Verbivores

=================================================

PoLtS has responded beautifully:

***************************************************************

PoLtS: "Polts is between a rock and a hard place eating his own words. He is going to be very quiet for a long long time. He also shamelessly requests a free copy of the book so that he can have a 'priceless' experience".

***************************************************************

gps: Now, now, PoLtS! If I remember you well, neither you nor I are known for our long silences. Indeed Aniket had a cute dig at me for shamelessly reneging on my vow of silence:

Aniket: "I can see that your self-proclaimed break from blogging, as expected, did not last very long".

Actually, I must thank PoLtS for giving me just that opportunity for some cheap boasting. If there were no PoLtS, I might have been forced to invent one: just as Oliver Wendell Holmes who was gabbing away day after day as 'the autocrat of his Boston, 1850's boarding-house breakfast table' had to invent a very smart young character called John who was the only one who could pull him down a few pegs by pulling his legs as and when the autocrat tended to be a bore.

As it is, I must assert that PoLtS is not a fictitious character invented by gps. He is very much flesh and warm blood.

I shall miss him badly if he declines to speak.

As for a free copy of the BOOK, I think it can be arranged if he gives an India postal address. Some of my friends at KGP should be able to access one and mail it. He can pick it up when he next visits home.

Again, one of the greatest inventions is the 'negative feedback': it stabilizes systems unlike uncontrolled positive feedback which tends to make them runaway.

Hail Harold Black!:

************************************************************

"On August 2, 1927, Harold Black, a young Bell Labs engineer just six years out of college, invented the negative-feedback amplifier. Negative feedback soon allowed the Bell system to reduce overcrowding of lines and extend its long-distance network by means of carrier telephony. It enabled the design of accurate fire-control systems in World War II, and it formed the basis of early operational amplifiers, as well as precise, variable-frequency audio oscillators. The invention, its development, the role it played in the founding of the Hewlett-Packard company, and the themes it illustrates in the history of technology are discussed"

...............Kline, R. Dept. of Sci. & Technol. Studies, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY

**************************************************************

'Eating words' reminds me of a light verse I did invent along with a word for word-eaters (verbivores) like PoLtS and gps. Here it is:

***************************************************************
Verbivores:


"Those who eat before they earn
Are found to ever cut and run;
Those who speak before their turn
Are bound to eat their words anon"

....................Monday, March 30, 2009

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html

*****************************************************************

Supratim writes:

*****************************************************************

supratim: "..Enjoyed the Ogden Nash verse via Aniket. I was wondering why you stopped writing limericks. They were awesome. GPS's book of limericks would be a great hit".

gps: There WAS a gps booklet of "Limericks & Light Verses", a compilation of a hundred odd ditties. In fact it was the first one to be printed, April 2009. It was a hit and a miss too. Those of my friends in AP (Telugu-proficient people) jokingly said; "You ought to have attached a dictionary too". The problem was that it started with this rogue-word limerick, which repelled outernet classical folks:

************************************************************

Do's and Don'ts for Old and Young

"Older folks ought not ogle
Lest their eyes goggle and boggle
But old and young
Queen and King
All of us ought to Google!"

........................Thursday, February 19, 2009

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html

******************************************************************

supratim: "On a lighter note, your story of BKM's interview in IIT KGP was hilarious. I would want to believe it even if it weren't true".

gps: As I declared: "It is as true as Death". Bidhan Krushna Mahanty, one of my closest colleagues just a year my senior had no reason to gul. And whenever we met, we always bragged about our latest Wodehouse acquisition. Wonderful chap; only one of two who submitted his Doctoral Thesis in Theoretical Physics on his own after his erstwhile guide left KGP for good; the other being C L Roy.

Now, it is my turn to turn nostalgic about my Faculty Hostel Years....crazy folks the residents were! All of us were in our mid-20s and ever feeling our oats. We used to play cowboys: hide behind the first-floor-staircases at the two ends of the long corridor, and pretend to shoot from the hip shouting titchoo, titchoo, titchoo at whosoever steps up unawares.

The 'hit' one was supposed to fall dead to the ground prompto..

Once the victim happened to be an unsuspecting bhadralok visitor in his 50s . He was taken aback at being 'hit' till his cowboy shooter apologized handsomely . And it turned out that the hit visitor was looking for precisely the same shooter, carrying a bag bulging with the latest photos, degree certificates and horoscopes of his daughter whom he wanted to propose to the 'shooter', a young, handsome and otherwise highly eligible bachelor.

Unfortunately, their "horoscopes didn't tally".

This again as true as 'Birth'. Promise!


=========================================================






=

Foreword

It is a pleasure to read the compilations and reminiscences of the emerging great in modern style blog-writing, the inimitable Prof Dr.GPS!

He is proving time and again that he is not only a great Physicist but also an English Scholar who has a deep penchant and love for the language thanks to the nice foundation laid by his great father and teacher par excellence Shri G Radhakrishniah.

The love for English runs in the family and also in the acquired family through marriage, in the likes of Shri G Rangarao IAS and of course myself through another great English teacher my beloved wife Mrs Ramadevi Moorthy. The only difference for me is that I enjoy the fruits of others and appreciate their work!

Dr.GPS has touched across the entire spectrum of his life right from childhood to the present state of happy retirement, giving us lucid entertaining views, without offending any one, which I feel is nice.

His views on all aspects of Campus Life, Economy, Society, Friendship with colleagues, Attachment to students -- and finally his portrayal of his favorite MALGUDI- the real beach village turned township of MUTHUKUR are all enjoyable

Habits are hard to beat! Like a good medical student who sits for the whole night just before the exam burning the proverbial midnight oil, I read through the book on the last day of my deadline to write the Foreword, (a nice gesture to honor me or motivate me to follow his foot steps?!) and find it to be a real interesting collection of blogs.

May God Bless him with more fruitful writings. I am glad to be part of his efforts and thank him for the nice opportunity to express my appreciation of his work... Congrats Dear Brother-in-law..Prabhakar

Dr L V K Moorthy

I thank Dr L V K Moorthy, President, IMA Tamil Nadu (2008-09), for his touching Foreword. His kind words three yeas ago dispelled my gloom and continue to do so to this day. Healing is his profession as well as his passion.

G P Sastry

Reco Mela - 1

===================================================

Ever since I realized that I am on a record-breaking blogspree, one haunting geeth of my youth has been continuously ringing in my ears:

"Sajan re jhoot mat bolo, khuda ke paas jaanaa hai;
na haathi hai na ghoda hai, waha paidal hi jaanaa hai..."

Basically I am a simple soul (like that Polish Math Prof who used to introduce himself as I told you earlier: "I am Bogdanvicz, a simple pole").

Ask any of my 5000 odd students if I hurt anyone's feelings ever. The answer will be a unanimous: "Nevermore, nevermore, nevermore...." like so many Poe's Ravens.

So also with my colleagues and Tech Market folks (that is about all the humanity I had to deal with).

But there is one person, at the mention of who, all my murderous subhuman instincts are roused.

Just show him to me, that is all I ask! Just show him!

You will see me breaking his bones into liquid pulp without the aid of a juicer-cum-mixer and making him drink it. And, certainly making trips on every dark drizzling moonless midnight to his grave and start dancing on it with abandon, with the Bollywood filmsong "eh raat bhegee bhegee..." on my lips. Just watch me!

You guessed it right: He is the one who invented the ghoulish 'Recommendation Letter'.

As Obama's predecessor would denounce: "He is EVIL".

The Bard sings:

*******************************************************

"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes"

.......................Portia in Merchant of Venice

*******************************************************

This 'blesseth him' maybe true of the 'quality of mercy'. But not of the 'quality of reco': More like "...it blasteth him that gives and him that takes".

In every way the Reco-Ritual is humiliating, demeaning, degrading, and dehumanizing on both the parties.

I asked my son why he was not 'apping'. I knew the truth....he was too lazy to study any further, like his dad was. But I was interested in what excuse he would invent.....dialogues between a Prof-father and his KGPian son are ever scintillating.....they play mind-games all the time.

Pat came the answer: "Koan jaake darwaja darwaja per khadkey bheek mangega? Vaisehi har Grand Viva may baar baar jhukna padta thaa".

You do not know how much heartache and soulburn I had to suffer when the Season descends on KGP: roughly when the Saptaparni trees all over the Campus suddenly start emitting their supersweet incense from seven-fold bunches of their tiny whitish seven-petaled flowers dangling from their seven-leafed bouquets.

A wee knock, a shy entry, an ingratiating smile, and a whopping bunch of forms in triplicate dumped on poor me; followed by more of the same, more of the same...."evermore, evermore, evermore..."

Life was pretty simple when we passed our M Sc from my alma mater in 1963.

A friend asked me: "Did you get your Testimonials?" I asked: "What are they?". I was a day-scholar not hep to the goings on in the Hostel rituals unless some kind soul takes the trouble to initiate me into the voodoo.

Then he hands over one of his to me asking me to keep it a top secret. I then go to the Departmental Office Typist, pay him Rs 3 and show him my one-short-para thing. He would ask: "Which Professors?". Then I would name the 3 Brahmin Professors. He would then dump my handwritten thing into the Great Basket and ask me to meet him the next day.

The next day he would hand over 3 typed sheets on plain paper, but with a rubber stamp under each Prof's signature. I would then take it to my friend and compare his with mine. Only the name is replaced. Otherwise they were what my MIT friend Edwin Taylor called: "Boiler Plate" [It was in the context of my squeezing 'Certificates' from him and his Guru John Wheeler (sadly no more) for their (12 + 2) online KGP disciples (including one discip-lin) on our own Last Supper....only Saswat impressed ET soooo much that he wrote up a special para and made JAW do the same...otherwise only I knew what was in each of those sealed envelopes enclosing the official letterheads of MIT & Princeton, unless 'A' and 'K' compared theirs stealthily.....fifty-fifty chance.....they were like Damon & Pythias, always together on the freeways of the Campus and in the Lecture Classes; also partners-in-crime in the Lab as one of them admitted in his blog; and co-authors of Lab-Manual Cartography-Artography as well as an earth-shaking paper with me and Sougato and RSS titled: "Tippe Top Paradox in Realitivity", the order of whose 5 authors was decided by lots late one night in my Office].

.....This holy 'rubber-stamp' business stumps me to this day. Anyone can go to the road-side stamp-making artist and get whatever he wanted made in whatever style just by shelling out Rs 5. The ink bottle is in the open market and costs another Rs 5. The latest technology doesn't even require buying messy ink and its pad...the stamp comes self- inked, good for a lifetime of stamping.

So, why should so much 'authenticity' be graced on the 'seal' which everyone always had to beg 'didi' for in the office?

There must be some dark secrecy behind this whole mystique; maybe there is an unseen 'trick' figure in the Official Seal that shows up only in ultraviolet light, much like our Subba Rao's Rs 1000 currency notes.

I don't know.

Anyway, I never had to use those Testimonials. I preserved those with me till I retired, when I sold them off to the ruddiwala. My Degree Certificates (on heavy parchment paper unlike yours on scrapsheets) and my atrocious Mark Sheets were good enough for my IIT KGP employers.

To be continued.....

=====================================================

Horns of Dilemmas

==========================================================

Saswat has responded gracefully and handsomely as I knew he would. To be honest, I was taking undue liberties but, as always, students and children forgive their teachers and parents.

And, Saswat has something stunning to say, which I didn't expect.

I am amazed to know that he is wearing two huge big hats: continuing to do cutting-edge research in String Theory with Brian Greene by night and equally challenging work in Quantitative Finance by day.

Mind-blowing! I couldn't guess. It was a revelation.

It is not everyone that can, or is, allowed this sort of luxury of a Jekyll-Hyde double life.

I cheer him lustily and wish him all the best! God Bless You!

But I must confess that although I cloaked my 'duck-wail' in funny sales talk, it was neither a slip of the tongue nor an off-the-cuff wisecrack. Such thoughts have always racked my brain. Added to that I have been re-reading RKN's 'The Indian in America'. Although it was written a quarter of a century ago, it is still not happy reading. And to one at my age, if not ripeness, 25 years is just yesterday. Particularly after reading Bill Bryson's book which deals with timelines on the geological scale.

I am fully aware that 'home-coming' is an intensely personal and toughest of all choices.

All of you know very well that teams of the highest-ups of prestigious Indian Academic Institutions are camping regularly in the US urging their alumni to please return home: "We need you more than you need us".

India is now in a position where it can afford to do this. The de-licensing of our Economy that started 20 years ago is just now bearing fruit. The consistent 7 or 8 % growth simply means that the Govt of India which was perennially poor is now flush with funds garnered by various types of inventive taxes. So, higher education, which was neglected for 6 long decades after Independence, is now taking off. I am sure that our Government is now much better placed to take reins of this vital activity rather than leave it in private hands, which, for all their enthu to step in, can never match the funds and resources of GOI. After all it is only the GOI that can print genuine currency notes backed up by software exports.

Look at at the number of IITs they have unleashed in the past few years. I always felt while at IIT KGP that we were very elitist and perhaps we could have democratized more by admitting a much larger number of students. When I started teaching at KGP in 1965, my B Tech Lecture Classes rarely went beyond 40, the Departmental Classes beyond 12, and the Tutorial Classes just about 12. When I retired these were 350, 60, and 40 respectively. Now even more.

I recall that when I was teaching a Class of 350 freshmen in my last and their first Semester there, the Class was full, though I didn't take attendance at all. And there was as much of a pin-drop silence as during my Lecture Classes in 1965 (as I explained earlier I cleverly converted every Lecture into a vast Tutorial Class).

A Japanese Professor who visited IIT KGP in the 1960s was stunned by the extraordinary 'wastage' of our resources, human and 'inhuman'; and remarked that with such vast resources, he would have run 3 shifts and increased the student strength ten-fold. That Japanese Prof should be happy now: his wishes have come true.

It is very easy to increase the student strength ten-fold and provide them with infrastructure like Hostels, Labs, Lecture Complexes, IT hubs almost overnight.

But not the human resources. The best of our lot still go to the US & UK; and stay put there. And if one dilutes the criteria for our faculty positions, it would cheat our very purpose: IITs would become so many private Engg Colleges (AP alone has about 700 of them!).

So, when do we get that break-even take-off point? We can't manufacture Sougatos, Indras, Saswats et al at the same pace we can manufacture tables, chairs and pcs.

Right?

So, what is the solution? If we can't get clones of a Feynman, Brian Green, or Coleman, we can at least try to get back their students that were originally 'ours'.

Nothing wrong in this, no?

Possibly the best solution would be 'Adjunct Faculty': Spring Semester at KGP and Fall Semester at Columbia. I do hope the GOI will one day wake up to let this come true. We do hear of dual citizenship. I do hope things in the academic world truly get globalized.

I stuck to KGP against all pressure from my family to get back home and take up a lucrative JEE coaching job there (the take-home then was tenfold for a chap like me who solved all Problems of Irodov for fun and preserved copies of their Solutions). I was selfish. I liked KGP so much for its academic freedom, student brilliance and company of stalwarts like SDM and DB. And its Central Library. I sacrificed my wife's career: she is an MD and could easily have risen to be a Professor of Microbiology in some Private Medical College in AP sooner than I could at IIT KGP.

But my gamble paid off: my only son could get the best of KGP from Nursery to IIT staying with us; and then on he chose to stay with us for reasons known only to him (genetic laziness, in praise of which I sang paeans as you all know).

But now I desire that my granddaughter Ishani too gets the best of higher education staying in Hyderabad without having to migrate to Australia, China, Russia, or Timbuktu. After all, my Boston Brahmin friend, Edwin Taylor, didn't have to dispatch his kids to Hyderabad and Benguluru for higher education and jobs, although Obama daily wakes up from this nightmare.

Wrote a lot.

From the heart.

***********************************************************

Aniket writes that he got a gift of precisely the same Edition of Webster from his father when he was a boy (Aniket, I mean). And that he puts it to the same wacky use as I do: beguile an hour or two browsing Webster! Two great and lazy minds but one unique pastime!

He also quotes this charming Ogden Nash verse his father inscribed on it:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Oft in the stilly night,
When the mind is mumbling muzzily,
I brood about how little I know,
And know that little so fuzzily
Ere slumber’s chains have bound me,
I think it would suit me nicely,
If I knew one tenth of the little I know,
But knew that tenth precisely"

......................................................................................

But he adds: "And then it struck me how the new Web has now replaced the old Web for our browsing pleasure".

Here I beg to differ. The new Web can never replace the old Web. Just as the 'online gps', whom Saswat says he can call up (like genie from the bottle) anytime from his blog and watch him perform, can never replace the 'old gps' of KGP: how can one get that disarming smile (cf Indra), that expressive eye (cf anushree), that spin-doling spoon (cf Vinit), that instant gul (cf gps), and that subverting praise?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

PoLtS posted many kind and some cool comments (which I transmute into gold by my patent 'heavenly alchemy') on my post: 'India Calling'.

First he wants me to write a book.

Perhaps he is not aware that I did write an absolutely original 270-page FAMOUS magnum opus distilling all my ignorance, called 'Lecture Notes on Optics & QM' with RSS (which RSS whisked away with him to Heaven, although Mahinder Thacker consoled me the other day that copies of it are still being sold outside IIT KGP; like the Puri Gate waste-merchants shops).

Cognoscenti (rhyming limerically with literati, glitterati and confetti), have told me that the (null subset) of about 3000 captive student-audience who read the text between its close-packed lines, topoed honestly solutions to all its 200 odd Problems and consulted its many (unavailable) papers of gps named in its References, feel that it has been a worthless or a priceless experience depending on whether they paid the whopping Rs 116 (magic figure of one hundred sixteen ony) or filched it.

I still have 2 copies of it, bought paying hard cash, since I was too lazy to fill up the book-grant forms in triplicate and get them signed by my HoD (Hail Bureaucracy!). I have willed that they be kept a dark secret from Ishani, since I wish she would rather pursue English Literature (my first love).

And I have already written even more glorious and original booklets (3 so far and the 4th one in the offing, with his name in the Queen's Birthday Honors List).

I cherish all these book-works of mine dearly (pun intended).

All my other invaluable manuscripts are safely lodged in my own theft-proof locker: my 1000 MW brain, to be taken out of my hat at an appropriate event.

Next PoLtS complains that I never guided a Ph D student.

But I did vastly much better:

In my own specialization I misguided more than half a dozen gifted M Sc Project students, each of them ten times more capable than me (ask Aniket who was my. foster student). They all gave me fantastic joint papers in prestigious Journals of the era like Phys Rev, Journal of Physics (A), Proceedings of the Royal Society, London (much after the 'Royal' thing dissolved into thin air, leaving all but the crown emblem studded with our jewels), American Journal of Physics (it IS American!, and much more widely read than Phys Rev; and its rejection rate is the highest, next only to Nature and PRL), European Journal of Physics and Physics Education (UK), and sundry other 'phoren' Journals.

More audaciously I blissguided about half a dozen most ambitious M Sc Project students in a subject I didn't know from Adam to Madam. Although they didn't give me any papers, they enjoyed their work, and ALL of them are now esteemed GR and Cosmology experts in spite of me.

There is a vast difference between taking a Ph D student and an M Sc Project student: like between taking a wife and a mistress. One has to suffer 5 years of intimate bedmanship before a consensual divorce; the other just a breezy 3-month highly productive enjoyable affair.

And all of my M Sc Project students ran away like bats out of Hell to places other than KGP for their M Techs and Ph Ds instead of sticking with me.

Only one most talented Project student of mine said charmingly: "Sir, aapni amaake jodi neethen, ami aar kothhavoo jethey hotho naa".

But one declined swallow doesn't make a winter vacation.

Let me state the bare truth: there were far too many guides fighting for too few Ph D students then; I don't know now.

And I was never a fighting soul.

Still, if any KGPians are pining to be guided by me, they are most welcome to quit the US and take the next flight to Hyderabad; noblesse oblige!

Over to you, PoLtS!


=============================================================

Fly

===========================================================

I love short words. Am crazy about them. After composing any piece, I inspect every word like a squirrel does its nut, and ditch it if I can find a shorter one that serves.

Short words are in short supply if you omit slang and flash-words. Wodehouse is at his best when the Drones Club slang of Bertie meets the ponderous circumlocutions of Jeeves.

Just before the last General Election I went madder than usual. The Indian scene then was like nothing else earlier. For me it was the silly season of 'limericks and light verses'. Unending political limericks were welling up as if from a fount. The one I cherish was provoked by the photo of a Gandhi Statue in DC:

***********************************************************************
Unhappy Pauper

(with apologies to 'Happy Prince' by Oscar Wilde)

"A completely veiled Gandhi Statue waits to be unveiled on Friday. As part of the model code of conduct, all Government functions have been stalled during the elections"............photo caption.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Swallow, swallow, little swallow!
Lift the veil, it's too hot"

"I can't do it, I'll be caught
Dragged before EC; maybe shot"

"Tell me at least what's on?"
"All make merry with booze & biryan"

"Who will win & who will lose?"
"Whoever wins, you will lose;

First you get a flowery noose
Then your limbs broken loose"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The last line owes to an earlier news item that the hands and legs of a Gandhi Statue nearby were smashed by boulders by one of those Senas.

I am rather proud of this light verse as most of its words have just one or two syllables. It is free from slang (Webster admits 'booze' with respect)

A day before I left home for College, my father gifted me a pocket dictionary. I finished reading it in a day and asked for a bigger one. My father was taken aback and said that dictionaries are to be 'consulted' but not 'read'. I was not convinced.

Since then the habit persists. I wanted to own as bulky a dictionary as possible. I got one gifted to me by my friend NP in return for a small favor, in 1969.

That was Webster's New World Dictionary.

1700 A-4 pages of so close a print that I now need an extra lens to read if lighting is poor. It cost Rs 12 minus 20% discount on a PL 480 Offer. I still have it, split into 2 volumes and re-bound. When I compose, I consult the online Webster in a side-window. When I am bored, I pick up my bound Webster, open a page at random, and keep flipping pages and browsing for a pleasant hour. Especially short words with cute pictures.

Apparently, when Indra mentioned this to his Princeton colleague, she burst into peals of laughter and referred henceforth to me as 'your crazy Dictionary Prof' (no gul!).

Today I was at a loss not getting any idea for my blogpost. And, then I opened my hard-Webster; it opened on the entry: 'fly'

I recalled my favorite Ogden Nash:

***************************************************************************
"God in His wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why"

****************************************************************************

Fly rhymes nicely with why. And unlike 'what, when, where, whose..', Physics is all about 'why'. That's why perhaps I like the fly.

Forget about the housefly and butterfly or even Gregor Mendel's fruit fly. They are well known. But in my childhood I used to play with dragonflies. When a swarm of them take to the sky (there you have another rhyming word), it is time to go in, because it means rain.

Despite its name, the dragonfly is as harmless as a toy. You can hold its long tail between right thumb and forefinger, and take it to a tiny pebble placed on your left palm...it will roll the pebble with its wee feet and lift it to its li'le mouth. Even Ishani can hold it safely. Nothing happens....it just flutters its light wings. But it is supposed to feed on houseflies and mosquitoes 'on the fly'! Good!!!

The verb 'fly' is great too. The other day I had to break the sad news of DB to Anirban & Co by e-mail. I just quoted Thurber:

**************************************************************************
"Who flies afar from our sphere of sorrow
Is here today and here tomorrow"

**************************************************************************
Anirban wrote back: "It is difficult to write anything after Prof. Sastry (Thurber) has so aptly put it".

Below are some cute Webster entries:

flyblow: a blowfly's eggs or larva
fly book: a booklike case to hold artificial fishing flies
flyspeck: a petty or insignificant error or flaw
flyway: a flying route taken regularly by migratory birds
flycatcher: any of fly-catching small birds like the kingbird, pewee, and phoebe

Ah, now we roam to 'p' to look up pewee and phoebe. Another hour of joy!

The fly-thing I liked best was 'flywheel'. No, not the one in the Physics Lab. But in a Radio shop in 1970 or so. I was looking to buy a good Philips set. I asked what was so great about the costliest one. She said: "It has flywheel tuning". That sounded new. I turned the tuning wheel this way and that and just loved its droll roll. Couldn't afford to buy it though.

Moment of Inertia at work. Some Physics there!!!

=============================================================

India Calling!

=====================================================

Some time back I set forth my lifelong philosophy of always looking for compliments and pocketing them any which way.

They are so rare coming our way that we can't afford to read between the lines.

Here are some more kind words:

**************************************************************************

Professor Anushree Roy:

"Few days back, I read your Blog and it was interesting to learn about the CRP of MI. Truly speaking, I never thought of this question."

gps:

It feels good to note that the post on Michelson CRP that troubled me for more than a decade off and on has been read by someone who is an expert on Fourier Transform Spectroscopy which, in principle, uses the same Michelson technique we used in our meek and humble 4th Year Lab presided by Tarapado-da.

So, it can't be just a passing remark, but a 'considered' one.

Anushree again:

"Why don't you write a separate column in your blog, only with such great nice ideas?...I am sure, many of us have lot more to learn from you."

gps:

Now I feel rather like an embarrassed duck since many Physics topics on which I had my serious say, like on Fresnel Zone Plate and Poisson Spot ('Beauty Spot'), were earlier buried deep in loose talk like:

"Take, for instance, Madhuri Dixit. I mean, figuratively. Everyone knows that MF Hussain in Dubai and gps in Hyderabad are the sole surviving undying Senior Citizen Fans of Madhuri."

I don't think these can easily be Bowdlerized and sanitized.What a shame!

I really ought to have been more careful. But these asides were for non-Physics readers who would otherwise evaporate. I could have run a separate blog as suggested but that would be rather presumptuous since I am after all a 'relapsed' Physics Teacher as Supratim would put it.

*********************************************************************

Kedar writes:

"I have been reading your recent blog posts with great interest. The stories of KGP from old-times and the 'spin' posts are simply masterpieces. Also it was great to read about Arnold Sommerfeld's life."

gps:

Many have said rather kind things about the 'spin' posts, but it is nice to know that the Sommerfeld 'copy-paste' thing also touched someone. As I said, SDM used to have a childlike gleam in his eyes whenever he talked about Sommerfeld.

Kedar is in great company!

Kedar again:

"There was some big puja going on (in a temple in NY suburbia?) and when I inquired, I was told that the puja was meant to celebrate 'Guru Pournima'. I immediately thought of writing to you."

gps:

There are already too many Teachers' Days in our Calendar. It is time we have a "KGP Physics Students' Day".

I have just taken a head-count and found that there are as many as 35 IIT KGP Physics students whom, in the words of one who knows, I have knighted in my 'My Swan Song / Duck Quack' (which quack turned out to be a hoax call since the duck turned a hen overnight and is clucking away merrily as Professor Sayan Kar says).

So, I intend to celebrate "Khadgpurena Bhouthik Shastra Vidya Vareeya Chhatra Diwas" (KBSVVCD) the day my fo(u)rthcoming booklets are 'released' (like so many ribboned pigeons).

**********************************************************************

Saswat writes:

"I have come to the realization after 10 years in the US that New York City is the only place in the US where I can live away from India and still be happy. The rest of the US is way too quiet and empty compared to India. And New York with all its craziness is as close as it gets to India."

gps:

This is what I call "Needless Nostalgia" (NN).

Why not come home and embrace the real thing rather than the fake imitation?

It would be far nicer if you return to India and pine nostalgically for NY than the other way round. Time for some 'Reverse Osmosis', man!

Now India needs you more than your dollars.

Bhagavan Ram was apparently offered Sri Lanka throne by Vibhishan. And everyone knows Sri Lanka is emerald paradise. But Ramjee declined saying:

"Jananee Janma Bhumischa Swargadapi Gariyasi"

Meaning that the troubled and polluted Ayodhya-on-Sarayu, his birth place, is more than Heaven for him.

Ten years is a long time; Bharavi couldn't stand six months of separation fom home.

I am not joking. I guess in a few months' time there would at least be half a dozen vacancies for Faculty Positions in the Physics Department of the alma mater of Saswat & Co.

Can anything be better? New pay-scales and perks are fantastic compared to my (Rs 375 + DA) when I joined in 1965 (even then I had doubled my income from a CSIR JRF of Rs 250, which itself was double the Demonstrator Post's Rs 125 at my alma mater which I was denied.....KGP is my alma pater since I am its alumnus by virtue of taking my Ph D there and donating a hard-earned Rs 1500 to its Technology Foundation).

And you can revisit your US as often as you wish in the Summer and Winter Vacations. They support and encourage attending International Conferences. And the Physics Dept there is no longer clogged with gray eminences like me. The average age, by the time these vacancies are filled up, would be nearer the 30s, rather than the 50s it was during one of my spells there.

So, every day in every way, you will get better and better.

Come on yaar! What prevents you really?

Can anyone be jollier than my KGPian son of a thope in Hyderabad who travels to the US, coast-to-coast frequently, stays there in Star Hotels, and when he returns home after a week or two he has his mother, father, wife, and his cutest daughter, and at times his in-laws too {;-( waiting to receive him at the world-class Shamsabad Green Field International Airport followed by a joy-ride on the longest in India (11.6 Km) PVNR Express-Flyover?

BIG Sales Talk, no!

My pleasure.

***************************************************************************

P S: The last piece, 'Local to Global', in the forthcoming booklet is now replaced with 'Bharavi's Atonement'.

=======================================================

Read OR Write?

=====================================================

Most laymen (including its not so nice word for the feminine gender) think that professionals in the academic and literary world read and write (likha pora).

Nothing can be farther from truth. 99% of them either read OR write. It is a question of time and inclination.

RKN didn't even like to read his prescribed text: "Amundsen's Expeditions" and failed in his BA exam. Later he went on, in his simplistic way, so far as to suggest that there should be a sort of Welfare Organization for Writers whose representatives can take care of his day-to-day family affairs so he can keep just writing fit.

I guess neither Dickens nor Dostoevsky nor even Shakespeare had any time to read.

SDM told me several times that all his reading of Physics and Math was over by the time he did his M Sc. Thereafter he hardly read anything. I saw him closely for 5 years. He was either thinking, or talking (nonsense), or writing. He did occasionally visit the Central Library, but only the Current Periodicals Section just to browse the Abstracts. He never got any Journal issued.

He ran the risk of getting out of date. He didn't care. He had enough number of gripping 'problems in his bag' (as he termed them) that he had just no time to read. Of course he was out having fun with his prowess. After his GR and QM work, he was not doing any 'frontline' research for almost his last 3 decades (he worked after retirement too). Moreover, he scrupulously avoided reading anyone's work bordering on his, lest it should affect his 'original' approach.

This is also true with those who indeed 'do' frontline research. If they start reading everything that is being written in current journals, they will have no time to breathe: such is the bulk of publication activity that goes on in frontline research. To get over this, they invented a wonderful short-cut: 'International Conference'. They just have to attend and listen to what interests them to keep abreast of their rivals and to get ideas.

Feynman is not known to have been a prolific reader. I beg to be corrected.

I shared Office (C-239) with DB for 20 years (1975-95). Almost once every hour some student or the other used to barge into our room without knocking...they were welcome! All would testify that while they would find DB smoking, thinking or writing (calculating), they would find me with my legs up on the table, reading. Each of us did what we enjoyed doing. And we were the obverse of one another every which way. We never published a single paper together although both of us did publish something every year.

There were about half a dozen voracious readers among the Faculty during my 40 years at KGP. One of them had the Constitution of India and the Indian Penal Code by heart, apart from everything else under the sun. Another had a home library that was the envy of everyone. He was a walking encyclopedia. He practically ruined his eyesight reading. All famous and tough crosswords were to him just child's play.

And a few more like that. They were all highly respected by students and colleagues. They were all the time picked up as quiz masters or judges by students for their functions. They were all eminent teachers loved by their students.

But they refused to write anything at all. They were promoted to the next post mostly when the post they were holding got abolished or under some 'supernumerary scheme' (they 'carried' the higher post with them and when they retired or left, only the lower post fell vacant!)

Some were never promoted at all and never even applied!

During my first 5 years at KGP (1965-70) I hardly wrote anything. But I read everything under the sun. I was a bachelor living in the Faculty Hostel and so had ample time on my hands. These 5 years took care of my teaching requirements for the whole of my stay there. For the next 5 years (1970-75) I could hardly read anything at all. I was busy doing Ph D under SDM. After that I reverted to my reading habit and wrote papers one every year on all sorts of topics mostly in educational journals, not writing 'serious' research papers. I declined to take any Ph D student. I was prepared to forgo all promotions. But I was just lucky...

For 2 years after retirement, in Hyderabad, I was neither reading nor writing nor even thinking coherently. Then on I was reading Deccan Chronicle and Hindu/Times of India. Then there was a 2-month stretch in which I could hardly read even DC: I was composing political limericks at the rate of 3 a day. They were just flowing from nowhere. Then I started blogging now and then but reading DC. For the last 3 months I have been blogging one piece daily. I just don't have time to even open DC. 8 hours go thinking up a topic lolling in bed; 2 more hours 'gathering' material in bed. And 2 hours of composing and keyboarding.

For me reading and writing happen to be mutually exclusive.

There was a curious person in Bengal last century. He neither read much, nor wrote much, and talked a bit later in life. But moved mountains through his disciples mostly after his death who practically rescued the decaying and dying Hinduism. His name happens to be Ramakrishna Paramahamsa.

There was another even more curious one in Tamilnadu. He never read anything much, nor wrote anything much, nor talked anything much, nor belonged to any math, nor established an order of disciples after his death, but stuck to a single-point agenda that is at the heart of all Vedanta.

He is little known outside. He is known as Ramana Maharshi.

The one exception is Adi Shankara. He lived only for 32 years. He had to read the Prasthana Traya (Gita, Upanishads & Vedanta Sutras) in order to win debates all over India and establish his Advaita. He wrote exquisite commentaries on the three. And also wonderful poetic works like Bhaja Govindam, Mahishasura Mardani, and also a popular Advaita text called Viveka Chudamani apart from many other beautiful things.

He toured the length and breadth of India and established Peethas that for today are living and thriving.

But that is rare indeed!
=======================================================

Potter's Superstick

==============================================

AP is very caste-conscious....KGP was not. This was one of the factors in my Culture Shock soon after I retired from KGP and tried to settle down in AP.

Fortunately Hyderabad is slightly less, but the virus is latent.

A couple of days after we settled down in this rented apartment complex, I was accosted by a grand old gentleman, obviously a retired official, around 76. God (who else?) gave me a puny and nondescript stature which comes to me as a blessing. Whoever looks at me ignores me as a nobody. And I am always happy to be left alone to my woolgathering.

This retiree looked at me and my mobile tucked into my shirt pocket with a string round my neck to secure it, and asked me a direct question: "What is that in your pocket? Can you follow English?" To which I demurred trying to escape giving a straight answer to his second question. [RKN writes there are some questions which can't bear a straight 'yes' or 'no' answer, like: "Have you stopped beating your wife?"]

He then said: "I am a Chief Engineer...not a Cheap Engineer like the present crop".

It took a dozen encounters (unwilling on my part) over six months for him to be convinced that I knew a little English; after which he settled down to our mother tongue, Telugu.

I got to love him. He really is a dear, with vast experience in the field in Bhutan in the Border Roads Organization. Schooled in the golden 1940s, imbibing the Freedom Spirit of that SDM generation and absolutely incorruptible.

After a year or so, he said: "Your name Sastry betrays that you are a brahmin. But I must confess I am a non-brahmin, in fact a Kamma". I said it didn't matter at all since I don't even wear the sacred thread.

The other day he invited us to his granddaughter's wedding, and said sotto voce, "It is a Love Marriage. She is marrying a Brahmin youth". I then said that we are now relatives and he was happy for it. Both my wife and I attended the wedding of our bridegroom.

One day he revealed that he has only one prayer: "Next birth I want to be born a Maharashtrian Brahmin; and a Konkani Brahmin if posible" (Kedar! Are you listening?).

I asked him why. He said they are all well-versed in the Vedas, Upanishads and Sanskrit and also accomplished in liberal arts like Carnatic Music and Bharata Natyam, while his kamma community knows only how to make money. I said I would love to change castes with him for a year. But told him I will also add my 'brahminical' prayers to his own so that his wish could come true.

Well, I must confess, as Saswat also reveals, that my home in my childhood was reverberating with the Vedic chants of my father's booming voice; in particular with the daily chants of Shree Suktam, Pursusha Suktam and Mantra Pushpam on which I commented in my blog titled: " Sound Bytes". For in a way that is what they are: extraordinarily grand sounds.

Don't ask of them much more. Except when they deal with Unitary Consciousness, which is their exclusive domain (no, not the Quantum Consciousness!), they are but so many 'stories'. But as I said day before yesterday in 'Our Own Lost World', they are indeed very instructive, in a way.

***************************************************************************

Here is one casteist story, not from the Upanishads but about very historical personalities of the 13th century:

Nam Dev (ND) of Pandharpur (Maharashtra; yes Chief Engineerjee!) became a devotee of Krishna (Vitthal) at the very early age of 5. And became very friendly with him, playing and chatting with Krishna himself in his famous temple.

Word spread about it and ND became famous by and by in his village, town and district. This naturally gave him a swollen head. Krishna wanted to rectify this defect and one day asked ND to go and meet the Saint Jnan Dev (JD) who was camping on the outskirts with his chelas.

ND asked why he should go anywhere else when Lord Krishna himself could teach him whatever he wanted since they were on talking terms. Krishna replied that the two were friends; and friends can't have a good guru-chela relation. (Although brothers-in-law can at times have as in Gita {;-)]

So, ND walked over to the campsite and found JD and his chelas having fun and frolic. As JD saw a newcomer approach the crowd, he instructed everybody to squat in a line at his feet so he could start the day's discourse.

And ND joined them at one end of the line .

JD then called one of his chelas, Gora Kumbhar (GK), so-called since he belonged to the potter community but was extraordinarily fair. And asked him to test if all those lined up were ripe enough for the day's teaching.

Then GK took his potter's stick in his hands and went about testing them if all the assembled 'pots' were properly baked or not.

As he went along the line, everyone duly bent their heads to take the light hit from GK's stick as he approached them.

As GK came to the end of the line ND was debating if it would be proper for him to bend his head to a potter, who was lower down the caste ladder than his own tailor caste; and so he was a wee slow and hesitant.

Upon which GK declared that "every pot is fully baked but the newcomer ND is a little wet and raw".

And everyone laughed.

And ND started crying and left the place in a huff to Krishna and complained that he was sent only to be humiliated.

Upon which Krishna replied that the Potter GK was an expert and couldn't go wrong.

And advised ND to go back and take the test again.

ND passed gloriously in the Supplementary and became a famous disciple of JD.

JD wrote the definitive Marathi Gita: 'Jnaneshwari'; and ND wrote many 'Abhangs' and 'Teerthavali' singing the glories of the Lord and his Guru JD.

Nam Dev is famous in Punjab, where he stayed for long and wrote many songs.

*************************************************************************
This blogpost is in Celebration of the thorough intermingling of our rigid caste system: potters with their supersticks, tailors with their caste egos, deviant KGP-trained Southee brahmins without a sacred thread, kamma Chief Engineers dying to be born Konkani brahmins, their granddaughters seducing AP brahmins; all supervised by that Kshatriya at Pandharpur who preferred to grow up as Laloo Krishna Yadav of the UP cow-belt!!!!

===============================================

Random Talk 2

==========================================================

More than a dozen people have implied that I follow, if not imitate, R K Narayan. I do not know if it is a compliment or a slur.

Bracketing poor me with RKN in anyway is like the swan and the duck thing.

Yet there is no doubt that I read RKN's Collected pieces: 'Next Sunday' many times over the past 40 odd years since its first publication, with great pleasure but without any intention nor premonition that I would be blogging 40 years down the line. I didn't read his novels though with that much pleasure. I enjoyed his 'My Days' but read it only once.

I first met the discursive essay which RKN popularized in Oliver Wendell Holmes's 'Autocrat of the Breakfast Table'. I read and re-read this book once every decade for the last half a century. Most folks can't even stand the first few pages. That way I am 'classical'.

RKN had some advantages as well as disadvantages compared with the modern Blogger.

Disadvantages first: There was no Word Processor, Google and online Webster. These are boons indeed for the Blogger. One can only imagine how many more pieces RKN would have written if he were writing today.

Advantages: In his time there was no Internet, You-Tube, 100-Channel Color TV. So, he had a captive audience. All his 'Next Sunday' pieces appeared in The Sunday Magazine of The Hindu. That was the cheapest and most affordable reading matter then. My granpa, a Retired Tahsildar, who was the favorite steno of the British 'Cotton Dora' who was the pioneer of River Godavari irrigation System and whom YSR, the late CM of AP, took up as his hero; read The Hindu cover to cover everyday during the 35 years of his retired life (he lived to 90 and missed his Hindu only during his last 3 years of paralysis).

RKN makes two contradictory statements, maybe at different stages in his career.

First, he says that an author like him works 'blind' unlike an artiste like a musician in a katcheri or a Dramatist or a Professional Magician, all of whom have a Live Audience and the feedback is instantaneous if at times riotous with rotten eggs and such missiles as live feedback. Not to talk of Physics Teachers like me of Second Year B Tech Chemical Engineering students of the 1980s when the attendance of 60 students was full (there were no pcs with Internet in Halls). But RKN did have his Royalties from Sales, a rough indication of his popularity.

But most of today's non-professional Bloggers have zero feedback. There are so many avocations for folks today that he is 'read' by anyone at all is a matter of great satisfaction, in spite of all the 'composing' advantages we now have compared to RKN as mentioned above.

Secondly, RKN says that he used to get so many fan-mails that he had absolutely no time to reply and had to consign them to the Great Basket rather apologetically. That anyone had his mailing address or bothered to write in long hand on postcards spending good money is itself a matter of great credit. Just imagine if RKN were alive today and disclosed his e-mail id (as some budding Journalists do)! I am sure I myself would have bombarded him daily first with praise followed by my own things which I expect him to read and praise and perhaps recommend for publication in the Sunday Magazine of The Hindu.

====================================================

Let me talk of some 'kind words an coronets' I got during the last 24 hours:

**************************************************************************

I was moaning to Dharmesh that unlike him I have no 'inventive' powers since I could never write even a short story forget a novelette; all my blogs were colored versions of my own experiences. He replies:

"Regarding you being inventive, I would say the reality you portray in your posts is much more appealing than my 'inventive' paper".

There is perhaps something in that. The few readers I have SHARE my experiences, whether of KGP or our common My India fo the 1950s.

*******************************************************************************

Saswat writes:

"I am having so much fun reading your blogs. Some of them make me nostalgic for KGP, some of them are physics-fun and I suspect some of them have a "moral of the story" as well."

Morals apart, the nostalgia for KGP is all too real. There is (or was) some magic in the atmosphere of KGP. Even just after 4 or 5 years, students miss it very badly, in spite of all its backwardness. And imagine me after 40 years, most of it my youth. For a full 2 years after my retirement I was daily waking up with a KGP-based dream. Now it is KGP-based blogs.

The only other dream-settings I have are my 7-year stint at my school-days in my sea-side village. And I NEVER dream of my 7-year stint at my University. I learned nothing there nor enjoyed a single day, in spite of my adolescence (14-21) and my standing University First in my B Sc (Hons). The reas0ns were several.......

Saswat also says:
"I hope we keep hearing stories from you from the old times - like today's blog on Bharavi - which you retell in this amazing ticklish language. It's a riot!"

This looks like an invitation to an entirely new genre in story-retelling, like the Fables for Modern Times (1940s!) by Thurber. Interesting suggestion...Fables for my granddaughter Ishani in rib-tickling "tomorrow's jargon" Why not?

Thanx Saswat!

**************************************************************************
Supratim says:

"Being a lapsed physicist, my knowledge of many physics topics have become a bit rusty, but the post which thrilled me the most (much like the thrill I experienced when DB taught us the proof of Noether's theorem in the beginning of his Particle Physics course) was "water-borne ideas". Your account of Schiff's discovery of spin precession was wonderful. Beauty is often an elusive concept, but the image of the spinning earth sweeping the nearby spacetime and making the gyroscope in the satellite wobble is, in my mind, a beautiful one".

There is nothing like "lapsed physicist". Even Dharam Vir (IAS, Secreatry, Haryana) and Subba Rao (IAS, present Governor of Reserve Bank) are just 'phycists', not lapsed. The Physics Training never leaves!

Yes, I too was so thrilled by Spin Precession that it was the first (of six) M Sc Projects I allotted to my Project Students at KGP in successive years.

I am rather proud of my 'spin -series' of seven blogs. I termed them 'Unpopular Physics', writing to the IISc Professor...because no one without a Physics background can make much of them, but those with Physics background consdier them 'popular' physics. Let us say, 'semi-popular'!

Thanx for now!

============================================================

Bharavi's atonement

================================================== 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Kiratarjuniya.jpg

About 1500 years ago (give or take a hundred years) there was this child prodigy, Bharavi, born in India (E, S, W, or N....let's not quarrel like our 'historians').

Before he was 10, he mastered all intricacies of Sanskrit like its Grammar, Prosody, Figure of Speech; and started composing wonderful Sanskrit Verses extempore.

He was therefore the cynosure of the town, district and province by and by.

Laurels, Encomiums, Degrees and Awards were pouring in from all corners.

But he had a grouse: While his mother was the typical 'Fond Parent' (of RKN), his father was rather reticent, lukewarm and muted in extolling his son's precocity .

This rankled badly in the mind of Bharavi who thought his father was smitten by envy.

By and by he was married to a beautiful lady (I know). Bharavi revealed his misgivings about his father to his newly-wed wife on the very first night (fool of an ass!).

She promptly urged him to take steps.

Next night he decided to 'eliminate' his envious father. He hid in the attic of his parents' bedroom with a huge boulder in his hands, ready to hit his father's sweet spot on the head at the right moment (child prodigies are prone to be rather weird during the first few nights after marriage).

After dinner, his parents were lounging on their sofa-cum-bed, chatting. Bharavi's mother sensed that something was amiss (call it the 'feminine intuition'). And asked her husband if he was aware that Bharavi was upset by his behavior in not praising his 'prodigious' son.

Bharavi's father replied famously:

"Don't think I don't know my own son's greatness. I am more proud of him than everyone else combined. But he is still young and childish. He has vast potential to become the Greatest Poet in India. A father's open praise of his immature son acts like a brake on his development since the kid has no more incentive to grow. As such he is getting more than enough adoration from everyone else who loll in his Present but don't care much for his Future. That is why I have to restrain myself with a heavy heart to not go overboard.

My praise now will be a curse on my son."

Bharavi turned blue at this revelation, jumped down from his perch, fell prostrate on his father's feet, confessed to his evil intention and sought appropriate atonement.

Bharavi's father lifted and embraced his son, but agreed with him that a 'mild' punishment would indeed do good (DC).

He then pronounced: "Leave my home tomorrow morning with your wife, go to her place, spend six months in your in-laws' home and return to your rightful place in my home thereafter".

Bharavi thought that his father was too kind to him in granting an extended honeymoon.

And you can guess what happened then (don't tell my wife, but I couldn't stand my in-laws for more than an hour at a go, it was mutual; LIP & RIP).

The first week was great. Bharavi was treated like a god. Next week the 6-course-dinner dwindled to a 4-course one. And so on in a rapidly converging series

After a fortnight his father-in-law was grumbling that price rise being what it was it would be nice if Bharavi did something for the family instead of enjoying all the while. And Mrs Bharavi suggested to her hubby why not tend to the cattle by taking them out in the morning and bringing them home by nightfall.

Bharavi agreed; he was indeed looking for an escape-outing.

And like SDM, he didn't need much paraphernalia to compose his verses: it was all in the head.

Bharavi's pop-in-law suddenly died and it fell to Bharavi to earn his keep and his wife's too.

But like SDM he was good for nothing else than his intellectual outputs.

And his wife was grumbling that the shopkeeper of their provisions was demanding overdue payments on his Credit Card.

Bharavi then composed a sweet verse praising SK (short for shopkeeper) sky-high; and asked his wife to pass on the palm leaf with this verse to him as part payment.

It turned out that SK was a connoisseur of Sanskrit (like HNB was to SDM's math). And when he read the verse, SK knocked off all the dues and told Mrs Bharavi that henceforth he would take payments only in her hubby's verses.

And so everyday, Bharavi, apart from his own 'papers' had to write an easy verse for the consumption of SK. And SK was reading them, re-reading them with great pleasure, and stacking them on his fumigated attic so that they wouldn't be 'termitinated' (like I hear what happened recently to the papers of one of our own Drs ).

And in six months the stack grew to a delightfully huge bundle.

Their six months' internment over, Bharavi and his Mrs returned to a fond welcome to his parents' home.

And now under the fondest encouragement of his father, Bharavi became the contemporary of Kalidas in Bhoj Raj's Court and became one of the topmost Navratnas.

And wrote what to this day is considered one of the greatest extant works in Sanskrit: "Kiratharjuneeyam" [Don't ask me to tell this story too!].

But that is beside the point.

SK had to leave India's shores once every year to get through his Export-Import trade. He usually was away for a month on the high seas on this business (like my son's quarterly business trips to the US and Europe).

On the next trip overseas, SK's ship ran into rough seas, sank, and all the businessmen aboard had to hold on to the first available wooden plank, drift on the high seas and hope to see land on some island or the other, growing beards, and waiting for a 'relief' ship.

That took SK a good 16 years. (Recall Ulysses's or Rip Van Winkle's return home after 20 years).

On the midnight of his home-coming, expecting wild jubilation from his wife, SK found instead that his wife was in bed with a handsome youth.

Enraged beyond himself, he drew his sword and swung it back to behead the two at one neat stroke (16 years away from home is too long for reason to prevail).

And the sword hit the attic on its back-lift and disturbed his palm-leaf bundle and one leaf gently descended on his shoulder.

SK recalled his fascination for Bharavi's verses with pleasure and began to read the one that fell on him, forgetting his wife for the nonce (that is the power of Literature Appreciation).
[Here I wish I knew a little Sanskrit rather than this foul alien tongue; I could then have recited this famous verse of Bharavi].

And the verse said sweetly: "Better pause a moment than rue a lifetime".

This injunction appeared god-sent to SK, who sheathed his sword and shook up his wife.

She at once fell on him, embraced him, showered hot kisses on him and so and such; and introduced their handsome son sleeping beside her; and asked SK to take him to the full-size mirror inlaid on their Godrej Almirah and see for himself how like a clone of SK their blessed son looks.

There was no need of a DNA test: SK embraced his son who turned out to be exactly 15 year-3-months old (give or take a week).

THE END
===================================================

P. S. It is my pleasure to announce that about seven hours back I received the Mailing Address of Dr D Jain. And I was thrilled to note that he also attached a Gift Article dedicated to me pertaining to his other Literature Proficiency.

Other Degree Recipients! Please hurry up! There will be no second printing! Book your Degrees NOW!

A quarter century ago when the Calcutta Metro was in her infancy, I used to take a ride on her every time I went to Calcutta just to listen to that husky female voice announcing over their CCPA System:

"Doors are closing! Darwaja bandh ho raha hai! Dorjata bando kora hocchey!"

*********************************************************************************

Our Own Lost World

====================================================================

About 3 years ago, I posted the following piece, which somehow got deleted. Kedar went very nostalgic about his 'Lost World' of the Maharashtrian Story-Teller.

I am re-posting it today since I am going to tell some cock & bull Mahabharat stories in my next piece, as asked by Don Quixotejee: *****************************************************************************************************
"When R. K. Narayan was a budding young Indian author in English, he visited his uncle on his death bed. The old man advised RKN to read ‘Ramayan’ composed by the Tamil savant Kamban. He promised ‘I will’, just to please a dying uncle. RKN writes that he was laughing inwardly at his own ‘promise’, wondering if a modern secular English author like him, with an eye on his foreign readers, would ever have the time and inclination to read such ‘old-wives tales’.

Half a century later, RKN was drawn to Ramayan. And, he couldn’t resist telling that great story, retold hundreds of times in many languages, in his own fluent English prose. Reason: He considered it to be one of the best ‘stories’ ever written.

A common part and parcel of Hinduism, as it is practiced in South India, is not a 'sermonizer' but a 'Story-Teller'. These are a profession unto themselves. After every special ritual in a temple (there are many throughout the year), there comes the Story-Teller, bare-bodied, with a garland on his neck, flowers in his hair, and cymbals in his hands. He comes with his accompanists (stand-ins, when the master takes a break to rest his throat), and musicians, who are waiting to step into the revelry whenever he breaks into song (which is often).

There are any number of stories in our mythology. Indeed, since Hinduism is a ‘non-prophet’ thing, it is all 'stories', with ‘free-for-all’ improvisations down the line. Most folks skip the ritual and come in for the stories.

Make no mistake, there are as many light moments to entertain and evoke laughter as moments when hard-boiled businessmen 'cry', and fork out their ill-begotten monies.

Read RKN’s beautiful piece: “A Story-Teller’s World”.

The Holy Bible is replete with charming stories. Of all the modern ‘Christian’ fictional stories I read, the Don Camillo series is the best; in particular, 'The Little World of Don Camillo'. It has 21 beautifully written Chapters of post-war turmoil in the Po Valley of Italy, with amusing but moving battles between the Communist Mayor Peppone and the local Priest Don Camillo.

Here is the link: http://www.meaning-of-life.info/DonCamillo.html

My own 'homage' to my Ph.D. Guide, SDM, addressed to the younger generation, has this disclaimer:

Please don’t expect these files to contain any profound physics. There is none; no equations, no figures, and no references. These are merely stories.

The students seemed to have been touched by these stories. Apparently they brought to life glimpses of not only a dead man but also a lost world, with a value system so lovely that the youngsters were charmed and longed for it wistfully.

A ponderous essay on SDM would have received a cold and laconic reception.

Here is what Varun N Achar & Wrick Sengupta wrote 3 years ago:

"Whenever we hear of 'old times' from our parents, teachers and other elders, we cannot help but wish we were born in those times. Your article has once again stirred up that wishful pseudo-nostalgia in us!"

**************************************************************************************************

P S: Doctorates in 'Literature Appreciation' are hereby conferred on these two Physicists, though a bit belatedly ========================================================================

An Open Letter from Dean

============================================

Just now I got this mail in my Inbox:

********************************************************************************


DonQuixote has left a new comment on your post "My Swan Song / Duck Quack":


Dear Sir,

If you could just convert yourself into a degree granting
Institution (officially) using but a little of your immense
clout- I could claim the fulfillment of a life long ambition
of becoming a Ph.D .....then I could retire from everything
else and become a woolgatherer. Congratulations to each
other among a few of those you decorated with the 'Dr.'
have been exchanged all right but still without a diploma
in Hand....it's cumbersome to refer everybody to a website
to prove my claim.

***********************************************************************************


gps writes:

Dear Don (Quixote/Juan and/or any other Classical Hero):

I have several impertinent points to make in this connection:

(1) With my 'immense clout' in the World of Physics & Literature, there is no need for any 'Official Degree-Granting Convocation' .

Just mention my name.

(2) I do agree that referring to a website is cumbersome. Just give me your mailing addresses and the names of the 'gps-Deemed (or damned) University Degree Holders'. I shall air-mail the requisite number of signed copies of my forthcoming booklet named appropriately: "Tall Tales" in which all these names occur in hard copy.

This will also stimulate the moribund Indian Posts & Telegraphs Department in spite of my several grouses (or grise) against her.

(3) Don't ask (like that youngster on whom I bestowed the equally Official 'Best Teacher Award') the other day: "What shall I do with this?".

In Life every little thing helps:

45 years ago, I had a young and 'literary' colleague Professor B K Mohanty (the Royal BKM of the 'Physics of Sex'). He told me that his first appointment as an Associate Lecturer at IIT KGP happened thus: The Director and Chairman of our Selection Committee was Professor V N Prasad (May His Soul Rest in Peace!) of the Department of Architecture (no Town Planning then).

Midway through the Interview VNP was getting bored and feeling rather lost with the Experts' silly questions on Physics and asked BKM:

"What is your hobby?"

"Reading Wodehouse"

"My God! So is mine. Who is your favorite Wodehouse Character?"

"Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge"

"So is mine, and you remember his FULL Name! You will be a wonderful addition to the drab Physics Department. You may go".

This is as true as Death...ask BKM if you can (I lost track of him). He left Physics & IIT KGP soon after becoming a Full Professor in 1985 or so. The loss was on both sides.

(3) Coming to the importance of odd bits and pieces of paper, remember, if you know it, the story of the Sanskrit Poet Bharavi who wrote: "Kiratharjuneeyam". If you don't know it, just confess and I will blog it tomorrow.

(4) 'Woolgatheirng' and the 'Acquisition of a Ph D Degree' (at least in Theoretical Physics, I don't know about Experimental Physics: as students we were unpardonably and unethically cooking up our Readings in our Physics Labs at AU, which however required a sound knowledge of Theory) are not mutually exclusive; rather they are irretrievably intertwined; just remember Newton: What the hell else was he doing under that Apple Tree in his Garden of Eden?

(5) Your "life long ambition of becoming a Ph D" is a little misplaced. Mine was more like what Kapeeleshwar Krishana (I am truly 'spell-bound' whenever I have to write his full name), Ph D (Experimental Physics) from Princeton, more of the same as Post-Doc at Harvard charmingly used to narrate:

"Beta, badey ho key kya karogey?'

"Aadmi banoonga"

"Aaadmi tho banogey, lekin karogey kya?"

"Shaadi karoonga"

This KK (unlike his more sensible senior KK who was my project student) embarrassed me endlessly by referring to me as his IDOL (didn't specify gold, silver, stone or clay though) in his M Sc Project Thesis, thereby threatening to antagonize his young Guide (who however charmingly turned his Approver).

When my son was hosted by him in his palatial 'Residence' in a posh Boston suburb last year, Kapeel, now a father of a cute 8-year-old-son, seemed to have given up his un-Christian Idolatry, Bless him!

(6) RSVP about your names and mailing addresses.

My first Bengali Classmate at my alma mater AU, Tathagata Sen, younger brother of Professor Ila Rao (nee Sen), used to decode RSVP as:

"RSVP: Remember Send Valuable Presents"

So long for now!

'Mere Frivolity'

==========================================

It has been 3 days since I blogged. And I used these days to edit the forthcoming slim booklet, and mailing and mailing...

To be sure, these activities are much more restful than blogging one new and fairly original piece everyday for months, which is a really exhausting deal.

Like the delightful Oliver Wendell Holmes simile: "Like holding a pet cat in the lap after trying to hold a wild squirrel".

But a hopeless addict of my blogs had this to say, inter alia:

".....I am a bit alarmed though at the announcement of your duck quack. I will miss your posts............".

One lesson I learned early in life is that it is hard to get compliments. So, one should try and take every forthcoming sentence as a compliment, come what may.

So, I thought instead of 'serious' blogging I can once in a while indulge in what I earlier on called 'RTP' (Random Talk Phenomenon).

There was again this curious statement from him:

"....I always thought that in the academic community, blogging is frowned upon as a bit frivolous......"

Frivolous, my foot!

About half a century ago, when I left home and joined College, there was this wonderful cartoon strip titled: 'Mere Frivolity'.

Till then I never had to look up a Dictionary; my father was my walking Dictionary. But now I was living in my Uncle's home....he was an MA (Hons) in English and was renowned as 'Professor Shakespeare' (he taught our Class English Prose, but). I was too shy to use him as my Dictionary.

So I surreptitiously took out his fat Dictionary to look up this word: 'frivolous', the first time ever in my life. And this is the entry from my online Webster for this word:

2 a : lacking in seriousness; b : marked by unbecoming levity

I challenge anyone who calls my blogs 'frivolous'. They are all dead serious.

A few days ago, I posted a series of half a dozen pieces on 'Spin'.

Let me quote the 'compliments' (see above) I got from impeccable professionals:
...................................................................................................
1.

In my life I called many people 'wonderful' teachers. But I reserved the term: "Best Teacher" to only one youngster, about half my age now. Not in speech or writing, but etched on a crystal glass memento (rather expensive for a pensioner) (I think by hydroflouric acid, if I remember my school chemistry right).

Here is what he says (and he, like Aniket, is the most kanjoos gent as far as doling out explicit compliments go; I being the most 'spendthrift' as they cost me nothing and fetch a lot of goodwill till some 'half-empty' guy reads too much between my lines):

"...Your Spin-stories should be prescribed to the UG/PG students and teachers of physics....".

2.

Again, there is this retired professor from IISc Bangalore (who unfortunately is trying to make me work), who has this to say about the same:

"....Simply super (not superb!) ... I feel , you should come here
and give a course of ten lectures on quantum mechanics
to college teachers and M.Sc. students. You should not
keep it to yourself--- really. We will plan it during this year...."


Those who know me could have guessed my reply:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Respected Sir:

Like Feynman "You must surely be joking!".... Me coming to Bangalore leaving

Hyderabad! What will happen to the Charminar? It would surely collapse if my

benign presence is removed!

--------------------------------------------------------------------
3.

And this is what my most erudite eldest Brother-in-law
(of the Gifter-Giftee post) has to say
(he is a retired IAS; they really don't retire, they just lie low!):

Dearest Prabhakar, 21-06-2010

Spinning tops (both animate and inanimate) are good,

spinning theories underlying those

spins are better and finally spinning yarns are, of course,

the best. Carry on, You Master

Spinner & Master Weaver of Facts and Fiction.

Akkayya (didi) is proud , no end of your

literary faculties, (so am I) Love, ranga rao

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Long while ago, I read the Bhagavad Gita and the Ten Principal Upanishads for fun. Also the Holy Bible, the New Testament fully and the Old in parts. In the famous Chapter 15 of Gita titled: Purushottama Prapti Yoga, there is this wonderful line:

"Vaayur gandha nivashayat".

Krishna is saying (hold your breath!) that the Lord takes away your favorite last thoughts just before your death (for bestowing you your next avatar) just as:

"The breeze whisks away the fragrance of a flower".

Surely, I would like to think at that blessed moment of these frivolous compliments rather than the ones I got for my 'serious' works of Physics (a couple of them from John Wheeler and Edwin Taylor in their 'hard copy' books sold on Amazon).

------------------------------------------------------------------

A few minutes back, my earlier post: 'Physics of Sex' elicited this comment from Polts:

"This is a riot!"

July 22, 2010 7:03 AM

This naturally made me look up that piece posted six months ago. And found this sentence there:

"..I said ok and went over to RGC and asked him to tell his joke with the bait of my share of free Rosogollas. RGC (who had a pleasing stammer) agreed..."

I refer to this because in my piece: "Get-up Please!" a few days back I said:

'There is a wonderful word in English which I am fond of: "Pleasing".'

I shared Office with RGC (Ramda) during the first years of my life at IIT KGP. And he was a master-teller of jokes. But he had this very 'pleasing' stammer.

But he was the Best B Tech Teacher then. Students just loved him, despite his stammer.

MSS used to tell me that Ramda compensated his stammer with appropriate gestures; the most famous being:

"...When he had to show three balls colliding, he would hold two imaginary balls one in each hand, and for the third one he would 'point his nose', like a 'pointer dog' (a large strong slender smooth-haired gundog that hunts by scent and indicates the presence of game by pointing .....Webster)..."

Ramda, after retirement was the most famous JEE Coach in Calcutta.

I would love to listen any day to Ramda's Tales rather those of silver-tongued orators.

He was a master-computer-miniaturizer in those 1960s. When he became the Institute Time-Table-in-Charge, he reduced the whole damn thing into just ONE piece of centimeter graph paper kept in his Kurta pocket that he alone could decipher. Prof So-and-So of Mech Engg Dept, the earlier TT-in-Charge needed a whole room with 30 Drawing Sheets stacked in it; but always made mistakes.

Once there was this announcement that Ramda would be giving a Seminar Talk and everyone should attend.

I asked him in our Office just before we left for his seminar; "Ramda! To which branch of Physics does your topic of today belong?"

Without batting an eyelid he replied: "Solid State Physics".

And his talk turned out to be a highly entertaining and educative one on:

"Perpetual Calendar" (the thing there is now on my mobile).

We shall meet soon, Ramda and exchange our Tall Tales!
==============================================================