Match & Patch

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At 23 my son, Sonoo, passed M Sc from IIT KGP, and joined a Software Firm in Hyderabad as a Trainee Developer.

Within a month I got a phone call from a Professor at KGP early one morning:

Prof: We want to visit your Qrs; are you free now?

Me: What is the matter?

Prof: About your son's match

Me: My son stopped playing Badminton for his Patel Hall last year itself

Prof: No, not Badminton;...Match.... Match....

Me: He is no good at any other game

Prof: No, no...not games... Marriage....my brother's daughter is also a Software Developer Trainee at Hyderabad..

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That was truly an eye-opener. Till then I never looked at my son with this third eye as a prospective bridegroom..he was just a kid as far as I was concerned (I married at 36).

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Me: He is just beginning his career...and his pay is just about enough to feed himself...

Prof: My brother will take care of EVERYTHING

Me: He is just 23

Prof: Just the right age for marriage

Me: .........My wife says not yet...sorry

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The first picture I get whenever Match is mentioned is the one that goes with: Game, Set and Match....

The next is of course the stick that I used to light my cigarettes with. Folks still use it now. They tried gas-filled, liquid-filled, wick-based, electronic and friction-things; but none caught on...it is still the age-old safety-match that prevails, at least in Hyderabad. During my heydays of smoking in my youth, I was dreaming of those cow-boy things which light up when you stylishly flick them on the back of your boot. I tried the safety ones...the success rate was one in a hundred; really safe!

Then of course I had the heck of a time when my wife gave me one of her green saris and asked me to fetch her a Matching Blouse from Gole Bazaar. I thought it was a breeze....but I found it impossible to get a perfect match of two independently produced colors. The visible spectrum VIBGYOR is a tiny bit of the entire thing...but what a headache it is...I gave up and declined to do the job....forever....When she looks nowadays for a matching blouse in the shop, that means an hour of Woolgathering for me;....but the manufacturers of saris caught on and produce nowadays saris-with-blouse...phew!

Next we come to Patch.

In our childhood, our khaki half pants were no Match for our rowdy play. They always used to get torn during the pushes, pulls, claws, and such....and you know where they give...right at the bottom of the bottom... and since buying a new knicker (till the next festive day) was out of budget, I had to run to Jaan Saab, my Tailor-Friend to get a Patch with a newly cut khaki thing....the result was for all to see...an inviting Non-Matching Patch at a crucial part of anatomy ideally suited for giggling girls...

I watched dents on scooters removed and cheaply repainted...same story...Non-Matching-Patches...

There are two Patches; one a Great Survivor and the other as dead as the Dodo:

The Survivor Patch is for the punctured rubber tube of the Great Survivor Push Bike (competing with the Sewing Machine, both of whose designs reached an optimum 60 years ago and remained triumphantly there). The same wayside cycle-repair-boy pulling the tube out by main force, inflating it by mouth, dipping it into his muddy water tub, looking for bubbles, pushing in a Match or two, cutting an old tube into a Designer Patch, quickly opening the same old Solution and closing it, applying it with his finger to the Patch, doing phoo-phoo-phoo with his mouth, sticking it on the hole, pressing it mightily, testing it and pushing the tube back, collecting the same old one-anna equivalent, and feeling sure that you will return sooner than he thought...

The Dead Patch is on utensils by the itinerant Tinker..shouting on the road for utensils with holes made by that miracle liquid called water. 60 years ago we didn't have Stainless Steel or Aluminum. All cooking and keeping was done in Brass, Copper, Bronze and Tin-coated Lead vessels. And water was drawn from wells and stored in Iron buckets. All these containers (for the contained) are playthings to water: salty, sweet, hard, soft, river, well, except perhaps distilled..I don't know..; and it made gaping ever-widening holes from time to time. Cotton-wicks were inserted for the nonce, till the Tinker with his bellows and coal-fire who was such a common fixture in the good old days; now vanished without trace, arrived and went to work. His Patches with metal (mostly lead-tin alloy solder) were as long-lasting as the cycle-walla's...generating continuous productive work for all...

Next I learned while trying to quit smoking was that there are Nicotine Patches. These are, I suppose, like the thing you wear on your shoulder while the doc takes BP the old-fashioned way....I declined and stuck to the good old devil-may-care attitude...I hope you know that Nicotine Addiction is the worst of all as far as quitting goes (because it is socially approved, despite everything)...after 30 years I still dream...

The latest Patch is what I daily hear my son talking on phone to his colleagues: "Patch 5 has been released and it costs 2 Man-Days....$ 200..". That is, as Webster says: "a minor correction or modification in a computer program"...

Minor, my Foot!

match-patch-match-patch-abol-tabol-abol-tabol......

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I wish I were..

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For most folks it happens in their teens; for me it happened at 50.

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'I wish I were...' was the topic of the Essay we were all asked to compose when we were in Class XI (Matriculation Final Year, 1957).

By then every student (except me) in our Class had access to Lifco, Leo & Duco Guides:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/08/books-guides.html

My HM-Father forbade me from consulting these Infectious AIDS and insisted I write original pieces, if in faulty English..I guess I stick to it even now about 50% of the time.

All put together, the Guides had about 20 Pieces.

Boys usually chose Engineer, Doctor, Cricketer...

Girls invariably chose Florence Nightingale & Apple Tree (non-existent in our sea-side Village Muthukur)...

I wrote in halting English: Tailor and Postman.

Tailor was my friendly neighborhood Jaan Saab:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/teacher-is-born-with-lesson.html

And somehow I always wanted to be a Postman. The other day I was reading RKN's Malgudi Days and found an entire Short Story on the Village Postman.

When I went to College, studies were so insufferable that all I wanted was a job.

And when I got it at IIT KGP, I thought, like Jerome's Dog Montmorency, that I reached Heaven and never wanted to be anything else than a Teacher there.

I am claustrophobic, so I never watched anything in Netajee Auditorium for more than 10 minutes at a stretch (except unabridged Gandhi, English, by Attenborough).

Then one day there was this Poster of a Lecture in Netajee by one Dr Sethi on Jaipur Foot. Since my Medico-Wife was getting bored at KGP, I thought I would drop her there, go out for a round of Woolgathering at Harrys and pick her up at the end of 2 hours.

But from the first slide on I stuck to the seat as if the seat were pasted with that glue with a couple of Elephants in its ad: "Joins Anything but Broken Hearts".

At 50, I ultimately couldn't escape feeling for a fleeting moment that there were other things to do than Teaching Physics @ IIT KGP:

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http://medgadget.com/archives/2008/01/dr_sethi_and_the_jaipur_foot.html

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Dr. Sethi and the Jaipur Foot

Filed under:

The New York Times has a nice obituary on Dr. Jaipur who changed the lives of countless amputees with his advanced, affordable prosthetics.

From the Times...

The Jaipur foot, which has never been patented, is available in more than 25 countries, most of them poor, many of them with great numbers of land-mine victims. Unlike many high-priced prostheses in developed countries, it can be made by traditional craftsmen, lasts more than five years and costs about $30, making it affordable for mass distribution...

Dr. Sethi came up with his invention after years of extensive research. He was helped by Ramachandra Sharma, a semiliterate craftsman who had been teaching lepers to make handicrafts and who became his assistant.

The two made a foot of vulcanized rubber but found it too heavy and stiff. So they filled the shell with sponge rubber and modified the design. They used a stiff piece for the metatarsals and added microcellular rubber for the heel, cutting wedges at its upper end to make a universal joint.

Since 1971, when Dr. Sethi presented the foot to British orthopedic surgeons at Oxford, the Jaipur foot has revolutionized lives in war-torn countries. It is very flexible, allowing the wearer to run, climb trees or pedal bicycles. It is well suited to the needs of many Asian countries in which most people sit, eat, sleep and pray on the floor. Using the Jaipur foot, a Bollywood actor and dancer, Sudha Chandra, was even able to perform a demanding dance sequence in the movie musical "Nache Mayuri."

Technology notes from JaipurFoot.org:

1) The limbs made with this technology are closest to a normal human limb. The Jaipur Foot has virtually got the same range of movements which a normal human foot has. It has dorsi-flexion, inversion, eversion, supination, pronation and axial rotation allowing a amputee not only to walk comfortably, but also squat (sitting on hunches), kneeling, crouching, sitting cross legged, walking also on undulated terrain, running, climbing a tree and driving an automobile. In other words, it is an all-functional, all-terrain limb. The other limbs with SACH foot cannot have these flexions and functions. There are some Multi Axial Feet but these allow specific limited flexions and functions.

2) Jaipur Foot is cosmetically also closest to the human foot with toes etc. Once Jaipur Foot was developed many other companies in the world added these cosmetic feature to their limb products to look like normal Foot or Jaipur Foot.

3) Jaipur Foot is water proof as many other artificial limbs in the world are.

4) Jaipur Foot is a dual purpose foot. It may be worn with shoes or without shoes depending on the desire and the need of the patients. This feature is crucial for meeting the cultural needs of many regions of the world. For example most of the modern limbs can be used only with the shoes on with the result that such amputees cannot enter the temples, mosques etc and cannot pray or perform NAMAZ.

5) The normal life of Jaipur Foot piece is around 3 years.

See also (for more info):

http://www.goodnewsindia.com/index.php/Magazine/story/jaipur-foot/

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Rainy Day

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"Misers may be difficult people to live with but they make great ancestors"

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Since I never understood Money, my views on it are suspect.

But this Post covers things other than Money and there I am as good an authority as my mythical neighbor XYZ.

Miserliness (Kanjoosi in chaste English) is inborn and shouldn't be condemned: it is like Sugar or Hemophilia.

I am told that rats are born Misers. Their affinity and efforts to hoard are legendary.

On the other hand, squirrels are supposed to be like gps: Carpe Diem (Seize the Day!) & Squander the Night!

The above mantra to Carpe the Diem is, I guess, the basis of the US Economy as of now. Things were different before the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Puritanical Work Ethic was epitomized by Classical America of the 18th and the 19th Century (Autocrat & Mark Twain).

Victory in the First World War changed all that. Since then Americans tried to make money without working....I mean....work as they knew it earlier, and started Gambling on the Stock Market Day & Night and also on the fly, investing in East Asian Markets while driving on the US Highways equipped with all colors of Berrys & Bananas in their pockets, thinking it was hard work.

Then came cyclical Depressions and Recessions followed by a Revolutionary Concept called Keynesian Economics which told the US Government, and, Government of the US being by Americans, for Americans, and of Americans, its Citizens to spend mindlessly like gps and stop hoarding like XYZ.

This is typified by that Marilyn Soap that was manufactured in the US in the good old days when soaps were manufactured in America: As you keep rubbing the Marilyn Soap on your body you keep seeing the growing picture of Marilyn Monroe progressively nuder and nuder till ultimately.....

The American Economy boomed and so Japs bombed and strafed Pearl Harbor imposing an unwilling World War II on the US till two of Jap's innocent cities were bombed out of existence by Theoretical Physicists like gps.

America never looked back on the Spending Spree till Credit Cards replaced Dollars which are expensive to print and whose working life was miserably low...as such American Greenbacks and their Postage Stamps are among the worst things ever printed by Man.

Slowly the Credit Card Culture became such a menace that their Manufacture is threatening to be outsourced to China (which, if it sneezes, Obama will catch Meachles).

China I suppose is now the legendary Kanjoos (Hyderabadis are thinking of sending their only daughters to China for 5 years to study Oriental Medicine & Kanjoosi!).

But I digress:

This mythical neighbor of mine (Prof XYZ) was what can only described as a Virulent & Aggressive Kanjoos ;...Kanjoosi was his Sword-Wielding Religion.

He would beckon to me from across our common fence and rebuke me for buying a sari each month to my wife and a toy each week to my only son; saying in so many ruddy words that I am spoiling the nukkad culture: his wife and sons are pestering him citing me as an ideal husband-father. He would say that he knew very well that I am a lower-middle-class Brahmin (He was upper-middle-class Brahmin...this thing is sounding very like a 3-tier Sleeper Compartment); and that I should Save for a Rainy Day (this being the Motto, Logo, Anthem, Headline, Topline, Waistline and Bottomline of all Aggressive Kanjooses...RAINY DAY...they would ask you to save even in the Sahara Desert).

But these Aggressive Kanjooses make good Treasurers of sundry Societies; since they are Pass-Bookworms by birth.

When they used to descend on me in my Qrs for collecting the Durga Puja Subscription, I used to tell the Secretary that I would contribute exactly Double of what our Treasurer XYZ contributes; and there would be uproarious laughter all around till the Secretary admits that if everyone does it, the Revenue would be so many Double, Triple, Quintuple........ Zeros.

And XYZ would whine that he is contributing his Labor and Precious Time, isn't he?; but would never let anyone else do it.....

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So much for Money Kanjooses...

We know very well of Umbrella Kanjooses....these are well described by RKN in his 'piece' Umbrella Devotee who has five of these but wouldn't lend even one without strict injunctions and misery. I am a little better; although I wouldn't like to part with any of my dozen, I would proffer Rs 200 (the price of a decent Hyderabadi Umbrella) as a hand-loan (without a Pro-Note).

Then there are Book Kanjooses....they wouldn't lend even one of their Collection of a Thousand Books...I lost all my 55 Penguin Wodehouses during the 1960s thinking that I would be spreading good-humor all round...the only thing I spread turned out to be bad-blood...

Then there are Time Kanjooses: typified by my Guru SDM's remark: "I love visiting People's houses...but the Catch is that they tend to return my visits"...

Then there are Praise Kanjooses: they tend to feel that they would be doling out from their hard-earned & hoarded Praise-Bank-Balance if they spread it here and there...

The there are Marks Kanjooses....these tend to think that there are only 100 Marks in their pocket and they should be careful spending them. My Principal-English Teacher-Uncle GVS, in 1958, came out of his Home Office and shook my tiny hands congratulating me for getting the highest number of Marks in First Year English in the Quarterly Exam Paper set by him. I asked how many?...and was told: "Fifty-Six" in a gloating Voice.

[Those days, folks getting High Second Class (between 58 and 59) were sought after as the most eligible bridegrooms destined to become IAS Officers. The one-in-a hundred First Class (above 60) was looked down upon, because at best he will earn a Ph D and become a Poor Teacher @ IIT KGP good for nothing else..maybe not even for Teaching but only for Useless Research].

Then there are Beauty Kanjooses... in their Dictionary there are no words like: Beautiful, Lovely, Splendid, Thank You & Sorry...They are like Reserved Compartments.

Finally there are Literary Kanjooses:

Nino describes a scene when his Class VIII son Albertino announces that their Teacher read out one of Nino's Stories in their Class that day.

With a Thumping Heart Nino asks his son the Million-Dollar Question of any Writer-Father to his only Son:

"How was it?"

"She reads well"

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Post Script: Albertino grew up to become a Project Manager in a Software Firm @ Hyderabad and changed his name to Sonoo....


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Ganges Water Mystery?

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Here is Mark Twain, Following the Equator, and discovering Benares with awe, wonder, mystery and writing about it frankly more than a century ago:

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http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2895/2895.txt

"...All this masonry, all this architecture represents piety. The palaces were built by native princes whose homes, as a rule, are far from Benares, but who go there from time to time to refresh their souls with the sight and touch of the Ganges, the river of their idolatry. The stairways are records of acts of piety; the crowd of costly little temples are tokens of money spent by rich men for present credit and hope of future reward. Apparently, the rich Christian who spends large sums upon his religion is conspicuous with us, by his rarity, but the rich Hindoo who doesn't spend large sums upon his religion is seemingly non-existent. With us the poor spend money on their religion, but they keep back some to live on. Apparently, in India, the poor bankrupt themselves daily for their religion. The rich Hindoo can afford his pious outlays; he gets much glory for his spendings, yet keeps back a sufficiency of his income for temporal purposes; but the poor Hindoo is entitled to compassion, for his spendings keep him poor, yet get him no glory.

We made the usual trip up and down the river, seated in chairs under an awning on the deck of the usual commodious hand-propelled ark; made it two or three times, and could have made it with increasing interest and enjoyment many times more; for, of course, the palaces and temples would grow more and more beautiful every time one saw them, for that happens with all such things; also, I think one would not get tired of the bathers, nor their costumes, nor of their ingenuities in getting out of them and into them again without exposing too much bronze, nor of their devotional gesticulations and absorbed bead-tellings.

But I should get tired of seeing them wash their mouths with that dreadful water and drink it. In fact, I did get tired of it, and very early, too. At one place where we halted for a while, the foul gush from a sewer was making the water turbid and murky all around, and there was a random corpse slopping around in it that had floated down from up country. Ten steps below that place stood a crowd of men, women, and comely young maidens waist deep in the water-and they were scooping it up in their hands and drinking it. Faith can certainly do wonders, and this is an instance of it. Those people were not drinking that fearful stuff to assuage thirst, but in order to purify their souls and the interior of their bodies. According to their creed, the Ganges water makes everything pure that it touches--instantly and utterly pure. The sewer water was not an offence to them, the corpse did not revolt them; the sacred water had touched both, and both were now snow-pure, and could defile no one. The memory of that sight will always stay by me; but not by request.

A word further concerning the nasty but all-purifying Ganges water. When we went to Agra, by and by, we happened there just in time to be in at the birth of a marvel--a memorable scientific discovery--the discovery that in certain ways the foul and derided Ganges water is the most puissant purifier in the world! This curious fact, as I have said, had just been added to the treasury of modern science. It had long been noted as a strange thing that while Benares is often afflicted with the cholera she does not spread it beyond her borders. This could not be accounted for. Mr. Henkin, the scientist in the employ of the government of Agra, concluded to examine the water. He went to Benares and made his tests. He got water at the mouths of the sewers where they empty into the river at the bathing ghats; a cubic centimetre of it contained millions of germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead. He caught a floating corpse, towed it to the shore, and from beside it he dipped up water that was swarming with cholera germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead. He added swarm after swarm of cholera germs to this
water; within the six hours they always died, to the last sample. Repeatedly, he took pure well water which was barren of animal life, and put into it a few cholera germs; they always began to propagate at once, and always within six hours they swarmed--and were numberable by millions upon millions.

For ages and ages the Hindoos have had absolute faith that the water of the Ganges was absolutely pure, could not be defiled by any contact whatsoever, and infallibly made pure and clean whatsoever thing touched it. They still believe it, and that is why they bathe in it and drink it, caring nothing for its seeming filthiness and the floating corpses. The Hindoos have been laughed at, these many generations, but the laughter will need to modify itself a little from now on. How did they find out the water's secret in those ancient ages? Had they germ-scientists then? We do not know. We only know that they had a civilization long before we emerged from savagery......"

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gps:

Talking about Christian Faith doing wonders, here is one from Readers Digest (30-year-Memory):

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An Ambulance of the Missionaries of Charity (Equivalent) stops by the kerb of the Highway.

Apparently their Vehicle's Gas (Petrol) Tank got empty.

Two nuns get down and decide to walk to the nearest petrol pump and get some petrol. Since they had no Can to bring it in they had to make do with their Urine Bottle.

While they were decanting the petrol into their Ambulance Tank, one of the passengers of another car passing by remarks in AWE:

"See what wonders Christian Faith can do!!!"

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Big Picture

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http://frank.mtsu.edu/~rbombard/RB/Texts/LookingGlass/ch5.html

`Oh, don't go on like that!' cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. `Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come to-day. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!'

Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. `Can YOU keep from crying by considering things?' she asked.

`That's the way it's done,' the Queen said with great decision: `nobody can do two things at once, you know....'

......Alice Through the Looking Glass....Lewis Carroll

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When I was suffering acutely from Severe Clinical Depression, most everyone (except my son) used to ask me to "Consider the Big Picture".

They didn't know that it was the Big Picture that was hurting me and making me feel so small.

They ought to have asked me, if anything, to stick to the Little Passing Moment.

Truth is that when Depression sets in absolutely unannounced, the mind runs riot...and thoughts go haywire at the speed of light. What you would like to have is a Brake if not Stopper of Thoughts. Stick to just one pleasant thought and forget the rest...Best is No Picture at all..good clean sound sleep..the first casualty.

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Anyway what does my Big Picture look like?

At a height of 5' 6'' I am luckily about the average height here. As such the wonderful wife I could get is about a foot shorter than me.

Were I a foot taller at 6' 6", I would have to forget all thoughts of marriage within our community.

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On a proper logarithmic scale, at 5' 6" I am middle class between the smallest elementary particle and the Big Picture Universe.

And my Earth is middle class among the planets...my Sun is middle class among the stars...my Galaxy is middle class among the galaxies... my age of about 15 billion years is about middle age of the System I live in....

It is almost as if the Middle Way Buddha designed me rather than any of my profligate Hindu gods.

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"...In this sutta - known in English as The Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Dharma - the Buddha describes the middle way as a path of moderation between the extremes of sensual indulgence and self-mortification. This, according to him, was the path of wisdom. The middle path does not mean a mid point in a straight line joining two extremes represented by points. The Middle Way is a dynamic teaching as shown by the traditional story that the Buddha realized the meaning of the Middle Way when he sat by a river and heard a lute player in a passing boat and understood that the lute string must be tuned neither too tight nor too loose to produce a harmonious sound......"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_way

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How Big or Small are things really? And how are they measured?

It is silly to call a totally arbitrary (as of now) Rhodium-Iridium or whatever alloy preserved in Paris or so as the Standard Meter, replicas of which have to be kept wherever needed. But that is the way things are in Science...it has a history to obey that refuses to go..like MPH in the Great US.

Michelson had the sense to appreciate that the wavelength of a nice specral line that could be produced anywhere in the Universe would be a better Standard of distance.

And with it comes the realization that Light of various wavelengths is the crux of all Distance Measurements.

Triangulation would do to measure the size of the Moon and perhaps the size of the orbit of the earth and the Astronomical Unit, the distance between the earth and the Sun. We use light to see things through our telescopes.

For measuring larger distances to the galaxies and distant stars, say, we use light again..the so-called Standard Candle Stars; Doppler Effect and the Cosmic Distance ladder...Light all the way..

Going down the length scale from me to bacteria again needs light..microscopes instead of telescopes...Dark Field Microscopes, Phase Contrast Microscopes..

And in the subatomic domain we hit particles with photons of various wavelengths, smaller and smaller, and measure their scattering properties.

Nice that God said: "Let there be Light!" and the Big as well as the Small Pictures followed.

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All Modesty is false..so is all Immodesty...in the Personkind.

It is all relative.

The one striving hard for the most modesty would envy one who appears more modest; and so with immodesty..the Big Bully would envy the Bigger Bully:

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Wild West: Small town on the Frontier: Midday:

Cries go up resounding; "Big Brother Bull is Coming! Big Brother Bull is Coming!"

Folks run helter-skelter and pell-mell indoors and shut themselves in.

The Bartender is a bit slow downing His Front Shutters.

A great resounding galloping horse stops in front of his shop. A Big Boots jumps down, shoots from both his hips with his stereo-pistols, Gatecrashes the Bar, shoots open a Big Bottle of Scotch on the Counter, downs the whole of it in one swell gulp, smacks his lips and growls....

The Bartender crouching under the Desk feels bold, peeps out, and says: "Have another bottle, on the House!"

"Nope! I must Hurry...Big Brother Bull is Coming!"

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Moooon!!!

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The shattering of the Moon Mythology started with Galileo turning his telescope on her and ended with Neil Armstrong soiling her virgin land with his Giant Footfall.

In a blogpost sometime ago I narrated my personal history of Moonlanding:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/06/moonshine.html

At that moment I was sitting on the parapet outside the First Class Waiting Hall on the First Floor of the Howrah Station, listening to the murmur of the Monsoon Ganges, very much audible those nights of the late 1960s...

Since we were all following the various earlier unmanned Moon Missions preparatory to the Big Event, the Footfall itself was no surprise except for the build up, climax and the safe reentry.

Nothing much of scientific significance was expected: Moon was the most closely studied Body in the Heavens along with our Sun, perhaps. The only thing that was not seen was the Other Side of the Moon; and the unmanned satellites that went around our Moon broadcast enough pictures to show that there were no surprises: she is as quiet as this side.

Moon happens to be the precise opposite of all that is bragged about her (including the honeymoon...no honey there... and not a great place for honeymooning).

She is one of those most uninteresting objects up there: nothing ever happens, no cyclones, moonquakes, rain or rainbows, and no Politics that keep us all busy down hereunder.

Imagination boggles.

No air means no sound, no music, no band-baaji, no Diwali Dhamakas, no hot air balloons (real as well as imagined). No wind, no breeze, no sweat, no fans no AC.

No rainbows mean no colors!!!

It is all black or white depending on whether you are facing the Sun or the Stars (which don't twinkle). Well, most of the colorful heavens we see in the popular books are synthetic computer colors. Stars do have colors, red, blue, yellow (no green). But they are tiny tots and dots (You can have a look at the Sky Chart in the Cambridge Atlas of Astronomy, if you don't believe me).

And the Sunlight is so blinding white...

No trees, no water...there is a Sea of Tranquility but that is more like the Slough of Despond (both misnomers...there can be no sea without water nor slough without mud).

Not much was expected of the Moon Mission for a layman like me except perhaps that the geology studies on the Moonrock may settle the question whether the Moon is Earth's Sister, Spouse or Daughter (or Servant Maid).

I have decided not to Google for this Post so I don't know if the matter has been settled one way or the other.

The uniqueness of our Moon as a satellite of any planet is that she is the biggest relatively speaking; and she is Captured by the Earth in her spin which coincides with her orbital rotation more or less (this latter is fairly common), so that only one side of her is visible always to us. Well, not exactly...because she goes round in a fairly elliptical orbit, a bit of her dark side (like envy and jealousy) is visible this way, the so-called Librations (I keyboarded it as Libations last night and lost my sleep).

Because of her size and closeness she raises impressive tides in our oceans alright, and land as well...though much much less.

I am told that cycles of madness coincide with the Full Moon and the New Moon; hence Lunacy etymologically speaking. I have no first hand experience of this distinction between her phases.

Well, the phases of the Moon are really impressive; almost beautiful.

Everyone knows Moonshine, but there is Earthshine as well: The so-called dark part of a Crescent-Moon (Dooj-ka-Chaand) is not quite dark. I asked my mom about it...why so? She just took a second to come up with the right answer: it is the light reflected by the Moon of the Sunlight reflected on her by the Earth. My mom is one woman suppressed by our patriarchal system. Given a chance she would have been a great Scientist, Civil Engineer or Economist; but not a great Teacher...she can't bluff off-hand.

Moon has an 18-year cycle; not quite well-known. There is an entire book titled: Motions of the Moon.

Moon is responsible for total solar eclipses...one of the most fascinating and rare events. Total solar eclipse is possible only because the apparent size of our Moon happens to be precisely the same as that of our Sun...a coincidence without reason (but many rhymes)....one of the most enduring mysteries.

I am told that our Earth is slowly losing his sway on her Moon and our Moon is slipping away from our clutches...surely due to the Sins of Mankind...I mean Personkind.

Our distance to our Moon (point to point) is one of the most precisely measured and monitored of data (within a few centimeters in about 400, 000 kilometers). This has been possible due to our invention of the Laser....the Giant-Pulsed-Laser, pulses of which are reflected off the Parabolic Mirror placed on the Moon by the Apollo Astronauts in the Sea of Tranquility, and timed by atomic clocks.

Shakespeare said:

"...There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."

Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167

(See, I cheated again and Googled).

But as far as I know there are no Visible Light Natural Lasers in the Heavens (unlike Nuclear Fusion and Fission).

Laser (like the Lie) is an exclusive invention of Personkind.

Lastly I repeat my fascination with the Bengali penchant for naming their kids:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/02/roll-call.html

They do name their kids with oomph and a tra-la-la.....Ishani...for example....

There is no New Moon Ganguly (only Arundhuti, posing as a wee-little tiny star that bamboozles newly-weds in AP who are asked to spot it in broad daylight), nor Full Moon Chatterjee (Purnima is no English and so doesn't count).

But they do have a wow...Moon Moon Sen!!!!

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Loony Lines

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http://www.clipartheaven.com/clipart/religion/hinduism/man_in_sacred_thread.gif

In a religiously religious ceremony in my 13th year, my father performed this Upanayanam Ritual on me just before I quit our Village for higher studies (in a perfectly useless subject called Theoretical Physics).

Since it was the first major function in my father's family, most everyone of our relatives came down to attend it leaving their business and traveling in a World War II Bus. And each of them gave me presents in Liquid Cash.

Since my father was the much-loved HM of the Village School, everyone in the Village and its environs gifted whatever was required like Ghee, Rice, Vegetables, Firewood [for both the Religious (Sacrificial) and the Secular (Cooking) Fires].

Bottom Line:

Expenditure: Rs 200
Revenues: Rs 400
Profit: 100%

The Highpoint or Climax of the Upanayanam Function is the Whispering of the Sacred Gayatri Mantra in my ears; and the Dangling of the Sacred Thread ceremonially around my upper torso.

I have nothing against the mantra: it has a lovely and deep meaning which we shall not go into.

But the Sacred Thread comes with lots of injunctions:

You can never never ever....be without it on your body, till you renounce your Family Life and Uppercrust Brahmin Caste and go forth as a Mendicant, when it is stripped off your torso in another equally Religious Function.

It should be made of pure cotton and will have three strands till you marry when you will acquire six more making nine in all.

When you go to the toilet for bladder evacuation, you have to pull it out from one side and twist it around your left ear for the nonce. If it turns out to be intestinal evacuation, you have to make it into a garland and wear it around your neck like a necklace.

Every year on the Full Moon Day coinciding with the Rakhee Festival, you have to replace the old and worn-out one with a brand new thing for the next year: Almost like a snake casts off its slough. But with this difference: The new one is worn (as an apprentice) along with the old one for one day before the old one is peeled out. Then, the old one can't be thrown in the dustbin. It has to be left hanging on the branch of a Neem Tree till Nature takes its course of bio-degradation.

And the casting off of the old one can't be done by you just like changing your shirt: it has to be accompanied by a suitable mantra after the new thread has been sanctified.

And during the annual Shradh Cermeony for your Heaven-Bound Ancestors that can last anything from 1 to 3 hours depending on the business schedule of the Purohit, there will be a couple of dozen times when he asks you to change your Sacred Thread right and left and left and right and back and forth. And if he is in a hurry to see off your Friend's Ancestors who are in an equal hurry, he will ask you perform this drill so fast that you will tire of it and feel like asking your Ancestors to go on the back of your Purohit to the Other Place (as Huck calls it charmingly).

All these rituals, rites, pro-and-con-injunctions must be having their deep meaning and significance.

But I am not told.

And if I ask I get the standard reply: "Mind your business and do what you are told to and don't arg!

The first problem starts with the inferior quality of the Thread brought by the Purohit (Business being Business). So, it will wear out in no time and the strands will start snapping one by one and you can't make a do-it-yourself job of tying the loose ends. The Purohit should be involved and invited and a small function has to be arranged for the Emergency Replacement Ceremony; and you smell a racket there.

If you rebel and buy a new one from the Puja Market and bring it home, it will invariably turn out that you can't unwind it before winding it around your neck: It will be like the Incident in the Three Men in a Boat where Harris & Co had a miserable time trying to disentangle the steel coils.

That the whole thing is a racket is reinforced by another ritual: if your baby happens to be born with its umbilical cord around its neck or shoulders (one in a hundred cases or so), the Purohit will insist that a mini-sacred-thread made of at least silver if not gold be ordered, and will make the baby wear it around its neck or shoulder, as the case maybe, during the baby's Sanctifying Baptism Ceremony with appropriate mantras again (the silver or gold thread will be the Purohit's after the ritual is over).

That the whole thing is reduced to a Joke will smack you when you get Herpes Joster (a terrible long-lasting viral infection accompanied by burning itchy oozy rashes spreading along a line that I had 3 years ago). In most cases the line will be around your shoulder diagonally just like a sacred Thread:

It is appropriately called in our lingo: "Jandhyala Sarpi: Sacred Thread Herpes"


...Posted by Ishani


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