======================================================================
The excerpts below are by way of publicity (gratis) for my favorite book: "The House that Nino Built" by Giovanni Guareschi (Nino), the author of "The Little World of Don Camillo" and its sequels.
Nino: Man (45)
Margherita: Wife (42)
Albertino: Son (10)
Duchess: Daughter (8)
**********************************************************************************************************
'We must have landed among these walls, and among these walls we must die. Just tell me which you think is the most suitable room.'
Margherita put her sewing aside and got up from the chair.
'That's true,' she said earnestly. 'It's something to think over.'
'Oh, it's not as urgent as all that, Margherita,' I hastened to say. 'God alone knows how many more hours we are to tread the mill.'
'All the more reason why we should give it a thought. In this life one must be ready for everything, including death. Think hard, Giovannino. If you were to be suddenly afflicted with a fatal disease, where would you go to die?'
I shrugged my shoulders.
'The bedroom seems a logical choice,' I replied. 'For one thing, it's roomy. There's plenty of light and air.'
Margherita shook her head sadly.
'And you would find it natural that, after all my grief, I should go on sleeping in your deathbed? That I should brush my head against your pilllow and see the last book you were reading on the bedside table?'
This was a reasonable enough remark. I have always been intolerant of egoists, and in my opinion we must die, as well as live, like ladies and gentlemen. Why should I impose such suffering on Margherita?
'Because the room is so very roomy,' I said, 'we could always put a couch over by the radiator, and I could die there instead of in our bed.'
Margherita sighed.
'It's a shame to go into such morbid details,' she said, 'but now that we've brought up the subject, we may as well go through...You say yourself that the bedroom's the best room in the house, so why should I have to give up after you're gone? Because the more I think about it, the more keenly I realize that I could never sleep in the room where you had died. It's a matter of delicacy and good taste.'
But the idea of the couch appealed to me, and I couldn't let it go.
'As a matter of fact,' I said, 'the children's room is even more agreeable than ours, and you could perfectly well exchange with them.'
At this moment, the Duchess, who had been listening from the sidelines, actively entered the discussion.
'I won't sleep in the room where you died,' she stated categorically. 'dead people scare me.'
'The first thing you've got to learn,' I retorted, 'is to respect your father's dead body!'
Margherita shared my indignation.
'Yes, your parents' bodies should be sacred to you,' she said to the children. And then, turning to me, she added: 'Nino, they don't know what they're talking about. But I'm amazed that you should insist upon dying in the bedroom. Wouldn't your study be a much more suitable place? There's a couch in there already, and it's a room where you've spent so much time that you'd feel comfortable and cosy. There's something very heroic, too, about ending your days amid the surroundings where you've worked so hard. It would be like a captain going down with his sinking ship.'
It wasn't a bad idea, and the comparison with a ship's captain was highly flattering.
But at this point Albertino had a word to put in.
'If she says she couldn't sleep in a room where you had died, how can anyone expect me to work in one? I'd be the head of the house, you know, and the study would be my headquarters. You always say that the place where a man works ought to be bright and cheerful, and if you die in the study, it will always have sad associations.'
'That's logical enough,' said Margherita. 'The boy has both feet on the ground. Now that I think about it, perhaps the room next to the study is still more intimate and cosy.'
'Nobody's going to die in my play-room!' the Duchess protested. 'I've got my homework to do! And when I'm a little older, my friends will be coming to see me and we'll want to play the gramophone. Surely you wouldn't want me to play dance music in the room where you died!'
'You ought to be ashamed of yourself!' said Margherita. 'Thinking of music and parties already! When I was your age, I didn't think of anything at all.'
'You couldn't be very bright, then,' said the Duchess. 'But how about the living-room, where you entertain your friends when they come to call?' After all, he's your husband.'
Margherita branded this suggestion as sabotage, and I didn't like the idea of such a frivolous place, either. We were left with the dining-room and the kitchen, which were excluded. Suddenly I had a new idea.
'The garage!' I exclaimed.
We made an immediate inspection, and decided that, after a thorough clean-up, this would be the perfect place.
'The wide door will facilitate the flow of visitors coming to pay their respects to the body, and also the passage of the coffin.'
Margherita and I sat down on a packing-case to smoke a cigarette.
'Well, we can put that problem behind us,' said Margherita with a sigh. 'The idea of dying in a garage is slightly depressing, Nino, but let God's will be done!'
We were silent for a moment or two, and then I recovered my natural buoyancy.
'What can we know of Fates' designs, Margherita?' I exclaimed. 'Who knows if we shall really draw our last breath in this garage? We may die in a train wreck or an automobile accident, you know. Or perhaps we'll be laid low by a stroke while we're strolling through a flower garden overhanging the sea.'
'A flower garden overhanging the sea!' said Margherita dreamily. 'Ther's a picture for you! Imagine dying just as the setting sun plunges into the water!'
'I'd rather die at dawn,' I protested, 'when the world is fresh and new....'
After some discussion, we compromised on half-past two in the afternoon, an hour when everything is quiet and motionless under the midday sun. Now, as we came out of the dark garage, we were happy to find ourselves in all the glory of a May morning.
'Life goes on!' said Margherita.
************************************************************************************************************
My Guru, SDM, who had talked about everything under the sun to me, said once how nice it would be to die while calculating.
He practically did that...at 83...
And what bout ME?
I guess, while blogging would be perfect...
**********************************************************************************************************
I do take pains, once in a while, keyboarding passages from authors I like. It sort of enables me to watch first hand how they write...much more intimately than mere reading.
=======================================================================
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
Sab-bath
======================================================================
God created everything in six days;
"And on the seventh day god ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made"
.......Genesis 2.2; King James Version.
So, one of the Ten Commandments in all Abrahamic Religions is to observe the seventh day of every week as Sabbath by desisting from their daily mundane labor, and by praying, fasting and engaging in such spiritual practices.
Jews observe Saturday as their Sabbath. One of the best whodunits I ever read is: 'Saturday the rabbi went hungry'. The puritanical zeal with which they observe it was commented upon by Feynman in the chapter: "Is electricity fire?":
*********************************************************************************************************
"...They (the young rabbis) said, 'Well, for instance, is electricity fire?'
'No,' I said, 'but......what is the problem?'
They said, 'In the Talmud it says you're not supposed to make fire on a Saturday, so our question is, can we use electrical things on Saturdays?'
I was shocked.....
And then one day--I guess it was a Saturday---I want to go up in the elevator, and here is a guy standing near the elevator. The elevator comes, I go in, and he goes in with me. I say, 'Which floor?' and my hand's ready to push one of the buttons.
'No, no!,' he says, 'I'm supposed to push the button for you.'
'What?'
'Yes! The boys here can't push the buttons on Saturday, so I have to do it for them You see, I'm not Jewish, so it's alright for me to push the buttons for them. I stand near the elevator, and they tell me what floor, and I push the button for them.'...."
Well, Feynman may have been Jewish or not, but he was as easy-going on religious practices as I. For instance, 'Torah required a slave who had worked for six years to go free in the seventh year' (wiki). So, he was entitled to his sabbatical leave and tried to use it as a pretext to decline Caltech's offer. But they were cleverer and told him to go take his sabbatical year in Brazil before even he joined them...which he did with relish.
*********************************************************************************************************
Christians observe Sunday as their Sabbath. Listen to how it was two centuries ago in Boston when our Autocrat was a kid:
"The Puritan 'Sabbath,' as everybody knows, began at 'sundown' on Saturday evening. To such observance of it I was born and bred. As the large, round disk of the day declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat melancholy hush came over us all. It was time for work to cease, and for playthings to be put away. The world of active life passed into the shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun should sink again beneath the horizon.
It was in this stillness of the world without and of the soul within that the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to make itself most distinctly heard,---so that I well remember I used to think that the purring of these little creatures, which mingled with the batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamp, was peculiar to Saturday evenings...."
Well, that is why no one except a crazy chap like me reads the Autocrat...I mean, using 'batrachian hymns' for the sing-song mating calls of the lecherous KGP Tech Market frogs!!!
And that is why Mark Twain spoke his infamous words at an Atlantic Dinner:
"Twain proceeded to characterize Emerson as 'seedy little bit of a chap,' Holmes 'as fat as a balloon,' and Longfellow as having the physical build of a 'prize fighter'. Smith concludes his lengthy analysis of the dinner with the suggestion that the 'speech expressed a "deep-seated conflict" on Twain's part regarding the literary Brahmins of the New England'...":
http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2008-11/twain_toast.html
The simpler explanation is of course that he was as tight as Pickwick's pants.
*****************************************************************************************************
Muslim's have their 'juma', the special noon prayers on Fridays when every male is expected to stop whatever business he is transacting and join the congregational prayers when he hears the 'aazan';...and they have this wonderful Ramzan month.
Most other religions have their weekly sabbath....except Hindus.
Good Hindus are never expected to 'work' any day of the week, month, year...
.........................................................Gita: 4-18
********************************************************************************************************
So, being a good Hindu, I shirked 'working' tonight....just 'copy-pasting'.
Here is a mail I received yesterday:
*******************************************************************************************************
Subject: Voice from the past
Sender: Dr S
Dear GP:
I recently ran into a bunch of IIT alumnus in Washington when I was a guest speaker at a forum on International Infrastructure Finance. Thereafter, I decided to surf and look up some of our IIT Kgp colleagues. After I left IIT Kharagpur in 1967, I stayed with Physics until 1972. Shortly after my Ph.D. work, I migrated away to delving into international energy issues for about 10 years.
In 1984, I founded CORE International as an international management consulting firm and further drifted to business and finance even going on to the Wharton Business School for an AMP and have been very busy advising donors, corporations, and governments worldwide. It has been quite a journey for the last 30 plus years. I have worked in over 90 countries and have no plans to quit. Essentially, I have devoted my life to developing countries in their plight for basic services such as water, healthcare, and electricity.
You certainly DID surprise me by your voice from the past. And what a voice!
Nice to hear that you have had a fruitful career doing good where it is needed most. And you have a cute family.
As for myself, your career and mine are precise opposites or, rather, complements. Like hurricane and the hurricane-lantern.
I have stayed put like a rock at IIT KGP for all of forty years holding the Tower up on my shoulders and retired as a Professor at the age of 62. I haven't set my foot on foreign soil. Indeed I don't have a passport and and don't intend to.
I got married at the rather late age of 36 and got a son pronto. He did his M Sc in Industrial Chemistry at IIT KGP and left chemistry as soon as he passed. And joined a software firm in Hyderabad seven years ago. He is now a Project Manager in Thomson-Reuters here. He is married to a lovely girl of our own sub-caste and they have a pretty daughter (2.2 years).
After retirement in 2005 I duly left Physics...both of us have done well enough...Physics has learned to live without me and vice versa.
Myself, my wife, our son, his wife, and their daughter, all of us stay together in a 3BHK apartment here in Hyderabad. My son is unlike me and has traveled all over the US and Europe on short business trips.
My ex-students spread all over the world insist I blog a short fun piece everyday for their daily fix of entertainment. So, I now have about a thousand pieces in my blogspot...some harmless fun.
When are you visiting India next? Welcome to this historic city of Nawabs and Nizams.
Love
gps
G.P.Sastry
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/
**************************************************************************************************
Here is his rejoinder:
********************************************************************************************************
======================================================================
God created everything in six days;
"And on the seventh day god ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made"
.......Genesis 2.2; King James Version.
So, one of the Ten Commandments in all Abrahamic Religions is to observe the seventh day of every week as Sabbath by desisting from their daily mundane labor, and by praying, fasting and engaging in such spiritual practices.
Jews observe Saturday as their Sabbath. One of the best whodunits I ever read is: 'Saturday the rabbi went hungry'. The puritanical zeal with which they observe it was commented upon by Feynman in the chapter: "Is electricity fire?":
*********************************************************************************************************
"...They (the young rabbis) said, 'Well, for instance, is electricity fire?'
'No,' I said, 'but......what is the problem?'
They said, 'In the Talmud it says you're not supposed to make fire on a Saturday, so our question is, can we use electrical things on Saturdays?'
I was shocked.....
And then one day--I guess it was a Saturday---I want to go up in the elevator, and here is a guy standing near the elevator. The elevator comes, I go in, and he goes in with me. I say, 'Which floor?' and my hand's ready to push one of the buttons.
'No, no!,' he says, 'I'm supposed to push the button for you.'
'What?'
'Yes! The boys here can't push the buttons on Saturday, so I have to do it for them You see, I'm not Jewish, so it's alright for me to push the buttons for them. I stand near the elevator, and they tell me what floor, and I push the button for them.'...."
Well, Feynman may have been Jewish or not, but he was as easy-going on religious practices as I. For instance, 'Torah required a slave who had worked for six years to go free in the seventh year' (wiki). So, he was entitled to his sabbatical leave and tried to use it as a pretext to decline Caltech's offer. But they were cleverer and told him to go take his sabbatical year in Brazil before even he joined them...which he did with relish.
*********************************************************************************************************
Christians observe Sunday as their Sabbath. Listen to how it was two centuries ago in Boston when our Autocrat was a kid:
"The Puritan 'Sabbath,' as everybody knows, began at 'sundown' on Saturday evening. To such observance of it I was born and bred. As the large, round disk of the day declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat melancholy hush came over us all. It was time for work to cease, and for playthings to be put away. The world of active life passed into the shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun should sink again beneath the horizon.
It was in this stillness of the world without and of the soul within that the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to make itself most distinctly heard,---so that I well remember I used to think that the purring of these little creatures, which mingled with the batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamp, was peculiar to Saturday evenings...."
Well, that is why no one except a crazy chap like me reads the Autocrat...I mean, using 'batrachian hymns' for the sing-song mating calls of the lecherous KGP Tech Market frogs!!!
And that is why Mark Twain spoke his infamous words at an Atlantic Dinner:
"Twain proceeded to characterize Emerson as 'seedy little bit of a chap,' Holmes 'as fat as a balloon,' and Longfellow as having the physical build of a 'prize fighter'. Smith concludes his lengthy analysis of the dinner with the suggestion that the 'speech expressed a "deep-seated conflict" on Twain's part regarding the literary Brahmins of the New England'...":
http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2008-11/twain_toast.html
The simpler explanation is of course that he was as tight as Pickwick's pants.
*****************************************************************************************************
Muslim's have their 'juma', the special noon prayers on Fridays when every male is expected to stop whatever business he is transacting and join the congregational prayers when he hears the 'aazan';...and they have this wonderful Ramzan month.
Most other religions have their weekly sabbath....except Hindus.
Good Hindus are never expected to 'work' any day of the week, month, year...
"Karmanyakarma yah pashyedakarmanicha karma yah
Sa buddhiman manushyeshu sa yuktah krstnakarmakrit"
Sa buddhiman manushyeshu sa yuktah krstnakarmakrit"
.........................................................Gita: 4-18
********************************************************************************************************
So, being a good Hindu, I shirked 'working' tonight....just 'copy-pasting'.
Here is a mail I received yesterday:
*******************************************************************************************************
Subject: Voice from the past
Sender: Dr S
Dear GP:
I recently ran into a bunch of IIT alumnus in Washington when I was a guest speaker at a forum on International Infrastructure Finance. Thereafter, I decided to surf and look up some of our IIT Kgp colleagues. After I left IIT Kharagpur in 1967, I stayed with Physics until 1972. Shortly after my Ph.D. work, I migrated away to delving into international energy issues for about 10 years.
In 1984, I founded CORE International as an international management consulting firm and further drifted to business and finance even going on to the Wharton Business School for an AMP and have been very busy advising donors, corporations, and governments worldwide. It has been quite a journey for the last 30 plus years. I have worked in over 90 countries and have no plans to quit. Essentially, I have devoted my life to developing countries in their plight for basic services such as water, healthcare, and electricity.
I am married to an American and we have one son who is now 23. He just graduated from the Villanova University Business School and is now a Financial Advisor at Merrill Lynch/Bank of America.
Hope, all is well with you. Would love to hear from you.
All the best
************************************************************************************
Here is my reply:
Dear S:All the best
************************************************************************************
Here is my reply:
You certainly DID surprise me by your voice from the past. And what a voice!
Nice to hear that you have had a fruitful career doing good where it is needed most. And you have a cute family.
As for myself, your career and mine are precise opposites or, rather, complements. Like hurricane and the hurricane-lantern.
I have stayed put like a rock at IIT KGP for all of forty years holding the Tower up on my shoulders and retired as a Professor at the age of 62. I haven't set my foot on foreign soil. Indeed I don't have a passport and and don't intend to.
I got married at the rather late age of 36 and got a son pronto. He did his M Sc in Industrial Chemistry at IIT KGP and left chemistry as soon as he passed. And joined a software firm in Hyderabad seven years ago. He is now a Project Manager in Thomson-Reuters here. He is married to a lovely girl of our own sub-caste and they have a pretty daughter (2.2 years).
After retirement in 2005 I duly left Physics...both of us have done well enough...Physics has learned to live without me and vice versa.
Myself, my wife, our son, his wife, and their daughter, all of us stay together in a 3BHK apartment here in Hyderabad. My son is unlike me and has traveled all over the US and Europe on short business trips.
My ex-students spread all over the world insist I blog a short fun piece everyday for their daily fix of entertainment. So, I now have about a thousand pieces in my blogspot...some harmless fun.
When are you visiting India next? Welcome to this historic city of Nawabs and Nizams.
Love
gps
G.P.Sastry
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/
**************************************************************************************************
Here is his rejoinder:
Hi GP:
Great to hear back from you. Thank you very much for sending your blog. I remember CL Roy, Chitnis, and S. Dutta Majumdar very well. Old memories. I enjoyed your blog; it is a very good thing that you are doing; nice way to share wonderful memories.
I have been to India many times and during 2004-2008, I ran a $5 million program in India for capacity building of the electricity service providers in India in partnership with 12 Indian institutions including IIT KGP and IIT, Kanpur. I was also invited to write a piece on rural electrification in the India Infrastructure Report with Prof. PK of IIT, Kanpur. The gentleman from IIT Kharagpur who signed the grant that we provided for training of utilities in India was a Professor there. Enclosed is a picture of that signing with IIT, KGP. I am in the middle of the picture.
I have been to India many times and during 2004-2008, I ran a $5 million program in India for capacity building of the electricity service providers in India in partnership with 12 Indian institutions including IIT KGP and IIT, Kanpur. I was also invited to write a piece on rural electrification in the India Infrastructure Report with Prof. PK of IIT, Kanpur. The gentleman from IIT Kharagpur who signed the grant that we provided for training of utilities in India was a Professor there. Enclosed is a picture of that signing with IIT, KGP. I am in the middle of the picture.
Also enclosed is a picture of my family here. Let us keep in touch and I will certainly visit you when I come to India next.
Take care and all the best.
Take care and all the best.
******************************************************************************************************
Good Night!
********************************************************************************************************
======================================================================
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Gupshup
======================================================================
There are two places every human being has to visit willy-nilly, 'alive or dead' (as our ex-Pres was fond of pledging...they did get him alive but found it inconvenient to keep him so).
One is the Marketplace and the other the Casketplace...the latter defined by Webster as:
'Casket 2 : a usually fancy coffin'. One is for keeping the body and soul together and the other to take them apart...
I don't want to talk much about the latter tonight, except to say that Nino wrote a hilarious piece: 'Driving Nails into My Coffin'...excerpts from which I shall reserve for another day.
But I did visit the Cremation Ground at IIT KGP half a dozen times to bid warm sendoffs to dear departed souls. It was not warm...it was pretty hot ;-)
This warm-hot thing recalls Dr V D Chitnis to my mind. He did his Ph D at Cornell, and held some positions here and there in the US, but wanted to return to his home country and settle down here. So, he was a Pool Officer staying with us in the Faculty Hostel for a couple of wonderful years (He flew back to the US since he failed to get a suitable post here...he was middle-aged and couldn't very well start from the bottom upwards once again). He was one of the most widely read I ever met, well-versed in music, fine arts, sports...a 'complete' human being (Purna Purush); and a very friendly soul.
Once I was saying, "It is very hot today," and he gently corrected me: "Very 'warm'...'hot' is for spices like chillies...". In his Farewell, I went to the dais and spoke a few emotive words (a very rare thing for me to do) and he was so touched he patted me gently on my shoulder after the meeting was over, in a nice gesture of 'Thanx'. When he was leaving us for good to the US, he gifted me as a memento a king-size gray-steel stapler 'Made in America' (China was then busy with her Cultural Revolution and Japs were making mini-staplers made of cheap plastic), along with a boxful of matching 'staple-centipedes' that would have lasted me a lifetime. One evening, my friend NP borrowed the lovely stapler and a couple of days later returned it...the stapler was intact like the gums of old folks shorn of their teeth; the staples were no longer in their big box but gift-wrapped in the center-spread of The Statesman. On opening it I discovered that all the thousands of staples were picked apart nicely into individual pieces and gathered into a heap losing not a single one...NP's 3-year-old son Dudu was playing with them like Ishani does nowadays with my dozen-odd ball-pens, dismantling each one of them and then trying in vain to mantle them back at random. So, Dr Chitnis' gift-stapler remained a true memento to be gawked at and appreciated but not used. It is worth pondering how miserable staples become once they are taken apart...something like Humpty Dumpty...'All the King's horses, and all the King's men, Couldn't put Humpty together again'...an irreversible thermodynamic process.
I wanted to talk about the Marketplace; and here I am talking about Dr Chitnis...this is becoming 'cream of consciousness'...
Marketplace can wait for another day but let me tell you the pleasure I got from it today...just human interest:
Around 9 PM I was at the corner-medical stores in our new locality buying a bottle of Aristozyme. 9 PM suits me because Santhosh, the young shopkeeper, is free with few customers breathing down his neck. And then there was this petulant power outage. The whole marketplace was dark and I helped Santhosh with my pocket-torch to light his candle. Everything looks different in candle-light:
So, Santhosh and I were chatting and waiting for the power to arrive. And from the darkness arrived a young tech-couple at the counter, the wife saying to her hubby: "Tumi bolo" and the husband; "Naa, tumi..."
She then asked Santosh for a pain-relieving ointment. And he promptly fetched a tube of Moov. She declined it saying in "Bhindi", "Eta hum try kiyaa hai, useless!". And he brought a tube of Volini...and she repeated, "Etavu hum try...". He then asked what for she needs one. She then spread her left palm on the counter and said: "dekhiye...eta thumb phoola hua hai" And he asked her to show her right palm for comparison. And then she did that famous Feynman trick:
"...The psychiatrist says, 'Turn them over.' I turn then over. The one that was up goes down and the one that was down goes up..."
And a peal of laughter...
And Santhosh asks: "Chot laggaya kya?"
And she becomes glum, pats her smiling hubby on his pate and complains: "ini hum ko mara hai"
And another peal of laughter.
Santhosh is by now fed up and says: "I suggest you take a tablet of Brufen"
And she raises one forefinger to her lips and says: "Ekhoon tablet khana mana hai!"
And the lights come up in a flood. And they jump down the steps laughing; and I withdraw...
Back to Bengal after a long while!
======================================================================
There are two places every human being has to visit willy-nilly, 'alive or dead' (as our ex-Pres was fond of pledging...they did get him alive but found it inconvenient to keep him so).
One is the Marketplace and the other the Casketplace...the latter defined by Webster as:
'Casket 2 : a usually fancy coffin'. One is for keeping the body and soul together and the other to take them apart...
I don't want to talk much about the latter tonight, except to say that Nino wrote a hilarious piece: 'Driving Nails into My Coffin'...excerpts from which I shall reserve for another day.
But I did visit the Cremation Ground at IIT KGP half a dozen times to bid warm sendoffs to dear departed souls. It was not warm...it was pretty hot ;-)
This warm-hot thing recalls Dr V D Chitnis to my mind. He did his Ph D at Cornell, and held some positions here and there in the US, but wanted to return to his home country and settle down here. So, he was a Pool Officer staying with us in the Faculty Hostel for a couple of wonderful years (He flew back to the US since he failed to get a suitable post here...he was middle-aged and couldn't very well start from the bottom upwards once again). He was one of the most widely read I ever met, well-versed in music, fine arts, sports...a 'complete' human being (Purna Purush); and a very friendly soul.
Once I was saying, "It is very hot today," and he gently corrected me: "Very 'warm'...'hot' is for spices like chillies...". In his Farewell, I went to the dais and spoke a few emotive words (a very rare thing for me to do) and he was so touched he patted me gently on my shoulder after the meeting was over, in a nice gesture of 'Thanx'. When he was leaving us for good to the US, he gifted me as a memento a king-size gray-steel stapler 'Made in America' (China was then busy with her Cultural Revolution and Japs were making mini-staplers made of cheap plastic), along with a boxful of matching 'staple-centipedes' that would have lasted me a lifetime. One evening, my friend NP borrowed the lovely stapler and a couple of days later returned it...the stapler was intact like the gums of old folks shorn of their teeth; the staples were no longer in their big box but gift-wrapped in the center-spread of The Statesman. On opening it I discovered that all the thousands of staples were picked apart nicely into individual pieces and gathered into a heap losing not a single one...NP's 3-year-old son Dudu was playing with them like Ishani does nowadays with my dozen-odd ball-pens, dismantling each one of them and then trying in vain to mantle them back at random. So, Dr Chitnis' gift-stapler remained a true memento to be gawked at and appreciated but not used. It is worth pondering how miserable staples become once they are taken apart...something like Humpty Dumpty...'All the King's horses, and all the King's men, Couldn't put Humpty together again'...an irreversible thermodynamic process.
I wanted to talk about the Marketplace; and here I am talking about Dr Chitnis...this is becoming 'cream of consciousness'...
Marketplace can wait for another day but let me tell you the pleasure I got from it today...just human interest:
Around 9 PM I was at the corner-medical stores in our new locality buying a bottle of Aristozyme. 9 PM suits me because Santhosh, the young shopkeeper, is free with few customers breathing down his neck. And then there was this petulant power outage. The whole marketplace was dark and I helped Santhosh with my pocket-torch to light his candle. Everything looks different in candle-light:
"Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays"...Henny Youngman
So, Santhosh and I were chatting and waiting for the power to arrive. And from the darkness arrived a young tech-couple at the counter, the wife saying to her hubby: "Tumi bolo" and the husband; "Naa, tumi..."
She then asked Santosh for a pain-relieving ointment. And he promptly fetched a tube of Moov. She declined it saying in "Bhindi", "Eta hum try kiyaa hai, useless!". And he brought a tube of Volini...and she repeated, "Etavu hum try...". He then asked what for she needs one. She then spread her left palm on the counter and said: "dekhiye...eta thumb phoola hua hai" And he asked her to show her right palm for comparison. And then she did that famous Feynman trick:
"...The psychiatrist says, 'Turn them over.' I turn then over. The one that was up goes down and the one that was down goes up..."
And a peal of laughter...
And Santhosh asks: "Chot laggaya kya?"
And she becomes glum, pats her smiling hubby on his pate and complains: "ini hum ko mara hai"
And another peal of laughter.
Santhosh is by now fed up and says: "I suggest you take a tablet of Brufen"
And she raises one forefinger to her lips and says: "Ekhoon tablet khana mana hai!"
And the lights come up in a flood. And they jump down the steps laughing; and I withdraw...
Back to Bengal after a long while!
======================================================================
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Instant Messaging
=====================================================================
When we were young brats living in the Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP, we used to off and on have 'guests', chiefly new senior faculty recruited by IIT KGP who were yet to be allotted Qrs. They used to stay for a week or two and tried to befriend us then and there. A look at them was sufficient to reveal that they had been downloaded straight from the US, England, Australia or even Russia. After dinner, we three musketeers used to sit down on the lawn bench and smoke and gossip for a while. The newcomer would join us on the bench opposite and wait for the right moment to butt into our conversation. Those were the decades when 'foreign-returned' were few and far between (unlike now) and they had a wee chip on their shoulders which they were eager to show off as early as possible, justifiably. And we used to bet how many minutes they would take to do that. And one of us would say it is very humid and, as likely as not, our 'guest' would declaim: "Not half as humid as London"
Last year we were staying in a high-class township...the costs and rents were double those of the neighborhood. Only NRIs could afford to buy them as investments and let them out, asking their poor old parents to 'look after' their property and collect rents. Indeed, our landlord, a middle-class brahmin, was made to buy two apartments in that township by his two sons who are both settled in the US and agonized that 'money doesn't grow in the US...while kids grow too fast'. One night I was visiting the local medical shop and was joined by a retiree. After a couple of minutes, he started asking me the usual intimate questions of where I worked, how many kids I have, and where are they...And then blurted out that his only son is 'settled' in the US and made him buy an apartment here and was forlorn that he 'lost' his son to the US and can never ever get him back. And said that he was made to visit the US for 3 months and he disliked the weather, the loneliness, the racism, and stuff and returned to India within a month and vowed to never go there again, saying that for Hyderabadi kids the US is like the proverbial 'distant mountain that looks smooth from afar'. I listened glumly and he suddenly produced his 'card' and asked for mine. And I had to bluff that my stock of cards is exhausted and new ones are still with the printer.
In the 19th century England, refusal to return the favor of exchanging 'cards' was deemed an insult sufficient to provoke a 'duel', with 'seconds' helping and encouraging them to 'have mutual satisfaction'. Let me quote from Pickwick Papers:
********************************************************************************************************
"...the stranger (Mr Jingle) was returning, and Mr Tupman was beside him. He spoke in a low tone, and laughed. The Little Doctor thirsted for his life. He was exulting. He had triumphed.
'Sir,' said the Doctor, in an awful voice, producing a card, and retiring into an angle of the passage, 'my name is Slammer, Doctor Slammer, sir---Ninety-seventh Regiment---Chatham Barracks---my card, sir, my card.' He would have added more, but his indignation choked him.
'Ah' replied the stranger, coolly, 'Slammer---much obliged---polite attention---not ill now Slammer---but when I am---knock you up.'
'You---you are a shuffler!, sir,' gasped the furious Doctor, 'a poltroon---a coward---a liar---a---a---will nothing induce you to give me your card, sir?'
......Doctor Slammer looked unutterable ferocity, as he fixed his hat on his head with an indignant knock......."
(And there was an infructuous pistol-duel arranged by their 'seconds'...)
********************************************************************************************************
None in our Physics Department at IIT KGP those days had ever dreamt of getting their 'cards' printed. Imagine HNB or SDM producing a Visiting Card!!!
But the very first day I landed in Hyderabad and took an auto-rickshaw and tried to befriend him since one such chap would be good for me in any emergency and asked him his name, he produced a wafer-thin plastic card with his name, cell-phone number and other details like the registration number of his vehicle, asking me to ring him up as and when needed and he would be at my place within minutes (I had paid him double the meter fare as a sweetener).
Perhaps our Director did have a card. And surely did our Professor-in-Charge of Training & Placement; since both would be dealing with aliens like Secretaries in the Ministry at Delhi and the Personnel Manager of Telco (if there is one).
Here is an e- sample of a retired eminence:
=====================================================================
When we were young brats living in the Faculty Hostel at IIT KGP, we used to off and on have 'guests', chiefly new senior faculty recruited by IIT KGP who were yet to be allotted Qrs. They used to stay for a week or two and tried to befriend us then and there. A look at them was sufficient to reveal that they had been downloaded straight from the US, England, Australia or even Russia. After dinner, we three musketeers used to sit down on the lawn bench and smoke and gossip for a while. The newcomer would join us on the bench opposite and wait for the right moment to butt into our conversation. Those were the decades when 'foreign-returned' were few and far between (unlike now) and they had a wee chip on their shoulders which they were eager to show off as early as possible, justifiably. And we used to bet how many minutes they would take to do that. And one of us would say it is very humid and, as likely as not, our 'guest' would declaim: "Not half as humid as London"
Last year we were staying in a high-class township...the costs and rents were double those of the neighborhood. Only NRIs could afford to buy them as investments and let them out, asking their poor old parents to 'look after' their property and collect rents. Indeed, our landlord, a middle-class brahmin, was made to buy two apartments in that township by his two sons who are both settled in the US and agonized that 'money doesn't grow in the US...while kids grow too fast'. One night I was visiting the local medical shop and was joined by a retiree. After a couple of minutes, he started asking me the usual intimate questions of where I worked, how many kids I have, and where are they...And then blurted out that his only son is 'settled' in the US and made him buy an apartment here and was forlorn that he 'lost' his son to the US and can never ever get him back. And said that he was made to visit the US for 3 months and he disliked the weather, the loneliness, the racism, and stuff and returned to India within a month and vowed to never go there again, saying that for Hyderabadi kids the US is like the proverbial 'distant mountain that looks smooth from afar'. I listened glumly and he suddenly produced his 'card' and asked for mine. And I had to bluff that my stock of cards is exhausted and new ones are still with the printer.
In the 19th century England, refusal to return the favor of exchanging 'cards' was deemed an insult sufficient to provoke a 'duel', with 'seconds' helping and encouraging them to 'have mutual satisfaction'. Let me quote from Pickwick Papers:
********************************************************************************************************
"...the stranger (Mr Jingle) was returning, and Mr Tupman was beside him. He spoke in a low tone, and laughed. The Little Doctor thirsted for his life. He was exulting. He had triumphed.
'Sir,' said the Doctor, in an awful voice, producing a card, and retiring into an angle of the passage, 'my name is Slammer, Doctor Slammer, sir---Ninety-seventh Regiment---Chatham Barracks---my card, sir, my card.' He would have added more, but his indignation choked him.
'Ah' replied the stranger, coolly, 'Slammer---much obliged---polite attention---not ill now Slammer---but when I am---knock you up.'
'You---you are a shuffler!, sir,' gasped the furious Doctor, 'a poltroon---a coward---a liar---a---a---will nothing induce you to give me your card, sir?'
......Doctor Slammer looked unutterable ferocity, as he fixed his hat on his head with an indignant knock......."
(And there was an infructuous pistol-duel arranged by their 'seconds'...)
********************************************************************************************************
None in our Physics Department at IIT KGP those days had ever dreamt of getting their 'cards' printed. Imagine HNB or SDM producing a Visiting Card!!!
But the very first day I landed in Hyderabad and took an auto-rickshaw and tried to befriend him since one such chap would be good for me in any emergency and asked him his name, he produced a wafer-thin plastic card with his name, cell-phone number and other details like the registration number of his vehicle, asking me to ring him up as and when needed and he would be at my place within minutes (I had paid him double the meter fare as a sweetener).
Perhaps our Director did have a card. And surely did our Professor-in-Charge of Training & Placement; since both would be dealing with aliens like Secretaries in the Ministry at Delhi and the Personnel Manager of Telco (if there is one).
Here is an e- sample of a retired eminence:
Professor G. P. Sastry, Ph.D.(IITKH), F.E.E.E.E.(Malaysia)
Director, ABC College of Engineering, Valhalla
Former Director (AA), IIIIIT-Timbuctoo
Former Dean, Discontinuing Elucidation
Principal PIQMD Coordinator
Professor-out-Charge, PQRST NMOT - 732-543-897
20, Gandhi Street II ,
Muthukur - 600106976
Tel:Off: 271635268765,
Res: 08521-22222222,
Mobile:9078654387654
e-mail: gps1943212@bahoo.go
*****************************************************************************************
Director, ABC College of Engineering, Valhalla
Former Director (AA), IIIIIT-Timbuctoo
Former Dean, Discontinuing Elucidation
Principal PIQMD Coordinator
Professor-out-Charge, PQRST NMOT - 732-543-897
20, Gandhi Street II ,
Muthukur - 600106976
Tel:Off: 271635268765,
Res: 08521-22222222,
Mobile:9078654387654
e-mail: gps1943212@bahoo.go
*****************************************************************************************
The Chief Engineer (Retd) here that I talked about many times earlier once asked me how I 'write' my address.
I replied: G. P. Sastry, G-4, Sri Sai Apts etc".
He then asked in bewilderment: "Don't you write Dr. G. P. Sastry, Ph D?"
I said, "No"
He then asked: "You don't even write Professor?"
I said "No"
He then asked me why not.
I had to reply that very few people do take the trouble of writing to me, and they know who and what I am...
I replied: G. P. Sastry, G-4, Sri Sai Apts etc".
He then asked in bewilderment: "Don't you write Dr. G. P. Sastry, Ph D?"
I said, "No"
He then asked: "You don't even write Professor?"
I said "No"
He then asked me why not.
I had to reply that very few people do take the trouble of writing to me, and they know who and what I am...
=====================================================================
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Memoranda
=====================================================================
Here is Thurber writing about Thurber:
*******************************************************************************************************
"Thurber's very first bit of writing was a so-called poem entitled 'My Aunt Mrs. John T. Savage's Garden at 185 South Fifth Street, Columbus, Ohio.' It is of no value or importance except insofar as it demonstrates the man's appalling memory for names and numbers. He can tell you to this day the names of all the children who were in the fourth grade when he was. He remembers the phone numbers of several of his high school chums. He knows the birthdays of all his friends and can tell you the date on which any child of theirs is christened. He can rattle off the names of all the persons who attended the lawn fete of the First M. E. Church in Columbus in 1907. This ragbag of precise but worthless information may have helped him in his work, but I don't see how."
********************************************************************************************************
Most kids have very good memories for names and numbers, but Thurber's looks like unique, because he was writing that piece at 50, and uses the present tense. Most of us lose our data in the memory disks of childhood, to be replaced by other 'useful' bytes.
My grannie on the father's side was precocious as a child and was reputed for her memory. But her memory was bookish. When, at 14, I was a (non-paying) guest in her household for a year when she was 80, I used to marvel at her fondness for the Potana Bhagavatam (Telugu). She used to spend about eight hours a day reading it and had most of the Krishnavatara by heart. But she was not interested in worldly affairs and had little memory for names, dates and events.
On the other hand, my grannie on the mother's side was illiterate, but wedded to a Revenue Official and was moving from place to place and her memory was no less keen. She could narrate every event that took place with dates, names, figures, the saris worn by her friends, the ornaments they wore, and the items they cooked that day as vividly as if it happened only yesterday; and she was 80 when she told us these tall tales...very worldly.
My father naturally inherited and imbibed his mom's memory and interests and a couple of days before he passed away (suffering from senile dementia) I tested his long-term memory and he was able to recite the whole of Wordsworth's Daffodils and the Tennyson Tales of King Aurthur and his ludicrous knights; before shooing me away: "Enough is enough...get lost, you Demon (Rakshasa)!"
My mom inherited her mom's vivid memory for worldly matters. She was withdrawn from her schooling after her Class 2 and studied at home rather desultorily. At 90, now, she can tell the names of my classmates in my B Sc (Hons) who were competing with me for the first rank, and the name of the girl I was running after, rather unsuccessfully, till I got that Central Govt Permanent Pensionable Job, after which she was running after me, rather unsuccessfully, when I fled 500 km to KGP.
My wife is a medico, and all medicos those days had to have abominable memories to pass their Anatomy Exam (flexion, adduction, abduction, extension, rotation, elevation, depression, showing them off by thumb movements). But it turned out she lost all interest in medicine after getting married to a genius. She however retained her fantastic memory and can remember dates and names and faces; and I use her as a backup.
It turned out that I had to make a living by lecturing to live audiences at KGP. Listen to our Autocrat who used to lecture moving from place to place much like our itinerant story-tellers (Harikatha Acharyas)...America may be the only country (if you can call it that) where grownup adults (used to) pay fortunes to listen to roving lecturers:
***********************************************************************************************************
"...Front seats: a few old folks, --- shiny-headed, --- slant up best ear towards the speaker, -- drop off asleep after a while, when the air begins to get a little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright women's faces, young and middle-aged, a little behind these, but towards the front, --- (pick out the best, and lecture mainly to that.) Here and there a countenance, sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones sprinkled about. An indefinite number of pairs of young people, --- happy, but not always very attentive. Boys in the background, more or less quiet. Dull faces, here, there, --- in how many places! I don't say dull people, but faces without a ray of sympathy or a movement of expression. They are what kill the lecturer. These negative faces with their vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him; --- that is the chief reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over..."
******************************************************************************************************
Well, that is not exactly what I had to face at IIT KGP. Because my audience was not a ragbag random assemblage but was the cream of the country, if not its butter and cheese. But as for memory, my forte is to faces and their expressions.
Like a kid collects postage stamps or coins, I collect interesting faces and their varied expressions and store them in my memory disk...to this day. Needless to say, the most interesting face at KGP was my Guide SDM's. It was so transparent, fluid, and mercurial (whatever that may mean...maybe it refers to the speed of those mercury drops on our glass plates in the Quincke's Method experiment when we tried to press them down). Half of my fascination for him was his pleasurable 'out-of-the-box' personality and the other half was 'business'.
When people talk to me, I listen spellbound, looking at their faces and trying to guess what they are going to say next...mind-reading. Most people want to talk and hog the conversation without realizing that they are giving themselves away. When I am forced to keep the conversation going, I talk talk and talk apparent nonsense, but all the while I keep looking at the faces of my audience to get their reactions and read their minds. That trait perhaps helped me in my job as well. By the time a student gets up and starts asking a question, I could read what was coming before the sentence was over and ready with the answer (if I knew it) or an honest attempt at it.
This trait also enabled me to steer through the politics present in any job without hurting others or myself too much and having a peaceful life.
There was but one Professor who outwitted me in this business. He was a mathematician and, by the time he rose to the eminence of a full professor he acquired and established a reputation for absent-minded unworldliness. It suited him nicely to avoid needless pressures. But, after a couple of interactions, he guessed that I could see that he was faking and seeing through his veil. Since he was thirty years my senior, I kept quiet, but DB told me that he prophesied in public, in my absence:
"Sastry is not going to do any more research now that he got his Ph D under SDM"
How true!
Thief catching bloody thief!!!
======================================================================
Here is Thurber writing about Thurber:
*******************************************************************************************************
"Thurber's very first bit of writing was a so-called poem entitled 'My Aunt Mrs. John T. Savage's Garden at 185 South Fifth Street, Columbus, Ohio.' It is of no value or importance except insofar as it demonstrates the man's appalling memory for names and numbers. He can tell you to this day the names of all the children who were in the fourth grade when he was. He remembers the phone numbers of several of his high school chums. He knows the birthdays of all his friends and can tell you the date on which any child of theirs is christened. He can rattle off the names of all the persons who attended the lawn fete of the First M. E. Church in Columbus in 1907. This ragbag of precise but worthless information may have helped him in his work, but I don't see how."
********************************************************************************************************
Most kids have very good memories for names and numbers, but Thurber's looks like unique, because he was writing that piece at 50, and uses the present tense. Most of us lose our data in the memory disks of childhood, to be replaced by other 'useful' bytes.
My grannie on the father's side was precocious as a child and was reputed for her memory. But her memory was bookish. When, at 14, I was a (non-paying) guest in her household for a year when she was 80, I used to marvel at her fondness for the Potana Bhagavatam (Telugu). She used to spend about eight hours a day reading it and had most of the Krishnavatara by heart. But she was not interested in worldly affairs and had little memory for names, dates and events.
On the other hand, my grannie on the mother's side was illiterate, but wedded to a Revenue Official and was moving from place to place and her memory was no less keen. She could narrate every event that took place with dates, names, figures, the saris worn by her friends, the ornaments they wore, and the items they cooked that day as vividly as if it happened only yesterday; and she was 80 when she told us these tall tales...very worldly.
My father naturally inherited and imbibed his mom's memory and interests and a couple of days before he passed away (suffering from senile dementia) I tested his long-term memory and he was able to recite the whole of Wordsworth's Daffodils and the Tennyson Tales of King Aurthur and his ludicrous knights; before shooing me away: "Enough is enough...get lost, you Demon (Rakshasa)!"
My mom inherited her mom's vivid memory for worldly matters. She was withdrawn from her schooling after her Class 2 and studied at home rather desultorily. At 90, now, she can tell the names of my classmates in my B Sc (Hons) who were competing with me for the first rank, and the name of the girl I was running after, rather unsuccessfully, till I got that Central Govt Permanent Pensionable Job, after which she was running after me, rather unsuccessfully, when I fled 500 km to KGP.
My wife is a medico, and all medicos those days had to have abominable memories to pass their Anatomy Exam (flexion, adduction, abduction, extension, rotation, elevation, depression, showing them off by thumb movements). But it turned out she lost all interest in medicine after getting married to a genius. She however retained her fantastic memory and can remember dates and names and faces; and I use her as a backup.
It turned out that I had to make a living by lecturing to live audiences at KGP. Listen to our Autocrat who used to lecture moving from place to place much like our itinerant story-tellers (Harikatha Acharyas)...America may be the only country (if you can call it that) where grownup adults (used to) pay fortunes to listen to roving lecturers:
***********************************************************************************************************
"...Front seats: a few old folks, --- shiny-headed, --- slant up best ear towards the speaker, -- drop off asleep after a while, when the air begins to get a little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright women's faces, young and middle-aged, a little behind these, but towards the front, --- (pick out the best, and lecture mainly to that.) Here and there a countenance, sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female ones sprinkled about. An indefinite number of pairs of young people, --- happy, but not always very attentive. Boys in the background, more or less quiet. Dull faces, here, there, --- in how many places! I don't say dull people, but faces without a ray of sympathy or a movement of expression. They are what kill the lecturer. These negative faces with their vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him; --- that is the chief reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over..."
******************************************************************************************************
Well, that is not exactly what I had to face at IIT KGP. Because my audience was not a ragbag random assemblage but was the cream of the country, if not its butter and cheese. But as for memory, my forte is to faces and their expressions.
Like a kid collects postage stamps or coins, I collect interesting faces and their varied expressions and store them in my memory disk...to this day. Needless to say, the most interesting face at KGP was my Guide SDM's. It was so transparent, fluid, and mercurial (whatever that may mean...maybe it refers to the speed of those mercury drops on our glass plates in the Quincke's Method experiment when we tried to press them down). Half of my fascination for him was his pleasurable 'out-of-the-box' personality and the other half was 'business'.
When people talk to me, I listen spellbound, looking at their faces and trying to guess what they are going to say next...mind-reading. Most people want to talk and hog the conversation without realizing that they are giving themselves away. When I am forced to keep the conversation going, I talk talk and talk apparent nonsense, but all the while I keep looking at the faces of my audience to get their reactions and read their minds. That trait perhaps helped me in my job as well. By the time a student gets up and starts asking a question, I could read what was coming before the sentence was over and ready with the answer (if I knew it) or an honest attempt at it.
This trait also enabled me to steer through the politics present in any job without hurting others or myself too much and having a peaceful life.
There was but one Professor who outwitted me in this business. He was a mathematician and, by the time he rose to the eminence of a full professor he acquired and established a reputation for absent-minded unworldliness. It suited him nicely to avoid needless pressures. But, after a couple of interactions, he guessed that I could see that he was faking and seeing through his veil. Since he was thirty years my senior, I kept quiet, but DB told me that he prophesied in public, in my absence:
"Sastry is not going to do any more research now that he got his Ph D under SDM"
How true!
Thief catching bloody thief!!!
======================================================================
Monday, March 26, 2012
Phantom Reflexes
=====================================================================
My matchbox Maruti 800 (AD: 2000 model) has her parking slot in what is termed B-2; meaning two floors below sea level. As I start her up, she groans and lurches, and as she finally crawls up to the ground level, she has to pass through a Security Boom...I mean a Security Chap sits at one end of the gate in a raised chair and pulls or releases a rope tied to one end of a colorfully painted bamboo pole to raise or lower it. The other end of the boom pole is hinged and weighted so that when the chap eases his rope, the pole rises up to an angle of around 30 deg with the horizon to let cars pass through it.
I have noticed that whenever I drive below the pole, I bow my head down onto my steering wheel as if to help clear my car through the barrier. And as I pass on, I laugh at myself and decide that I won't do this foolish maneuver next time around. But, as I am always lost in blog-thought, I forget my own admonition and bend down once again reflexively. Nowadays I like to do it. Because, I have found that every time I bend my head down, the Security Chap bends his head down, thinking I am wishing him: "Nomoshkar!"
I thought a lot why I keep doing this childish act. And found out the reason...it has indeed to do with my childhood. Whenever we kids used to cross the closed Railway Boom in Nellore on foot, we used to bend down below the pole, run, and get across to the other side effortlessly...grownups couldn't do it and so used to curse us.
This is an example of what I call phantom reflexes. Like phantom pains felt in an amputated limb that is no longer there.
Phantom reflexes are typical to retirees. Though they quit their jobs long long ago, they carry them in their brains and act once in a while as if they were still working.
Retired Doctors go about prescribing ancient out-of-date drugs to whoever opens his mouth and complains of ache this or ache that unwisely. One of my uncles (80) still advises everyone in the family to drink one spoonful of Waterbury Compound every morning. And follow it up with Cod Liver Oil.
Lawyers of course never retire. Here it is from: You Are Old Father William:
The saddest case among retirees is that of IAS Officers. They are trained at Mussoorie for all of one year how they are different from and superior to the lay public they administer, how they can manage everything from a Zoo to an Airport, and how they should never ever be the first to extend their hand to shake with anyone but another junior IAS Officer, and what is the Protocol when a young Sub-Collector meets the wife of an old Fifth Additional Judicial Magistrate and stuff. So, after they suddenly retire, they have nothing to do but ruminate the good old times...and whenever a Retired Professor happens to meet one of their kind at a Party and smiles, they are in doubt whether to smile back and if so by how many millimeters.
When I was an Associate Lecturer at IIT KGP and rather proud of it, I happened to sit by the side of a young IAS Officer friend at his Residence (never 'home') as his honored guest. A young Cub Reporter came in and wanted to interview the IAS chap fancying his 'column' would appear in the Hindu in toto. After a few pourparlers, the Cub asked the IAS chappie:
"What is your hobby, sir!"
and got the instant reply:
"Reading"
The Cub took it down briskly in shorthand and turned to me (I had been introduced to him by then):
"And yours, sir?"
"Thinking"
My friend never forgave me to this day...he deemed it a grievous breach of protocol.
The other kind who keep wearing their Uniform under their skin long after their retirement are the Military Folks. There were three of them in our Phy Dept at IIT KGP. All of them had stints of Service during the World War II and were demobbed when it was over. And joined IIT KGP as Technical Assistants. Two were in the Army and one in the Air Force. When I was introduced to them first, our colleagues took care to say:"Meet Major Mukherjee" et al so as not to wound their feelings, since a useless Associate Lecturer like me drew more pay than any of them. And Major Mukherjee would open his chest like an inflated football and give a military handshake instead of the default Nomoshkar. They were all very friendly guys and were very nice to me since I took care to salute them whenever I met them. And helped me several times in and out of the Dept. When I wanted to gift a good Ambassador Briefcase to Dr and Mrs Dr Kohili of the BNR Hospital who refused to take the usual fees for a surgery they did on my wife since she too is a medico, and I couldn't afford it, the Air Force (Retd) Mukherjee brought one for me at half the price from the Air Force Canteen at Kalikunda.
But one thing I noticed was that for all those decades there, I never saw the three together...they certainly avoided one another...I don't know why.
Here is the only instance I know when a Professor and a General got equal respect:
*******************************************************************************************************
"...Something else happened at that time which is worth mentioning here. One of the questions the rabbinical students and I discussed at length was why it is that in academic things, such as theoretical physics, there is a higher proportion of Jewish kids than their proportion in the general population. The rabbinical students thought the reason was that the Jews have a history of respect for learning: They respect their rabbis, who are really teachers, and they respect education. The Jews pass on this tradition in their families all the time, so that if a boy is a good student, it's as good as, if not better than, being a good football player.
It was the same afternoon that I was reminded how true it is. I was invited to one of the rabbinical students' home, and he introduced me to his mother, who had just come back from Washington D.C. She clapped her hands together, in ecstasy, and said, 'Oh, My day is complete. Today I met a general, and a professor!'
I realized that there are not many people who think it's just as important, and just as nice, to meet a professor as to meet a general. So I guess there's something in what they said..."
.....................Need I say where this passage is lifted from?
=====================================================================
My matchbox Maruti 800 (AD: 2000 model) has her parking slot in what is termed B-2; meaning two floors below sea level. As I start her up, she groans and lurches, and as she finally crawls up to the ground level, she has to pass through a Security Boom...I mean a Security Chap sits at one end of the gate in a raised chair and pulls or releases a rope tied to one end of a colorfully painted bamboo pole to raise or lower it. The other end of the boom pole is hinged and weighted so that when the chap eases his rope, the pole rises up to an angle of around 30 deg with the horizon to let cars pass through it.
I have noticed that whenever I drive below the pole, I bow my head down onto my steering wheel as if to help clear my car through the barrier. And as I pass on, I laugh at myself and decide that I won't do this foolish maneuver next time around. But, as I am always lost in blog-thought, I forget my own admonition and bend down once again reflexively. Nowadays I like to do it. Because, I have found that every time I bend my head down, the Security Chap bends his head down, thinking I am wishing him: "Nomoshkar!"
I thought a lot why I keep doing this childish act. And found out the reason...it has indeed to do with my childhood. Whenever we kids used to cross the closed Railway Boom in Nellore on foot, we used to bend down below the pole, run, and get across to the other side effortlessly...grownups couldn't do it and so used to curse us.
This is an example of what I call phantom reflexes. Like phantom pains felt in an amputated limb that is no longer there.
Phantom reflexes are typical to retirees. Though they quit their jobs long long ago, they carry them in their brains and act once in a while as if they were still working.
Retired Doctors go about prescribing ancient out-of-date drugs to whoever opens his mouth and complains of ache this or ache that unwisely. One of my uncles (80) still advises everyone in the family to drink one spoonful of Waterbury Compound every morning. And follow it up with Cod Liver Oil.
Lawyers of course never retire. Here it is from: You Are Old Father William:
'You are old,' said the youth, 'and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak---
Pray, how did you manage to do it?'
'In my youth,' said his father, 'I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.'
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak---
Pray, how did you manage to do it?'
'In my youth,' said his father, 'I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.'
The saddest case among retirees is that of IAS Officers. They are trained at Mussoorie for all of one year how they are different from and superior to the lay public they administer, how they can manage everything from a Zoo to an Airport, and how they should never ever be the first to extend their hand to shake with anyone but another junior IAS Officer, and what is the Protocol when a young Sub-Collector meets the wife of an old Fifth Additional Judicial Magistrate and stuff. So, after they suddenly retire, they have nothing to do but ruminate the good old times...and whenever a Retired Professor happens to meet one of their kind at a Party and smiles, they are in doubt whether to smile back and if so by how many millimeters.
When I was an Associate Lecturer at IIT KGP and rather proud of it, I happened to sit by the side of a young IAS Officer friend at his Residence (never 'home') as his honored guest. A young Cub Reporter came in and wanted to interview the IAS chap fancying his 'column' would appear in the Hindu in toto. After a few pourparlers, the Cub asked the IAS chappie:
"What is your hobby, sir!"
and got the instant reply:
"Reading"
The Cub took it down briskly in shorthand and turned to me (I had been introduced to him by then):
"And yours, sir?"
"Thinking"
My friend never forgave me to this day...he deemed it a grievous breach of protocol.
The other kind who keep wearing their Uniform under their skin long after their retirement are the Military Folks. There were three of them in our Phy Dept at IIT KGP. All of them had stints of Service during the World War II and were demobbed when it was over. And joined IIT KGP as Technical Assistants. Two were in the Army and one in the Air Force. When I was introduced to them first, our colleagues took care to say:"Meet Major Mukherjee" et al so as not to wound their feelings, since a useless Associate Lecturer like me drew more pay than any of them. And Major Mukherjee would open his chest like an inflated football and give a military handshake instead of the default Nomoshkar. They were all very friendly guys and were very nice to me since I took care to salute them whenever I met them. And helped me several times in and out of the Dept. When I wanted to gift a good Ambassador Briefcase to Dr and Mrs Dr Kohili of the BNR Hospital who refused to take the usual fees for a surgery they did on my wife since she too is a medico, and I couldn't afford it, the Air Force (Retd) Mukherjee brought one for me at half the price from the Air Force Canteen at Kalikunda.
But one thing I noticed was that for all those decades there, I never saw the three together...they certainly avoided one another...I don't know why.
Here is the only instance I know when a Professor and a General got equal respect:
*******************************************************************************************************
"...Something else happened at that time which is worth mentioning here. One of the questions the rabbinical students and I discussed at length was why it is that in academic things, such as theoretical physics, there is a higher proportion of Jewish kids than their proportion in the general population. The rabbinical students thought the reason was that the Jews have a history of respect for learning: They respect their rabbis, who are really teachers, and they respect education. The Jews pass on this tradition in their families all the time, so that if a boy is a good student, it's as good as, if not better than, being a good football player.
It was the same afternoon that I was reminded how true it is. I was invited to one of the rabbinical students' home, and he introduced me to his mother, who had just come back from Washington D.C. She clapped her hands together, in ecstasy, and said, 'Oh, My day is complete. Today I met a general, and a professor!'
I realized that there are not many people who think it's just as important, and just as nice, to meet a professor as to meet a general. So I guess there's something in what they said..."
.....................Need I say where this passage is lifted from?
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Sunday, March 25, 2012
Penelope Syndrome
======================================================================
It has been my experience that windfalls thrill us far more and for longer than fulfillment of long-cherished dreams. The one is positive while the other is negative.
Much has been written about Ulysses on his return to Ithaca after twenty years and how he got terribly bored after reunion with his family and how he was pining for more and more adventures...the chap who loved his wife and son so much and was so reluctant to leave them and go forth for battle that he tried to fake lunacy.
That about sums up the male psyche a year after marriage...they pine for their bachelorhood and its freedoms and friends and wonder how foolish they were to imagine unrelenting wedded bliss unlike the boring Heaven of Don Juan in Shaw's Man and Superman and Huck in Mark Twain.
But what about the feelings of Penelope, the wedded wife of Ulysses who remained true and faithful to her long-lost husband and tended to their only son, Telemachus, like a lioness? The default answer is that Ulysses' return home after twenty long years of pining for him must have made her exultant and they lived happily forever. But the truth is more likely to be that she must be "missing the wistfulness of missing him".
Maugham (?) wrote a short story of a jailbird pining for reunion with his ladylove. He thinks and thinks of her so much and for so long every hour every day that when the meeting at last does take place he runs away...
My Guide SDM told me that his most cherished and ardent desire was to get a good D Sc of the Calcutta University. He delayed submission by a decade or more, fortifying his thesis so much that one of his thesis-examiners remarked it deserves three Doctorates in
1: General Relativity
2. Molecular Spectroscopy
3. Quantum Mechanics.
But SDM told me that for all those encomiums, his happiness on getting his D Sc didn't last for more than 24 hours.
On the other hand, he was a village school kid in the district of Sylhet (present day Bangladesh) when he wrote his Matriculation Exam. Though he knew he would top in maths, he was so overjoyed when he came to know that he topped the Combined Exam in the whole of undivided Bengal that the moment was etched forever in his memory and he still gets a stupendous kick reliving it after 50 years.
I was a Late Kate in most of my dreams come true, especially marriage (at 36). The thrill didn't even last SDM's 24 proverbial hours...it was just a nice and healthy disillusionment. But, most unexpectedly, I got the windfall of a cute unplanned son. And to this day, I relish the moment I first saw him in his crib when he was all of 5 days in a maternity home in Jalgaon...my son! MY SON!!!
And nothing can beat the continued thrills I get when looking at Ishani day in and day out...another windfall, sumptuous by more than two orders of magnitude.
When I retired and started living in Hyderabad with my wife and son in a rented apartment, I used to pine for my 'own' 3 BHK apartment. Those were the years of the housing boom and even a 2 BHK flat was quoted at Rs 45 lakhs, which of course was like the pie in my sky. All of a sudden the bubble burst and builders were begging buyers to please book and pay, just so they could remain afloat. The prices crashed so low that they were willing to promise me a 3 BHK apartment for just Rs 23 lakhs provided we pay the entire amount up front. My son and me pooled our bank balances and took a grave risk and paid up, looking at heavens.
And then I lost all interest in the affair. My son and D-i-L were making frequent visits to the 'site' and used to report that the promised 'township' was just boulders and rock formations for a good 2.5 years. Suddenly on their next visit they found that our first block of 300 flats is touching the sky...apparently they used German Technology that needed hardly any labor and no bricks at all. The whole thing was concrete and cranes.
In another 3 months the builders were begging us to take 'possession' so they can get the remaining two lakh rupees for the car park and stuff. And within another three months my son and D-i-L completed the 'interiors' and one fine morning they took me there blindfolded and released me in the midst of our 'own' apartment.
And then it was my latest and best windfall...I never imagined we were getting for peanuts a fantastic living space flooded by light and breeze...almost akin to the thrill I got when I shifted from a dark and dingy Qrs C-1/97 to a heavenly B-140 at IIT KGP after 20 years of wait.
Every noon I wake up and get out of bed I feel thrilled by the streaming sunshine and breeze through three contiguous balconies...something I never dreamed of...
It is like sitting on the cement bench of the Harrys at KGP way back during my bachelorhood in the Faculty Hostel decade...
========================================================================
It has been my experience that windfalls thrill us far more and for longer than fulfillment of long-cherished dreams. The one is positive while the other is negative.
Much has been written about Ulysses on his return to Ithaca after twenty years and how he got terribly bored after reunion with his family and how he was pining for more and more adventures...the chap who loved his wife and son so much and was so reluctant to leave them and go forth for battle that he tried to fake lunacy.
That about sums up the male psyche a year after marriage...they pine for their bachelorhood and its freedoms and friends and wonder how foolish they were to imagine unrelenting wedded bliss unlike the boring Heaven of Don Juan in Shaw's Man and Superman and Huck in Mark Twain.
But what about the feelings of Penelope, the wedded wife of Ulysses who remained true and faithful to her long-lost husband and tended to their only son, Telemachus, like a lioness? The default answer is that Ulysses' return home after twenty long years of pining for him must have made her exultant and they lived happily forever. But the truth is more likely to be that she must be "missing the wistfulness of missing him".
Maugham (?) wrote a short story of a jailbird pining for reunion with his ladylove. He thinks and thinks of her so much and for so long every hour every day that when the meeting at last does take place he runs away...
My Guide SDM told me that his most cherished and ardent desire was to get a good D Sc of the Calcutta University. He delayed submission by a decade or more, fortifying his thesis so much that one of his thesis-examiners remarked it deserves three Doctorates in
1: General Relativity
2. Molecular Spectroscopy
3. Quantum Mechanics.
But SDM told me that for all those encomiums, his happiness on getting his D Sc didn't last for more than 24 hours.
On the other hand, he was a village school kid in the district of Sylhet (present day Bangladesh) when he wrote his Matriculation Exam. Though he knew he would top in maths, he was so overjoyed when he came to know that he topped the Combined Exam in the whole of undivided Bengal that the moment was etched forever in his memory and he still gets a stupendous kick reliving it after 50 years.
I was a Late Kate in most of my dreams come true, especially marriage (at 36). The thrill didn't even last SDM's 24 proverbial hours...it was just a nice and healthy disillusionment. But, most unexpectedly, I got the windfall of a cute unplanned son. And to this day, I relish the moment I first saw him in his crib when he was all of 5 days in a maternity home in Jalgaon...my son! MY SON!!!
And nothing can beat the continued thrills I get when looking at Ishani day in and day out...another windfall, sumptuous by more than two orders of magnitude.
When I retired and started living in Hyderabad with my wife and son in a rented apartment, I used to pine for my 'own' 3 BHK apartment. Those were the years of the housing boom and even a 2 BHK flat was quoted at Rs 45 lakhs, which of course was like the pie in my sky. All of a sudden the bubble burst and builders were begging buyers to please book and pay, just so they could remain afloat. The prices crashed so low that they were willing to promise me a 3 BHK apartment for just Rs 23 lakhs provided we pay the entire amount up front. My son and me pooled our bank balances and took a grave risk and paid up, looking at heavens.
And then I lost all interest in the affair. My son and D-i-L were making frequent visits to the 'site' and used to report that the promised 'township' was just boulders and rock formations for a good 2.5 years. Suddenly on their next visit they found that our first block of 300 flats is touching the sky...apparently they used German Technology that needed hardly any labor and no bricks at all. The whole thing was concrete and cranes.
In another 3 months the builders were begging us to take 'possession' so they can get the remaining two lakh rupees for the car park and stuff. And within another three months my son and D-i-L completed the 'interiors' and one fine morning they took me there blindfolded and released me in the midst of our 'own' apartment.
And then it was my latest and best windfall...I never imagined we were getting for peanuts a fantastic living space flooded by light and breeze...almost akin to the thrill I got when I shifted from a dark and dingy Qrs C-1/97 to a heavenly B-140 at IIT KGP after 20 years of wait.
Every noon I wake up and get out of bed I feel thrilled by the streaming sunshine and breeze through three contiguous balconies...something I never dreamed of...
It is like sitting on the cement bench of the Harrys at KGP way back during my bachelorhood in the Faculty Hostel decade...
========================================================================
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