==============================================
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat
"I don't much care where--" said Alice
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat
"--so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough"
************************************************
That rather neatly sums up my blogging. Aimless, but going strong.
My yesterday's story about teaching a Class of 1 to Suranjana for an entire semester had me thinking of several such 'Small is Beautiful' gatherings.
The most celebrated is of course that story about Chandrasekhar. I read that he used to drive 100 miles back and forth every other day to take a Class for Grad-students. In the end the whole Class got Nobel Prizes: 'Yang & Lee'.
There is this story about Rubenstein, the Polish Pianist, Made in America, told in Readers Digest (where else?):
While in Berlin, trying to launch a career in music, he failed and was hounded by creditors. Dejected, he hanged himself in his Hotel Room. But the rope gave and he fell down like a sack of coal. And, as he walked into the sweet sunshine of street and life, he said to himself: "Never Again!"
The morning after an overnight performance in NY, Rubenstein & Co were winding down in their Rented Music Hall, when a young man ran in and dropped down from exhaustion. It turned out that the he missed his 'connection' the previous evening and could reach the Hall only that morning, with a Ticket in his hand.
Rubenstein ordered refreshments, and when recuperated, seated him in the front row of the empty Music Hall and gave the young man a full 3-hour Performance!
[Aside: Book-Lover's Idea of Hell: An AC Room with ample food and drinks, and all walls covered by bookshelves filled with Back Numbers of Readers Digest and nothing else!]
Professor and Mrs Robin Mukherjee of IIT KGP were our samne badir
neighbors for a decade and half. Great family friends. Very nice and gentle folks with a wonderful sense of the beautiful and the best in life and arts. Well-maintained garden and home. Both were accomplished singers. Ex-AIR artists. Legend had it that they met first in the AIR Studios. Mrs Mukherjee narrated this story to me the morning after the event:
Those days (1985) Spring Fest at IIT KGP used to be a small and homely thing. All Faculty Members with families were invited to the Cultural Events at the OAT. That night Amzad Ali Khan, then a young and charming handsome man was scheduled to give his recital, starting 11 PM. Around 10 PM, there was one of those wild Nor'Westers that blew everything away of the AV System. The aficionado crowd waited till 3 AM and slowly dwindled till Prof & Mrs Mukherjee and a handful others were left alone refusing to quit.
Then Amzadjee asked his devotees to come on to the dais, and gave them a cozy and full performance till daybreak, sans any AV or other systems than his own Sarod and Tabla.
A day before I left KGP in August 2005, KK asked me to talk to him about any one of my favorite topics in Optics. I chose a paper that I, he, and that 'shy' one did a couple of decades back and which KK forgot all about:
=====================================
"Locating the extraordinary ray", Sastry, G. P.; Kumar, Krishna; Chakrabarty, S.
American Journal of Physics, Volume 55, Issue 7, pp. 659-661 (1987)
====================================
I dragged him to our old M Sc Class Room, asked him to bring his pen and khata, talked about it for 15 minutes and made him work out all the steps of his own paper afresh for the next hour or so.
One-on-one Swan Song of gps@ his alma pater.
It is never easy to teach one's own son in Class XI. Adolescent rebelliousness on one side and fretful impatience on the other. A most difficult period for both.
So, I suggested that my son go to AD, my erstwhile student in the Phy Dept who did professional coaching. And forgot about it. At the end of Class XI, my son refused to continue there, as he was lagging behind and losing interest in Physics, which he was good at till then. Reason: "Lack of personal attention in a Class of 10 or so". My son was shy and burdened with keeping up the false reputation of his father. So, he couldn't ask questions and had to pretend to follow everything.
And he asked me to coach him myself.
I knew it wouldn't work out. So, I told him to bring along his best friend in his Class who was equally frustrated. Deepu's joy knew no bounds with my free offer of 'personal' JEE coaching.
Between the three of us, it went like swell. The two used to gather in our 'Guest Room' at 11 PM every night, solve all the Problems of H C Verma & Resnick-Halliday under my benign supervision, with healthy and friendly competition till 3 AM with a half hour break at 1 AM when my wife would feed us all hot hot aloo bhajee and chai.
.
Very soon, Deepu became my best young friend and a darling extra son of my wife. He completed his Ph D in Computer Science at one of those Universities of California and is now a 'big bucks' earner. My son, wife and daughter-in-law flew to Cal to attend his marriage with another campus girl class mate of theirs; and they in turn gifted us the Micro-Oven in which I heat my 'Bowl of India' every midnight.
A very profitable 'symbiotic' arrangement. With my son alone, we would have got pissed off with each other in 10 minutes of one-on-one coaching.
DB & I shared the same supervisor SDM for five years and then the same Office Room for the next 20 years. But we never published anything together. Within a short time, we realized that our interests are mutually orthogonal; but 'complementary'. They sort of 'dove-tailed' to make a clean sweep of UG Physics.
We had 2 blackboards in our Room, one behind his seat and the other behind mine. When both of us would be reading or musing silently, one of us would get pesky about some issue that was bothering us and start attacking the blackboard. The other would be all attention and listen and make comments, ask for clarifications and make profitable nuisance. HoDs who would 'peep' in for some work or the other would be frightened by the tense and charged atmosphere and withdraw in silence. And then we would go for a cup of tea and gossip.
At the end of an year, his paper would have an Acknowledgment to me or vice versa.
Great time is had when one understands the other's interets and limitations.
A keen listener is enough sometimes even if he doesn't know all the intricacies of what you talk.
SDM once gave me a Certificate after talking about his Problem with me for an hour, all attention, but no comment:
"Discussions with you have always been fruitful!"
I used to recall with glee the story that Churchill used to go visit his stable and read out his Speech to his pet horse before delivering it in the Combined Houses of Parliament
================================================
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Allergica Teacheralis
============================================
Oliver Wendell Holmes says that kids who hadn't grown up handling and fondling books from their household book racks will grow up to fear books.
I suppose, after 150 years, 'book racks' must be replaced by 'systems' as Hyderabadis call their PCs.
My father, with his six biennial 'daughter productions', was too poor to have a home-library; but took care of his only son's 'early education' in an ingenious way.
By the time I came to 'Secondary School', he was its HM. By nature, I am an out-door sort and used to grab all the prizes in the 'subjunior' category of 'pull-ups, high jumps, long jumps, 3-legged races, ball badminton etc', for which traditionally 'items' like 'torch light, table lamp. pen-set' were awarded. He decreed that an exception must be made in my case and books be substituted for thingummies.
In adition, he used to force me into 'entering' for 'literary' stuff like 'essay-writing, elocution, recitation' for which I neither had the skills nor interest. However, being the HM's son, I was given at least a 3rd prize, if not a 'consolation' one.
These 'literary' actvities naturally deserved 'books' as prizes. Here, he refused to make any exception. Books and more books.
But, he used to take pains to go to the District HQ, Nellore, to personally 'select' books meant for me according to my rising age and 'mental' development. So, I started from 'Lorna Doone', and reached 'Tom Brown's School Days' via the mandatory 'Tolstoy and Kabuliwala', by the time I quit school.
Today is his 16th Death Anniversary, and I remember him for his kindness with gratitude.
In my First Year at the University, I somehow chanced upon the First Edition of Eddington's paperback: 'Nature of the Physical World'. I didn't follow much, but became lyrically fanatic about Relativity.
I was looking forward to learning this subject from a competent teacher in our class room. I had to wait till my Final Year.
Everyone else (who didn't perhaps read Eddington) were busy furiously copying the Minkowski Calculus in the very First Lecture from a rather dour and stubborn Lady Professor (I was not averse to Lady Professors...rather the boot was always on the other foot. I LOVED 'My Fair English Lady Professor' to distraction. It was just that I loved Relativity more).
I never attended any of her classes after that; just so I don't get to hate that subject. At our University, there was no Attendance Rule.
It was my fate that I had to not only teach Relativity year after year all my teaching life, but get to invent and publish two wacky Relativity Paradoxes, one of which is in the Second Edition of Taylor & Wheeler; and the other is with Aniket as the first of 5 authors. Aniket: Now that you told me that you are in possession of the Sommerfeld set, look into the last Chapters of his Electrodynamics. Full of four- and six-vectors! I didn't teach them, but made Dharam Vir, Subba Rao & Trivedi teach them in my stead.
So, there IS a thing called Teacher-Allergy.
Towards the end of my stay at KGP, I had neatly divided my Relativity-Electrodynamics Semester into pre- and post-midsem Parts. The first part was formal and was taught from Classical Theory of Fields of Landau & Lifschiz. The second part was the bread-and-butter EM Radiation from other books.
Very few of my students liked both parts equally.
Ashish Bhardwaj (now a big shot) was vocally whining: "What is the use of all this crap?" about the first part. He was one of the few who went into Experimental Physics at Caltech and got some Patents of his own. When we came to the Radiation Part, he used to slide forward to the front bench and 'ogle' at the various Polar Plots as if they were so many nauch-girls. And, recommended to the Director KLC, who happened to be his Local Guardian (Ashish was the son of the Big Boss of IPCL, Baroda), that gps should be made to teach ALL his subsequent courses forthwith.
[Aside: A Punjabi Lady Teacher, newly recruited in the Humanities Dept, was looking for alliances for her sister, and asked me how good is Somnath Bharadwaj, our own new recruit and our student a decade ago. I told her that he is a Bengali BharAdwaj and not a Punjabi Bhardwaj. She went away disappointed. Somnath is now the hubby of a wonderful Bengali English Mam from Cal and is the father of two darlingest sons]
And there was this other kid, whose name I forget (he is a near-topper in Jogia's batch), who attended the first lecture my Part I and stopped attending, because he had already waded through this favorite of his from L&L. And when he started attending the Radiation Part post-midsem, he was out of his depth and lost continuity; because there WAS a continuity that I grafted and implanted.
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 EMI, EMII 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 etc 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 was. Waiting in front of my Office Room 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!
Allergica Teacheralis!
=============================================
Oliver Wendell Holmes says that kids who hadn't grown up handling and fondling books from their household book racks will grow up to fear books.
I suppose, after 150 years, 'book racks' must be replaced by 'systems' as Hyderabadis call their PCs.
My father, with his six biennial 'daughter productions', was too poor to have a home-library; but took care of his only son's 'early education' in an ingenious way.
By the time I came to 'Secondary School', he was its HM. By nature, I am an out-door sort and used to grab all the prizes in the 'subjunior' category of 'pull-ups, high jumps, long jumps, 3-legged races, ball badminton etc', for which traditionally 'items' like 'torch light, table lamp. pen-set' were awarded. He decreed that an exception must be made in my case and books be substituted for thingummies.
In adition, he used to force me into 'entering' for 'literary' stuff like 'essay-writing, elocution, recitation' for which I neither had the skills nor interest. However, being the HM's son, I was given at least a 3rd prize, if not a 'consolation' one.
These 'literary' actvities naturally deserved 'books' as prizes. Here, he refused to make any exception. Books and more books.
But, he used to take pains to go to the District HQ, Nellore, to personally 'select' books meant for me according to my rising age and 'mental' development. So, I started from 'Lorna Doone', and reached 'Tom Brown's School Days' via the mandatory 'Tolstoy and Kabuliwala', by the time I quit school.
Today is his 16th Death Anniversary, and I remember him for his kindness with gratitude.
In my First Year at the University, I somehow chanced upon the First Edition of Eddington's paperback: 'Nature of the Physical World'. I didn't follow much, but became lyrically fanatic about Relativity.
I was looking forward to learning this subject from a competent teacher in our class room. I had to wait till my Final Year.
Everyone else (who didn't perhaps read Eddington) were busy furiously copying the Minkowski Calculus in the very First Lecture from a rather dour and stubborn Lady Professor (I was not averse to Lady Professors...rather the boot was always on the other foot. I LOVED 'My Fair English Lady Professor' to distraction. It was just that I loved Relativity more).
I never attended any of her classes after that; just so I don't get to hate that subject. At our University, there was no Attendance Rule.
It was my fate that I had to not only teach Relativity year after year all my teaching life, but get to invent and publish two wacky Relativity Paradoxes, one of which is in the Second Edition of Taylor & Wheeler; and the other is with Aniket as the first of 5 authors. Aniket: Now that you told me that you are in possession of the Sommerfeld set, look into the last Chapters of his Electrodynamics. Full of four- and six-vectors! I didn't teach them, but made Dharam Vir, Subba Rao & Trivedi teach them in my stead.
So, there IS a thing called Teacher-Allergy.
Towards the end of my stay at KGP, I had neatly divided my Relativity-Electrodynamics Semester into pre- and post-midsem Parts. The first part was formal and was taught from Classical Theory of Fields of Landau & Lifschiz. The second part was the bread-and-butter EM Radiation from other books.
Very few of my students liked both parts equally.
Ashish Bhardwaj (now a big shot) was vocally whining: "What is the use of all this crap?" about the first part. He was one of the few who went into Experimental Physics at Caltech and got some Patents of his own. When we came to the Radiation Part, he used to slide forward to the front bench and 'ogle' at the various Polar Plots as if they were so many nauch-girls. And, recommended to the Director KLC, who happened to be his Local Guardian (Ashish was the son of the Big Boss of IPCL, Baroda), that gps should be made to teach ALL his subsequent courses forthwith.
[Aside: A Punjabi Lady Teacher, newly recruited in the Humanities Dept, was looking for alliances for her sister, and asked me how good is Somnath Bharadwaj, our own new recruit and our student a decade ago. I told her that he is a Bengali BharAdwaj and not a Punjabi Bhardwaj. She went away disappointed. Somnath is now the hubby of a wonderful Bengali English Mam from Cal and is the father of two darlingest sons]
And there was this other kid, whose name I forget (he is a near-topper in Jogia's batch), who attended the first lecture my Part I and stopped attending, because he had already waded through this favorite of his from L&L. And when he started attending the Radiation Part post-midsem, he was out of his depth and lost continuity; because there WAS a continuity that I grafted and implanted.
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 EMI, EMII 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 etc 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 was. Waiting in front of my Office Room 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!
Allergica Teacheralis!
=============================================
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Blink Failure
==================================
For the last 24 hours the 'Link' on my internet modem is unsteady and blinking. Which means I can't post my blogs at my will. The BSNL chappie is as hard to get as the pre-monsoon showers that 'promise only to deceive'.
Otherwise I am fine and kicking.
And raring to go!
========================================
For the last 24 hours the 'Link' on my internet modem is unsteady and blinking. Which means I can't post my blogs at my will. The BSNL chappie is as hard to get as the pre-monsoon showers that 'promise only to deceive'.
Otherwise I am fine and kicking.
And raring to go!
========================================
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Beauty Spot
=========================================
This morning I was in for a Shock. Or rather a Betrayal.
For the past ten days, Aniket has been darkly hinting that he, his Mrs, and their cute 16-month-old-Beany were planning to attack our home to look up our 5-month-old-Ishani.
I ignored it. Hint turned an e-mail threat. As a rule, if any of my 'clan' writes a 3-sentence mail, I compose and send a 30-line reply at once. Exuberance. But I dithered for 3 days; and wrote a 3-word-reply: "Let Heat Abate".
I then got an ultimatum that this weekend would be my "Ides of May". I suggested: "Why do you take the trouble? We would visit you instead". He then exclaimed: "How would THAT make for a badly-needed outing for my wife and kid?"
This type of dialogue always reminds me of the famous repartee by the Village Farmer to the City Psychiatrist.
Anyway, everyone knows that Aniket and me are born slippery-customers. Ask KK. When we try to do our Slippery Act with the Rest of the World, we are in it together, and aid and encourage each other by word and gesture.
But when we confront each other it was a close thing. It is like that Army & Navy Store, which sells that Spear which can pierce any Shield, side by side with that Shield which no Spear can pierce.
Or to change the figure, we are like two Sumo wrestlers jumping into the Ring just out out of soak-pits of castor oil (me) and honey (Aniket). Like that kid in the Slumdog who I am told surfaced out of a soak-pit of Chocolate Gravy.
This round went to Aniket.
After seating himself in our AC Bedroom, he broke the news that he read my latest blog posted this morning. The whole idea of posting blogs in the early hours and then going to bed is that after waking up at noon and checking it by the daylight I can edit, shorten or delete it safely before the readers, if any, can access it as usual in the evening.
But Aniket had to read it first thing in the morning and confront me in person.
My whole idea of blogging after retirement is this: I am a born story-teller. It runs in the family. Ask my nephews and nieces. Even now they flock to me, ripe souls they by now are. The essence of good story-telling is a judicious and audacious mix of euphemism and hyperbole deep-fried in pure gul oil.
It was my misfortune that instead of teaching Economics, I had to teach Physics all my life for a living. Now Physics has to do with 'facts' (mostly supported by incorrigible experiments). In my Final Semester at KGP, I wrote an Application to the Standing(?) Time Table Committee headed by Somanth/Sayan (as the case maybe) that I be allowed to teach one final semester of pure gul. They routinely sent me a Standard Proforma asking for Qualifications & Experience in the relevant field, attaching cited publications (not less than 3 in the past six months). Which I did. After the Scrutiny Jury met in a closed-door session for over an hour, they declared (orally, not to offend me or commit themselves): "Although even a convict in the death-row is permitted his last wish, we regret to convey to you that we found unfortunately that you are not qualified to teach String Theory".
Then and there I decided to take revenge on the entire Physics Community by narrating absolutely mythical stories in fertile fields of Physics by joining the celebrated Blogosphere (Hail Blogosphere!).
And this morning Aniket announces on empty stomach that he found my latest blog full of references to his Idol's pretty Idol, and waded through the relevant quoted Volumes of Sommerfeld and checked page by page, para by para, and foot-note by foot-note to check the veracity of my tall claims.
This, as Mark Antony would cry: "is the most unkindest cut of all". For, it was this same kid who encouraged me to 'forget facts' while blogging and wrote a famous Foreword to that effect.
A good story has a skeleton of Truth surrounded by a flesh of Fiction. Both are necessary.
Take, for instance, Madhuri Dixit. I mean, figuratively. Everyone knows that MF Hussain in Dubai and gps in Hyderabad are the sole surviving undying Senior Citizen Fans of Madhuri.
Before I forget: A few years ago, my son tried to wake me up of a lazy afternoon nap, shaking me and announcing that he has just then got hold of a pirated CD of Devdas and wanted me to watch it with him. He recalls that the last film we watched together several times in a day was 'The Great Train Robbery'. He was asking for a repeat.
I asked him who plays Devda. He replied: "Shah Rukh Khan". "And who plays the chap who 'drinks' him". "Jackie Shroff". I say: "Devdas is a deep and dark character. Shah Rukh is a joker. They should switch sides". And I switch sides and try to sleep off. He then shakes me and cries: "Madhuri is there". I sort of get up. "And who else". "Ash". "Who plays Paro and who that nauch-girl?" "Ash & Madhuri resply". I shout: "It should be the other way round!". And go back to bed.
Now, her skeleton alone would need lots of imagination to appreciate Madhuri (by laymen I mean). On the other hand her flesh alone would be like that of a hilsa without its delicious bones (sorry!). Both are required in proper arrangement for a story to gel.
Anyway, Aniket didn't say in so many words that my Sommerfeld's quotes were 'unfounded'.
Instead, he suggested, that by way of mitigation, I should 'retell' that story of Poisson Spot in my next blogpost.
'Retell' meant that I had told him this story once or more than once, with enriching embellishments each time around.
Having lived in Bengal for 4 juicy decades, I grasped two inalienable features of Bengali youth (upto 80 years of age):
(1) They are each fans of some or other hot shot fairly big; and they fight as to 'who is bigger' (now don't ask me Aniket, to 'retell' the 'who is bigger' triad) tooth and nail.
(2) They HAVE got to 'rank' everyone in every field, and each field by the other field. (SSG approves my take and even cited some song by some turn-coat Bengali poet as proof).
SDM, as I told you yesterday was an undying fan of Sommerfeld.
DB was a deathless fan of Maxwell.
And me a perpetual fan of Fresnel, from my tender age of 18 till now. Every time I look at his work, I 'discover' something new, like that White Knight (?) in Alice.
I don't know if you have seen the picture of Fresnel in, say, Wikipedia. It has that romantic agony writ on it just like Keats (sorry, Keats didn't have to face 'experimental evidence'; he could shoot crap).
Fresnel was a slow learner. Couldn't speak coherently till 8 or so. And died, like Keats, of consumption, at the tender age of 38 or so.
In between, he accomplished so much that Maxwell only had to put in the Math and the daring Vacuum Displacement Current.
And, being a fan, I can write a small tome on him now if only I can quit blogging.
Anyway, like Keats, he died in penury and almost anonymity. All revolutionaries have to face this (us precluded).
At the tender age of 18, he submitted to the Academie of France (or some such Body) his theory of half-period zones, now known as Fresnel Diffraction, for approval.
Now, Theoretical Physicists are like batsmen and experimentalists are like bowlers. A bowler may be hit for for successive fours and sixes over after over; nothing much happens to him.
On the other hand, the batsman has only one chance. One miscued hook, and he is OUT!
Likewise, someone's Theory may fit a hundred experimental facts; but if it can't explain the next one, it is declared out!
Poisson, of the Poisson Equation, was asked to scrutinize Fresnels' Paper. All a referee has to do to shoot down a Theory is to point out or invent ONE absurd experimental consequence which that Theory contradicts (we all had tried that, in a small way, in our Refereedom).
Overnight Poisson said that Fresnel's beautiful theory is bullshit, because it predicts that a beam of light falling on an opaque disk should have a bright spot at the center of its dark shadow. Period.
Fresnel looked into Poisson's objection and got gloomy because that is exactly the absurd rsult that his Half-Peiord Zone Theory predicts.
And went into deep depression with accompanying suicidal tendencies. At such a tender age!
Everyone had a good laugh (any upstart is anathema for the Establishment).
Except Fresnel's friend, Arago.
He said to himself: "Let me see".
And he SAW the bright spot at the center of the dark shadow exactly as Fresnel's theory predicted and pointed out by Poisson.
Arago's Paper with his live demos jerked up the Establishment.
And it decided that the newly discovered Beauty Spot be called, not 'Fresnel Spot' nor 'Arago Spot', but 'Poisson Spot', because he was who first suggested its 'existence'.
Take heart, young ones, keep poking holes in established theories...you may have your very own 'Beauty Spot'.
Coming to serious Physics (Ahem!):
The opaque disk has to be of the size of the wavelength of light. That is too tiny for light. Hence Arago ought to get his due credit.
Now, we have microwaves and Big Zone Plates for Microwaves, easily made in any lab.
And, since the advent of thin grating grooves, like the video cassettes, we can have Fresnel Lenses of decimeter-size containing millions of half-period zones alternately opaque and transparent that give such a bright spot acting like Zone Plates for light that burn holes in metal plates just by playing with them as we used to do with big convex lenses in sunlight in our childhood. Only please be careful not to gift one to your kids.
Again, when I was teaching Zone Plate during my last semester at KGP, I discovered that Zone Plates ought to produce 'virtual' images in addition to real images found in text books.
Any takers?
Just before blogging this artcle an idea dawned on me:
Everyone knows that any system that gives a bright point spot for a bright point source can act as a 'camera': Like the pin-hole camera.
This indeed is found in Jenkins and White, which has a photo of the 'image' of a coin that has Woodrow Wilson on it, produced by its collection of Poisson's spots on a screen, via a half-period sized opaque disk.
Now, we know that a pin-hole camera does the same, as beautifully.
The advantage of these two 'imaging systems' is that they are absolutely free from spherical aberration. That's fine.
What occurred to me was that these two systems: viz: (1) the pin-hole camera, and (2) the Arago opaque disk form COMPLEMENTARY SYSTEMS: Meaning, interchange the transparent and opaque portions of the 'pin-hole camera'; And you get the 'Arago disk-camera'.
Remember Babinet's Principle: "Complementary systems produce the same Diffraction Patterns" under suitable conditions.
My take is: Had Fresnel known Babinet's Principle, he could have knocked down Poisson with this feather: "Of course, there will be a bright spot, just like in a pin-hole camera!"
Am I right?
Some Physics at last!
===============================================
This morning I was in for a Shock. Or rather a Betrayal.
For the past ten days, Aniket has been darkly hinting that he, his Mrs, and their cute 16-month-old-Beany were planning to attack our home to look up our 5-month-old-Ishani.
I ignored it. Hint turned an e-mail threat. As a rule, if any of my 'clan' writes a 3-sentence mail, I compose and send a 30-line reply at once. Exuberance. But I dithered for 3 days; and wrote a 3-word-reply: "Let Heat Abate".
I then got an ultimatum that this weekend would be my "Ides of May". I suggested: "Why do you take the trouble? We would visit you instead". He then exclaimed: "How would THAT make for a badly-needed outing for my wife and kid?"
This type of dialogue always reminds me of the famous repartee by the Village Farmer to the City Psychiatrist.
Anyway, everyone knows that Aniket and me are born slippery-customers. Ask KK. When we try to do our Slippery Act with the Rest of the World, we are in it together, and aid and encourage each other by word and gesture.
But when we confront each other it was a close thing. It is like that Army & Navy Store, which sells that Spear which can pierce any Shield, side by side with that Shield which no Spear can pierce.
Or to change the figure, we are like two Sumo wrestlers jumping into the Ring just out out of soak-pits of castor oil (me) and honey (Aniket). Like that kid in the Slumdog who I am told surfaced out of a soak-pit of Chocolate Gravy.
This round went to Aniket.
After seating himself in our AC Bedroom, he broke the news that he read my latest blog posted this morning. The whole idea of posting blogs in the early hours and then going to bed is that after waking up at noon and checking it by the daylight I can edit, shorten or delete it safely before the readers, if any, can access it as usual in the evening.
But Aniket had to read it first thing in the morning and confront me in person.
My whole idea of blogging after retirement is this: I am a born story-teller. It runs in the family. Ask my nephews and nieces. Even now they flock to me, ripe souls they by now are. The essence of good story-telling is a judicious and audacious mix of euphemism and hyperbole deep-fried in pure gul oil.
It was my misfortune that instead of teaching Economics, I had to teach Physics all my life for a living. Now Physics has to do with 'facts' (mostly supported by incorrigible experiments). In my Final Semester at KGP, I wrote an Application to the Standing(?) Time Table Committee headed by Somanth/Sayan (as the case maybe) that I be allowed to teach one final semester of pure gul. They routinely sent me a Standard Proforma asking for Qualifications & Experience in the relevant field, attaching cited publications (not less than 3 in the past six months). Which I did. After the Scrutiny Jury met in a closed-door session for over an hour, they declared (orally, not to offend me or commit themselves): "Although even a convict in the death-row is permitted his last wish, we regret to convey to you that we found unfortunately that you are not qualified to teach String Theory".
Then and there I decided to take revenge on the entire Physics Community by narrating absolutely mythical stories in fertile fields of Physics by joining the celebrated Blogosphere (Hail Blogosphere!).
And this morning Aniket announces on empty stomach that he found my latest blog full of references to his Idol's pretty Idol, and waded through the relevant quoted Volumes of Sommerfeld and checked page by page, para by para, and foot-note by foot-note to check the veracity of my tall claims.
This, as Mark Antony would cry: "is the most unkindest cut of all". For, it was this same kid who encouraged me to 'forget facts' while blogging and wrote a famous Foreword to that effect.
A good story has a skeleton of Truth surrounded by a flesh of Fiction. Both are necessary.
Take, for instance, Madhuri Dixit. I mean, figuratively. Everyone knows that MF Hussain in Dubai and gps in Hyderabad are the sole surviving undying Senior Citizen Fans of Madhuri.
Before I forget: A few years ago, my son tried to wake me up of a lazy afternoon nap, shaking me and announcing that he has just then got hold of a pirated CD of Devdas and wanted me to watch it with him. He recalls that the last film we watched together several times in a day was 'The Great Train Robbery'. He was asking for a repeat.
I asked him who plays Devda. He replied: "Shah Rukh Khan". "And who plays the chap who 'drinks' him". "Jackie Shroff". I say: "Devdas is a deep and dark character. Shah Rukh is a joker. They should switch sides". And I switch sides and try to sleep off. He then shakes me and cries: "Madhuri is there". I sort of get up. "And who else". "Ash". "Who plays Paro and who that nauch-girl?" "Ash & Madhuri resply". I shout: "It should be the other way round!". And go back to bed.
Now, her skeleton alone would need lots of imagination to appreciate Madhuri (by laymen I mean). On the other hand her flesh alone would be like that of a hilsa without its delicious bones (sorry!). Both are required in proper arrangement for a story to gel.
Anyway, Aniket didn't say in so many words that my Sommerfeld's quotes were 'unfounded'.
Instead, he suggested, that by way of mitigation, I should 'retell' that story of Poisson Spot in my next blogpost.
'Retell' meant that I had told him this story once or more than once, with enriching embellishments each time around.
Having lived in Bengal for 4 juicy decades, I grasped two inalienable features of Bengali youth (upto 80 years of age):
(1) They are each fans of some or other hot shot fairly big; and they fight as to 'who is bigger' (now don't ask me Aniket, to 'retell' the 'who is bigger' triad) tooth and nail.
(2) They HAVE got to 'rank' everyone in every field, and each field by the other field. (SSG approves my take and even cited some song by some turn-coat Bengali poet as proof).
SDM, as I told you yesterday was an undying fan of Sommerfeld.
DB was a deathless fan of Maxwell.
And me a perpetual fan of Fresnel, from my tender age of 18 till now. Every time I look at his work, I 'discover' something new, like that White Knight (?) in Alice.
I don't know if you have seen the picture of Fresnel in, say, Wikipedia. It has that romantic agony writ on it just like Keats (sorry, Keats didn't have to face 'experimental evidence'; he could shoot crap).
Fresnel was a slow learner. Couldn't speak coherently till 8 or so. And died, like Keats, of consumption, at the tender age of 38 or so.
In between, he accomplished so much that Maxwell only had to put in the Math and the daring Vacuum Displacement Current.
And, being a fan, I can write a small tome on him now if only I can quit blogging.
Anyway, like Keats, he died in penury and almost anonymity. All revolutionaries have to face this (us precluded).
At the tender age of 18, he submitted to the Academie of France (or some such Body) his theory of half-period zones, now known as Fresnel Diffraction, for approval.
Now, Theoretical Physicists are like batsmen and experimentalists are like bowlers. A bowler may be hit for for successive fours and sixes over after over; nothing much happens to him.
On the other hand, the batsman has only one chance. One miscued hook, and he is OUT!
Likewise, someone's Theory may fit a hundred experimental facts; but if it can't explain the next one, it is declared out!
Poisson, of the Poisson Equation, was asked to scrutinize Fresnels' Paper. All a referee has to do to shoot down a Theory is to point out or invent ONE absurd experimental consequence which that Theory contradicts (we all had tried that, in a small way, in our Refereedom).
Overnight Poisson said that Fresnel's beautiful theory is bullshit, because it predicts that a beam of light falling on an opaque disk should have a bright spot at the center of its dark shadow. Period.
Fresnel looked into Poisson's objection and got gloomy because that is exactly the absurd rsult that his Half-Peiord Zone Theory predicts.
And went into deep depression with accompanying suicidal tendencies. At such a tender age!
Everyone had a good laugh (any upstart is anathema for the Establishment).
Except Fresnel's friend, Arago.
He said to himself: "Let me see".
And he SAW the bright spot at the center of the dark shadow exactly as Fresnel's theory predicted and pointed out by Poisson.
Arago's Paper with his live demos jerked up the Establishment.
And it decided that the newly discovered Beauty Spot be called, not 'Fresnel Spot' nor 'Arago Spot', but 'Poisson Spot', because he was who first suggested its 'existence'.
Take heart, young ones, keep poking holes in established theories...you may have your very own 'Beauty Spot'.
Coming to serious Physics (Ahem!):
The opaque disk has to be of the size of the wavelength of light. That is too tiny for light. Hence Arago ought to get his due credit.
Now, we have microwaves and Big Zone Plates for Microwaves, easily made in any lab.
And, since the advent of thin grating grooves, like the video cassettes, we can have Fresnel Lenses of decimeter-size containing millions of half-period zones alternately opaque and transparent that give such a bright spot acting like Zone Plates for light that burn holes in metal plates just by playing with them as we used to do with big convex lenses in sunlight in our childhood. Only please be careful not to gift one to your kids.
Again, when I was teaching Zone Plate during my last semester at KGP, I discovered that Zone Plates ought to produce 'virtual' images in addition to real images found in text books.
Any takers?
Just before blogging this artcle an idea dawned on me:
Everyone knows that any system that gives a bright point spot for a bright point source can act as a 'camera': Like the pin-hole camera.
This indeed is found in Jenkins and White, which has a photo of the 'image' of a coin that has Woodrow Wilson on it, produced by its collection of Poisson's spots on a screen, via a half-period sized opaque disk.
Now, we know that a pin-hole camera does the same, as beautifully.
The advantage of these two 'imaging systems' is that they are absolutely free from spherical aberration. That's fine.
What occurred to me was that these two systems: viz: (1) the pin-hole camera, and (2) the Arago opaque disk form COMPLEMENTARY SYSTEMS: Meaning, interchange the transparent and opaque portions of the 'pin-hole camera'; And you get the 'Arago disk-camera'.
Remember Babinet's Principle: "Complementary systems produce the same Diffraction Patterns" under suitable conditions.
My take is: Had Fresnel known Babinet's Principle, he could have knocked down Poisson with this feather: "Of course, there will be a bright spot, just like in a pin-hole camera!"
Am I right?
Some Physics at last!
===============================================
Friday, May 14, 2010
Name-Game
=========================================
My blogs are becoming just like my life....'wayward'.
Last night I began talking about my take on the Inscrutability of Americans and ended up talking about the Sommerfeld-Watson Transformation.
Let me continue and see where this goes:
'Sommerfeld' was a great name to drop during my times. It sounds good and has an aura and tang that reminds one of flowering fields of summer.
Not that I resorted to name-dropping with my students: First there was never any need, and second it wouldn't work. Those few students who cared, didn't get frightened by big names: they wanted 'stuff'. The rest couldn't CARE period.
But there were occasions when I resorted to this business and it always worked.
Professor T. Pradhan, who was the Founder-Director of IOP(?) was my Ph D Viva Examiner (1975) by virtue of the proximity of Bhubaneswar to Kharagpur. He told me after my Viva that he was too busy to read my thesis and could only glance through the Introduction and the Reprints on his train journey. But that was enough for an experienced Viva Examiner, I guess. In the hundreds of Vivas I (and my son) experienced at KGP on either side of the shows, it was always the 'presentation' which counted.
[Punch Cartoon: The picture showed the results of a Vegetable Show. The First Prize went to a dame, suitably underdressed, wheeling a barrow with not a Really HUGE cabbage; followed by an old man, suitably overdressed, carrying an ENORMOUS pumpkin, winning the Second Prize. Man says: "She scored in Presentation"]
My Viva went ok.
Two years later, I entered the Director's Office to face an Interview for my Promotion. And was pleasantly surprised that TP was there again as an Expert this time, for the same reason.
Deja Vu:
Same questions; same answers. Nothing learned; nothing forgot. Both sides.
TP asked me what did I teach. "Electrodynamics" "From which book?" "Sommerfeld" (gul! I read that book, and his 'Optics', cover to cover, but was teaching from Panofsky-Phillips and Jackson) "Which Indian Physicist's name occurs in his books?" "J C Bose" "In which context?" "Frustrated Total Internal Reflection" "Body or Footnote?" "Footnote" "Which other book describes this phenomenon most elegantly?" "Feynman Lectures" "Very Good!"
An exchange of glances between the HoD (HNB) and the Director Shankar Lal; and I was through.
Double dose name-dropping.
Then there was this KK who reluctantly joined me as an M Sc Project Student, as he himself admits. Nowadays he is a Senior Professor at IIT KGP holding an important Administrative Position and rings me up at midnight a couple of days back for urgent consultations which take a day and half to settle a Physics Issue hanging fire. I have to comply: my pension is with KGP.
Anyway, he told me much later that he wanted to apply my Principle of Least Action and do as little work as he could manage. But, unfortunately for him, my son was just a babe at that time not letting me do the nitty-gritty calculations; and so I had to summon KK to my home every night during the Summer Vacation and make him do the calculations under my direct 'supervision'. Midway, both of us found the thing was getting very interesting, and neither of us relaxed. His Project Thesis led to an experimentally verifiable new prediction. Since this is so rare in Theoretical Physics, I took 2 years finalizing it, with mails and further calculations back and forth between KGP and Kanpur, where he joined as an RS.
At that time Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, was the best Journal in this field. So, I took my time to plan the 'Introduction' and decided to drop Sommerfeld from Heaven (Himmel). The first sentence read:
"Sommerfeld (1954) remarked: 'Cherenkov Effect makes electrons visible'."
That one leading sentence won half the battle; and it was published forthwith (1987) and the experimental confirmation followed from the Proton-Synchrotron Labs, JINP, Dubna, USSR.
Last week, my Medico-Brother-in-Law (ex-President IMA, Tamilnadu Chapter..to drop more names!) forwarded a set of beautiful photos of Transparent Butterflies.
I at once gave some gyan taken from Sommerfeld's 'Optics'. He was so charmed that he forwarded my Sommerfeld comment to their entire IMA Chapter.
==========================================
"Truly Beautiful and Gorgeous! I think there is a bit of lovely Physics here too. Butterfly wings made of ordinary 'chemical pigments (dyes)', which work by absorption and reflection of specific colors of light like those of any sari, won't be this transparent. These must be 'Interference Colors'. Just like the colors of soap film bubbles we all played with in our childhood.
Sommerfeld mentions this in his famous Optics Book written a century ago"
*******************************************
I now narrate an absolutely true story (really!):
1992: Midway through the 10-year Rule as Director of IIT KGP, of Prof KLC, who also happened to be a Physicist-Material Scientist of world renown.
A month after he took over, he transformed the Ground Floor of our Department and converted it into a gold-plated hi-tech Microscience Lab and recruited a dozen or so Research Scholars and co-workers in his Lab. The place was truly humming with unwonted activity. He got installed the then latest Nobel-winning Scanning Tunneling Microscope, whose output photographs I displayed in my B Tech Class and these converted the Pussy Cat from Chemical Engg to Pure Physics (Refer to the blogpost: 'Russi Modi's Tom Cat').
One fine noon, there was a phone call for me from our HoD, Prof KVR, asking if he could meet me urgently in my celebrated Room C-239. I replied I could as well go over to his office, but he was particular that since the work was not 'official' but 'personal' it was his turn to come to me, as per Protocol. I said welcome.
In a few minutes, he arrived, closed the door, drew a Chair close me so that his back would face DB who was blowing smoke rings and searching for a poker to hit with his sledge-hammer called S-W Transformation; and said sotto voce tremulously that his honor, if not job, was in jeopardy. I asked him what such a serious matter could be. He replied that he just then got a call from the HoD Material Science that he is forwarding an RS of the Diro KLC with a crystal whose optic axis needs to be determined experimentally. HoD Mat Science washed his hands of the matter since KVR, on his own proclamation, was the Local Authority in Dielectrics, so the baby was squarely in his lap. KVR couldn't back out (his honor was at stake). Nor could he fail (his job was at stake, as per his hallucinations). And he confessed that he never had to locate optic axes of any crystals in his life. He got his crystal samples from MIT a couple of decades ago; but....that was it!
I told him not to worry, but simply send the RS to me with the crystal. At that time the subject was at my finger tips. And my UG training at AU made me fearless in Labs.
In a few minutes, Ms M (KLC's RS) arrived smiles all over. The smiles, I thought, were of mutual recognition: she and her would-be (who sat in my M Sc Class a couple of years back and whose Hall Day Group Photo was still in my album) were attending my Lectures on History of Science & Technology sitting side-by-side.
Little did I KNOW!
I asked her to hand me the crystal. She said she would fetch it whenever I was free. I asked her to bring it that Wednesday afternoon when the Second Year Lab would be free.
Come Wednesday afternoon, Ms M was accompanied by a total stranger, Ms P, who fished out the 25-paise-shaped crystal from her Money Purse and handed it over to me. I kept quiet and got down to business.
I pondered over the issue during the interval: since they were asking for 'the' optic axis, it should be a uniaxial crystal. And if I was lucky, the optic axis could be on its surface; most cuts are like that, perhaps. This could be decided in a few minutes. If so, the matter is simple. I could locate its optic axis by sandwiching it between two polaroid sheets and rotating them suitably.
I WAS lucky: the axis was on its surface.
Those days, (I don't know now), the Polaroid sheets didn't come with THEIR Pass Axes drawn on them. So, a supplementary experiment was required to determine them. The only recourse is to Brewster's Law. I knew where exactly a glass slab was (I was the Second Year Lab-in-Charge some years ago).
Shining Sodium light on the Glass Slab via the Polaroid, and rotating it viewing the reflected beam till it disppears, the thing was done in 10 minutes.
I asked them to give me a ball pen and lightly drew the blessed optic axis on its crystal.
And pocketed the crystal.
And asked them to tell me the whole story. It turned out that neither the Crystal nor the Problem belonged to Ms M of the Diro's Lab; but to Ms P, who was an M Tech student in the ECE Dept and was a close friend of Ms M in the SN Hall.
Bomb-Shell_Name-Dropping!
Felt sorry for KVR.
I wanted to teach them a lesson, but not a stern one. I told them to go to Prof KVR and tell him the truth. Then only he would revert the crystal to them.
They agreed.
Meanwhile I met Prof KVR and handed him the cute crystal with its optic axis drawn on it; but asked him not to report to the Diro till I 'submitted' to KVR a 'Detailed Write-up of the Experimental Procedure'.
Which, of course, I never did!
==============================================
My blogs are becoming just like my life....'wayward'.
Last night I began talking about my take on the Inscrutability of Americans and ended up talking about the Sommerfeld-Watson Transformation.
Let me continue and see where this goes:
'Sommerfeld' was a great name to drop during my times. It sounds good and has an aura and tang that reminds one of flowering fields of summer.
Not that I resorted to name-dropping with my students: First there was never any need, and second it wouldn't work. Those few students who cared, didn't get frightened by big names: they wanted 'stuff'. The rest couldn't CARE period.
But there were occasions when I resorted to this business and it always worked.
Professor T. Pradhan, who was the Founder-Director of IOP(?) was my Ph D Viva Examiner (1975) by virtue of the proximity of Bhubaneswar to Kharagpur. He told me after my Viva that he was too busy to read my thesis and could only glance through the Introduction and the Reprints on his train journey. But that was enough for an experienced Viva Examiner, I guess. In the hundreds of Vivas I (and my son) experienced at KGP on either side of the shows, it was always the 'presentation' which counted.
[Punch Cartoon: The picture showed the results of a Vegetable Show. The First Prize went to a dame, suitably underdressed, wheeling a barrow with not a Really HUGE cabbage; followed by an old man, suitably overdressed, carrying an ENORMOUS pumpkin, winning the Second Prize. Man says: "She scored in Presentation"]
My Viva went ok.
Two years later, I entered the Director's Office to face an Interview for my Promotion. And was pleasantly surprised that TP was there again as an Expert this time, for the same reason.
Deja Vu:
Same questions; same answers. Nothing learned; nothing forgot. Both sides.
TP asked me what did I teach. "Electrodynamics" "From which book?" "Sommerfeld" (gul! I read that book, and his 'Optics', cover to cover, but was teaching from Panofsky-Phillips and Jackson) "Which Indian Physicist's name occurs in his books?" "J C Bose" "In which context?" "Frustrated Total Internal Reflection" "Body or Footnote?" "Footnote" "Which other book describes this phenomenon most elegantly?" "Feynman Lectures" "Very Good!"
An exchange of glances between the HoD (HNB) and the Director Shankar Lal; and I was through.
Double dose name-dropping.
Then there was this KK who reluctantly joined me as an M Sc Project Student, as he himself admits. Nowadays he is a Senior Professor at IIT KGP holding an important Administrative Position and rings me up at midnight a couple of days back for urgent consultations which take a day and half to settle a Physics Issue hanging fire. I have to comply: my pension is with KGP.
Anyway, he told me much later that he wanted to apply my Principle of Least Action and do as little work as he could manage. But, unfortunately for him, my son was just a babe at that time not letting me do the nitty-gritty calculations; and so I had to summon KK to my home every night during the Summer Vacation and make him do the calculations under my direct 'supervision'. Midway, both of us found the thing was getting very interesting, and neither of us relaxed. His Project Thesis led to an experimentally verifiable new prediction. Since this is so rare in Theoretical Physics, I took 2 years finalizing it, with mails and further calculations back and forth between KGP and Kanpur, where he joined as an RS.
At that time Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, was the best Journal in this field. So, I took my time to plan the 'Introduction' and decided to drop Sommerfeld from Heaven (Himmel). The first sentence read:
"Sommerfeld (1954) remarked: 'Cherenkov Effect makes electrons visible'."
That one leading sentence won half the battle; and it was published forthwith (1987) and the experimental confirmation followed from the Proton-Synchrotron Labs, JINP, Dubna, USSR.
Last week, my Medico-Brother-in-Law (ex-President IMA, Tamilnadu Chapter..to drop more names!) forwarded a set of beautiful photos of Transparent Butterflies.
I at once gave some gyan taken from Sommerfeld's 'Optics'. He was so charmed that he forwarded my Sommerfeld comment to their entire IMA Chapter.
==========================================
"Truly Beautiful and Gorgeous! I think there is a bit of lovely Physics here too. Butterfly wings made of ordinary 'chemical pigments (dyes)', which work by absorption and reflection of specific colors of light like those of any sari, won't be this transparent. These must be 'Interference Colors'. Just like the colors of soap film bubbles we all played with in our childhood.
Sommerfeld mentions this in his famous Optics Book written a century ago"
*******************************************
I now narrate an absolutely true story (really!):
1992: Midway through the 10-year Rule as Director of IIT KGP, of Prof KLC, who also happened to be a Physicist-Material Scientist of world renown.
A month after he took over, he transformed the Ground Floor of our Department and converted it into a gold-plated hi-tech Microscience Lab and recruited a dozen or so Research Scholars and co-workers in his Lab. The place was truly humming with unwonted activity. He got installed the then latest Nobel-winning Scanning Tunneling Microscope, whose output photographs I displayed in my B Tech Class and these converted the Pussy Cat from Chemical Engg to Pure Physics (Refer to the blogpost: 'Russi Modi's Tom Cat').
One fine noon, there was a phone call for me from our HoD, Prof KVR, asking if he could meet me urgently in my celebrated Room C-239. I replied I could as well go over to his office, but he was particular that since the work was not 'official' but 'personal' it was his turn to come to me, as per Protocol. I said welcome.
In a few minutes, he arrived, closed the door, drew a Chair close me so that his back would face DB who was blowing smoke rings and searching for a poker to hit with his sledge-hammer called S-W Transformation; and said sotto voce tremulously that his honor, if not job, was in jeopardy. I asked him what such a serious matter could be. He replied that he just then got a call from the HoD Material Science that he is forwarding an RS of the Diro KLC with a crystal whose optic axis needs to be determined experimentally. HoD Mat Science washed his hands of the matter since KVR, on his own proclamation, was the Local Authority in Dielectrics, so the baby was squarely in his lap. KVR couldn't back out (his honor was at stake). Nor could he fail (his job was at stake, as per his hallucinations). And he confessed that he never had to locate optic axes of any crystals in his life. He got his crystal samples from MIT a couple of decades ago; but....that was it!
I told him not to worry, but simply send the RS to me with the crystal. At that time the subject was at my finger tips. And my UG training at AU made me fearless in Labs.
In a few minutes, Ms M (KLC's RS) arrived smiles all over. The smiles, I thought, were of mutual recognition: she and her would-be (who sat in my M Sc Class a couple of years back and whose Hall Day Group Photo was still in my album) were attending my Lectures on History of Science & Technology sitting side-by-side.
Little did I KNOW!
I asked her to hand me the crystal. She said she would fetch it whenever I was free. I asked her to bring it that Wednesday afternoon when the Second Year Lab would be free.
Come Wednesday afternoon, Ms M was accompanied by a total stranger, Ms P, who fished out the 25-paise-shaped crystal from her Money Purse and handed it over to me. I kept quiet and got down to business.
I pondered over the issue during the interval: since they were asking for 'the' optic axis, it should be a uniaxial crystal. And if I was lucky, the optic axis could be on its surface; most cuts are like that, perhaps. This could be decided in a few minutes. If so, the matter is simple. I could locate its optic axis by sandwiching it between two polaroid sheets and rotating them suitably.
I WAS lucky: the axis was on its surface.
Those days, (I don't know now), the Polaroid sheets didn't come with THEIR Pass Axes drawn on them. So, a supplementary experiment was required to determine them. The only recourse is to Brewster's Law. I knew where exactly a glass slab was (I was the Second Year Lab-in-Charge some years ago).
Shining Sodium light on the Glass Slab via the Polaroid, and rotating it viewing the reflected beam till it disppears, the thing was done in 10 minutes.
I asked them to give me a ball pen and lightly drew the blessed optic axis on its crystal.
And pocketed the crystal.
And asked them to tell me the whole story. It turned out that neither the Crystal nor the Problem belonged to Ms M of the Diro's Lab; but to Ms P, who was an M Tech student in the ECE Dept and was a close friend of Ms M in the SN Hall.
Bomb-Shell_Name-Dropping!
Felt sorry for KVR.
I wanted to teach them a lesson, but not a stern one. I told them to go to Prof KVR and tell him the truth. Then only he would revert the crystal to them.
They agreed.
Meanwhile I met Prof KVR and handed him the cute crystal with its optic axis drawn on it; but asked him not to report to the Diro till I 'submitted' to KVR a 'Detailed Write-up of the Experimental Procedure'.
Which, of course, I never did!
==============================================
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Dr Dracula
==========================================
This evening while flipping through the modest collection of books in my shelf looking for something which I now completely forget, I chanced on a paperback titled: 'The Inscrutable Americans' by Anurag Mathur.
The Inside Front Cover had this inscription in graphic letters with double shades: "To....'Sir'....From the Class of '98".
Let me see. That makes it IM's notorious batch (they squeezed TWO wholesale and many retail Parties from my wife @Home). The handwriting is feminine. Kripa is too shy and Arundhuti too proud. So, it must be Dora (whatever happened to her?...lost touch after a fairly turbulent decade. The last I saw her was on a short visit to us by herelf & Kingshuk, both of whom were fed up with their lucrative Software jobs and were dying to return to Physics...they took away IM's QM Lecture Notes from my bookshelf).
I can visualize the scene before that Great Farewell Party at my Qrs. In return for or in anticipation of: (1) Good food, (2) Inflated Grades, (3) Mythical Recos, my students often decide that a 'book' will serve as a Revenge Gift. They could have asked me, and, I would have said, like AC, the BC Roy Hall Lotus Eater: "Cash Please!". But they had to give me this book instead. This went on for decades. After educating me in the Class Room, in my Office after each Class, they still felt that I needed more of it; and always gifted me what they thought I needed by way of improving my cobweb mind, in the best of my interest. You might not have noticed it, but I am rather a sentimental bum (there we go again!). And I always read the books my students gifted me, come what may, with one sole exception to which I shall return presently.
The chap who was convinced that my education was totally inadequate was a somewhat fiery, combative, idealistic Bengali student (you may say they are all are like that, but some are more like that). His name is Amitava Chatterjee. After fighting long listless battles in the Physics Dept at KGP, he took it up to Bloomington, and then to Chicago(?) and then simply vanished from my Radar.
Anyway, while he was in his Final Year, he led a campaign that it was high time that GR was taught in our M Sc Physics Curriculum. Since there was none in GR after SDM retired and GB retired hurt, and none was willing to read up and teach a new subject, he fell after me. Those were the days when Hawking and Black Holes were looming in the KGP Event Horizon. He first gifted me Hawking's 'Brief History of Time' which was rather diverting, after my attempts to read that absolutely unreadable 'Large Scale Structure of Spacetime' by Hawking & Ellis. He then gifted me 'Surely You are Joking, Mr Feynman' which contained more Physics than his Lectures did if only you care to tease it out (Only yesterday VK and me were talking on phone about his Extinction Theorem idea in Brazil). And I learned the basic physics of 'Least/Most Action Principle' of GR by his teaser of the Rocket Clock to an unwiiitng Grad-student of Einstein.
Under the 'hallu' of Amitabh's 'inspiration prick', I borrowed the most wonderful tome: 'Gravitation & Cosmology' by Weinberg and spent a year working out its first 12 Chapters in two fat Khatas. And he inspired his Junior batch of Somnath et al to sign a Mass Representation to the HoD asking for a Course in GR. Nothing came out of that 'Memorandum of (mis)Understanding' for various non-academic but valid reasons. The infusion of GR into our UG Curriculum had to wait a good decade till Somnath & Sayan joined the Dept and I happened to be the unwilling Chairman of the UG Committee. The first thing I did after this fresh talent joined us was to ask them to write a brand new syllabus (after 20 years) giving them absolute freedom. They did it to their heart's content and I saw to it that it got pushed through.
Amitav's dream had to wait for a decade. Indeed when my wife and I hapened to meet and chat with Sayan over cups of Hot Chai in a Dhaba at Kolaghat by prior appointment as our ways crossed this January on the Calcutta-Bombay Highway, a couple of newer recruits were passing by and accosted Sayan, who introduced me to them as 'the gps responsible for Syllabus Revision' (Mark Antony was plain wrong: "the good is oft not interred with their bones").
However, my year of working out Weinberg was not laid to waste, because about half a dozen very eager Project students benefited from it year after year and many of them made their mark in Astrophysics and Cosmology as a fruitful career. A determined teacher inspired by his students can deliver...if only by proxy.
Then Amitabh returned to KGP from the US on his first summer vacation (he was a Campus Boy). The very first day, he dumped the brand-new American Edition of MQM by Sakurai, with the beautiful CG Series Block Diagonal Matrix on its Cover, and ordered me to read it and return it in just one month; and teach it to his juniors. Which I did, as commanded by him for the rest of my life at KGP! Day before yesterday, Krish and I were talking of this book which Krish referred to as 'one in a zillion' a long time ago when he was visiting us from Maryland.
Only the other day I was talking to VK that I was a Dracula sucking the blood of students. With the difference that after slaking my blood-thirst I did that of their juniors as well.
This Dracula thing was first said by SDM in his Farewell Function. While replying to the usual encomiums suited to the occasion, he said: "Few people know that I have been a Dracula all my life: When young students talk to me I get ideas which they don't see. I work on them and publish papers with them as Part I and without them as part II, III etc. The work is mine but the ideas 'spring' from their innocent questions."
How true!
Coming to the one in the dozen exceptions: Mahadevan & Raheja of Moitreyi's batch (which had the ZC I gulled about, as well as SSG) dumped on me a 'popular' book on 'Superstrings' written by obvious experts. In spite of several attempts, I could never wade through it and gave it up. String Theory is one subject which I could never digest, but unlike Hittorf, it didn't make me unhappy.
Coming to Hittorf (I think I am right), I read this story in Sommerfeld's: 'Electrodynamics'.
Now, an aside [this is becoming Pancha Tantra (stories looped within more stories)]: SDM's eyes used to 'glow' whenever he uttered the word: 'Sommerfeld'. Obviously a fan (punkha, in the IIT lingo): Sommerfeld was not only such a genius in Physics & Math, but also a great teacher building schools, unlike Einstein.
SDM and DB used to play with Sommerfeld-Watson Transformation in almost everyone of their CG Papers. Thereby hangs a tale. After SDM left. DB got an invite for a one-year fully-paid trip to KBW's Mexico City (that was the brief period in Mexico's recent history when she was basking on her Petro-Dollars). DB landed in Mexico trying to 'collaborate' and benefit from KBW.
It was like that infamous 'Bolus'. Bolus is a morsel of food mixed with drug administered by Veterinary Doctors to their animals, typically ill bulls. The Doctor takes a hollow pipe, inserts the bolus at its one end and keeping the bolus end of the pipe in the bull's throat, he puts its other end in his mouth, and blows the bolus down the throat of the bull.
One fine day, the Bull blew first!
Likewise, DB came to know that KBW wanted to learn Sommerfeld-Watson Transformation from him first hand. After learning it, KBW vanished on, first a vacation, then a Sabbatical, leaving DB in the lurch. Nothing much came of that one year, except a 2-bedroom apartment in North Calcutta.
Coming back to Hittorf, a Senior Professor of Physics & Chemistry at Munster, his brilliant young students gifted him the brand-new 2-Volume Set of young Maxwell's 'Elecricity & Magnetism' just hot from the Cambridge University Press. Hittorf eagerly carried the Volumes home and stopped coming to the University for a week. His colleagues and students were concerned by this unusual absence of Hittorf, and visited his Home. Only to find that Hittorf was lolling in his bed declining to eat or sleep. On persistent questioning, his wife told them that he turned morose ever since he brought those books home. He was taken to their Family Physician who discovered that Hittorf was depressed that such a Senior Professor such as he was, he couldn't make out a single Equation of the young & upstart Maxwell.
The Physician advised the students to see that Hittorf takes a Holiday for a month in a nearby Beach Resort. And while doing a final check-in of his trunk, his students found that the 2 cussed Maxwell Volumes were hidden wrapped up in a long coat!
My case was not that bad. I gifted that weird Superstrings Book to the Physics Library, with Best Compliments.
By the way, I too applied the Sommerfeld-Watson Transformation converting a definite real integral into a Contour Integral and got a wonderful result.
Only, Dr Annapurna of Math showed me that it could be done by Partial Fractions which Class XI students learn.
Talk of cracking a pea with a sledge-hammer!
================================================
This evening while flipping through the modest collection of books in my shelf looking for something which I now completely forget, I chanced on a paperback titled: 'The Inscrutable Americans' by Anurag Mathur.
The Inside Front Cover had this inscription in graphic letters with double shades: "To....'Sir'....From the Class of '98".
Let me see. That makes it IM's notorious batch (they squeezed TWO wholesale and many retail Parties from my wife @Home). The handwriting is feminine. Kripa is too shy and Arundhuti too proud. So, it must be Dora (whatever happened to her?...lost touch after a fairly turbulent decade. The last I saw her was on a short visit to us by herelf & Kingshuk, both of whom were fed up with their lucrative Software jobs and were dying to return to Physics...they took away IM's QM Lecture Notes from my bookshelf).
I can visualize the scene before that Great Farewell Party at my Qrs. In return for or in anticipation of: (1) Good food, (2) Inflated Grades, (3) Mythical Recos, my students often decide that a 'book' will serve as a Revenge Gift. They could have asked me, and, I would have said, like AC, the BC Roy Hall Lotus Eater: "Cash Please!". But they had to give me this book instead. This went on for decades. After educating me in the Class Room, in my Office after each Class, they still felt that I needed more of it; and always gifted me what they thought I needed by way of improving my cobweb mind, in the best of my interest. You might not have noticed it, but I am rather a sentimental bum (there we go again!). And I always read the books my students gifted me, come what may, with one sole exception to which I shall return presently.
The chap who was convinced that my education was totally inadequate was a somewhat fiery, combative, idealistic Bengali student (you may say they are all are like that, but some are more like that). His name is Amitava Chatterjee. After fighting long listless battles in the Physics Dept at KGP, he took it up to Bloomington, and then to Chicago(?) and then simply vanished from my Radar.
Anyway, while he was in his Final Year, he led a campaign that it was high time that GR was taught in our M Sc Physics Curriculum. Since there was none in GR after SDM retired and GB retired hurt, and none was willing to read up and teach a new subject, he fell after me. Those were the days when Hawking and Black Holes were looming in the KGP Event Horizon. He first gifted me Hawking's 'Brief History of Time' which was rather diverting, after my attempts to read that absolutely unreadable 'Large Scale Structure of Spacetime' by Hawking & Ellis. He then gifted me 'Surely You are Joking, Mr Feynman' which contained more Physics than his Lectures did if only you care to tease it out (Only yesterday VK and me were talking on phone about his Extinction Theorem idea in Brazil). And I learned the basic physics of 'Least/Most Action Principle' of GR by his teaser of the Rocket Clock to an unwiiitng Grad-student of Einstein.
Under the 'hallu' of Amitabh's 'inspiration prick', I borrowed the most wonderful tome: 'Gravitation & Cosmology' by Weinberg and spent a year working out its first 12 Chapters in two fat Khatas. And he inspired his Junior batch of Somnath et al to sign a Mass Representation to the HoD asking for a Course in GR. Nothing came out of that 'Memorandum of (mis)Understanding' for various non-academic but valid reasons. The infusion of GR into our UG Curriculum had to wait a good decade till Somnath & Sayan joined the Dept and I happened to be the unwilling Chairman of the UG Committee. The first thing I did after this fresh talent joined us was to ask them to write a brand new syllabus (after 20 years) giving them absolute freedom. They did it to their heart's content and I saw to it that it got pushed through.
Amitav's dream had to wait for a decade. Indeed when my wife and I hapened to meet and chat with Sayan over cups of Hot Chai in a Dhaba at Kolaghat by prior appointment as our ways crossed this January on the Calcutta-Bombay Highway, a couple of newer recruits were passing by and accosted Sayan, who introduced me to them as 'the gps responsible for Syllabus Revision' (Mark Antony was plain wrong: "the good is oft not interred with their bones").
However, my year of working out Weinberg was not laid to waste, because about half a dozen very eager Project students benefited from it year after year and many of them made their mark in Astrophysics and Cosmology as a fruitful career. A determined teacher inspired by his students can deliver...if only by proxy.
Then Amitabh returned to KGP from the US on his first summer vacation (he was a Campus Boy). The very first day, he dumped the brand-new American Edition of MQM by Sakurai, with the beautiful CG Series Block Diagonal Matrix on its Cover, and ordered me to read it and return it in just one month; and teach it to his juniors. Which I did, as commanded by him for the rest of my life at KGP! Day before yesterday, Krish and I were talking of this book which Krish referred to as 'one in a zillion' a long time ago when he was visiting us from Maryland.
Only the other day I was talking to VK that I was a Dracula sucking the blood of students. With the difference that after slaking my blood-thirst I did that of their juniors as well.
This Dracula thing was first said by SDM in his Farewell Function. While replying to the usual encomiums suited to the occasion, he said: "Few people know that I have been a Dracula all my life: When young students talk to me I get ideas which they don't see. I work on them and publish papers with them as Part I and without them as part II, III etc. The work is mine but the ideas 'spring' from their innocent questions."
How true!
Coming to the one in the dozen exceptions: Mahadevan & Raheja of Moitreyi's batch (which had the ZC I gulled about, as well as SSG) dumped on me a 'popular' book on 'Superstrings' written by obvious experts. In spite of several attempts, I could never wade through it and gave it up. String Theory is one subject which I could never digest, but unlike Hittorf, it didn't make me unhappy.
Coming to Hittorf (I think I am right), I read this story in Sommerfeld's: 'Electrodynamics'.
Now, an aside [this is becoming Pancha Tantra (stories looped within more stories)]: SDM's eyes used to 'glow' whenever he uttered the word: 'Sommerfeld'. Obviously a fan (punkha, in the IIT lingo): Sommerfeld was not only such a genius in Physics & Math, but also a great teacher building schools, unlike Einstein.
SDM and DB used to play with Sommerfeld-Watson Transformation in almost everyone of their CG Papers. Thereby hangs a tale. After SDM left. DB got an invite for a one-year fully-paid trip to KBW's Mexico City (that was the brief period in Mexico's recent history when she was basking on her Petro-Dollars). DB landed in Mexico trying to 'collaborate' and benefit from KBW.
It was like that infamous 'Bolus'. Bolus is a morsel of food mixed with drug administered by Veterinary Doctors to their animals, typically ill bulls. The Doctor takes a hollow pipe, inserts the bolus at its one end and keeping the bolus end of the pipe in the bull's throat, he puts its other end in his mouth, and blows the bolus down the throat of the bull.
One fine day, the Bull blew first!
Likewise, DB came to know that KBW wanted to learn Sommerfeld-Watson Transformation from him first hand. After learning it, KBW vanished on, first a vacation, then a Sabbatical, leaving DB in the lurch. Nothing much came of that one year, except a 2-bedroom apartment in North Calcutta.
Coming back to Hittorf, a Senior Professor of Physics & Chemistry at Munster, his brilliant young students gifted him the brand-new 2-Volume Set of young Maxwell's 'Elecricity & Magnetism' just hot from the Cambridge University Press. Hittorf eagerly carried the Volumes home and stopped coming to the University for a week. His colleagues and students were concerned by this unusual absence of Hittorf, and visited his Home. Only to find that Hittorf was lolling in his bed declining to eat or sleep. On persistent questioning, his wife told them that he turned morose ever since he brought those books home. He was taken to their Family Physician who discovered that Hittorf was depressed that such a Senior Professor such as he was, he couldn't make out a single Equation of the young & upstart Maxwell.
The Physician advised the students to see that Hittorf takes a Holiday for a month in a nearby Beach Resort. And while doing a final check-in of his trunk, his students found that the 2 cussed Maxwell Volumes were hidden wrapped up in a long coat!
My case was not that bad. I gifted that weird Superstrings Book to the Physics Library, with Best Compliments.
By the way, I too applied the Sommerfeld-Watson Transformation converting a definite real integral into a Contour Integral and got a wonderful result.
Only, Dr Annapurna of Math showed me that it could be done by Partial Fractions which Class XI students learn.
Talk of cracking a pea with a sledge-hammer!
================================================
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Dr Bowdler
=========================================
In Shakespeare's time, England was free from inhibitions. By the 19th Century, this Nation of Shopkeepers unwittingly acquired an Empire and then there emerged a Society Stratum that turned genteel to maintain its status different than the worker-bees. Typical Jane Austen Syndrome. In these well-fed households the long winter months were cruel to spend forcibly indoors in the wretched English climate. There was no Radio, TV to divert them. So, the fathers took it upon themselves to amuse and educate their wives and kids by reading aloud passages from the Bible and Shakespeare.
One such was little Bowdler's father. When he grew up to be a physician of private means, Dr Bowdler turned to his father's pastime of reading Shakespeare aloud to his kids. He discovered to his consternation that his late lamented father was conning them by omitting, rewording or sweetening some very juicy sentences from the original Shakespeare. It then occurred to him that he could do himself and the prudish English households enormous good by publishing his own version of a 'Family Shakespeare' fit for consumption of the forthcoming Victorian Society. It sold like hot cakes and Bowdler was immortalized by becoming a verb 'bowdlerize' for 'censoring', which can be said to have officially begun with him, at least in Literature.
When the acutely British 'The Statesman' copy containing my celebrated article 'In Praise of Laziness' arrived at my desk, courtesy Shyamal, I was curious to see how much of my 'copy' was bowdlarized by the resident represantative of the erstwhile British Empire in The Statesman House in Chowringhee. I was astonished to note that it suffered no major editorial licenses than changing some Capital Letters to which I am addicted to lower case. And it was acompanied by the routine Debabratada's drawing. And I was amused to see that the picture he drew neither had Sherlock Holmes. nor SDM, nor even me; but an IAS Babu in the Writers Building relaxing in his stupid chair with a cigarette in his hand, and a matchbox on his Table which had a heap of files in the Inbox and none in the Outbox. I could figure it out that when my article landed on his desk, Debabratada saw the Title and wanted to be true to it by being too lazy to read the 'copy', but assume its contents.
My IAS brother-in-law was curious to see Debabratada's picture more than my article. It so happened that they had a family get-together at Hyderabad, six highly accomplished brothers and their womenfolk. And I was asked to bring along with my wife a xerox copy of the Statesman article, which I carried to the Hotel suite where they were staying. As I entered the room, the youngest of the six brothers snatched the paper from my hand. Now, this gentleman was an MD in Microbiology settled in London for over a quarter century. By sheer dint of his services to Her Majesty the Queen he was recently honored by an OBE (Officer of the [defunct] British Empire). And he started reading it aloud for the benefit of the gathering of a dozen or so gentlemen and an equal number of ladies (with the exception of me and my wife, who would wilt to be so labeled).
Now, this Read Aloud thing is something which always embarrassed me acutely. And I knew that there was a word in my 'copy' fit to be censored out by an OBE, and was waiting for it to arrive. When the OBE saw it while reading aloud, he paused, recovered his composure quickly, and replaced it by a more innocent upstart. What the Statesman didn't dare do to me was done by an OBE. I could have dragged him to a British Court of appropriate jurisdiction:
The offending word was: 'bum'. I called Sherlock Holmes the proverbial 'lazy bum'.
He read it out as: "lazy, ahem, Man"!
I give you below the Free Online Dictionary's Entries:
........................................
bum: 1
n.
1. A tramp; a vagrant.
2. A lazy or shiftless person, especially one who seeks to live solely by the support of others.
3. An incompetent, insignificant, or obnoxious person: 'The batter called the pitcher a bum'.
4. One who is devoted to a particular activity or milieu: 'a beach bum'.
bum 2
n. Chiefly British Slang
The buttocks.
..........................................
You be the Jury and the Judge. Our own USA hands out 4 meanings all of which vindicate me and only 1 'British slang' which bugged him.
Am I not justified to be peeved?
-----------------------------------------
His IAS brother, who happens to be my brother-in-law (Saalah Inverse) was having a rather poor opinion of Retired IIT Professors of Physics as unread except in Physics unlike the widely read IAS Brotherhood. But, after reading 150 of my impromptu Limerical Political Satires, he reversed his opinion and turned a fan of mine (these IAS chappies know which side of their bread is buttered...."Better be the first rather than the last to appreciate and encourage 'hidden' talents").
When I wrote an amusing but biting piece of satire called 'Mehsud mehsud' and sent it to him, this was his spontaneous reply :
........................
Wah Janab! Wah! Apne Kamal kardiya! Khuda se mujhe yeh dua hai Apki is Hasee-majak sada salamath rakhe! diwali mubarak! asli mazhab ye hai "Auri ki dukh se jo pershan nahi hota wo majhab koi bhi ho, woh musalman nahi hai. khud hafiz apki shub chintak.
.........................
So far so good. But when a week later I happened to meet him at his Madras Home on my return trip from Madurai, he did point out that Brahmins don't have 'pony tails' as I wrote in that piece, but 'pigtails'. I was fresh from Srirangam, the chief temple town of Vaishnavites (to which be happens to belong) and I told him that I saw all the Pujaris there with ponier-like tails than the pigtailed Shaivites. And the matter ended there.
While preparing the piece for printing in my booklet: 'Woolgathering' I reread the sentence;
................................
"They even sell Veg Haleem nowadays for pony-tailed Brahmins"
...............................
I found the word irreplaceable, not because of its veracity, but 'pigtailed' sits uneasily if it replaces the word 'pony-tailed'.
Reason: Our beautiful Lady Teacher of English at our University taught us that the letters l,m,n are special in the English alphabet and they are called 'lyrical' letters particularly if they occur in combinations like in: 'lemonade, moonlight, or even lamentable'.
And my sentence above bristles with combinations of these letters; and the harsh guttaral 'pigtailed' would be a brash intruder.
So I kept it as such, IAS or no IAS!
-------------------------------------------
Below I take pains to keyboard a devastating sample of bowdlerizing:
........................................
Oliver Wendell Holmes, more than a century and half ago, was 'commissioned' to write a short poem to a committee for a certain celebration, which he thought was to be a festive and convivial occasion. But its President turned out to be a 'teetotaler'. So, Holmes' poem was suitably 'altered' by the President.
Here is the original poem;
====================================
Come! fill a fresh bumper,- for why should we go
While the nectar still reddens our cups as they flow!
Pour out the rich juices still bright with the sun,
Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubies shall run.
The purple glebed-clusters their life-dews have bled;
How sweet is the breath of the fragrance they shed!
For summer's last roses lie hid in the wines
That were garnered by maidens who laughed through the vines.
Then a smile, and a glass, and a toast, and a cheer,
For all the good wine, and we've some of it here
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall,
Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all!
====================================================
And below is the teetotaler President's 'slightly altered' version:
===========================================
Come! fill a fresh bumper,- for why should we go
While the logwood still reddens our cups as they flow!
Pour out the decoction still bright with the sun,
Till o'er the brimmed crystal the dyestuff shall run.
The half-ripened apples their life-dews have bled;
How sweet is the taste of the sugar of lead!
For summer's rank poisons lie hid in the wines!!!
That were garnered by stable-boys smoking their long-nines.
Then a scowl, and a howl, and a scoff, and a sneer,
For all strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall,
Down, down, with the tyrant that masters us all!
==============================================
In Shakespeare's time, England was free from inhibitions. By the 19th Century, this Nation of Shopkeepers unwittingly acquired an Empire and then there emerged a Society Stratum that turned genteel to maintain its status different than the worker-bees. Typical Jane Austen Syndrome. In these well-fed households the long winter months were cruel to spend forcibly indoors in the wretched English climate. There was no Radio, TV to divert them. So, the fathers took it upon themselves to amuse and educate their wives and kids by reading aloud passages from the Bible and Shakespeare.
One such was little Bowdler's father. When he grew up to be a physician of private means, Dr Bowdler turned to his father's pastime of reading Shakespeare aloud to his kids. He discovered to his consternation that his late lamented father was conning them by omitting, rewording or sweetening some very juicy sentences from the original Shakespeare. It then occurred to him that he could do himself and the prudish English households enormous good by publishing his own version of a 'Family Shakespeare' fit for consumption of the forthcoming Victorian Society. It sold like hot cakes and Bowdler was immortalized by becoming a verb 'bowdlerize' for 'censoring', which can be said to have officially begun with him, at least in Literature.
When the acutely British 'The Statesman' copy containing my celebrated article 'In Praise of Laziness' arrived at my desk, courtesy Shyamal, I was curious to see how much of my 'copy' was bowdlarized by the resident represantative of the erstwhile British Empire in The Statesman House in Chowringhee. I was astonished to note that it suffered no major editorial licenses than changing some Capital Letters to which I am addicted to lower case. And it was acompanied by the routine Debabratada's drawing. And I was amused to see that the picture he drew neither had Sherlock Holmes. nor SDM, nor even me; but an IAS Babu in the Writers Building relaxing in his stupid chair with a cigarette in his hand, and a matchbox on his Table which had a heap of files in the Inbox and none in the Outbox. I could figure it out that when my article landed on his desk, Debabratada saw the Title and wanted to be true to it by being too lazy to read the 'copy', but assume its contents.
My IAS brother-in-law was curious to see Debabratada's picture more than my article. It so happened that they had a family get-together at Hyderabad, six highly accomplished brothers and their womenfolk. And I was asked to bring along with my wife a xerox copy of the Statesman article, which I carried to the Hotel suite where they were staying. As I entered the room, the youngest of the six brothers snatched the paper from my hand. Now, this gentleman was an MD in Microbiology settled in London for over a quarter century. By sheer dint of his services to Her Majesty the Queen he was recently honored by an OBE (Officer of the [defunct] British Empire). And he started reading it aloud for the benefit of the gathering of a dozen or so gentlemen and an equal number of ladies (with the exception of me and my wife, who would wilt to be so labeled).
Now, this Read Aloud thing is something which always embarrassed me acutely. And I knew that there was a word in my 'copy' fit to be censored out by an OBE, and was waiting for it to arrive. When the OBE saw it while reading aloud, he paused, recovered his composure quickly, and replaced it by a more innocent upstart. What the Statesman didn't dare do to me was done by an OBE. I could have dragged him to a British Court of appropriate jurisdiction:
The offending word was: 'bum'. I called Sherlock Holmes the proverbial 'lazy bum'.
He read it out as: "lazy, ahem, Man"!
I give you below the Free Online Dictionary's Entries:
........................................
bum: 1
n.
1. A tramp; a vagrant.
2. A lazy or shiftless person, especially one who seeks to live solely by the support of others.
3. An incompetent, insignificant, or obnoxious person: 'The batter called the pitcher a bum'.
4. One who is devoted to a particular activity or milieu: 'a beach bum'.
bum 2
n. Chiefly British Slang
The buttocks.
..........................................
You be the Jury and the Judge. Our own USA hands out 4 meanings all of which vindicate me and only 1 'British slang' which bugged him.
Am I not justified to be peeved?
-----------------------------------------
His IAS brother, who happens to be my brother-in-law (Saalah Inverse) was having a rather poor opinion of Retired IIT Professors of Physics as unread except in Physics unlike the widely read IAS Brotherhood. But, after reading 150 of my impromptu Limerical Political Satires, he reversed his opinion and turned a fan of mine (these IAS chappies know which side of their bread is buttered...."Better be the first rather than the last to appreciate and encourage 'hidden' talents").
When I wrote an amusing but biting piece of satire called 'Mehsud mehsud' and sent it to him, this was his spontaneous reply :
........................
Wah Janab! Wah! Apne Kamal kardiya! Khuda se mujhe yeh dua hai Apki is Hasee-majak sada salamath rakhe! diwali mubarak! asli mazhab ye hai "Auri ki dukh se jo pershan nahi hota wo majhab koi bhi ho, woh musalman nahi hai. khud hafiz apki shub chintak.
.........................
So far so good. But when a week later I happened to meet him at his Madras Home on my return trip from Madurai, he did point out that Brahmins don't have 'pony tails' as I wrote in that piece, but 'pigtails'. I was fresh from Srirangam, the chief temple town of Vaishnavites (to which be happens to belong) and I told him that I saw all the Pujaris there with ponier-like tails than the pigtailed Shaivites. And the matter ended there.
While preparing the piece for printing in my booklet: 'Woolgathering' I reread the sentence;
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"They even sell Veg Haleem nowadays for pony-tailed Brahmins"
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I found the word irreplaceable, not because of its veracity, but 'pigtailed' sits uneasily if it replaces the word 'pony-tailed'.
Reason: Our beautiful Lady Teacher of English at our University taught us that the letters l,m,n are special in the English alphabet and they are called 'lyrical' letters particularly if they occur in combinations like in: 'lemonade, moonlight, or even lamentable'.
And my sentence above bristles with combinations of these letters; and the harsh guttaral 'pigtailed' would be a brash intruder.
So I kept it as such, IAS or no IAS!
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Below I take pains to keyboard a devastating sample of bowdlerizing:
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, more than a century and half ago, was 'commissioned' to write a short poem to a committee for a certain celebration, which he thought was to be a festive and convivial occasion. But its President turned out to be a 'teetotaler'. So, Holmes' poem was suitably 'altered' by the President.
Here is the original poem;
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Come! fill a fresh bumper,- for why should we go
While the nectar still reddens our cups as they flow!
Pour out the rich juices still bright with the sun,
Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubies shall run.
The purple glebed-clusters their life-dews have bled;
How sweet is the breath of the fragrance they shed!
For summer's last roses lie hid in the wines
That were garnered by maidens who laughed through the vines.
Then a smile, and a glass, and a toast, and a cheer,
For all the good wine, and we've some of it here
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall,
Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all!
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And below is the teetotaler President's 'slightly altered' version:
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Come! fill a fresh bumper,- for why should we go
While the logwood still reddens our cups as they flow!
Pour out the decoction still bright with the sun,
Till o'er the brimmed crystal the dyestuff shall run.
The half-ripened apples their life-dews have bled;
How sweet is the taste of the sugar of lead!
For summer's rank poisons lie hid in the wines!!!
That were garnered by stable-boys smoking their long-nines.
Then a scowl, and a howl, and a scoff, and a sneer,
For all strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall,
Down, down, with the tyrant that masters us all!
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