, is ZEAL!

They say, "Child is the father of man"

When I was seven years old and a meter tall, Father got his promotion as HM and was posted for a year to Kurichedu, a village far far away from civilization in an arid tract of land...the Government then (as now) believed in ordeal by fire. 

About four miles away from Kurichedu there was a famous Kali temple in an even more miserable place called Potlapadu that could be reached only by a double-bullock-cart track. One morning a party consisting of our family and neighbors decided to visit the temple, women and infants in the cart, and men walking by. And I was invited by Father to join the walkers, now that I was no more a 'woman or babe'. And I took up the challenge and completed the walk triumphantly. And we returned next morning. 

A few days later, late one evening, I suddenly had this inspiration of re-visiting the kali temple by walk. And without telling anyone I started walking. And as I reached the outskirts of Kurichedu, it was getting dark but I didn't bother. I then saw a group of five or six high school students strolling along the village tank bund. They saw me and stopped, recognizing me as their HM's kid-son. And asked:

"Where are you going?"

"To Potlapadu"

"Why?"

"To visit the Kali temple"

Before I could take any more steps, the tallest guy of the lot lifted me up, my legs astride his neck, and the whole group started walking back to our home ceremonially much to the clapping and merriment of bystanders of both sexes along the Main Road. And reached me at their HM's place and dumped me and fled...

I was reminded of this childish bravado of mine a good 40 years later. Russi Mody was then the Chairman, BOG, IIT KGP, as well as the top boss of Tata Steel. To earn back the goodwill of his employees at IIT (many of whom he had suspended), he instituted a 'silver jubilee memento' for such folks as I who completed 25 glorious years of service. It was a Titan watch of the Tata Group. And we were asked to assemble at the Netaji Auditorium and receive the gift from the very hands of our Director, one  by one, without jumping the queue and coming to blows. As I said many times, I am a mild claustrophobic and generally avoided such functions and took my degree etc in absentia later. But I learned that the Director was on leave that day and the DD, Professor M N Faruqi, was doing the honors. Since MNF was one of us (he was a B Tech from KGP) and much admired, I went there and took my gift-box in person and returned home. And opened it and found it was a Day-Date thing which was completely new to me. The watch I then had on my wrist was a second-hand tiny Favre-Leuba of 30 years vintage and still going strong. It had a knob which when you pulled out let you turn its hands. 

And so, I pulled the knob of my brand new gift Titan and started turning it. The hands turned alright, but the day and date were not matching the present data...if the date got matched, the day wouldn't, and vice versa. And I went on turning it and turning it and noticed that they had Days written in French too...for a while. And my dear wife was pestering me to stop it and come down for lunch...which I didn't. At about six in the evening, after a good six hours of trial and ghastly error, I ultimately gave up and took it to the Misal Watch Co at the Tech Market, and the young one there adjusted the day-date-time in 30 seconds flat....

Don't think I am alone in this glorious business of obstinate foolhardiness.

There is this purohit, MKS, in my village whom I saw as a lad. His father was as strict a brahmin as they came half a century ago. And he trained his son meticulously in his family business. MKS was precocious and quickly learned the Sanskrit mumbo-jumbo required for all events...from namakaranam, upanayanam, marriage to funeral...womb to tomb. And his name and fame spread by and by. His father, who never left our village, never ate anywhere anything other than food prepared in his home by his mother or wife or himself, saying that this strict observance keeps the body, mind and tongue shipshape. And MKS inherited this code of honor to the letter from his father.

So, whenever he was invited for performing rituals, MKS wouldn't touch food prepared by the cooks since it was 'impure'. And however late it was, he would return home and eat home-made food. But his fame spread so far and wide that he was once invited to Hyderabad city, 500 km away, for performing the marriage of a wealthy family. 

And MKS kept his vow and didn't eat anything at all during the ceremony. And the folks here were so much impressed by him and his purity that he was asked to continue for a couple more days and perform a couple more pujas like Satyanarayan Vrat, Griha Pravesh during the next couple of days. And his well-wishers urged him to break his vow and eat something like bananas or curd, but he steadfastly refused.

The story goes that on the fourth night, he slyly visited the famed roadside stalls selling hot mirchi-bhaja and devoured a dozen or more of them...and landed in the Govt Hospital where he had to stay for a week...eating the equally famed Hyderabad Govt Hospital Food...

Talking of zeal, I am reminded of this lovely passage from RKN:

...What I suffered in the class as a non-Christian was nothing compared to what a Christian missionary suffered when he came to preach at our street corner. If Christian salvation came out of suffering, here was one who must have attained it. A European missionary with a long beard, escorted by a group of Indian converts carrying violins and harmoniums, would station himself modestly at the junction between Vellala Street and Purasawalkam High Road. A gentle concert would begin unobtrusively. A few onlookers stopped by, the priest nodded to everyone in a friendly manner, casting a genial look around, while the musicians rendered a full-throated Biblical hymn over the babble of the street, with its hawkers' cries and the jutka-drivers' urging of their lean horses. Urchins sat down in the front row on the ground, and all sorts of men and women assembled. When the preacher was satisfied that he had gathered a good audience, he made a sign to the musicians to stop. His speech, breaking into the abrupt silence that ensued, was delivered in an absolutely literary Tamil, stiff and formal, culled out of a dictionary, as far from normal speech as it could be. It was obvious that he had taken a lot of trouble to learn the local language so that he could communicate his message to the heathen masses successfully. But Tamil is a tongue-twister and a demanding language even for Indians from other provinces, the difficulty being that the phonetic value and the orhthography are different, and it cannot be successfully uttered by mere learning; it has to be inherited by the ear. I am saying this to explain why the preacher was at first listened to with apparent attention, without any mishap to him. This seemed to encourage him to go on with greater fervour, flourishing his arms and raising his tone to a delirious pitch, his phrases punctuated with "Amen" from his followers.

Suddenly the audience woke up to the fact that the preacher was addressing them as "sinners" ("Pavigal" in Tamil) and that he was calling our gods names. He was suggesting that they fling all the stone gods into the moss-covered green tanks in our temples, repent their sins, and seek baptism. For God would forgive all sinners and the Son of God would take on the load of their sins. When the public realized what he was saying, pandemonium broke out. People shouted, commanded him to shut up, moved in on his followers -- who fled to save their limbs and instruments. The audience now rained mud and stone on the preacher and smothered him under bundles of wet green grass. Actually, every evening a temporary grass market sprang upon his piece of ground for the benefit of jutka-drivers, and all through the evening hot exchanges went on over the price of each bundle, the grass-selling women shrieking at their customers and trying to match their ribaldry while transacting business. It was impolitic of the preacher to have chosen this spot, but he had his own reasons apparently. Now people snatched up handfuls of grass and flung them on him, but his voice went on unceasingly through all this travail; lamps lit up by his assistants earlier were snatched away and smashed. The preacher, bedraggled and almost camouflaged with damp grass and water, went through his programme to the last minute as scheduled. Then he suddenly disappeared in the night. One would have thought that the man would never come again. But he did, exactly on the same day a week hence, at the next street corner...   

gps: Whenever I read this charming description of missionary zeal, I always wonder what happened to our RKN's roadside preacher...like Holden Caulfield wondered what happened to the ducks in winter when the lake froze.

...Posted by Ishani

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Sledgehammers & Peas - Repeat Telecast

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http://www.veryabc.cn/flash/uploads/stories/bedtime/LionMosquito.jpg

My Grannie entered her mom-in-law's kitchen at the age of 12:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2009/11/autocrat-of-dining-floor.html

Their household then had no less than 20 members...relatives, friends and guests...at any point of time. And Grannie became an expert cook by and by. But when she grew into her sixties and everyone of her kids got married and left her, and her husband and she alone were left in their sumptuous home, she had to employ a cook, not because she was too old and infirm but because she couldn't cook for two, no way...the scale was different. A huge pot and kadai on a blast-furnace can handsomely make up errors and approximations...

A tigress stalking a wild buffalo three times its size can hamstring and kill it in two minutes, but is helpless in swatting a fly landing on her nose...the equipment is different.

One summer in my small town, Gudur, I had a severe stomach infection caused by drinking an old and stale bottle of soft drink...it was so hot that I didn't care for its taste. And was promptly admitted into the best nursing home in an AC-room with attached bath and non-stop water and power supply...it was heaven. But its old and expert GP had retired by then and his young MS son-in-law took over making an equally great name for himself. I didn't know that he was a vascular surgeon. He kept me there for a whole week on unending saline and one tiny tablet of chloramphenicol every morning. It needed my MBBS B-i-L in Madurai to ring him up and ask him to add one small bottle of metrogyl in the drip. I recovered immediately and was discharged the next day.

And then this story of a friend of mine at KGP who wanted to undergo vasectomy and chose Dr Kohili, the Chief of the BNR Hospital and a renowned railway surgeon:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/07/hypocratic-oath.html

But Dr Kohili and his anesthetist had never done such a simple procedure before and messed it up thoroughly. 

Once my friend E F Taylor of MIT and I landed in what looked like a messy indefinite integral that needed to be urgently cracked. EFT gave it up since it was not found in his bulky Table of Integrals. And I didn't even try. My son then was in his First Year at IIT KGP and was boasting he could do any integral that didn't have special functions...he was coached by Dr Mrs NP for his JEE. And I gave it to him and he took only ten minutes and a couple of substitutions to get the answer...and won a handsome Acknowledgment in our Solutions Manual for Taylor & Wheeler's Black Holes Book.

Talking of integrals, I once did an integral by applying the Sommerfeld-Watson Transformation that I learned from DB. And showed it to Dr Mrs NP. And in two minutes she did it by partial fractions, a thing she was teaching her Class XII students. My pleasure knew no bounds when I discovered later on that this very same integral was done by the S-W Transformation in a paper in JMP by a famous physicist.

Here is more about real and complex integrals from Feynman:

...One thing I never did learn was contour integration. I had learned to do integrals by various methods shown in a book that my high school physics teacher Mr. Bader had given me....

....One time I boasted, "I can do by other methods any integral anybody else needs contour integration to do."

So Paul (Olum) puts up this tremendous damn integral he had obtained by starting out with a complex function that he knew the answer to, taking out the real part of it and leaving only the complex part. He had unwrapped it so it was only possible by contour integration! He was always deflating me like that. He was a very smart fellow...'
In our time (the 1960s) it was acknowledged that Landau was the expert physicist in contour integration.

Finally there is this Telugu proverb:

One Farmer takes his son who was bitten by a scorpion to the best Sanskrit Pundit in their village. And when the Pundit expresses his helplessness in the matter, the Farmer exclaims:

"Such a renowned Pundit!...And you don't know the scorpion mantra!"



...Posted by Ishani

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Shauq - Repeat Telecast

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  http://hrtantenna.en.alibaba.com/product/205082262-200156663/Outdoor_aluminum_alloy_Yagi_antenna_5elements_9dBi_.html

In the beginning, the world was Black & White...ask Calvin's Dad if you don't believe me.

I am talking of the IIT KGP Campus in the late 1970s. My friend NP has a shauq for the latest gadgets and gizmos and he was among the first in the Campus to instal a B&W TV set. It was bought and brought from Midnapore and installed ceremoniously by a team of youngsters who had to jump up the roof of his C1 Type Qrs that had no stairs but was about 15 feet high. 

You may ask why roof? The answer: Where else can one find a higher place to install the multi-element Yagi antenna that looked like an elaborate crow-stand?

Indeed KGP Campus being an ornithologist's paradise, one could always watch birds of different feathers roosting there. Remember the famous bird-shit-noise associated with the Nobel-winning Holmdel Antenna?

This Yagi antenna of KGP was furiously unstable and after every gale had to be rotated manually to receive its faint signals from the only TV channel broadcast via Calcutta TV. KGP was then on the fringes of civilization and TV coverage and one had to have boosters of capricious ability to get any signal at all. NP was not so much interested in what was going on in front of the Box as at its rear...he would squeeze himself behind the huge red-hot tube-receiver trying to improve its S/N ratio with limited success...no amount of amplification can violate the golden rule: "Input BS...output more BS"

The high-flying antenna was a status symbol alright...but it came with its flip side. Whenever there was this football match between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, his huge hall was packed to capacity mostly by youngsters of both sexes...the crowd split evenly into two opposing cheerleads. The noise on the screen was matched by the noise of the crowd...no one could really see the spotty foot ball...but how does it matter...the audio was clear enough.

By and by, color came to KGP but for a long time Doordarshan was the only channel...a monopoly. I don't quite agree that it was too bad. Surely you were forced to watch the programs dumped on you...but once in a while there used to be great sitcoms like Hum Log...I know of ladies who would start their day with the bright prospect: "Today is Hum Log". When there is a pool of abundant talent in the country and commercial considerations don't prevail, you have the chance for top-class programs.

I wasn't much of a TV viewer...my mother-in-law was...indeed I had to buy a color TV set to amuse her when she visited us for a stretch of six months...the "Thermometer Effect"...TV was and is the Great Silencer.

But I was hooked to a program called Surabhi hosted by Siddharth Kak and Renuka Shahane...I don't know why...the programs themselves were no great shakes but there was this ambience...pronounced (equally well) 'ombiaance' by my son.

The one episode I recall vividly even now had to do with their team visiting a very old toothless man in thick specs that shone in the glare of the camera; and his turban headgear. He was doing a 'show & tell' of a figurine he made. The lingo was quite alien to me but the toothless smile wasn't. He was asked about his craft and he was telling them details of the how, why and wherefore of his family craft that was dying if not already dead.

As expected, finally, he was asked how much he makes selling them. And the old artist-artisan smiled and showed with his hands a big circle. And as Newton's Third law follows his Second, he was asked:

"What makes you keep on doing them when you can't sell these dolls?"

"Haa! Aaadmi shauq se bahut kuch karta hai!"

(Sorry I can't quite translate it into English)

But how true!!!

It was an eye-opener to me that the entire science of Geology was done by well-to-do gentlemen who had no more reason to do it than shauq:

 

...In the winter of 1807, thirteen like-minded souls in London got together at the Freemason's Tavern at Long Acre, in Covent Garden, to form a dining club called the Geological Society. The idea was to meet once a month to swap geological notions over a glass or two of Madeira and a convivial dinner. The price of the meal was set at a deliberately hefty fifteen shillings to discourage those whose qualifications were merely cerebral. It soon became apparent, however, that there was a demand for something more properly institutional, with a permanent headquarters, where people could gather to share and discuss new findings. In barely a decade membership grew to four hundred --- still all gentlemen, of course --- and the Geological was threatening to eclipse the Royal as the premier scientific society in the country.

The members met twice a month from November until June, when virtually all of them went off to spend the summer doing field work. These weren't people with a pecuniary interest in minerals, you understand, or even academics for the most part, but simply gentlemen with the wealth and time to indulge a hobby at a more or less professional level. By 1830, there were 745 of them, and the world would never see the like again.

It is hard to imagine now, but geology excited the nineteenth century --- positively gripped it -- in a way that no science ever had before or would again.  In 1839, when Roderick Murchison published The Silurian System, a plump and ponderous study of a type of rock called greywacke, it was an instant bestseller, racing through four editions, even though it cost eight guineas a copy and was, in true Huttonian style, unreadable. (As even a Murchison supporter conceded, it had "a total want of literary attractiveness.")  And when, in 1941, the great Charles Lyell traveled to America to give a series of lectures in Boston, sellout audiences of three thousand at a time packed into the Lowell Institute to hear his tranquilizing descriptions of marine geolites and seismic perturbations in Campania.

Throughout the modern, thinking world, but especially in Britain, men of learning ventured into the countryside to do a little "stone breaking" as they called it. It was a pursuit taken seriously, and they tended to dress with appropriate gravity, in top hats, and dark suits, except for the Reverend William Buckland of Oxford, whose habit it was to do his field work in academic gown.

The field attracted many extraordinary figures, not least the aforementioned Murchison, who spent the first thirty or so years of his life galloping after foxes, converting aeronautically challenged birds into puffs of drifting feathers with buckshot, and showing no mental agility whatever beyond that needed to read The Times or play a hand of cards. Then he discovered an interest in rocks and became with rather astounding swiftness a titan of geological thinking.

Then there was Dr. James Parkinson, who was also an early socialist and author of many provocative pamphlets with titles like "Revolution without bloodshed." In 1794, he was implicated in a faintly lunatic-sounding conspiracy called "the Pop-gun Plot," in which it was planned to shoot King George III in the neck with a poisoned dart as he sat in his box at the theater. Parkinson was hauled before the Privy Council for questioning and came within an ace of being dispatched in irons to Australia before the charges against him were quietly dropped. Adopting a more conservative approach to life, he developed an interest in geology and became one of the founding members of the Geological Society and the author of an important geological text, Organic Remains of a Former World, which remained in print for half a century. He never caused trouble again. Today, however, we remember him for his landmark study of the affliction then called the "shaking palsy," but known ever since as the Parkinson's Disease. (Parkinson had one other slight claim to fame. In 1785, he became possibly the only person in history to win a natural history museum in a raffle. The museum, in London's Leicester Square, had been founded by Sir Ashton Lever, who had driven himself bankrupt with his unrestrained collection of natural wonders. Parkinson kept the museum until 1805, when he could no longer support it and the collection was broken up and sold.)

...Buckland was a bit of charming oddity. He had some real achievements, but he is remembered at least as much for his eccentricities. He was particularly noted for a menagerie of wild animals, some large and dangerous, that were allowed to roam through his house and garden, and for his desire to eat his way through every animal in creation. Depending on whim and availability, guests to Buckland's house might be served baked guinea pig, mice in batter, roasted hedgehog, or boiled Southeast Asian sea slug. Buckland was able to find merit in them all, except the common garden mole, which he declared disgusting. Almost inevitably, he became the leading authority on coprolites --- fossilized feces --- and had a table made entirely out of his collection of specimens....

...Bill Bryson: "A Short History of Nearly Everything"

...courtesy: Supratim

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...Posted by Ishani


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Loociphers - Repeat Telecast

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Loos are back in the noos.

The other day, our own Khairatabadi ebullient and outspoken Minister (the one who said that IIT Teachers are no good) is reported to have said:

"India is the world capital of open defecation"

There may be a little hyperbole in that claim of us being the 'world capital'...many other countries may protest...but honestly I applaud his statement...out of patriotism...our economy seems to be in the doldrums and we have to depend, for fame, on our shooters instead of our 'troubleshooter supreme' who has been elevated, with justice, to the most exalted post in our constitution...and we are also experts as a nation in 'shooting our mouths off' and 'shooting ourselves in our feet'.

The other day, my son and myself visited our Passport Office in Secunderabad after a long and troubled drive of an hour and a half. The car-park there abuts the high wall of the exalted office. And it was clear that there was no public convenience anywhere nearby since we found the pass-port wall adorned with nascent world-maps...and of course wisdom dictated:

"Do in Secunderabad as Secunderbadis do"

Some years ago there was this cute and absolutely original proposal for discouraging grown-ups from relieving themselves on public walls: A camouflaged police van would go round, stop wherever it sees an offender and round him up inside the van to join such other urine-passers. The van, when filled to capacity, would travel to the outskirts of the city and dump its leaky passengers in that no-man's land, where they can safely relieve themselves to their bladders' content before trekking back to civilization on foot.

Our school in our seaside Village, Muthukur, was itself on its outskirts and was surrounded by shrub jungle. As soon as the Vontale-Bell (the gong announcing Urine-Break) went off, all of us would run to the jungle outside our fence and urinate our chosen plants. And the next day, we would compare whose plant wilted most...for, urea, though a good fertilizer in moderate doses, can kill plants if they are mercilessly fertilized on a daily basis. And of course there was this other parabolic competition....

What I want to emphasize is that the problem that so troubles our Minister is one of rapid unbridled urbanization.

Then again there is this front page news-item today:

"School Shocker...Students must clean toilets"

I mean...their own toilets, like Mahatma Gandhi's controversial diktat that EVERY resident and visitor to his Ashram (which forbade attached bathrooms) must clean its public toilet irrespective of whether he was Nehru or even our Minister mentioned above who is a Nehru-Gandhian as per Wiki.

The news-item above emanates from a senior IAS Lady Officer in charge of schools and has generated much controversy.

Sometime back there was this claim that India has abolished night-soil cleaners. A very welcome achievement, for, I have seen this practice in my boyhood and resented it.

One of the reasons, I am told, that folks who visit the US would prefer to stay there forever and never like to return to their homeland is that this nuisance is not seen there (there may be others...like prohibitive costs of education and health care). America, being the world-champion in technology, has a hi-tech solution for every problem...something that seems to be alien to our Indian culture which opposes introduction of anything that threatens to steal our hereditary jobs.

Without doubt, hi-tech toilets like commodes (when they flush) are most welcome compared to the common open latrines of our villages.

But compared to the stinking Indian open toilets, commodes come with their own problem. They are so comfy that people forget that others may be waiting outside. My Father who at 79 refused to use the western commode I installed in his house, got so used to it by and by that he had to be dragged back with chains...he suffered from chronic consti...

And a senior physics professor at IIT KGP was reputed to have installed a book-rack on the wall by the side of his toilet seat.

I myself, while I was composing my Ph D thesis in our Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP, where my single room came with an attached western toilet, used to take with me a pen and paper...lest the mot juste may slip from my mind.

And here is Saswat going ga-ga about MIT:

...I have to say MIT is a very nerdy place. They have a bar somewhere in one of their buildings (I was there some years ago so don't remember the exact location) where they have a restroom with a big blackboard and chalks ready in front of the urinals. In case you have a brilliant idea while relieving yourself, the chalks are ready...

And their scribbles would come useful while claiming priority for patents...

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...Posted by Ishani

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Walter Mitty Syndrome - Repeat Telecast

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Hyderabad is at a height of 1800 ft above sea level. And our apartment complex is on top of what are fancifully called Madhavapuri Hills in suburbia. And we live on the 7th floor. And our flat has four balconies. Drag your chair and sit in any one of them and you are literally in a poor man's hill station. And monsoon here is cool, cloudy, breezy and dry with occasional downpours. And for a retired soul, nothing could be more thrilling.

For about three years we were living in downtown Hyderabad off the posh Banjara Hills on their downward slope. And in the ground floor. And it was gloomy, dark, stuffy and the narrow roads were flooded with (d)rain water. I was practically marooned and bottled up for the four monsoon months. But the land prices there are three times here...a rich man's hell station.

The other evening around 8 PM I was sitting in our balcony and gathering wool. It was cloudy, moonless, starless, and breezy. And I watched a lone blinking airplane below the clouds flying its languid course horizon to horizon. 

And called out to Ishani (2.7), for, I knew that one of our fantasy sessions was overdue.

She came running and watched the twinkling star wandering lonely like one of those Wordsworth things. Then I put her in the pilot's seat and myself in the copilot's. And taught her how to taxi on the runway, pull up the joystick, vroom, level off, turn, nose down, land, brake, halt, get down triumphantly, and of course all about seat belts and parachutes and stuff. And to take care that the plane is fully fueled before take-off since there are no petrol pumps up there...

And just watching the starry wonder in her eyes was bliss...have a girl grandkid if you wish to enjoy your retired life.

I recall only one fantasy session of my boyhood that lasted months and months...the rest were stupid and ephemeral by comparison.

I was 10 then and we were living in the town of Kadapa...it was then spelled Cuddapah charmingly. My Uncle (who later became an MD) was a house surgeon in the District HQ Hospital there and my didi was hospitalized for ten days recovering from her appendectomy. There were no rickshaws then in that town. The only mode of transport was what we called jhatka (tanga), a horse-drawn carriage. And we hired one for the whole of ten days and it was my pleasure to share the seat beside the driver's during our to and fro trips carrying tiffin, lunch and dinner for my mom who was stationed there...our home was about 2 miles away...

As I watched the driver's commands and controls over his horse, I became fascinated...pulling the rein rightward for a right turn, leftward for a left turn, pulling hard for braking, using his joystick as throttle, cracking his whip in the air for fun, shouting hai, hai, hai as a horn, using his legs for tickling, the tak tak tak tak of the musical hoofs...the entire ride was simply adorable...and I wished my Father would buy me a horse and a cart for my living...like Ishani finally went and asked her dad to buy her a REAL airplane...  

I never had a more enduring fantasy than that...

Certainly not in Physics or English.

I am told that for every published author in English there are a hundred fantasizing souls pestering them.

Listen to Thurber:

...These pieces have usually been written in a gay, carefree vacation mood, and it is a sound rule to avoid self-expression at such a time, since it leads to over-emphasis, underlining, unnecessary quotation marks, and the odd notion that everything that happens is funny. The American housewife, possibly a a result of what might be called the 'Blandings Influence', also seems to believe that amusement is inherent in everything that goes wrong about the house and in everybody that comes to fix it. My own experience has not been that fortunate. In my view, a carpenter named Twippley is likely to be as dull as a professor named Tweedle, and I think we are safe in setting this up as a standing rule...

Or RKN:

...We always question the bonafides of the man who tells us unpleasant facts. On the surface it is all very well to say, "I want an honest criticism that will help me, not blind compliment." I wish people would mean it. In my experience I have met only one person who took my views literally and tore up the story that he had brought to me for an opinion. He could very well have turned round and said, "The stories you write up are no better. I see no reason to accept your judgement," but he tore up the manuscript into minute bits and scattered them out of the window, and turned his attention to other things immediately, and later became a distinguished anthropologist. His book on the subject, a respectable demy size volume priced at thirty shillings, is about to be published by a famous press...

For the rest of us there is always the blogspot...

...Posted by Ishani

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