===========================================================================
Weather is something everyone has lived with from infancy. And so most folks, particularly journos, feel complacent talking about it.
Whereas Atmosphere is about the most complicated system as idealized systems of physics go. Atmospheric Physics is tough and embraces all branches of classical physics such as fluid mechanics (including turbulence), thermodynamcis, electrodynamics, optics, gravity, and whatever you name it.
But journalists couldn't care less...they go after the neat and mod phrase.
I got thinking about this when I read the picturesque description that all opposition parties cornered the Government in Parliament when they found that the issue of FDI in Retail acted like a 'lightning rod'.
Really? Lightning rod is the safety mechanism against thunderbolts, as everyone knows. What the journos wanted to say was that the FDI in Retail served as a thunderbolt on the GoI.
Often I read in the newspapers that the GoI was caught in the Eye of the Storm, say, on the issue of 2G spectrum. I lived through the Eye of a vicious cyclone at about 1 AM while we were in Qrs C1-97 at IIT KGP circa 1985. The cyclone brewed slowly from about 6 in the evening and reached a crescendo around 12.55. And there was this sudden lull as if the whole event blew over. But for about just 10 minutes. Then the winds reversed and it gathered strength again. By dawn when it was all over, all the trees in our backyard were flattened. The Eye was a passing lull of great peace and tranquility.
And the familiar phrase that the price of onions touched the Stratosphere. I guess it sounded nice. But Stratosphere is only the second highest after the Troposphere. We then have the Mesosphere, Thermosphere and Exosphere, no? And Stratosphere is the one in which there is a reversal of temperatures; cool below and hot above.
They also talk of the PM being in Cloud Nine after a good Summit. And they are quite unaware of the various cloud types we had to mug up, like cirrus, stratus, nimbus, cumulus, and their various combos. Google tells me that Cloud Nine as per US Weather Service is Cumulonimbus...stormiest...though the highest. PM better be described as in the tenth heaven...begging the question about the other nine.
And they talk about Rainbow Coalitions. Rainbow is the toughest topic I ever faced and it took all of 43 years for me to understand why all rainbows have the same angular radius of about 41 degrees arc. Rainbows have all the seven colors, while governing coalitions have about 4 colors; the rest three sitting in the unwilling opposition.
Well, I am picking needlessly on journos. But I am scared of Atmospheric Physics, having served for forty years in the Department of Physics & Meteorology at KGP.
Here is an anecdote:
An Atmospheric Scientist from IMD gave a seminar in our Seminar Room. After which, HNA, who was then a young lecturer, rose up and asked:
"Tell me simply why it doesn't rain in my Bikaner when it rains in Jodhpur"
Obviously there was no one-word answer and there was pandemonium. And CLR got up and said: "We need Rajasthan desert very badly since in summer it gets so hot there that the monsoon currents build up and rain copiously in Bengal"
And then HNA got angry till STA got up and told the story of Lord Raam getting angry with Sugriv for forgetting his promise of help and is about to launch his missile-arrow. Sugriv is scared and falls on the feet of Lord Raam but Laxman says that once it is loaded, Raam's missile can't be taken back. And then the King of Rajasthan offers that Lord Raam's arrow be aimed at his fertile land if it pleases Raam so. And Raam's arrow then scorches Rajasthan so dry that it becomes a desert...but everyone in India hails the sacrifice of the King of Rajasthan for his sacrifice...and HNA is the epitome of all self-sacrifice in the Phy Dept...
And HNA laughed and sat down...
===========================================================================
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Symmetry Breaking
============================================================================
From DC, yesterday:
London: Kate Middleton's teeth have been deliberately made "not too perfect" which helped her in giving a "natural, healthy smile, but not an artificial one", a French dentist has claimed. Didier Fillion uses a system of "micro-rotations" and gentle whitening to make teeth look spectacular....
*************************************************************************************************************
No wonder it is said Beauty Lies in the Eyes of the Beholder.
When I was about 10 and my Father 40, there was this cinema we all watched in which Jamuna (total score: 198 films) was a newcomer at age 16. On our way back from the movie, my Father and I were walking ahead of the others. And, my Father, normally a shy chap, said: "This beautiful newcomer will become a famous actress soon." And I was a little taken aback and contested: "But her teeth are awful. One of them in her left upper jaw grows a bit over its neighbor."
And he crooned: "THAT is her beauty spot"
Veterans know all about beauty better than urchins!
When my son was about seven months old, he developed a scary reddish rash all over his Fair & Lovely body. We rushed him to the Child Specialist in BNR Hospital who asked us to immediately stop all those various oils my wife used to apply on his body parts, face and head. And leave him alone to Nature's own skin-glow oils. (That saved him; and me as well...I didn't have to buy those costly Johnson & Johnson kits).
One morning when I was walking with him in his pram to our Jersey Bull Mother Farm at IIT to fetch milk, an elderly dhoti-clad Bengali Bhadralok stopped the pram, blew a couple of kisses to the infant, and rebuked me for not applying the default black dot (bindi) on his forehead. Apparently the black dot wards off the Evil Eye. To please the Old Man and also to take no chances, I filched a Shilpa Black Sticker Bindi from my wife's kit and stuck it lightly a bit above the junction of his eyebrows.
The Old Man inspected my work next morning, shook his head, peeled off the bindi and stuck it way up on the right side of my son's forehead...deliberate (not spontaneous) Symmetry Breaking!
In the wedding functions of our AP folks, the bride and groom have their lovely symmetry broken by black dots stuck on their left and right cheeks respectively...some cheeks!
There are of course a disproportionately large number of talented left-handed batsmen in cricket. And some who bat with their left hand but bowl with their right arm. But I guess there are no great cricketers who bat with their right hand and bowl with their left arm...Symmetry Breaking?
The pictures of all the famous buildings I watched in my childhood were plumb symmetric...like Charminar, Taj Mahal, Victoria Memorial...
And all Clock Towers in my AP towns were symmetric. Also my University Science College with its towering Clock. Same with the Old Building at IIT KGP which was the infamous Hijli Jail. But the first skewed building I saw was this stunning New Building of IIT KGP with its 120 feet tall tower. Felt sort of out of place.
Most men have their hair parting to the left side of their face. So, it didn't feel very odd. But when I saw a picture of Hitler with his hair parting right and a Charlie Chaplin 'fly' mustache, to me he was a vastly amusing figure...not to Churchill though...
There is this nasty story told of a husband jealous of his wife's beauty. So, he said:
"Bhaaryaa roopvati shatruh!" (A good-looking wife is an enemy)
And blinded her left eye breaking her symmetry. Then he recalled:
"Ekaakshi lok sanchaari!" (One-eyed one has a roving eye)
And blinded her right eye, restoring the symmetry.
And then there is this bally story told of a chap betting with his friends and school mates, saying:
"Between us we have three"
And winning handsomely...God gave him only one...till he meets this Stranger whom God gave three.
=============================================================================
From DC, yesterday:
Duchess' Teeth Deliberately Unaligned?
London: Kate Middleton's teeth have been deliberately made "not too perfect" which helped her in giving a "natural, healthy smile, but not an artificial one", a French dentist has claimed. Didier Fillion uses a system of "micro-rotations" and gentle whitening to make teeth look spectacular....
*************************************************************************************************************
No wonder it is said Beauty Lies in the Eyes of the Beholder.
When I was about 10 and my Father 40, there was this cinema we all watched in which Jamuna (total score: 198 films) was a newcomer at age 16. On our way back from the movie, my Father and I were walking ahead of the others. And, my Father, normally a shy chap, said: "This beautiful newcomer will become a famous actress soon." And I was a little taken aback and contested: "But her teeth are awful. One of them in her left upper jaw grows a bit over its neighbor."
And he crooned: "THAT is her beauty spot"
Veterans know all about beauty better than urchins!
When my son was about seven months old, he developed a scary reddish rash all over his Fair & Lovely body. We rushed him to the Child Specialist in BNR Hospital who asked us to immediately stop all those various oils my wife used to apply on his body parts, face and head. And leave him alone to Nature's own skin-glow oils. (That saved him; and me as well...I didn't have to buy those costly Johnson & Johnson kits).
One morning when I was walking with him in his pram to our Jersey Bull Mother Farm at IIT to fetch milk, an elderly dhoti-clad Bengali Bhadralok stopped the pram, blew a couple of kisses to the infant, and rebuked me for not applying the default black dot (bindi) on his forehead. Apparently the black dot wards off the Evil Eye. To please the Old Man and also to take no chances, I filched a Shilpa Black Sticker Bindi from my wife's kit and stuck it lightly a bit above the junction of his eyebrows.
The Old Man inspected my work next morning, shook his head, peeled off the bindi and stuck it way up on the right side of my son's forehead...deliberate (not spontaneous) Symmetry Breaking!
In the wedding functions of our AP folks, the bride and groom have their lovely symmetry broken by black dots stuck on their left and right cheeks respectively...some cheeks!
There are of course a disproportionately large number of talented left-handed batsmen in cricket. And some who bat with their left hand but bowl with their right arm. But I guess there are no great cricketers who bat with their right hand and bowl with their left arm...Symmetry Breaking?
The pictures of all the famous buildings I watched in my childhood were plumb symmetric...like Charminar, Taj Mahal, Victoria Memorial...
And all Clock Towers in my AP towns were symmetric. Also my University Science College with its towering Clock. Same with the Old Building at IIT KGP which was the infamous Hijli Jail. But the first skewed building I saw was this stunning New Building of IIT KGP with its 120 feet tall tower. Felt sort of out of place.
Most men have their hair parting to the left side of their face. So, it didn't feel very odd. But when I saw a picture of Hitler with his hair parting right and a Charlie Chaplin 'fly' mustache, to me he was a vastly amusing figure...not to Churchill though...
There is this nasty story told of a husband jealous of his wife's beauty. So, he said:
"Bhaaryaa roopvati shatruh!" (A good-looking wife is an enemy)
And blinded her left eye breaking her symmetry. Then he recalled:
"Ekaakshi lok sanchaari!" (One-eyed one has a roving eye)
And blinded her right eye, restoring the symmetry.
And then there is this bally story told of a chap betting with his friends and school mates, saying:
"Between us we have three"
And winning handsomely...God gave him only one...till he meets this Stranger whom God gave three.
=============================================================================
Monday, November 28, 2011
Awesome Jawsome
============================================================================
Words can instill more fear in tender hearts of students than swords.
Take for instance Wigner-Eckart Theorem. If you have not heard it from your Teacher in your Class Room you will live in perpetual fear (like me) of this combo whenever you hear it later. Or Ricci Tensor. Or even such a simple thing as Multivibrator.
The purpose of a Teacher is to remove this fear. He may or may not give you an understanding.That depends on his capability and your interest. But if you have heard such hi-fi jargon in the Class Room, you will recall it later and won't be afraid; say in an Interview or a Viva. Otherwise you will shrink like a jellyfish and retract like a poked snail whenever such terms are uttered and start developing a Complex.
Prof RGC was a good 15 years older to me. And he was one of the smartest teachers I ever met with. Like MSS. And we happened to share a Room for over an year. QM and GR and such stuff were not taught to him when he was a student at Allahabad Univ. He was a master of Classical Physics and Electronics. His Ph D was in Acoustics.
When he realized that I was teaching QM, he asked me if I can explain to him Dirac Delta Function in a few words. I got up at once and took a piece of chalk and was going to the blackboard in front of him. He suddenly got up and said:
"GP, let us go to the Canteen, have a cup of tea and come back refreshed"
And you know what happens after such Canteen Adjournments.
A month later he asked me if I can explain to him Dirac Delta Function in a few words. I got up at once and took a piece of chalk and was going to the blackboard in front of him. He suddenly got up and said:
"GP, let us go to the Canteen, have a cup of tea and come back refreshed"
And so on...
I have known many teachers avoid Cornu Spiral like the very plague just because they didn't hear of it in their student days. Also Localization of Fringes. Also Babinet Compensator.
I was lucky that we had terrific labs at our AU, Waltair (Vizagh). Then on I was never afraid of labs or such bread 'n' butter Physics. But I was shoot scared of Math of any description. Like Matrices, Tensors, CGC's and stuff.
SDM gave me my Ph D. Anyone else could have given it to me if I wanted one. But none could drive the fear of math from my heart as SDM did. That is what happens when you rub shoulders with an expert. He doesn't have to teach you formally. You learn by closely watching him do it.
The World's Best Teachers are of course Sage Uddalaka (Chandogya Upanishad), sage Yagnyavalkya (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad) and Jesus Christ (Sermon on the Mount) among many others.
Uddalaka sends his son, Svetaketu, to College for 12 years as an intern. And when he returns takes his Viva. And discovers that his teachers omitted the most important lesson of all. Svetaketu reasons that his teachers must have been ignorant of the subject's funda. And prays to his Father to please teach him.
That is the HOLY moment between a Teacher and his Student...when the pupil ardently desires to know something that his teacher knows like the back of his palm.
And Uddalaka begins with an example and Svetaketu says it is not very clear to him. And his dad gives another example. And the kid is not happy....it goes on nine times. And finally Uddalaka asks his son if the matter is very clear now. And Svetaketu nods his head and says:
"Crystal Clear, thanx!"
Understanding comes from examples and applications, not just by hi-fi Theory.
This is what I learned in my life, such as it is....
=============================================================================
Words can instill more fear in tender hearts of students than swords.
Take for instance Wigner-Eckart Theorem. If you have not heard it from your Teacher in your Class Room you will live in perpetual fear (like me) of this combo whenever you hear it later. Or Ricci Tensor. Or even such a simple thing as Multivibrator.
The purpose of a Teacher is to remove this fear. He may or may not give you an understanding.That depends on his capability and your interest. But if you have heard such hi-fi jargon in the Class Room, you will recall it later and won't be afraid; say in an Interview or a Viva. Otherwise you will shrink like a jellyfish and retract like a poked snail whenever such terms are uttered and start developing a Complex.
Prof RGC was a good 15 years older to me. And he was one of the smartest teachers I ever met with. Like MSS. And we happened to share a Room for over an year. QM and GR and such stuff were not taught to him when he was a student at Allahabad Univ. He was a master of Classical Physics and Electronics. His Ph D was in Acoustics.
When he realized that I was teaching QM, he asked me if I can explain to him Dirac Delta Function in a few words. I got up at once and took a piece of chalk and was going to the blackboard in front of him. He suddenly got up and said:
"GP, let us go to the Canteen, have a cup of tea and come back refreshed"
And you know what happens after such Canteen Adjournments.
A month later he asked me if I can explain to him Dirac Delta Function in a few words. I got up at once and took a piece of chalk and was going to the blackboard in front of him. He suddenly got up and said:
"GP, let us go to the Canteen, have a cup of tea and come back refreshed"
And so on...
I have known many teachers avoid Cornu Spiral like the very plague just because they didn't hear of it in their student days. Also Localization of Fringes. Also Babinet Compensator.
I was lucky that we had terrific labs at our AU, Waltair (Vizagh). Then on I was never afraid of labs or such bread 'n' butter Physics. But I was shoot scared of Math of any description. Like Matrices, Tensors, CGC's and stuff.
SDM gave me my Ph D. Anyone else could have given it to me if I wanted one. But none could drive the fear of math from my heart as SDM did. That is what happens when you rub shoulders with an expert. He doesn't have to teach you formally. You learn by closely watching him do it.
The World's Best Teachers are of course Sage Uddalaka (Chandogya Upanishad), sage Yagnyavalkya (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad) and Jesus Christ (Sermon on the Mount) among many others.
Uddalaka sends his son, Svetaketu, to College for 12 years as an intern. And when he returns takes his Viva. And discovers that his teachers omitted the most important lesson of all. Svetaketu reasons that his teachers must have been ignorant of the subject's funda. And prays to his Father to please teach him.That is the HOLY moment between a Teacher and his Student...when the pupil ardently desires to know something that his teacher knows like the back of his palm.
And Uddalaka begins with an example and Svetaketu says it is not very clear to him. And his dad gives another example. And the kid is not happy....it goes on nine times. And finally Uddalaka asks his son if the matter is very clear now. And Svetaketu nods his head and says:
"Crystal Clear, thanx!"
Understanding comes from examples and applications, not just by hi-fi Theory.
This is what I learned in my life, such as it is....
=============================================================================
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Halls of Fame
=============================================================================
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.
......Mark Twain
*****************************************************************************************************************
Mark Twain must have been in one of his famous moods when he said that. He has certainly escaped earthly oblivion. For, I heard of him when I was a mere kid of 10 in our obscure seaside Village, Muthukur (which is now becoming famous for its port Krishnapatnam from where millions of tons of iron ore are alleged to have been illegally exported to China, that wanted to become an all-time famous nation for her Olympiad, by folks who wanted to become famous by donating fabulous diamond-studded gold crowns to Lord Balajee at his famous shrine of Tirupati).
NB: There are as many as 5 'famouses' in the above para.
At that time Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were being serialized in one of our popular Telugu Weeklies and we used to fight for the possession of its issues.
Most everyone wants to become famous by hook or crook for something or the other. All famous Books of World Records like the Guinness and the Limca thrive on this greed for fame in the bosom of everyone. There are those who grow mustaches to unspeakable lengths balancing lemons on them and nails to unbelievable footage.
But I guess lasting fame comes to those who were busy thinking of something else and wholly immersed in it. Very few achieve lasting fame by spitting on their hands and going about it single-mindedly.
Note the word 'lasting' in the above sentence. For, there have been many who were famous for their fifteen minutes or even a few weeks. While I was living in Bengal, there was this newly started English Dialy that became famous later on by issuing a Sunday Supplement on the front page of which were photos of folks who regularly proved Einstein wrong. By the way, that was one easy way of going about it...pick on Einstein; or even Ramakrishnadeb proving that he was queer.
Money can buy ephemeral fame in one's own neighborhood. One day in the early 1970s I happened to be sitting behind HNB in what is now famously HIS Seminar Room awaiting the arrival of others for a Faculty Meeting. Prof G, a couple of years junior to him, arrived and sat beside HNB. And HNB started ragging him. Apparently Prof G had just joined the nascent Rotary Club of KGP Town. HNB said:
"Look, G, Rotary Club is for those like the Bhandaris who have ample money but desire fame whereas we have ample fame but desire money"
Prof R of one of those Departments that are sister things of Physics was a very jovial person. In fact too obtrusively jovial. He happened to visit Germany for a year where he was sharing digs with my classmate KLM at AU who naturally was excited that R knew me...auld lang syne senti.
On his return to KGP, R sought me out and talked to me extensively about their sojourn in Germany...I guess for the first time he heard a few good words about me from a third party. That was fine. But he had this brand new Maruti Van in the campus and he was fond of stopping bang in the middle of the busy road leading to Gate # 5 and picking up passengers, willing and unwilling. Those days I was trying to tone up my middle age system by taking walks to and fro the Insti. But, our timings used to match and Prof R would bid me to jump in and would brook no excuses from me.
And there was no need for me to invent small talk for those 3 minutes...he would do it single-handedly. Here is a snatch of our typical conversation:
He: Three years back I was visiting the US. At that time I was very famous in Physics.
Me: Is that so?
He: Yes, indeed I was very famous...
Me: Is that so...I didn't know...
He: Oh, Yes, yes, very famous...
=============================================================================
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.
......Mark Twain
*****************************************************************************************************************
Mark Twain must have been in one of his famous moods when he said that. He has certainly escaped earthly oblivion. For, I heard of him when I was a mere kid of 10 in our obscure seaside Village, Muthukur (which is now becoming famous for its port Krishnapatnam from where millions of tons of iron ore are alleged to have been illegally exported to China, that wanted to become an all-time famous nation for her Olympiad, by folks who wanted to become famous by donating fabulous diamond-studded gold crowns to Lord Balajee at his famous shrine of Tirupati).
NB: There are as many as 5 'famouses' in the above para.
At that time Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were being serialized in one of our popular Telugu Weeklies and we used to fight for the possession of its issues.
Most everyone wants to become famous by hook or crook for something or the other. All famous Books of World Records like the Guinness and the Limca thrive on this greed for fame in the bosom of everyone. There are those who grow mustaches to unspeakable lengths balancing lemons on them and nails to unbelievable footage.
But I guess lasting fame comes to those who were busy thinking of something else and wholly immersed in it. Very few achieve lasting fame by spitting on their hands and going about it single-mindedly.
Note the word 'lasting' in the above sentence. For, there have been many who were famous for their fifteen minutes or even a few weeks. While I was living in Bengal, there was this newly started English Dialy that became famous later on by issuing a Sunday Supplement on the front page of which were photos of folks who regularly proved Einstein wrong. By the way, that was one easy way of going about it...pick on Einstein; or even Ramakrishnadeb proving that he was queer.
Money can buy ephemeral fame in one's own neighborhood. One day in the early 1970s I happened to be sitting behind HNB in what is now famously HIS Seminar Room awaiting the arrival of others for a Faculty Meeting. Prof G, a couple of years junior to him, arrived and sat beside HNB. And HNB started ragging him. Apparently Prof G had just joined the nascent Rotary Club of KGP Town. HNB said:
"Look, G, Rotary Club is for those like the Bhandaris who have ample money but desire fame whereas we have ample fame but desire money"
Prof R of one of those Departments that are sister things of Physics was a very jovial person. In fact too obtrusively jovial. He happened to visit Germany for a year where he was sharing digs with my classmate KLM at AU who naturally was excited that R knew me...auld lang syne senti.
On his return to KGP, R sought me out and talked to me extensively about their sojourn in Germany...I guess for the first time he heard a few good words about me from a third party. That was fine. But he had this brand new Maruti Van in the campus and he was fond of stopping bang in the middle of the busy road leading to Gate # 5 and picking up passengers, willing and unwilling. Those days I was trying to tone up my middle age system by taking walks to and fro the Insti. But, our timings used to match and Prof R would bid me to jump in and would brook no excuses from me.
And there was no need for me to invent small talk for those 3 minutes...he would do it single-handedly. Here is a snatch of our typical conversation:
He: Three years back I was visiting the US. At that time I was very famous in Physics.
Me: Is that so?
He: Yes, indeed I was very famous...
Me: Is that so...I didn't know...
He: Oh, Yes, yes, very famous...
=============================================================================
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Hormonious Living
===========================================================================
This is sort of a sequel to my earlier post:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/03/games-old-men-play.html
When I was a kid I used to look at my granpa (75) and pity him. He had lost most of his teeth and couldn't eat the stuff we relished, like cashew nuts, green guava fruit and mango pickle. And he used to sit quietly on the floor and recite his prayers or roll beads till the Hindu arrived, after which he would bring out his trademark Gandhi specs and get busy. His head had hardly any hair, and on top of it, he used to get it tonsured every other Monday. That was a special day for me and my elder sister. We used to get hold of a few color chalks and stand on his either side and use his shiny pate as our slate...drawing birds, animals and poetry on it...while all the while he would be smirking toothlessly and pretend to scold us once in a while for public consumption. And he couldn't run like us and walked with the help of a stick laboriously.
In short we used to pity him.
Now I know how wrong we were. The poor old fool must have been enjoying our pranks and attitude endlessly.
Old Age is infinitely more enjoyable than childhood. For one thing, kids are restless and think that they are enjoying themselves when all that they are doing is wasting their energies instead of conserving them. And they have a future to look to and prepare for. And then there is this school. And after they grow a bit, there are these fretful hormones. And they have to then find a job and keep it, marry, procreate and take care of their little devils. And save for a rainy day. And live in perpetual tension.
Old folks have none of these troubles. If a little food and less drink is assured for the day, they just bask in the sun and enjoy doing things they want to do instead of things they have to do. And all those nasty hormones that urge them to do 'fight or flight' don't rule their lives any longer. And they have no future to worry about. All their achievements or otherwise are in the past. And they have this advantage that they had been there and done that and know what it is like. Like I used to say to my smart-aleck students that they tend to forget that I used to be a student once and know all about what is going on in their frivolous heads.
Anyway, my son dragged me this evening to our upcoming Nile Valley Apartment where finishing touches of the wood work, electrical fittings and other frills are taking shape. My son takes care of everything and I drag a chair into the verandah outside our door and sit quiet like a Buddha or a moron. And pretend to doze while I am terribly busy preparing my day's blog in the head.
I came to know that the apartment facing us has been recently occupied by a Bengali Couple working in the Hi-Tec City. And they have an old parent of my age living with them. And this Old Man came out and started his to and fro walk along the corridor (his constitutional). We have never been introduced and so I keep quiet while he stares at me during the reversal of each of his SHMs, hoping I talk first. And, as you know, the Lord God has blessed me with a nondescript face and figure to match:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/08/nondescript-face.html
So, I avoid his looks and bury myself in my cell phone pretending to check my mails or browse the web. This makes him all the more suspicious. He was not told that I know a bit of Bengali yet. The Hi-Tec Couple have a rough idea that my son studied in Bengal.
Presently the Young One arrives and asks me to please come inside his home and sit instead of suffering mosquito bites. Again and again. The Young One doesn't know that I know his evil designs (he wants company for his old dad...someone to take the old goof off his and his wife's hands). I decline politely again and again. And the Young One says that his wife is asking me in for Tea. I decline again and again.
And to keep the Young One pleased I ask where he works. And it is quite clear that he wanted to be asked this question...rather.
And he says: "Oh, I have been in the States for the last six months and am going again next month". With a tiny shrug of his shoulders.
And I ask him: "Where?"
And he says aloud, thinking that I am hard of hearing: "States...you know, America"
And I ask: "Where in the States?"
And he says: "Oh, Connecticut"
And I say: "It is said to be a lovely place"
And he asks suspiciously: "Have you been there?"
I say: "Oh no, I never went abroad"
And I add: "Mark Twain wrote about his desire to have his retirement home in Hartford"
And he asks: "Who, who, who?"
And I say: "My students told me it is a lovely place"
And he exclaims: "I work in Hartford! And where did you work?"
And I say: "IIT Kharagpur"
That sort of silences him for a moment...
And I strike the iron when it is hot: "I used to have a couple of students at Yale"
"Sir, please come in and have Tea and Rosogollas"
I excuse myself saying that my teeth don't permit the luxury of eating sweets.
Meanwhile my son comes out and they chat in their Hi-Tec lingo for a while and the Young One complains that I declined his hospitality.
My son says: "Oh, he is so shy!"
And the Young One asks my son if he could drop him on the Bombay Highway so he could collect his car that he gave for servicing.
And we three have a nice ride and my son takes pleasure in announcing that he had to pay an extra 1.1 lakh of Rupees for our Double Car Park.
And the Young One turns round and asks me incredulously: "Do you drive in Hyderabad!"
"Also in Secunderabad"
Rest is silence as Hamlet says finally...
===========================================================================
This is sort of a sequel to my earlier post:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/03/games-old-men-play.html
When I was a kid I used to look at my granpa (75) and pity him. He had lost most of his teeth and couldn't eat the stuff we relished, like cashew nuts, green guava fruit and mango pickle. And he used to sit quietly on the floor and recite his prayers or roll beads till the Hindu arrived, after which he would bring out his trademark Gandhi specs and get busy. His head had hardly any hair, and on top of it, he used to get it tonsured every other Monday. That was a special day for me and my elder sister. We used to get hold of a few color chalks and stand on his either side and use his shiny pate as our slate...drawing birds, animals and poetry on it...while all the while he would be smirking toothlessly and pretend to scold us once in a while for public consumption. And he couldn't run like us and walked with the help of a stick laboriously.
In short we used to pity him.
Now I know how wrong we were. The poor old fool must have been enjoying our pranks and attitude endlessly.
Old Age is infinitely more enjoyable than childhood. For one thing, kids are restless and think that they are enjoying themselves when all that they are doing is wasting their energies instead of conserving them. And they have a future to look to and prepare for. And then there is this school. And after they grow a bit, there are these fretful hormones. And they have to then find a job and keep it, marry, procreate and take care of their little devils. And save for a rainy day. And live in perpetual tension.
Old folks have none of these troubles. If a little food and less drink is assured for the day, they just bask in the sun and enjoy doing things they want to do instead of things they have to do. And all those nasty hormones that urge them to do 'fight or flight' don't rule their lives any longer. And they have no future to worry about. All their achievements or otherwise are in the past. And they have this advantage that they had been there and done that and know what it is like. Like I used to say to my smart-aleck students that they tend to forget that I used to be a student once and know all about what is going on in their frivolous heads.
Anyway, my son dragged me this evening to our upcoming Nile Valley Apartment where finishing touches of the wood work, electrical fittings and other frills are taking shape. My son takes care of everything and I drag a chair into the verandah outside our door and sit quiet like a Buddha or a moron. And pretend to doze while I am terribly busy preparing my day's blog in the head.
I came to know that the apartment facing us has been recently occupied by a Bengali Couple working in the Hi-Tec City. And they have an old parent of my age living with them. And this Old Man came out and started his to and fro walk along the corridor (his constitutional). We have never been introduced and so I keep quiet while he stares at me during the reversal of each of his SHMs, hoping I talk first. And, as you know, the Lord God has blessed me with a nondescript face and figure to match:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/08/nondescript-face.html
So, I avoid his looks and bury myself in my cell phone pretending to check my mails or browse the web. This makes him all the more suspicious. He was not told that I know a bit of Bengali yet. The Hi-Tec Couple have a rough idea that my son studied in Bengal.
Presently the Young One arrives and asks me to please come inside his home and sit instead of suffering mosquito bites. Again and again. The Young One doesn't know that I know his evil designs (he wants company for his old dad...someone to take the old goof off his and his wife's hands). I decline politely again and again. And the Young One says that his wife is asking me in for Tea. I decline again and again.
And to keep the Young One pleased I ask where he works. And it is quite clear that he wanted to be asked this question...rather.
And he says: "Oh, I have been in the States for the last six months and am going again next month". With a tiny shrug of his shoulders.
And I ask him: "Where?"
And he says aloud, thinking that I am hard of hearing: "States...you know, America"
And I ask: "Where in the States?"
And he says: "Oh, Connecticut"
And I say: "It is said to be a lovely place"
And he asks suspiciously: "Have you been there?"
I say: "Oh no, I never went abroad"
And I add: "Mark Twain wrote about his desire to have his retirement home in Hartford"
And he asks: "Who, who, who?"
And I say: "My students told me it is a lovely place"
And he exclaims: "I work in Hartford! And where did you work?"
And I say: "IIT Kharagpur"
That sort of silences him for a moment...
And I strike the iron when it is hot: "I used to have a couple of students at Yale"
"Sir, please come in and have Tea and Rosogollas"
I excuse myself saying that my teeth don't permit the luxury of eating sweets.
Meanwhile my son comes out and they chat in their Hi-Tec lingo for a while and the Young One complains that I declined his hospitality.
My son says: "Oh, he is so shy!"
And the Young One asks my son if he could drop him on the Bombay Highway so he could collect his car that he gave for servicing.
And we three have a nice ride and my son takes pleasure in announcing that he had to pay an extra 1.1 lakh of Rupees for our Double Car Park.
And the Young One turns round and asks me incredulously: "Do you drive in Hyderabad!"
"Also in Secunderabad"
Rest is silence as Hamlet says finally...
===========================================================================
Friday, November 25, 2011
Summing Up Med-Phys
==========================================================================
Yesterday I suddenly discovered like a simpleton (like all such sudden discoveries of mine) that the progress of my lessons in Physics runs parallel to the progress of medical instrumentation.
My earliest memory is that of the deadly clinical thermometer in my Father's medicine kit. And that lesson was there in my Class IX. Also the first chapter of Saha & Srivastava...their next chapter is Calorimetry and I resented it was not there in Med Phys. But no, there it was in dietitian's jargon...only they don't know that their calorie is a thousand times bigger than ours.
Then our country doc had this stethoscope that he used to dig into my ribs and listen. And that is sound and its propagation in wave guides. And he also had a knee hammer...that is pure mechanics. And my MD Uncle used to ask me to lie down and place his left middle finger on my midriff or abdomen and hit it with his right. And they called it percussion. It is all sound, and good old physicists used to employ it to discover where they buried their bootleg bottles underground.
And the BP kit...it is nothing but manometry that we read in Class X.
And X-ray kits as old as our own Roentgen.
And then there were these eye defects and how to correct them by lenses of all kinds. And that is ray optics. And then there was this microscope to see the worms. I resented that they didn't use telescopes. But later on I found my medico friends in their third year using these to focus on their ladies' hostel. But as I read Physical Optics, I got to know that they use this fantastic thing called Phase Contrast...which got our Zernike his Nobel. And there was also this Young's Eriometer that measures the size of their blood corpuscles by using the Airy Disk that I loved.
And then all those grams...electrocardio, electroencephalo and their cousins. They are nothing but improved versions of the frog leg jerks and a rotating drum{;-} Our own Galvani did it three centuries back when there was no Nobel.
And then came all those hi-fi scans. These are nothing but applications of the Rs 10 worth thyratron we used in our Electronics Lab at AU to generate saw tooth wave forms. And the oscilloscope and sweep circuits in radars. Brain child of one of our own ubiquitous Popovs, rather.
And then the echo-batty things...I mean such as sonography. Just replace penetrating X-rays by reflecting hi-fi sound that we did experiments with in our Final Year at AU.
Today I saw the most interesting kit..Color Doppler kit. Doppler Effect we read in Class XII and it is so nice to see it being used to measure the speed of blood flow in veins...no need to use bulky venturimeters.
And medicine has got really highbrow...we have PET Scans. They shoot positrons at electrons and catch the emitted gamma rays..only thing is that those white-overalled dames manning (womanning) them haven't heard of QED (I mean the Mod Phys stuff).
Ignorance is bliss sometimes...
===========================================================================
Yesterday I suddenly discovered like a simpleton (like all such sudden discoveries of mine) that the progress of my lessons in Physics runs parallel to the progress of medical instrumentation.
My earliest memory is that of the deadly clinical thermometer in my Father's medicine kit. And that lesson was there in my Class IX. Also the first chapter of Saha & Srivastava...their next chapter is Calorimetry and I resented it was not there in Med Phys. But no, there it was in dietitian's jargon...only they don't know that their calorie is a thousand times bigger than ours.
Then our country doc had this stethoscope that he used to dig into my ribs and listen. And that is sound and its propagation in wave guides. And he also had a knee hammer...that is pure mechanics. And my MD Uncle used to ask me to lie down and place his left middle finger on my midriff or abdomen and hit it with his right. And they called it percussion. It is all sound, and good old physicists used to employ it to discover where they buried their bootleg bottles underground.
And the BP kit...it is nothing but manometry that we read in Class X.
And X-ray kits as old as our own Roentgen.
And then there were these eye defects and how to correct them by lenses of all kinds. And that is ray optics. And then there was this microscope to see the worms. I resented that they didn't use telescopes. But later on I found my medico friends in their third year using these to focus on their ladies' hostel. But as I read Physical Optics, I got to know that they use this fantastic thing called Phase Contrast...which got our Zernike his Nobel. And there was also this Young's Eriometer that measures the size of their blood corpuscles by using the Airy Disk that I loved.
And then all those grams...electrocardio, electroencephalo and their cousins. They are nothing but improved versions of the frog leg jerks and a rotating drum{;-} Our own Galvani did it three centuries back when there was no Nobel.
And then came all those hi-fi scans. These are nothing but applications of the Rs 10 worth thyratron we used in our Electronics Lab at AU to generate saw tooth wave forms. And the oscilloscope and sweep circuits in radars. Brain child of one of our own ubiquitous Popovs, rather.
And then the echo-batty things...I mean such as sonography. Just replace penetrating X-rays by reflecting hi-fi sound that we did experiments with in our Final Year at AU.
Today I saw the most interesting kit..Color Doppler kit. Doppler Effect we read in Class XII and it is so nice to see it being used to measure the speed of blood flow in veins...no need to use bulky venturimeters.
And medicine has got really highbrow...we have PET Scans. They shoot positrons at electrons and catch the emitted gamma rays..only thing is that those white-overalled dames manning (womanning) them haven't heard of QED (I mean the Mod Phys stuff).
Ignorance is bliss sometimes...
===========================================================================
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Childhood Home Remedies
*****************************************************************************************************************************
This is about my kidlife between 1945 and 1955 in our seaside Village, Muthukur, before the advent of vaccines, analgesics, antipyretics, antihystamines, antibiotics, antipathies and sympathies.
Fevers: There was this insidious thing called the clinical thermometer inserted under the tongue or armpit or inside unspeakables. The moment it showed even just one degree Fahrenheit above normal, I was happy that I don't have to go to school. But the catch is that I was also taken off any solid diet...no rice, no curry, no sambar, no nothing...pure and simple starvation. It is a case of trade-off between two evils, school and starvation. After two days, you press the bulb of the thermometer hard so that it registers fever before school time and try to take it in and off in one second before it registers any reading at all before lunchtime. It never works the way you want to.
Headaches: I never had any...totally unaware of any head at all.
Bowels: It is in one of two states: constipation and loose. For constipation, castor oil is administered. The very smell and taste of it cures the symptom. For the other problem, a derivative of opium is ingested in mild doses in infancy. The side-effect is more welcome than the main. As you grow up, bismuth replaces opium...who asked you to grow up?
Colds: These also come in two opposites: nose block and running nose. For nose block, you hunt outside your backyard jungle for the tender stem of that weed which, when picked oozes a milky fluid. Insert this inside the nose and you start sneezing immediately. For running nose a hanky is tied to your lapel (if you have one). And if it doesn't subside, water is boiled in a vessel on mom's chulha, the lid is quickly taken out and a drop eucalyptus oil (nilgiri extract) is dumped in the boiling water, and your head is pushed just above the fumes generated, and both you and the chulha are covered with a blanket. Till you scream that your face is burning wet with the steam treatment. If Nilgiri extract is not available, a pinch of turmeric (haldi) will do. Only your face takes on a pale yellow color like the Chinese.
Coughs: If it is a whooping cough that makes you whoop and whoop and whoop, you are asked to stay back from school which you miss badly because it takes a good fortnight to recover, by when you will be as thin as a reed with all ribs exposed. The only remedy is to make a garland of the unripe green fruit of a tree called kanuga and wear it around your neck like a necklace. If it is not a whooping cough, you ignore it.
Eyes: One fine morning you wake up and want to see the world around you, but you can't, because the eyelids get stuck with each other and refuse to open. And your father brings a cold water jug and a piece of cloth and moistens your eyelids. If it repeats over days, the only cure is to put some drops of breast milk in the eyes hoping for the best. Breast milk is always available either in-house or from neighbors this side or that and it is brought in a special device that is otherwise used to pour honey into the mouth of infants. Don't make the mistake of putting even a drop of honey in your eyes...you will scream like hell.
Ears: Shooting pain is common because you are given baths daily (quite unnecessarily) and you run to your playground before you dry your head. Droplets of water get into the ears and germinate there. Hot mustard oil is the only remedy. Heat and mustard kill all the germs and your lust for life as well. On the other hand you may suddenly develop temporary deafness because you never had time to clean the innards of your ears...wax accumulates. In this case, hot til oil will do the trick of melting the wax somewhat.
Throat: One fine morning you find that you are unable to speak...the vocal cords are jammed up. A solution of violet potassium permanganate crystals in water that turns purple is ingested and gargled furiously till the throat gives.
Injuries: These are as common as life itself. If you don't have bleeding injuries on your elbows or knees, it means you are not playing outdoor games...which is a shame. You try to hide them but your father watches out and drags you to his medicine chest. He will then take out that horrendous bottle of Tincture of Iodine and try to pour a few drops on the raw wound. It is a matter of his power versus your agility. He wins in the end and your cries will be heard two streets away...
For all other major crises like poxes, dogbites, snakebites, typhoid, cholera and worse...just PRAY!
...Posted by Ishani
===========================================================================
This is about my kidlife between 1945 and 1955 in our seaside Village, Muthukur, before the advent of vaccines, analgesics, antipyretics, antihystamines, antibiotics, antipathies and sympathies.
Fevers: There was this insidious thing called the clinical thermometer inserted under the tongue or armpit or inside unspeakables. The moment it showed even just one degree Fahrenheit above normal, I was happy that I don't have to go to school. But the catch is that I was also taken off any solid diet...no rice, no curry, no sambar, no nothing...pure and simple starvation. It is a case of trade-off between two evils, school and starvation. After two days, you press the bulb of the thermometer hard so that it registers fever before school time and try to take it in and off in one second before it registers any reading at all before lunchtime. It never works the way you want to.
Headaches: I never had any...totally unaware of any head at all.
Bowels: It is in one of two states: constipation and loose. For constipation, castor oil is administered. The very smell and taste of it cures the symptom. For the other problem, a derivative of opium is ingested in mild doses in infancy. The side-effect is more welcome than the main. As you grow up, bismuth replaces opium...who asked you to grow up?
Colds: These also come in two opposites: nose block and running nose. For nose block, you hunt outside your backyard jungle for the tender stem of that weed which, when picked oozes a milky fluid. Insert this inside the nose and you start sneezing immediately. For running nose a hanky is tied to your lapel (if you have one). And if it doesn't subside, water is boiled in a vessel on mom's chulha, the lid is quickly taken out and a drop eucalyptus oil (nilgiri extract) is dumped in the boiling water, and your head is pushed just above the fumes generated, and both you and the chulha are covered with a blanket. Till you scream that your face is burning wet with the steam treatment. If Nilgiri extract is not available, a pinch of turmeric (haldi) will do. Only your face takes on a pale yellow color like the Chinese.
Coughs: If it is a whooping cough that makes you whoop and whoop and whoop, you are asked to stay back from school which you miss badly because it takes a good fortnight to recover, by when you will be as thin as a reed with all ribs exposed. The only remedy is to make a garland of the unripe green fruit of a tree called kanuga and wear it around your neck like a necklace. If it is not a whooping cough, you ignore it.
Eyes: One fine morning you wake up and want to see the world around you, but you can't, because the eyelids get stuck with each other and refuse to open. And your father brings a cold water jug and a piece of cloth and moistens your eyelids. If it repeats over days, the only cure is to put some drops of breast milk in the eyes hoping for the best. Breast milk is always available either in-house or from neighbors this side or that and it is brought in a special device that is otherwise used to pour honey into the mouth of infants. Don't make the mistake of putting even a drop of honey in your eyes...you will scream like hell.
Ears: Shooting pain is common because you are given baths daily (quite unnecessarily) and you run to your playground before you dry your head. Droplets of water get into the ears and germinate there. Hot mustard oil is the only remedy. Heat and mustard kill all the germs and your lust for life as well. On the other hand you may suddenly develop temporary deafness because you never had time to clean the innards of your ears...wax accumulates. In this case, hot til oil will do the trick of melting the wax somewhat.
Throat: One fine morning you find that you are unable to speak...the vocal cords are jammed up. A solution of violet potassium permanganate crystals in water that turns purple is ingested and gargled furiously till the throat gives.
Injuries: These are as common as life itself. If you don't have bleeding injuries on your elbows or knees, it means you are not playing outdoor games...which is a shame. You try to hide them but your father watches out and drags you to his medicine chest. He will then take out that horrendous bottle of Tincture of Iodine and try to pour a few drops on the raw wound. It is a matter of his power versus your agility. He wins in the end and your cries will be heard two streets away...
For all other major crises like poxes, dogbites, snakebites, typhoid, cholera and worse...just PRAY!
...Posted by Ishani
===========================================================================
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Vintage Beverages
===========================================================================
Like in Wheat & Rice:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/10/wheat-rice.html
post-Independence India of the 1950s can be divided into two irreconcilable cultures: Coffee & Tea.
RKN has written extensively on the Coffee Culture of his South India. But not about Tea in the deep South, because it was just not there.
My Father's household (about 10 strong) was finding it tough to serve Coffee to visitors and maid servants (both partly welcome). Because Coffee was becoming too expensive and laborious...one has to buy a Filter Pot which was made of two vertical compartments like the heinous Kipp's Apparatus in the Chemistry Lab, separated by a metallic grid like the Control Grid of the Vacuum Triode, dump some coffee powder and pour boiling water and close the lid and wait for 12 hours for the decoction to seep down...Instant Coffee was unknown.
So there appeared in the Nellore Market two grades of Brooke Bond Tea Packets, one red and the other green. The cheapest is for the maids and was called Dust Tea. And for visitors a slightly costlier called Semi-Leaf. Full-Leaf was unknown and when I asked my Father, if such a thing exists, he kept quiet like a good teacher, unlike me.
Buying a packet of Tea is kid's play; even I could do it. But what to do after buying it was left to mothers who never believed in asking others for instructions. So, my mother used to take a big enough vessel and pour as much water in it as is required and add a little milk and add a pinch of sugar (if the visitor is welcome) or gud (molasses) and boil it on the chulha till the concoction threatens to overflow and bring down the vessel and take a piece of old cotton sari and pour the brew down the membrane and squeeze the sari piece with all her might till the yield stops and keep the sari piece aside and fill up a tumbler and pass it on. And when the maid comes, repeat the process...only this time no fresh tea dust is used...the soakings of the earlier sari piece are recycled, again and again...
To this day...
If it is summer, I was asked to go down to the Bus Stand and fetch a couple of soda water bottles, with the opener, leaving the change as imprest with the shopkeeper.
I used to enjoy this exercise. The soda chap had a machine with a handle that can be cranked. He would take half a dozen specialized blue glass bottles of thickest gauge each with a weird kink in its neck that holds a huge glass marble that can't sink below its throat but can dance and go up to the mouth of the bottle where it acts as a stopper. These bottles would normally be filled with plain water. And kept in their grooves in the machine. And connect the inlet pipe to a long metal cylinder which I came to know had compressed Carbon Dioxide (?) in it. And he opens the throttle and cranks the machine 21 times if you don't count and 22 times if you insist that he not cheat. And open the machine and take out the bottles filled with Carbonic Acid and pass them on at twenty bottles for a Rupee.
I used to bring the bottles home and hand the opener to my Father. He would hold a bottle against his ribs and push the opener with all his might. The glass marble would give and sink down to the bottle's throat with as mighty a sound as the greatest sneeze ever. The bottle would be passed on to the guest and he would quickly hold it to his mouth and attempt to drink it before the 'gas' leaks out. And would have tears in his eyes.
If the Visitor is a VIP (like the District Collector to the High School), the HM's Peon with his khakhi uniform and a dawal would be sent to the soda shop. This proud dawal is a thick khakhi belt worn across the shoulder and its buckle holds a brass showpiece with the ornamental lettering: Government of India.
And in half an hour the Peon would arrive with a crate of soda water bottles. The first one would be served to the Collector; and the soda water in his bottle would look RED. And the HM would say: "Please have COLOR!" And the rest of mankind would be given the regulation colorless bottles. The COLOR is just like the janata model except that a little of ESSENCE would be added to it...it would smell oranges and taste sweet.
GRR, my eldest B-i-L told me that when he was in his High School as a student, their District Collector arrived one day and he was served COLOR in public...the urchin GRR decided then and there that he would one day become Collector...
He was like Arjun...single-mindedly he achieved his ambition and he became Collector of Dharmapuri. And he asked me to visit him and I did quickly because by his time there was such a huge demand to become Collector from his junior IAS folks that he was brought back to the Secretariat at Madras within 10 months.
There was this bright batchmate of mine at AU, Waltair who was very smart and loved to mix with Physics folks. But he chose to do his MA in Economics...just to become IAS Collector. And he did.
There was a time at IIT KGP before the Dawn of IT Revolution when every other topper in Physics wanted to become IAS Collectors, and many did. I recall one youngster, Umakanta Chowdhury, who was in EE and in my Optics Class. He was sitting in the front row and taking down every word I said; and at the end of the Semester, I stole his Class Notes and got it bound and used it subsequently. It became the breadboard for the Lecture Notes I published with RSS a decade and half later.
Umakanta came down to my Room when he was in his Final Year and asked me if he could borrow his Class Notes for a couple of months. I asked him what for. And he said he is preparing for IAS and he chose Physics as a Special Paper. You may hear of him one day like our Subba Rao and Dharam Vir.
Maybe he too wanted to have a COLOR soda in his heart of hearts...
============================================================================
Like in Wheat & Rice:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/10/wheat-rice.html
post-Independence India of the 1950s can be divided into two irreconcilable cultures: Coffee & Tea.
RKN has written extensively on the Coffee Culture of his South India. But not about Tea in the deep South, because it was just not there.
My Father's household (about 10 strong) was finding it tough to serve Coffee to visitors and maid servants (both partly welcome). Because Coffee was becoming too expensive and laborious...one has to buy a Filter Pot which was made of two vertical compartments like the heinous Kipp's Apparatus in the Chemistry Lab, separated by a metallic grid like the Control Grid of the Vacuum Triode, dump some coffee powder and pour boiling water and close the lid and wait for 12 hours for the decoction to seep down...Instant Coffee was unknown.
So there appeared in the Nellore Market two grades of Brooke Bond Tea Packets, one red and the other green. The cheapest is for the maids and was called Dust Tea. And for visitors a slightly costlier called Semi-Leaf. Full-Leaf was unknown and when I asked my Father, if such a thing exists, he kept quiet like a good teacher, unlike me.
Buying a packet of Tea is kid's play; even I could do it. But what to do after buying it was left to mothers who never believed in asking others for instructions. So, my mother used to take a big enough vessel and pour as much water in it as is required and add a little milk and add a pinch of sugar (if the visitor is welcome) or gud (molasses) and boil it on the chulha till the concoction threatens to overflow and bring down the vessel and take a piece of old cotton sari and pour the brew down the membrane and squeeze the sari piece with all her might till the yield stops and keep the sari piece aside and fill up a tumbler and pass it on. And when the maid comes, repeat the process...only this time no fresh tea dust is used...the soakings of the earlier sari piece are recycled, again and again...
To this day...
If it is summer, I was asked to go down to the Bus Stand and fetch a couple of soda water bottles, with the opener, leaving the change as imprest with the shopkeeper.
I used to enjoy this exercise. The soda chap had a machine with a handle that can be cranked. He would take half a dozen specialized blue glass bottles of thickest gauge each with a weird kink in its neck that holds a huge glass marble that can't sink below its throat but can dance and go up to the mouth of the bottle where it acts as a stopper. These bottles would normally be filled with plain water. And kept in their grooves in the machine. And connect the inlet pipe to a long metal cylinder which I came to know had compressed Carbon Dioxide (?) in it. And he opens the throttle and cranks the machine 21 times if you don't count and 22 times if you insist that he not cheat. And open the machine and take out the bottles filled with Carbonic Acid and pass them on at twenty bottles for a Rupee.
I used to bring the bottles home and hand the opener to my Father. He would hold a bottle against his ribs and push the opener with all his might. The glass marble would give and sink down to the bottle's throat with as mighty a sound as the greatest sneeze ever. The bottle would be passed on to the guest and he would quickly hold it to his mouth and attempt to drink it before the 'gas' leaks out. And would have tears in his eyes.
If the Visitor is a VIP (like the District Collector to the High School), the HM's Peon with his khakhi uniform and a dawal would be sent to the soda shop. This proud dawal is a thick khakhi belt worn across the shoulder and its buckle holds a brass showpiece with the ornamental lettering: Government of India.
And in half an hour the Peon would arrive with a crate of soda water bottles. The first one would be served to the Collector; and the soda water in his bottle would look RED. And the HM would say: "Please have COLOR!" And the rest of mankind would be given the regulation colorless bottles. The COLOR is just like the janata model except that a little of ESSENCE would be added to it...it would smell oranges and taste sweet.
GRR, my eldest B-i-L told me that when he was in his High School as a student, their District Collector arrived one day and he was served COLOR in public...the urchin GRR decided then and there that he would one day become Collector...
He was like Arjun...single-mindedly he achieved his ambition and he became Collector of Dharmapuri. And he asked me to visit him and I did quickly because by his time there was such a huge demand to become Collector from his junior IAS folks that he was brought back to the Secretariat at Madras within 10 months.
There was this bright batchmate of mine at AU, Waltair who was very smart and loved to mix with Physics folks. But he chose to do his MA in Economics...just to become IAS Collector. And he did.
There was a time at IIT KGP before the Dawn of IT Revolution when every other topper in Physics wanted to become IAS Collectors, and many did. I recall one youngster, Umakanta Chowdhury, who was in EE and in my Optics Class. He was sitting in the front row and taking down every word I said; and at the end of the Semester, I stole his Class Notes and got it bound and used it subsequently. It became the breadboard for the Lecture Notes I published with RSS a decade and half later.
Umakanta came down to my Room when he was in his Final Year and asked me if he could borrow his Class Notes for a couple of months. I asked him what for. And he said he is preparing for IAS and he chose Physics as a Special Paper. You may hear of him one day like our Subba Rao and Dharam Vir.
Maybe he too wanted to have a COLOR soda in his heart of hearts...
============================================================================
Monday, November 21, 2011
Exam Mixups
==========================================================================
One morning around 1979, a first-year B Tech kid, Utpal Basu, entered my room and started crying. Semester Exams were just over then.
I asked him to sit down and tell me what happened. It turned out to be a one-off story in all those decades I was there at KGP. I used to take First Year Physical Optics for B Techs then in the Spring Semester. Utpal was a brilliant topper in that Class.
Utpal wrote his Optics Paper the day before. And was wondering why gps set a weird Paper having a couple of Geometrical Optics questions but none on his favorite Fresnel Diffraction...he must have attributed it to a quarrel I had with my brand new wife while setting that Paper; and he answered those questions he was familiar with.
After the Exam was over, he was comparing his Question Paper with his classmates. And discovered that their Paper had no Geometrical Optics questions but a couple on Vibration Spiral alright...gps didn't have that canonical quarrel...
It turned out that there were also First Year B Sc (Physics) students in the same Raman Auditorium answering their Optics Paper which at that time was different and taught by a different Teacher.
Utpal then ran to the Professor-in-Charge of Exams and explained the mixup and requested for a re-exam. He was asked to get out since it was all his fault that he didn't check and double-check that he got the right Question Paper. It was rather a piquant situation involving the usual blame game.
I asked Utpal to stay, and walked into the Dean's Office. Professor MNF was the Dean (UG) then, and having been a student of IIT KGP (ECE), he understood the problem in one minute, and asked me what I wanted to do about it. I told him I wanted to take a Special Exam for Utpal alone the next day in my Room...a preposterous suggestion that would have been laughed off with a rebuke if it were someone other than MNF, who simply said:
"If the Teacher wants to take an Exam and his student wants to appear in it, who am I to prevent it?"
They used to boast that IIT Kanpur was an Institute, of the Teachers, for the Teachers, and by the Teachers.
IIT KGP was no less under MNF who rose to become DD when his Teacher GSS became the Diro; and thereafter he was Vice-Chancellor of AMU (which was naturally different).
*****************************************************************************************************************
In 1961 I was in my third year B Sc (Hons) at AU, Waltair (Vizagh), and was among the top rankers in our small Class of 12. My HoD one day sent for me and said that a Team from TIFR (or was it BARC?) was visiting to pre-select a few students from Sciences with a handsome stipend of Rs 500 per month provided a Bond was signed that the selected students would join TIFR after their M Sc. Selection was by an Interview where only the Principal would be present other than the TIFR Team.
I jumped up...Rs 500!!! And an assured RS position!!!
The day after the Interview, I timidly walked into the Principal's Chamber to ask if I got selected. He was all smiles and congratulated me saying yes and that I would be hearing from TIFR in a week or so.
I thanked him bowing my head and was jubilantly leaving when he called me back and said:
"You are Kameswar Rao, no?"
**************************************************************************************************************
I often fancy that there is a Guardian Angel guiding me at critical junctures of my long life.
I recall a nice story (maybe from Panchatantra) that goes like this:
An itinerant traveler was exhausted by the morning's long walk and decided to take a nap under this huge Neem Tree. And as he spread his towel and was about to doze, he looked up and wondered at the anomaly of God's Creation: This tall tree has pitiably tiny fruit while that creeper there crawling along the ground has a dozen huge pumpkins...
By the time he woke up after an hour he was covered by a couple of dozen Neem fruit from head to toe; and he realized that God was no fool after all...if tall trees had huge fruit dropping on the ground, what would happen to folks like him resting under them...
I often felt that TIFR, without the burden of UG Teaching, is like that tall Neem tree while IIT KGP is like that pumpkin creeper.
By the way, there were a couple of huge tall trees along Scholar's Avenue at KGP and a couple more outside the Tech Market. I don't know their common or botanical name. These trees, unlike that Neem Tree, do have huge brown fruit dangling from them. And on my evening walks I used to speed up lest one of those giants decides to fall on my head. But surprisingly, in all those decades, I never heard of anyone hurt by their windfall...they did have very thick and strong 'cables' attaching them to their branches firmly.
Since we didn't know the names of those huge fruit, we used to call them: Elephant Balls.
I may kindly be forgiven if I take the liberty of comparing these trees with IISc, B'lore.
**********************************************************************************************
Postscript
Kameswara Rao, one year junior to me, postpaid the Bond Money and left for the US where he became a legend.
===========================================================================
One morning around 1979, a first-year B Tech kid, Utpal Basu, entered my room and started crying. Semester Exams were just over then.
I asked him to sit down and tell me what happened. It turned out to be a one-off story in all those decades I was there at KGP. I used to take First Year Physical Optics for B Techs then in the Spring Semester. Utpal was a brilliant topper in that Class.
Utpal wrote his Optics Paper the day before. And was wondering why gps set a weird Paper having a couple of Geometrical Optics questions but none on his favorite Fresnel Diffraction...he must have attributed it to a quarrel I had with my brand new wife while setting that Paper; and he answered those questions he was familiar with.
After the Exam was over, he was comparing his Question Paper with his classmates. And discovered that their Paper had no Geometrical Optics questions but a couple on Vibration Spiral alright...gps didn't have that canonical quarrel...
It turned out that there were also First Year B Sc (Physics) students in the same Raman Auditorium answering their Optics Paper which at that time was different and taught by a different Teacher.
Utpal then ran to the Professor-in-Charge of Exams and explained the mixup and requested for a re-exam. He was asked to get out since it was all his fault that he didn't check and double-check that he got the right Question Paper. It was rather a piquant situation involving the usual blame game.
I asked Utpal to stay, and walked into the Dean's Office. Professor MNF was the Dean (UG) then, and having been a student of IIT KGP (ECE), he understood the problem in one minute, and asked me what I wanted to do about it. I told him I wanted to take a Special Exam for Utpal alone the next day in my Room...a preposterous suggestion that would have been laughed off with a rebuke if it were someone other than MNF, who simply said:
"If the Teacher wants to take an Exam and his student wants to appear in it, who am I to prevent it?"
They used to boast that IIT Kanpur was an Institute, of the Teachers, for the Teachers, and by the Teachers.
IIT KGP was no less under MNF who rose to become DD when his Teacher GSS became the Diro; and thereafter he was Vice-Chancellor of AMU (which was naturally different).
*****************************************************************************************************************
In 1961 I was in my third year B Sc (Hons) at AU, Waltair (Vizagh), and was among the top rankers in our small Class of 12. My HoD one day sent for me and said that a Team from TIFR (or was it BARC?) was visiting to pre-select a few students from Sciences with a handsome stipend of Rs 500 per month provided a Bond was signed that the selected students would join TIFR after their M Sc. Selection was by an Interview where only the Principal would be present other than the TIFR Team.
I jumped up...Rs 500!!! And an assured RS position!!!
The day after the Interview, I timidly walked into the Principal's Chamber to ask if I got selected. He was all smiles and congratulated me saying yes and that I would be hearing from TIFR in a week or so.
I thanked him bowing my head and was jubilantly leaving when he called me back and said:
"You are Kameswar Rao, no?"
**************************************************************************************************************
I often fancy that there is a Guardian Angel guiding me at critical junctures of my long life.
I recall a nice story (maybe from Panchatantra) that goes like this:
An itinerant traveler was exhausted by the morning's long walk and decided to take a nap under this huge Neem Tree. And as he spread his towel and was about to doze, he looked up and wondered at the anomaly of God's Creation: This tall tree has pitiably tiny fruit while that creeper there crawling along the ground has a dozen huge pumpkins...
By the time he woke up after an hour he was covered by a couple of dozen Neem fruit from head to toe; and he realized that God was no fool after all...if tall trees had huge fruit dropping on the ground, what would happen to folks like him resting under them...
I often felt that TIFR, without the burden of UG Teaching, is like that tall Neem tree while IIT KGP is like that pumpkin creeper.
By the way, there were a couple of huge tall trees along Scholar's Avenue at KGP and a couple more outside the Tech Market. I don't know their common or botanical name. These trees, unlike that Neem Tree, do have huge brown fruit dangling from them. And on my evening walks I used to speed up lest one of those giants decides to fall on my head. But surprisingly, in all those decades, I never heard of anyone hurt by their windfall...they did have very thick and strong 'cables' attaching them to their branches firmly.
Since we didn't know the names of those huge fruit, we used to call them: Elephant Balls.
I may kindly be forgiven if I take the liberty of comparing these trees with IISc, B'lore.
**********************************************************************************************
Postscript
Kameswara Rao, one year junior to me, postpaid the Bond Money and left for the US where he became a legend.
===========================================================================
Travel Mixups
==========================================================================
GRR was a wonderfully sportive employee of IIT KGP. He had gone to his in-law's place at Waltair (Vizagh) and was to return to KGP by the 3 Up Madras-Howrah Mail boarding post-lunch at 2 PM.
Having had a hectic and tiring schedule at Waltair, he slept off as soon as he settled down in the side-upper berth #32 in the S-4 Sleeper Coach. After a couple of hours he was woken up by an irate passenger who claimed that GRR was occupying the berth reserved for him. And GRR got angry and asked him to get lost. Eventually the TTE was brought in by the irate customer. TTE asked GRR to show him his ticket. GRR fished it out of his back pocket, threw it on the TTE's face, and turned the other side.
TTE then burst out laughing and said: "You better get down quick before the train leaves Samalkot".
GRR jumped down and asked TTE: "Is this not Srikakulam?"
And rushed down to verify it was not. And he scrambled and got down and returned to Waltair by the next train and landed up at his in-law's place at midnight. And, after the door opened he growled: "Food and Bed!".
Next morning he narrated his tale of woe how he thought he boarded 3 Up while what he in fact boarded turned out to be 4 Dn Howrah-Madras Mail...the Up and Dn trains arrive and leave Waltair around the same time...
***************************************************************************************************************
When I narrated this tale to Kedar, he wasn't surprised.
Apparently Kedar was going home to Bombay by the Gitanjali Express in the evening after his 7th Semester Exams. And he was late and rushed into his S3 compartment, settled down in his upper berth, wondering but not inquiring why it was rather unusually empty. And slept off dreaming of whatever IITian students dream after their 7th Sem Exams. After a couple of hours, he was rudely woken up by the Railway Sweeper asking him to get down before the train leaves for the Loco Shed at Santragachi.
Kedar boarded the wrong Gitanjali and had to return to Bombay without reservation in a General Compartment, reaching home after 3 good days and looking, as he said, like one of those singers singing: "eh raath bhigi bhigi..", and asking for 'compensation', declining anything less than a whole rupee coin.
***************************************************************************************************************
My friend Tyagi, a clone of Thurber's Walter Mitty, the one who tried to enter New Empire thrice looking for Lighthouse, had a far better time. See below, where he was labeled Dr B (3-in-1):
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/04/dr-b.html
During the 1960s, when the only Airline plying in India was the IA, air travel was the prestigious prerogative of the forbiddingly rich...it was so costly that only folks on Government Duty and the filthy rich could afford it. And there was no quick way to reach Far-East India except by air. IIT JEE had an exam center at Gauhati. And the Faculty Member chosen to go there carrying the Question Papers and Answer Scripts in a doubly sealed steel trunk had the unique privilege of flying there by IA at IIT expense.
And so there was a terrific rush for the job. Since Tyagi was an IITian (ME, NH), he managed to get chosen once. And he reached Dum Dum airport just in time, booked the steel trunk to Gauhati, ran into the tarmac and boarded the flight just as it was preparing to take off, wondering why the Dum Dum-Gauhati carrier that day was small and almost empty. But happy to get the exclusive attention of the comely air-hostess for an hour (he was as cute as Cupid).
And when he was escorted to the ladder he asked her how best to go to the Gauhati University.
And she swooned and got up after a good 2 minutes and said that they had arrived at Bagdogra, the gateway Airport to Darjeeling.
Since it was as much her mistake as his,Tyagi was given free lunch and drinks at the airport and put back at Dum Dum by the return flight and forwarded from there to Gauhati with an escort to see that he boards the right flight this time around.
The steel trunk reached Gauhati safe before he did...
***************************************************************************************************************
For the last six months our local Supermarket here didn't bother to have allocated trays for various vegetables and customers had to hunt where aloo is and where banana; and there were complaints to organize it better. Today, the Manager woke up and stuck big, bold, and beautiful stickers naming all the various vegetables on strictly allotted trays. The long one that I wanted badly was spelled:
============================================================================
GRR was a wonderfully sportive employee of IIT KGP. He had gone to his in-law's place at Waltair (Vizagh) and was to return to KGP by the 3 Up Madras-Howrah Mail boarding post-lunch at 2 PM.
Having had a hectic and tiring schedule at Waltair, he slept off as soon as he settled down in the side-upper berth #32 in the S-4 Sleeper Coach. After a couple of hours he was woken up by an irate passenger who claimed that GRR was occupying the berth reserved for him. And GRR got angry and asked him to get lost. Eventually the TTE was brought in by the irate customer. TTE asked GRR to show him his ticket. GRR fished it out of his back pocket, threw it on the TTE's face, and turned the other side.
TTE then burst out laughing and said: "You better get down quick before the train leaves Samalkot".
GRR jumped down and asked TTE: "Is this not Srikakulam?"
And rushed down to verify it was not. And he scrambled and got down and returned to Waltair by the next train and landed up at his in-law's place at midnight. And, after the door opened he growled: "Food and Bed!".
Next morning he narrated his tale of woe how he thought he boarded 3 Up while what he in fact boarded turned out to be 4 Dn Howrah-Madras Mail...the Up and Dn trains arrive and leave Waltair around the same time...
***************************************************************************************************************
When I narrated this tale to Kedar, he wasn't surprised.
Apparently Kedar was going home to Bombay by the Gitanjali Express in the evening after his 7th Semester Exams. And he was late and rushed into his S3 compartment, settled down in his upper berth, wondering but not inquiring why it was rather unusually empty. And slept off dreaming of whatever IITian students dream after their 7th Sem Exams. After a couple of hours, he was rudely woken up by the Railway Sweeper asking him to get down before the train leaves for the Loco Shed at Santragachi.
Kedar boarded the wrong Gitanjali and had to return to Bombay without reservation in a General Compartment, reaching home after 3 good days and looking, as he said, like one of those singers singing: "eh raath bhigi bhigi..", and asking for 'compensation', declining anything less than a whole rupee coin.
***************************************************************************************************************
My friend Tyagi, a clone of Thurber's Walter Mitty, the one who tried to enter New Empire thrice looking for Lighthouse, had a far better time. See below, where he was labeled Dr B (3-in-1):
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/04/dr-b.html
During the 1960s, when the only Airline plying in India was the IA, air travel was the prestigious prerogative of the forbiddingly rich...it was so costly that only folks on Government Duty and the filthy rich could afford it. And there was no quick way to reach Far-East India except by air. IIT JEE had an exam center at Gauhati. And the Faculty Member chosen to go there carrying the Question Papers and Answer Scripts in a doubly sealed steel trunk had the unique privilege of flying there by IA at IIT expense.
And so there was a terrific rush for the job. Since Tyagi was an IITian (ME, NH), he managed to get chosen once. And he reached Dum Dum airport just in time, booked the steel trunk to Gauhati, ran into the tarmac and boarded the flight just as it was preparing to take off, wondering why the Dum Dum-Gauhati carrier that day was small and almost empty. But happy to get the exclusive attention of the comely air-hostess for an hour (he was as cute as Cupid).
And when he was escorted to the ladder he asked her how best to go to the Gauhati University.
And she swooned and got up after a good 2 minutes and said that they had arrived at Bagdogra, the gateway Airport to Darjeeling.
Since it was as much her mistake as his,Tyagi was given free lunch and drinks at the airport and put back at Dum Dum by the return flight and forwarded from there to Gauhati with an escort to see that he boards the right flight this time around.
The steel trunk reached Gauhati safe before he did...
***************************************************************************************************************
What's that again?
For the last six months our local Supermarket here didn't bother to have allocated trays for various vegetables and customers had to hunt where aloo is and where banana; and there were complaints to organize it better. Today, the Manager woke up and stuck big, bold, and beautiful stickers naming all the various vegetables on strictly allotted trays. The long one that I wanted badly was spelled:
SNACK GUARD
============================================================================
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Pickwickian Retractions
============================================================================
US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, called India (along with China) a 'threat' to America.
Justice Markandeya Katju, Chairman, Press Council of India, said: "Majority media people are of very poor intellectual level with no idea of economics or political science, philosophy, literature"
Rahul Baba decried UP workers going and 'begging' for a living in Mumbai.
In a public meeting in a house-full Bhatnagar Auditorium, HNB went to the dais and called the Director Brig Bose a 'dictator'.
SDM, in a fit of rage angered on an administrative matter, called his HoD, HNB, an illiterate, in the Phy corridor: "Pete bom phutle ekti akkhar berobena". HNB, who rehabilitated SDM at KGP from his ruined career at Cal, smiled, took him by his hand, and led him back into his room (which is now adorned by SLS).
For all of those four decades at KGP, Amalendu and I were MSMA (Members, Society of Mutual Admiration). Suddenly however, Amalendu was made the G Sec of IITTA (IIT Teachers Association) for a couple of years. Under the mango tree in the TOAT Canteen among half a dozen faculty members including DB and Research Scholars, Amalendu lost his temper and called me a 'liar'; which I didn't mind:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/seven-ages-of-lying-man.html
Next day happened to be a Saturday and my wife and I were going to Gole Bazaar on our Chetak. Near the Dreamland Restaurant, I found Amalendu coming towards us on his LML. I hailed him and beckoned him to the kerb. Getting down from my Chetak, I embraced him and told my wife: "Amalendu called me a 'liar' yesterday".
In every instance cited above, the offender would love to retract his words but not explicitly apologize.
I am sure none of you read Pickwick Papers and are not going to, either. The book is a classic and I gave my copy to DB and asked him to read the first fifty pages, and let me know if he could then dump the book. He finished the entire thing (I stopped after Dickens tried to moralize after the first 600 pages).
Here is how Members of the august Pickwick Club retract their insults (Blotton called Pickwick a 'humbug' in the very first meeting of the Club):
**************************************************************************************************************
============================================================================
US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, called India (along with China) a 'threat' to America.
Justice Markandeya Katju, Chairman, Press Council of India, said: "Majority media people are of very poor intellectual level with no idea of economics or political science, philosophy, literature"
Rahul Baba decried UP workers going and 'begging' for a living in Mumbai.
In a public meeting in a house-full Bhatnagar Auditorium, HNB went to the dais and called the Director Brig Bose a 'dictator'.
SDM, in a fit of rage angered on an administrative matter, called his HoD, HNB, an illiterate, in the Phy corridor: "Pete bom phutle ekti akkhar berobena". HNB, who rehabilitated SDM at KGP from his ruined career at Cal, smiled, took him by his hand, and led him back into his room (which is now adorned by SLS).
For all of those four decades at KGP, Amalendu and I were MSMA (Members, Society of Mutual Admiration). Suddenly however, Amalendu was made the G Sec of IITTA (IIT Teachers Association) for a couple of years. Under the mango tree in the TOAT Canteen among half a dozen faculty members including DB and Research Scholars, Amalendu lost his temper and called me a 'liar'; which I didn't mind:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/10/seven-ages-of-lying-man.html
Next day happened to be a Saturday and my wife and I were going to Gole Bazaar on our Chetak. Near the Dreamland Restaurant, I found Amalendu coming towards us on his LML. I hailed him and beckoned him to the kerb. Getting down from my Chetak, I embraced him and told my wife: "Amalendu called me a 'liar' yesterday".
In every instance cited above, the offender would love to retract his words but not explicitly apologize.
I am sure none of you read Pickwick Papers and are not going to, either. The book is a classic and I gave my copy to DB and asked him to read the first fifty pages, and let me know if he could then dump the book. He finished the entire thing (I stopped after Dickens tried to moralize after the first 600 pages).
Here is how Members of the august Pickwick Club retract their insults (Blotton called Pickwick a 'humbug' in the very first meeting of the Club):
**************************************************************************************************************
Mr. Pickwick observed (says the secretary) that fame was dear to the
heart of every man. Poetic fame was dear to the heart of his friend
Snodgrass; the fame of conquest was equally dear to his friend Tupman;
and the desire of earning fame in the sports of the field, the air,
and the water was uppermost in the breast of his friend Winkle. He (Mr.
Pickwick) would not deny that he was influenced by human passions and
human feelings (cheers)--possibly by human weaknesses (loud cries of
"No"); but this he would say, that if ever the fire of self-importance
broke out in his bosom, the desire to benefit the human race in
preference effectually quenched it. The praise of mankind was his swing;
philanthropy was his insurance office. (Vehement cheering.) He had felt
some pride--he acknowledged it freely, and let his enemies make the most
of it--he had felt some pride when he presented his Tittlebatian Theory
to the world; it might be celebrated or it might not. (A cry of "It
is," and great cheering.) He would take the assertion of that honourable
Pickwickian whose voice he had just heard--it was celebrated; but if
the fame of that treatise were to extend to the farthest confines of the
known world, the pride with which he should reflect on the authorship of
that production would be as nothing compared with the pride with which
he looked around him, on this, the proudest moment of his existence.
(Cheers.) He was a humble individual. ("No, no.") Still he could not but
feel that they had selected him for a service of great honour, and
of some danger. Travelling was in a troubled state, and the minds of
coachmen were unsettled. Let them look abroad and contemplate the scenes
which were enacting around them. Stage-coaches were upsetting in all
directions, horses were bolting, boats were overturning, and boilers
were bursting. (Cheers--a voice "No.") No! (Cheers.) Let that honourable
Pickwickian who cried "No" so loudly come forward and deny it, if he
could. (Cheers.) Who was it that cried "No"? (Enthusiastic cheering.)
Was it some vain and disappointed man--he would not say haberdasher
(loud cheers)--who, jealous of the praise which had been--perhaps
undeservedly--bestowed on his (Mr. Pickwick's) researches, and smarting
under the censure which had been heaped upon his own feeble attempts at
rivalry, now took this vile and calumnious mode of---
'Mr. BLOTTON (of Aldgate) rose to order. Did the honourable Pickwickian
allude to him? (Cries of "Order," "Chair," "Yes," "No," "Go on," "Leave
off," etc.)
'Mr. PICKWICK would not put up to be put down by clamour. He had alluded
to the honourable gentleman. (Great excitement.)
'Mr. BLOTTON would only say then, that he repelled the hon. gent.'s
false and scurrilous accusation, with profound contempt. (Great
cheering.) The hon. gent. was a humbug. (Immense confusion, and loud
cries of "Chair," and "Order.")
'Mr. A. SNODGRASS rose to order. He threw himself upon the chair.
(Hear.) He wished to know whether this disgraceful contest between two
members of that club should be allowed to continue. (Hear, hear.)
'The CHAIRMAN was quite sure the hon. Pickwickian would withdraw the
expression he had just made use of.
'Mr. BLOTTON, with all possible respect for the chair, was quite sure he
would not.
'The CHAIRMAN felt it his imperative duty to demand of the honourable
gentleman, whether he had used the expression which had just escaped him
in a common sense.
'Mr. BLOTTON had no hesitation in saying that he had not--he had
used the word in its Pickwickian sense. (Hear, hear.) He was bound to
acknowledge that, personally, he entertained the highest regard and
esteem for the honourable gentleman; he had merely considered him a
humbug in a Pickwickian point of view. (Hear, hear.)
'Mr. PICKWICK felt much gratified by the fair, candid, and full
explanation of his honourable friend. He begged it to be at once
understood, that his own observations had been merely intended to bear a
Pickwickian construction. (Cheers.)'
Here the entry terminates, as we have no doubt the debate did also,
after arriving at such a highly satisfactory and intelligible point.============================================================================
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Mixups & Goofups
===========================================================================
The canonical mixup is that of the Papal Bull {;-}
Ishwar, the Lord God, inspected Brahma's Creation and noticed that the inhabitants of the Earth are dirty and grimy and obese. So, he called Nandi, his Big Bull, and asked him to go down and proclaim His G.O.:
"Everyone of you chaps will henceforth take bath thrice everyday and eat once a week".
Nandi must have been preoccupied with whatever fascinates bulls and proclaimed:
"Ishwar orders that everyone of you will henceforth eat thrice a day and take bath once a week"
Ishwar gets to know Nandi's goofup and asks him, as a recompense, to go forth down below and procreate millions of his kind so they can all till the land by the sweat of their brow to feed all the greedy earthlings. So, Nehrujee got to choose 'Two Bulls on a Yoke' as his Election Symbol.
Dasarath had this benighted gift called Shabdavedhi: he could hunt blind without looking. So, he aimed his arrow at what he thought was an elephant gurgling in a stream and shot and killed him, a thorough mixup, since it happened to be the kid Sravan Kumar filling his pot with water; and his mother cursed Dasarath appropriately.
His son Raam enticed Sugriv to go forth and challenge Vali for a duel promising him that He would kill Vali shooting His arrow hiding behind a tree...it turned out that Vali and Sugriv looked so alike that Raam was confused and avoided a costly goofup at the last minute.
Duryodhan was invited to have a look at the heavenly interior decor of Maya Sabha, not telling him that it was a palace of mirrors. He lifted his dhoti to clear a pool of water where there was none...a costly mirage as it turned out for Pandavas.
Columbus thought he discovered a new sea route to India...everyone then wanted trade with India...like Pakistan does now under the influence of their charming FM.
Berzelius was a very renowned Chemist, known as the Father of Chemistry in Sweden...but first we heard of him in our Class XII was of his goofup between atoms and molecules.
Bombarding Uranium with neutrons was supposed to give at worst Radium...but what a mixup! The lady Physicist Lise Meitner saw that what she got was not Radium but Barium...and discovered Nuclear Fission, ahem, but it was her Chemistry Guide Otto Hahn that walked away with the Nobel...big goofup there; and as a belated recompense for the Jewish woman's travails we have Meitnerium now...goru mere juto daan...
Prof VS got a telegram that his father is dead and was summoned to VZM from KGP. He returned after three days and explained that it was not his father but uncle; the wire read:
"Father expired start immediately...moorthy"
Prof AC came down to our place with sweets saying that his wife had a safe delivery and got a darling daughter...like Ishani.
He and his Mrs returned to KGP with a bonny boy; his telegram had read:
"Usha normal delivery mother and baby safe...ramu"
Baby vs Babu!
Soon after he got married, my friend N took me to the Jaswant Cabinet Mart in Gole Bazaar:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/10/woodpeckers-1.html
And ordered a Dining Table and he was in a hurry to get it made and delivered at his Qrs as a surprise gift to his brand new wife. Jaswant Singh promised to send it coming Sunday morning via his Assistant, Sahib Singh, a lean and emaciated guy...POSITIVELY...han han jee positively...
Next Sunday, N had to travel to his F-i-L's place in Cal and asked me to wait for Sahib Singh and his Table at his Qrs.
And I sat in his verandah from 8 AM to Noon and was waiting patiently like those eunuchs by the Sarayu waiting for Raam's return:
http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?tag=eunuch
Finally, I saw Sahib Singh walking by and stood up and invited him in, saying THIS is Prof N's Qrs; and asking him where his thela gadi is.
Sahib Singh stood transfixed and bewildered and was humming and hawing and I was getting impatient.
After five minutes of banging him for his late empty-handed arrival, I discovered that he was not THE Sahib Singh of Jaswant Cabinet Mart, but was an employee of the Accounts Section of IIT KGP going late, very late, to his duties and trying to find an excuse for his late-coming, and wasn't quite following where the Dining Table came in...
Turned out that THIS Saheb Singh was perennially high and confused...
Dining Table came in the evening...
============================================================================
The canonical mixup is that of the Papal Bull {;-}
Ishwar, the Lord God, inspected Brahma's Creation and noticed that the inhabitants of the Earth are dirty and grimy and obese. So, he called Nandi, his Big Bull, and asked him to go down and proclaim His G.O.:
"Everyone of you chaps will henceforth take bath thrice everyday and eat once a week".
Nandi must have been preoccupied with whatever fascinates bulls and proclaimed:
"Ishwar orders that everyone of you will henceforth eat thrice a day and take bath once a week"
Ishwar gets to know Nandi's goofup and asks him, as a recompense, to go forth down below and procreate millions of his kind so they can all till the land by the sweat of their brow to feed all the greedy earthlings. So, Nehrujee got to choose 'Two Bulls on a Yoke' as his Election Symbol.
Dasarath had this benighted gift called Shabdavedhi: he could hunt blind without looking. So, he aimed his arrow at what he thought was an elephant gurgling in a stream and shot and killed him, a thorough mixup, since it happened to be the kid Sravan Kumar filling his pot with water; and his mother cursed Dasarath appropriately.
His son Raam enticed Sugriv to go forth and challenge Vali for a duel promising him that He would kill Vali shooting His arrow hiding behind a tree...it turned out that Vali and Sugriv looked so alike that Raam was confused and avoided a costly goofup at the last minute.
Duryodhan was invited to have a look at the heavenly interior decor of Maya Sabha, not telling him that it was a palace of mirrors. He lifted his dhoti to clear a pool of water where there was none...a costly mirage as it turned out for Pandavas.
Columbus thought he discovered a new sea route to India...everyone then wanted trade with India...like Pakistan does now under the influence of their charming FM.
Berzelius was a very renowned Chemist, known as the Father of Chemistry in Sweden...but first we heard of him in our Class XII was of his goofup between atoms and molecules.
Bombarding Uranium with neutrons was supposed to give at worst Radium...but what a mixup! The lady Physicist Lise Meitner saw that what she got was not Radium but Barium...and discovered Nuclear Fission, ahem, but it was her Chemistry Guide Otto Hahn that walked away with the Nobel...big goofup there; and as a belated recompense for the Jewish woman's travails we have Meitnerium now...goru mere juto daan...
Prof VS got a telegram that his father is dead and was summoned to VZM from KGP. He returned after three days and explained that it was not his father but uncle; the wire read:
"Father expired start immediately...moorthy"
Prof AC came down to our place with sweets saying that his wife had a safe delivery and got a darling daughter...like Ishani.
He and his Mrs returned to KGP with a bonny boy; his telegram had read:
"Usha normal delivery mother and baby safe...ramu"
Baby vs Babu!
Soon after he got married, my friend N took me to the Jaswant Cabinet Mart in Gole Bazaar:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/10/woodpeckers-1.html
And ordered a Dining Table and he was in a hurry to get it made and delivered at his Qrs as a surprise gift to his brand new wife. Jaswant Singh promised to send it coming Sunday morning via his Assistant, Sahib Singh, a lean and emaciated guy...POSITIVELY...han han jee positively...
Next Sunday, N had to travel to his F-i-L's place in Cal and asked me to wait for Sahib Singh and his Table at his Qrs.
And I sat in his verandah from 8 AM to Noon and was waiting patiently like those eunuchs by the Sarayu waiting for Raam's return:
http://www.shadowsandsymbols.org/?tag=eunuch
Finally, I saw Sahib Singh walking by and stood up and invited him in, saying THIS is Prof N's Qrs; and asking him where his thela gadi is.
Sahib Singh stood transfixed and bewildered and was humming and hawing and I was getting impatient.
After five minutes of banging him for his late empty-handed arrival, I discovered that he was not THE Sahib Singh of Jaswant Cabinet Mart, but was an employee of the Accounts Section of IIT KGP going late, very late, to his duties and trying to find an excuse for his late-coming, and wasn't quite following where the Dining Table came in...
Turned out that THIS Saheb Singh was perennially high and confused...
Dining Table came in the evening...
============================================================================
Friday, November 18, 2011
Gole Bazaar 1960s - Railway Gardens
===========================================================================
After the Mughal Empire and then the British Empire vanished like so many flakes of snow, there is only one Empire surviving here: Indian Railways. For, it is a Central Government monolith crisscrossing the entire country and uniting it, sort of. It has resisted all talk of privatization. And the Ministry of Railways is a coveted portfolio sought after by as diverse persona as Lalu and Didi. It has its Colonial Romance intact, including the Coal Mafia and Wagon-Breakia. Yet they are as much part of its body politic as our own wisdom teeth and appendix...
The quaint charm of trains didn't escape great artists like Mark Twain and Satyajit Ray. My best moments have always been associated with trains...not that I got my bride on a train journey as I hear many do nowadays...but, having to travel days on end alone between Gudur and KGP, those were the hours of woolgathering and settling many pending issues of life and, yes, death...as the train chugged through Palasa and passed within arm's length of Chilka Lake.
I haven't traveled in a ship on high seas...which is said to be the most boring thing...although C V Raman and his nephew S Chandrasekhar settled many path-breaking issues of Physics while on the high seas. But I did travel for a couple of hours each by Indian Airlines, Jet Airways, Kingfisher (now less of a King and more like fishy) and IndiGo. Well, it is most boring...no landmarks at all. I wonder how my son travels 15 hours at a stretch on his Trans-Atlantic flights...he says he sleeps.
For one like me who lived in a Railway Town like KGP for all those decades, the Railways sort of rub off. And to add fuel to the fire, my wife hails from a Railways Family and to hear her talk on the wedding night of all those charming towns called Wardha, Manmad, Bhusaval and Jalgaon added to the romance (not to speak of the kachoris of Shegaon...they are real good). And when my friend in the Army Medical Corps talked of the Kamrup Express passing through Duliajan and Tinsukhia, they sounded like Timbuktu and Tipperary.
When I was 8 my eldest cousin posted at Calcutta and working in the GSI spoke of Kalka Mail as the fastest in the country. I thought he was bluffing and boasting. But the other day the great Sunanda Datta-Ray (of my Statesman years) wrote nostalgically about his father taking him along in the Kalka Mail...I knew its grandeur was something unparalleled by today's Rajdhanis and Palaces on Wheels.
Well, since money was never a problem with Indian Railways (the GoI prints it), there was this fabulous Railway Gardens on a loop line from IIT to Gole Bazaar. I recall taking my son there in the front basket of my pushbike on our winter picnics. Huge place full of all kinds of winter flowers tended with love and care by an old gardener who became our friend. I don't know if it survives still.
On our way there, we cross so many red-bricked mansions of the Colonial Raj. The British knew how to live in this sun-baked subcontinent. Those bungalows had super-high sloping ceilings and a verandah that runs all the way 270 degrees arc in front of it. I was inside one of them once and it was awe-inspiring.
At our own IIT, there is this Old Building which housed our freedom fighters of the Hijli Jail, with its cells, single, double and solitary...I taught Electrodynamics for third years in one of those cells much later. Apart from it, there was only one Raj Building which was the mansion of the Jailer and his family. This was converted into our Faculty Club during my heydays where I read Time and Newsweek, played TT, Carroms, and Tambola. This building was later annexed by the KV School, and last I saw, it was teeming with kids...the Jailor's soul blessing them.
Every Director of IIT KGP left his mark. S R Sengupta with all those PAN Halls which, with their huge verandahs looked so cool. Brigadier Bose erected the OAT, now TOAT after Tagore, but we used to call it BOAT after Brig Bose. He also cleared the jungle within the Main Building as you entered the Main Gate and got most species of roses planted there and tended them. We used to call it the Bose Garden. Shankar Lal built the famous Technology Guest House as an Annexe to his Director's Bungalow. GSS wanted a clone of the Powai Lake and refurbished the Gymkhana Lake with a Mini-Howrah Bridge spanning the lake into the greenery which he converted into a mini-zoo housing several species of birds. KLC laid the Bypass Road and converted the Old Building Ground Floor into the Nehru Museum. AB brought his IITK ideas and implanted them as the fabulous Vikramsila-Takhasila Complex where I taught the Jumbo Physics Class in my last semester at IIT. Rest is silence as far as my ignorance goes...
Well, I love gardens; provided someone else lays and maintains them...they are such a headache.
Hyderabad has its Public Gardens like Delhi has its Mughal thing. Bangalore used to be called the City of Gardens before the IT Revolution.
Everything has its flip side as Jerome put it when the mom-in-law died but they came down for the funeral expenses.
Every City of Gardens has its curse...it is called Asthma. Several of my friends had to quit Bangalore on account of it; and KGP as well...
===========================================================================
After the Mughal Empire and then the British Empire vanished like so many flakes of snow, there is only one Empire surviving here: Indian Railways. For, it is a Central Government monolith crisscrossing the entire country and uniting it, sort of. It has resisted all talk of privatization. And the Ministry of Railways is a coveted portfolio sought after by as diverse persona as Lalu and Didi. It has its Colonial Romance intact, including the Coal Mafia and Wagon-Breakia. Yet they are as much part of its body politic as our own wisdom teeth and appendix...
The quaint charm of trains didn't escape great artists like Mark Twain and Satyajit Ray. My best moments have always been associated with trains...not that I got my bride on a train journey as I hear many do nowadays...but, having to travel days on end alone between Gudur and KGP, those were the hours of woolgathering and settling many pending issues of life and, yes, death...as the train chugged through Palasa and passed within arm's length of Chilka Lake.
I haven't traveled in a ship on high seas...which is said to be the most boring thing...although C V Raman and his nephew S Chandrasekhar settled many path-breaking issues of Physics while on the high seas. But I did travel for a couple of hours each by Indian Airlines, Jet Airways, Kingfisher (now less of a King and more like fishy) and IndiGo. Well, it is most boring...no landmarks at all. I wonder how my son travels 15 hours at a stretch on his Trans-Atlantic flights...he says he sleeps.
For one like me who lived in a Railway Town like KGP for all those decades, the Railways sort of rub off. And to add fuel to the fire, my wife hails from a Railways Family and to hear her talk on the wedding night of all those charming towns called Wardha, Manmad, Bhusaval and Jalgaon added to the romance (not to speak of the kachoris of Shegaon...they are real good). And when my friend in the Army Medical Corps talked of the Kamrup Express passing through Duliajan and Tinsukhia, they sounded like Timbuktu and Tipperary.
When I was 8 my eldest cousin posted at Calcutta and working in the GSI spoke of Kalka Mail as the fastest in the country. I thought he was bluffing and boasting. But the other day the great Sunanda Datta-Ray (of my Statesman years) wrote nostalgically about his father taking him along in the Kalka Mail...I knew its grandeur was something unparalleled by today's Rajdhanis and Palaces on Wheels.
Well, since money was never a problem with Indian Railways (the GoI prints it), there was this fabulous Railway Gardens on a loop line from IIT to Gole Bazaar. I recall taking my son there in the front basket of my pushbike on our winter picnics. Huge place full of all kinds of winter flowers tended with love and care by an old gardener who became our friend. I don't know if it survives still.
On our way there, we cross so many red-bricked mansions of the Colonial Raj. The British knew how to live in this sun-baked subcontinent. Those bungalows had super-high sloping ceilings and a verandah that runs all the way 270 degrees arc in front of it. I was inside one of them once and it was awe-inspiring.
At our own IIT, there is this Old Building which housed our freedom fighters of the Hijli Jail, with its cells, single, double and solitary...I taught Electrodynamics for third years in one of those cells much later. Apart from it, there was only one Raj Building which was the mansion of the Jailer and his family. This was converted into our Faculty Club during my heydays where I read Time and Newsweek, played TT, Carroms, and Tambola. This building was later annexed by the KV School, and last I saw, it was teeming with kids...the Jailor's soul blessing them.
Every Director of IIT KGP left his mark. S R Sengupta with all those PAN Halls which, with their huge verandahs looked so cool. Brigadier Bose erected the OAT, now TOAT after Tagore, but we used to call it BOAT after Brig Bose. He also cleared the jungle within the Main Building as you entered the Main Gate and got most species of roses planted there and tended them. We used to call it the Bose Garden. Shankar Lal built the famous Technology Guest House as an Annexe to his Director's Bungalow. GSS wanted a clone of the Powai Lake and refurbished the Gymkhana Lake with a Mini-Howrah Bridge spanning the lake into the greenery which he converted into a mini-zoo housing several species of birds. KLC laid the Bypass Road and converted the Old Building Ground Floor into the Nehru Museum. AB brought his IITK ideas and implanted them as the fabulous Vikramsila-Takhasila Complex where I taught the Jumbo Physics Class in my last semester at IIT. Rest is silence as far as my ignorance goes...
Well, I love gardens; provided someone else lays and maintains them...they are such a headache.
Hyderabad has its Public Gardens like Delhi has its Mughal thing. Bangalore used to be called the City of Gardens before the IT Revolution.
Everything has its flip side as Jerome put it when the mom-in-law died but they came down for the funeral expenses.
Every City of Gardens has its curse...it is called Asthma. Several of my friends had to quit Bangalore on account of it; and KGP as well...
===========================================================================
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Gole Bazaar 1960s - Printers
===========================================================================
There was only one Printing Press in Gole Bazaar in the 1960s and my friend N used to crack that it looked very like that of John Gutenberg (AD 1400 vintage). It was in a line parallel to the High Street. And I guess it used to print wedding cards and Railway Brochures.
There was another in Chota Tengra within the precincts of the Chaitanyashram run by its Swamijees.
Printing and Religion always had a symbiotic existence. The biggest thing Gutenberg did soon after inventing his Printing Press, the Mother of all Presses till HP took over, was to print cheap and easy-to-read read Bibles. Prior to that, I guess, all the available Bibles were handcrafted, elaborately calligraphed, and highly decorated prize possessions. Printing on an industrial scale effectively democratized Religion.
My Father graduated from the prestigious Christian College at Madras in the 1930s. There was this lovely Studio Photo of him with a Parchment Degree Certificate (unlike the imitation thing that IIT KGP fobbed off on me), gown and hood, and looking furiously celebratory. And, to go with the Degree, his College gave him a wonderfully printed and bound gilt-edged Holy Bible with which I used to play. Its papers were thin but glossy and RKN would have loved it...maybe he too got one.
I too got one along with my Degree Certificate from my AU at Vizagh. But by then there must have been a funds crunch and an explosion of Degrees and my copy of the Pocket Bible didn't last long. But I also got a free Pocket English Gita printed at the Advaitashrama at Mayawati, Almora, founded by the Western disciples of Swami Vivekananda in 1899:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Ashrama
That was the first Gita I read. A lovely Gita in Telugu script, printed by the Ramakrishna Mutt at Mylapore, Madras, gifted to me by my mom, is still with me well-flipped yet in good condition. There is a sprawling RK Mission in Hyderabad too at Indira Park. It has a very good Bookshop which I visit often to buy copies of another fabulously printed Collection of Vedic Hymns in Telugu script with meanings. I buy, off and on, several copies of it because whoever visits me (of my senile age) picks up a copy and filches it. The book itself costs me only Rs 35 (highly subsidized) but I get it rexine-bound gorgeously and the visitors love the binding more than the text {;-}. I myself use my original paperback. There is a lesson there...paperbacks are good for reading and rereading while rexine-bounds are good for display and preservation...binding spoils the fun of reading.
My treasure-trove (as Supratim puts it) of Ishani-set of 4 booklets of gul tales is almost depleted. So, I got 5 xeroxed and rexine-bound sets meant for Ishani when she grows up enough to show off.
Coming back to the Chaitanyashram Press, I recall going there along with my friend N to get my wedding cards printed. The Press was manned by a taciturn and gloomy technician. I think the whole job of setting manually each and every letter on their lead heads, arranging them in a frame, taking the proofs and correcting them, inking the drum and feeding papers one by one and cleaning blotches of KGP sweat, and facing irate customers who make corrections after the proofs and refuse to pay for them...the whole routine must be vexatious enough to make even a Sadhu revolt.
The only fun we had at that encounter was with the newly joined Clerk who was supposed to do the billing and maintaining the Cash Register. After we paid cash and asked for a Receipt, he wrote it up in his Bill Book with his ball pen on a top page with a carbon paper inserted beneath it. And when he tore it off, it was great fun to watch his face...the Carbon Copy turned out to be as blank as the Answer Script of my son's mid-term math paper in his first semester (as he says). And the Clerk was turning it over and over till my friend pointed out that the Original on which he wrote had an extra copy on its reverse...as a mirror image. The whole thing was mystifying to him till my friend showed him that he inserted the carbon paper the wrong way round.
And he was a sight to watch...it was as if Watson finally understood that the gleaming Hound of the Baskervilles was only an enhanced version using the science of luminescence:
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Ghost-BlackDog.jpg/300px-Ghost-BlackDog.jpg&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hound_of_the_Baskervilles&h=234&w=300&sz=4&tbnid=vxhwbKfWp7_OHM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=115&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhound%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bbaskervilles%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=hound+of+the+baskervilles&docid=jA0oYWgGynIHGM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uBzFTpLhHoLxrQeu6YThCw&ved=0CEEQ9QEwAg&dur=31
Well, our IIT too had its own captive Printing Press in the backyard of the Old Building. I suppose it was used to print our Annual Reports and the Scientific Journals brought out by some Departments...I recall the AgE had her own monthly Journal. But as time progressed, it was found that getting things printed by Ashrams turned out to be cheaper and better for the IIT and so our Press went on to prove the Theory of Use and Disuse till Professor A K Gayen of the Math Department went to Cambridge where he learned the latest Printing Technology of the hoary Cambridge University Press (in which the Reprints of my PRS Papers were printed) and tried implementing it in our Press...but you know how tough that sort of a thing is....teaching new tricks...
But soon our Desktop thing appeared and my Laser Booklet published by the Nehru Museum got printed there...sort of.
Hi-tech printing never looked back and today I watched with great pleasure photos of Obama smooching Hu Jinatao on the front page of ToI...
Good News! Amitjee is blessed with his own Ishani and must be as pleased as gps...we are the same age...
============================================================================
There was only one Printing Press in Gole Bazaar in the 1960s and my friend N used to crack that it looked very like that of John Gutenberg (AD 1400 vintage). It was in a line parallel to the High Street. And I guess it used to print wedding cards and Railway Brochures.
There was another in Chota Tengra within the precincts of the Chaitanyashram run by its Swamijees.
Printing and Religion always had a symbiotic existence. The biggest thing Gutenberg did soon after inventing his Printing Press, the Mother of all Presses till HP took over, was to print cheap and easy-to-read read Bibles. Prior to that, I guess, all the available Bibles were handcrafted, elaborately calligraphed, and highly decorated prize possessions. Printing on an industrial scale effectively democratized Religion.
My Father graduated from the prestigious Christian College at Madras in the 1930s. There was this lovely Studio Photo of him with a Parchment Degree Certificate (unlike the imitation thing that IIT KGP fobbed off on me), gown and hood, and looking furiously celebratory. And, to go with the Degree, his College gave him a wonderfully printed and bound gilt-edged Holy Bible with which I used to play. Its papers were thin but glossy and RKN would have loved it...maybe he too got one.
I too got one along with my Degree Certificate from my AU at Vizagh. But by then there must have been a funds crunch and an explosion of Degrees and my copy of the Pocket Bible didn't last long. But I also got a free Pocket English Gita printed at the Advaitashrama at Mayawati, Almora, founded by the Western disciples of Swami Vivekananda in 1899:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Ashrama
That was the first Gita I read. A lovely Gita in Telugu script, printed by the Ramakrishna Mutt at Mylapore, Madras, gifted to me by my mom, is still with me well-flipped yet in good condition. There is a sprawling RK Mission in Hyderabad too at Indira Park. It has a very good Bookshop which I visit often to buy copies of another fabulously printed Collection of Vedic Hymns in Telugu script with meanings. I buy, off and on, several copies of it because whoever visits me (of my senile age) picks up a copy and filches it. The book itself costs me only Rs 35 (highly subsidized) but I get it rexine-bound gorgeously and the visitors love the binding more than the text {;-}. I myself use my original paperback. There is a lesson there...paperbacks are good for reading and rereading while rexine-bounds are good for display and preservation...binding spoils the fun of reading.
My treasure-trove (as Supratim puts it) of Ishani-set of 4 booklets of gul tales is almost depleted. So, I got 5 xeroxed and rexine-bound sets meant for Ishani when she grows up enough to show off.
Coming back to the Chaitanyashram Press, I recall going there along with my friend N to get my wedding cards printed. The Press was manned by a taciturn and gloomy technician. I think the whole job of setting manually each and every letter on their lead heads, arranging them in a frame, taking the proofs and correcting them, inking the drum and feeding papers one by one and cleaning blotches of KGP sweat, and facing irate customers who make corrections after the proofs and refuse to pay for them...the whole routine must be vexatious enough to make even a Sadhu revolt.
The only fun we had at that encounter was with the newly joined Clerk who was supposed to do the billing and maintaining the Cash Register. After we paid cash and asked for a Receipt, he wrote it up in his Bill Book with his ball pen on a top page with a carbon paper inserted beneath it. And when he tore it off, it was great fun to watch his face...the Carbon Copy turned out to be as blank as the Answer Script of my son's mid-term math paper in his first semester (as he says). And the Clerk was turning it over and over till my friend pointed out that the Original on which he wrote had an extra copy on its reverse...as a mirror image. The whole thing was mystifying to him till my friend showed him that he inserted the carbon paper the wrong way round.
And he was a sight to watch...it was as if Watson finally understood that the gleaming Hound of the Baskervilles was only an enhanced version using the science of luminescence:
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Ghost-BlackDog.jpg/300px-Ghost-BlackDog.jpg&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hound_of_the_Baskervilles&h=234&w=300&sz=4&tbnid=vxhwbKfWp7_OHM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=115&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhound%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bbaskervilles%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=hound+of+the+baskervilles&docid=jA0oYWgGynIHGM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uBzFTpLhHoLxrQeu6YThCw&ved=0CEEQ9QEwAg&dur=31
Well, our IIT too had its own captive Printing Press in the backyard of the Old Building. I suppose it was used to print our Annual Reports and the Scientific Journals brought out by some Departments...I recall the AgE had her own monthly Journal. But as time progressed, it was found that getting things printed by Ashrams turned out to be cheaper and better for the IIT and so our Press went on to prove the Theory of Use and Disuse till Professor A K Gayen of the Math Department went to Cambridge where he learned the latest Printing Technology of the hoary Cambridge University Press (in which the Reprints of my PRS Papers were printed) and tried implementing it in our Press...but you know how tough that sort of a thing is....teaching new tricks...
But soon our Desktop thing appeared and my Laser Booklet published by the Nehru Museum got printed there...sort of.
Hi-tech printing never looked back and today I watched with great pleasure photos of Obama smooching Hu Jinatao on the front page of ToI...
Good News! Amitjee is blessed with his own Ishani and must be as pleased as gps...we are the same age...
============================================================================
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Gole Bazaar 1960s - South Institute
===========================================================================
On your way to Gole Bazaar you would find a handsome maidan enclosing a two-story building of British vintage called South Institute. It was at the peak of its glory, such as it is, in the 1960s. And its exclusiveness declined steadily along with the decline of another charming institution called Anglo-Indian Community.
To me, Anglo-Indians associate and identify themselves with the Great Indian Railways of the Steam Engine Era. And, as the steam loco, along with its romance, slowly but steadily vanished like the Cheshire Cat, so did its Anglo-Indian Drivers and Coalmen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoPmVEXoAEc
When I was just about 5, I happened to visit our Uncle's new home in Nellore which was a stone's throw from the Madras-Howarh single-track line with signal posts with wooden arms provided with kerosene lamp holders and red and green glasses covering them. And one of them was just across our place. Mail and Express trains hooted and tooted and sped at a terrific speed since Nellore was then too small a station for them to halt. And they had those Canadian Engines which didn't exactly whistle but sort of brayed like a donkey. And by the time we rushed, they vanished from our sight.
But not the Goods Trains. They heaved and huffed and puffed and lugged and chugged and cranked to a screeching halt a yard or so before the signal tower. And as we ran and climbed the embankment to have a closer look, the Driver would spot us and wave to us cheerfully and throw a stick or two of grease as prizes and mementos. The Driver almost always had an exotic complexion and a 'way' of speaking to us quite unlike what we were used to...he was speaking Anglo-Indian, a special variant of English with a typical accent and style. And as the signal fell and he pulled the wire and tooted, we all stood transfixed. Mark Twain wrote that every kid in his childhood along the Mississippi had only one dream: to become the pilot of a steam boat...and if they behaved well and be good boys, God would make them pirates by and by. So did most of us talk about becoming a Steam Loco Driver.
Coming back to the Railway Town of KGP, it used to teem with cute Anglo-Indian families then...menfolk working in the Railways and their ladies as teachers of English in the many Convent Schools around. And South Institute was their meeting place. Its Cub House had an Auditorium with a stage. And it was used as their Dancing Hall on festive occasions and weddings and the many gala Fairs.
And as time passed it was used more and more as a make-shift cinema hall. And we used to buy tickets in the morning for the Evening Show and make a Party of it...the first floor had a small cafeteria where drinks of the right variety were served ceremoniously. All in all, a different weekend outing than watching the drab and cheap movies brought by the TFS in the Netajee.
And the ground floor of South Institute had a grand Barber Shop...compared to the dirty and lousy ones housed in the IIT Campus and manned by amateurs. I recall once my wife inspected my hairdo from a distance and asked me not to enter the house but get back and 'correct' my haircut at once before it is too late and the shop closes...apparently the job done by the IIT Barber kid was like Beta Decay...there was a gross parity violation.
On the other hand, the shop in the South Institute had swivel-chairs of adjustable height with plush cushions revolving glitch-free and had huge mirrors on opposite sides and had sprays and scents and foams and the works. It was a luxury which we looked forward to...though the chap charged double for his aambiance which included a radiogram with a choice of music like the jukeboxes of Madras that my Father used to reminisce.
My friend NCLN Chari, an orthodox Vaishnavite Brahmin, had a skin infection that BCR tried to cure and succeeded in aggravating. So, he consulted the Skin Specialist in the BNR Hospital. The Doc gave him a prescription and asked NCLN to visit him in the South Institute Auditorium that evening. We two drove down on our pushbikes and I was waiting upstairs while he went into the Auditorium. And the wait was getting longer by the minute and ultimately NCLN joined me after a good hour. And was describing what went on...apparently a Christian Prayer Meeting was on and the Skin Doc was leading it. And after half an hour, NCLN was called up the stage and the entire gathering rose and prayed for a good ten minutes for a quick recovery of the 'esteemed IIT Patient'.
And I asked him if the several Hallelujahs I heard were part of it and he blushed and stammered yes...indeed.
Two-in-One therapy...
=============================================================================
On your way to Gole Bazaar you would find a handsome maidan enclosing a two-story building of British vintage called South Institute. It was at the peak of its glory, such as it is, in the 1960s. And its exclusiveness declined steadily along with the decline of another charming institution called Anglo-Indian Community.
To me, Anglo-Indians associate and identify themselves with the Great Indian Railways of the Steam Engine Era. And, as the steam loco, along with its romance, slowly but steadily vanished like the Cheshire Cat, so did its Anglo-Indian Drivers and Coalmen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoPmVEXoAEc
When I was just about 5, I happened to visit our Uncle's new home in Nellore which was a stone's throw from the Madras-Howarh single-track line with signal posts with wooden arms provided with kerosene lamp holders and red and green glasses covering them. And one of them was just across our place. Mail and Express trains hooted and tooted and sped at a terrific speed since Nellore was then too small a station for them to halt. And they had those Canadian Engines which didn't exactly whistle but sort of brayed like a donkey. And by the time we rushed, they vanished from our sight.
But not the Goods Trains. They heaved and huffed and puffed and lugged and chugged and cranked to a screeching halt a yard or so before the signal tower. And as we ran and climbed the embankment to have a closer look, the Driver would spot us and wave to us cheerfully and throw a stick or two of grease as prizes and mementos. The Driver almost always had an exotic complexion and a 'way' of speaking to us quite unlike what we were used to...he was speaking Anglo-Indian, a special variant of English with a typical accent and style. And as the signal fell and he pulled the wire and tooted, we all stood transfixed. Mark Twain wrote that every kid in his childhood along the Mississippi had only one dream: to become the pilot of a steam boat...and if they behaved well and be good boys, God would make them pirates by and by. So did most of us talk about becoming a Steam Loco Driver.
Coming back to the Railway Town of KGP, it used to teem with cute Anglo-Indian families then...menfolk working in the Railways and their ladies as teachers of English in the many Convent Schools around. And South Institute was their meeting place. Its Cub House had an Auditorium with a stage. And it was used as their Dancing Hall on festive occasions and weddings and the many gala Fairs.
And as time passed it was used more and more as a make-shift cinema hall. And we used to buy tickets in the morning for the Evening Show and make a Party of it...the first floor had a small cafeteria where drinks of the right variety were served ceremoniously. All in all, a different weekend outing than watching the drab and cheap movies brought by the TFS in the Netajee.
And the ground floor of South Institute had a grand Barber Shop...compared to the dirty and lousy ones housed in the IIT Campus and manned by amateurs. I recall once my wife inspected my hairdo from a distance and asked me not to enter the house but get back and 'correct' my haircut at once before it is too late and the shop closes...apparently the job done by the IIT Barber kid was like Beta Decay...there was a gross parity violation.
On the other hand, the shop in the South Institute had swivel-chairs of adjustable height with plush cushions revolving glitch-free and had huge mirrors on opposite sides and had sprays and scents and foams and the works. It was a luxury which we looked forward to...though the chap charged double for his aambiance which included a radiogram with a choice of music like the jukeboxes of Madras that my Father used to reminisce.
My friend NCLN Chari, an orthodox Vaishnavite Brahmin, had a skin infection that BCR tried to cure and succeeded in aggravating. So, he consulted the Skin Specialist in the BNR Hospital. The Doc gave him a prescription and asked NCLN to visit him in the South Institute Auditorium that evening. We two drove down on our pushbikes and I was waiting upstairs while he went into the Auditorium. And the wait was getting longer by the minute and ultimately NCLN joined me after a good hour. And was describing what went on...apparently a Christian Prayer Meeting was on and the Skin Doc was leading it. And after half an hour, NCLN was called up the stage and the entire gathering rose and prayed for a good ten minutes for a quick recovery of the 'esteemed IIT Patient'.
And I asked him if the several Hallelujahs I heard were part of it and he blushed and stammered yes...indeed.
Two-in-One therapy...
=============================================================================
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Gole Bazaar 1960s - Kamal Sports
===========================================================================
Those days there was only one sports goods shop in Gole Bazaar called Kamal Sports. It was in the line of the GOG Fancy Shop. The Owner was a good-looking Sardarjee, pleasant to talk to. He had a toddler son who I thought was so lucky to have the pick of whatever he wanted to play or fiddle with.
This is rather a thought. I can't say that a Bookseller's son would happily read all the books of his dad's shop for free. Rather not...he would possibly envy the Nair Canteen's son.
Well, Nair had several kids and the eldest was a poor eater since he was a diabetic. He used to look after the kitchen and must have been happy just smelling the Dosa, Pesarat and Sambar (like me nowadays). The youngest kid about 8 liked to pretend that he was a Customer. As soon as his dad drops him back from school, he would run to the back row of tables and order: "Ek Masala Dosa! Kam mircha jyada ghee aur piyaj!" and wait ceremoniously for his order to materialize. I hear he is now in Dubai with a thriving business.
When my son duly arrived, I used to seat him in the front basket of my pushbike and drive to Gole Bazaar to the only toy shop manned by a very cheerful Gujerati couple. They used to take him in their lap and show him the latest arrivals with demos and we would settle on one toy per week. And the couple were always having one or more infants and toddlers sitting on their lap. And I used to think what a lark it is for the kids of toy-shop owners. One day after a decade I asked them how many kids they have. And that was a foolish thing I rarely do...ask a leading question. And I bit my tongue furiously when they replied rather sportingly that they are childless and the kids that used to run around were their neighbors'.
Kamal Sports Sardarjee used to supply carrom boards to all the Halls. Those days the craze was the so-called Match Boards. They were huge and had big pockets, not round circles but sort of arcs of a big circle. And the boards were so smooth that if you hit the striker powerfully, it would rebound, ricochet and weave a pattern of straight line designs very nice to watch. And would scatter all coins along their way.
I knew that Bridge is a passionate game with lots of postmortem and acrimony between partners. But I never thought Carroms could also have fanatic devotees. There was one Dr P in our Faculty Hostel who possessed a rare variety of striker made of I don't know what material; could be ivory. He would always carry that striker in his pant-pocket ready for any game that he would chance by. And he would never ever allow anyone else, including his partner, to touch it. Then there was this other Dr G who would buy a huge big tin of costly Boric Acid powder (used as a high-class lubricant on the board...the janata had to do with the poor man's Chalk Powder which is as sticky as Colgate Tooth Powder). Dr G would pour a little of his Boric Acid in a homeopathy tube and bring it to the Common Room. And would pull it out only when he plays the Game; and would take the tube back as soon as he is done. And there was this Dr N who had a fancy set of coins in a tin; and he would never leave it in the Common Room...he would carry it back home.
Crazy guys!
There was this Common Room Incident that became a tale told and retold many times:
This brash Punju Dr P learned a few gaalis (juicy oaths) in Kannada from his friend. And came one day to the Common Room to play a Singles Carrom Match with this gentlest Mysorean Dr M. And as the game proceeded with a dozen onlookers, Dr P would utter one vile Kannada oath after the other as and when he plays and misses. Dr M gently asked him not to say these things because they are vulgar and distract his concentration. But Punjus being used to such bawdy oaths, Dr P didn't care.
After the fourth or fifth offense, Dr M lost his cool and got up and uttered one and only one vile Punju gali aimed at Dr P, who got up from his seat and in a couple of seconds they were at each others' throat and about to come to blows.
Upon which, this Bengali Dr B ran in and tried to separate them with all his might.
Upon which this wily Keralite Dr K ran in and pulled Dr B with all his might scolding him:
"What the hell are you doing? I was waiting and waiting to watch some real good fight in this God-forsaken Hostel for TWO years; and when God ultimately granted me my boon, you try and spoil the tamasha. Let go, or I will kill you!"
End of fights...
============================================================================
Those days there was only one sports goods shop in Gole Bazaar called Kamal Sports. It was in the line of the GOG Fancy Shop. The Owner was a good-looking Sardarjee, pleasant to talk to. He had a toddler son who I thought was so lucky to have the pick of whatever he wanted to play or fiddle with.
This is rather a thought. I can't say that a Bookseller's son would happily read all the books of his dad's shop for free. Rather not...he would possibly envy the Nair Canteen's son.
Well, Nair had several kids and the eldest was a poor eater since he was a diabetic. He used to look after the kitchen and must have been happy just smelling the Dosa, Pesarat and Sambar (like me nowadays). The youngest kid about 8 liked to pretend that he was a Customer. As soon as his dad drops him back from school, he would run to the back row of tables and order: "Ek Masala Dosa! Kam mircha jyada ghee aur piyaj!" and wait ceremoniously for his order to materialize. I hear he is now in Dubai with a thriving business.
When my son duly arrived, I used to seat him in the front basket of my pushbike and drive to Gole Bazaar to the only toy shop manned by a very cheerful Gujerati couple. They used to take him in their lap and show him the latest arrivals with demos and we would settle on one toy per week. And the couple were always having one or more infants and toddlers sitting on their lap. And I used to think what a lark it is for the kids of toy-shop owners. One day after a decade I asked them how many kids they have. And that was a foolish thing I rarely do...ask a leading question. And I bit my tongue furiously when they replied rather sportingly that they are childless and the kids that used to run around were their neighbors'.
Kamal Sports Sardarjee used to supply carrom boards to all the Halls. Those days the craze was the so-called Match Boards. They were huge and had big pockets, not round circles but sort of arcs of a big circle. And the boards were so smooth that if you hit the striker powerfully, it would rebound, ricochet and weave a pattern of straight line designs very nice to watch. And would scatter all coins along their way.
I knew that Bridge is a passionate game with lots of postmortem and acrimony between partners. But I never thought Carroms could also have fanatic devotees. There was one Dr P in our Faculty Hostel who possessed a rare variety of striker made of I don't know what material; could be ivory. He would always carry that striker in his pant-pocket ready for any game that he would chance by. And he would never ever allow anyone else, including his partner, to touch it. Then there was this other Dr G who would buy a huge big tin of costly Boric Acid powder (used as a high-class lubricant on the board...the janata had to do with the poor man's Chalk Powder which is as sticky as Colgate Tooth Powder). Dr G would pour a little of his Boric Acid in a homeopathy tube and bring it to the Common Room. And would pull it out only when he plays the Game; and would take the tube back as soon as he is done. And there was this Dr N who had a fancy set of coins in a tin; and he would never leave it in the Common Room...he would carry it back home.
Crazy guys!
There was this Common Room Incident that became a tale told and retold many times:
This brash Punju Dr P learned a few gaalis (juicy oaths) in Kannada from his friend. And came one day to the Common Room to play a Singles Carrom Match with this gentlest Mysorean Dr M. And as the game proceeded with a dozen onlookers, Dr P would utter one vile Kannada oath after the other as and when he plays and misses. Dr M gently asked him not to say these things because they are vulgar and distract his concentration. But Punjus being used to such bawdy oaths, Dr P didn't care.
After the fourth or fifth offense, Dr M lost his cool and got up and uttered one and only one vile Punju gali aimed at Dr P, who got up from his seat and in a couple of seconds they were at each others' throat and about to come to blows.
Upon which, this Bengali Dr B ran in and tried to separate them with all his might.
Upon which this wily Keralite Dr K ran in and pulled Dr B with all his might scolding him:
"What the hell are you doing? I was waiting and waiting to watch some real good fight in this God-forsaken Hostel for TWO years; and when God ultimately granted me my boon, you try and spoil the tamasha. Let go, or I will kill you!"
End of fights...
============================================================================
Monday, November 14, 2011
Gole Bazaar 1960s - Medicine Men
==========================================================================
As you hit the T-Junction you will see a series of Medial Shops on the Bombay-Calcutta Loop. And these will be of all '-pathies', homeo, naturo, kaviraji, unani, and allo.
We were hearing about Dabur then. And the canonical quiz question was: "What does Dabur mean?"
Well, Dr S K Burman did Bengal proud for over a century. His Chyavanpras and Honey are household names in South India. And I guess Dabur has diversified into several products...the latest being Red Toothpaste and Beauty & Health Care. Yesterday there was an interview in DC with the fourth generation Burman, Amit.
Bengalis (including me) love low-cost non-invasive health care...the intervention shouldn't worsen the disease. I guess it is part of the Hippocratic Oath.
When I was at my University in Vizagh, the only non-Western authors we heard of, and bought books by, were Bengalis...their names were exotic for us Moorthies, Reddies, Raos, not to speak of mere Sastries. I was asked to buy Saha and Srivastava (giant size) and P Ray (Chemistry). And my medico friends were happy when they found Chatterjee & Banerjee et al's affordable books on Medicine and Surgery. All in all Bengal nurtured what SDM called the "likha-pora" culture as against the "taka-paisa". He himself was writing till his last breath, just like his chela DB. And as I said the other day, when I read that an Indian wrote a monumental book titled: The Emperor of all Maladies, I knew it must be a Bengali.
My Chief Engineer (Naidu) Friend told me one day that he is praying daily that he should be born a Konkani Brahmin next time around. I don't believe in reincarnation, but who knows? Well, I would rather be a (vegetarian) Sengupta.
Coming back to Medical Shops at KGP, I found this inversion:
In AP, every private-practitioner Doctor would open his shop, however small it is; and as it grows into a popular Clinic or Nursing Home, pharmacists would vie to open their medical shops attached to them.
At KGP it was the other way round: Pharmacists would open their Medical Shops and keep a small anteroom for Visiting Specialists...these dingy cubicles are called by the high-sounding name: Chambers. As the shop grows and expands, the Chamber doesn't. On the other hand, there would be competing Doctors aspiring for a time-slot in these Chambers. And there would be discreet pimping.
The exception is Psychiatrists. These poor guys wouldn't be welcome in any Medical Shop, perhaps as the shop-owners think it would be a bad omen...Bengalis are fond of para-sciences...you would find them wearing several rings with all colors of stones on their fingers and malas around their necks...from veg beads to glass and crystal ones...my hero is Bhappi-da:
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=bappi+lahiri&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=617&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsol&tbnid=2PA_jT3F1wYMvM:&imgrefurl=http://www.glamsham.com/movies/scoops/11/oct/31-bappi-lahiri-i-have-become-vidyas-fan-101108.asp&docid=h_V3QPAMJa0kFM&imgurl=http://www.glamsham.com/movies/scoops/11/oct/bappi_lahiri.jpg&w=450&h=338&ei=siTBTuusC8HirAeZ08DLAQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=174&vpy=325&dur=42&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=125&ty=152&sig=110171882230473958487&page=6&tbnh=124&tbnw=167&start=114&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:14,s:114
So, the 'mental doctors' have to fend for themselves by opening their own clinics...and hope that some pharmacists ask for a room. In the good old 1960s the drugs prescribed by mental doctors were dead cheap; and they worked too. But I guess globalization has changed all that.
And Dentists too have to fend for themselves.
The only authentic Nursing Home we had near IIT in the Chota Tengra area was the Dandapat Nursing Home. It was very popular then because the (granpa) Dr Dandapat was a wizard very renowned for his abilities. His services were sought for each and every trouble, including pregnancies of all subtleties.
Talking of Dentists, there was this Dr Pathak, son of the BNR Hospital Dentist, whose services I gladly sought as soon as my teeth started giving me trouble one by one (thanx to the classy products of W.D. & H.O. Wills). His charges were surprisingly nominal...just Rs 10 for Consultation and Rs 30 for Extraction. He was (and is, I guess) a wizard and saved my wife from serious surgical and other intervention. It so happened that her lips were gradually cracking and their tender skin peeling off making it impossible for her to eat and drink. The wisemen of BCR finally gave up and suspected the worst, gave it a very highsounding name, and asked her to consult the Bigwig in Cal. We got an appointment and were ready to travel the next day. But that morning she developed toothache and I took her to Dr Pathak. He said at once: "Ma'am, you got scurvy...eat lots of oranges." We canceled our Cal trip and she started recovering after a couple of oranges.
A couple of years later, she developed absolute weakness and was hardly able to walk or work at home. The wisemen again referred to a Specialist in Vellore and we booked our tickets. And, as you can guess, she developed toothache that morning and had to visit Dr Pathak. He looked at her and said: "You look so anemic, Ma'am, drink bottles of the Iron Tonic Tonoferon"...the hemoglobin count, we found, was 50%. Bye to Vellore!
Moral: First eliminate mental and then dental.
As I said long ago:
===========================================================================
As you hit the T-Junction you will see a series of Medial Shops on the Bombay-Calcutta Loop. And these will be of all '-pathies', homeo, naturo, kaviraji, unani, and allo.
We were hearing about Dabur then. And the canonical quiz question was: "What does Dabur mean?"
Well, Dr S K Burman did Bengal proud for over a century. His Chyavanpras and Honey are household names in South India. And I guess Dabur has diversified into several products...the latest being Red Toothpaste and Beauty & Health Care. Yesterday there was an interview in DC with the fourth generation Burman, Amit.
Bengalis (including me) love low-cost non-invasive health care...the intervention shouldn't worsen the disease. I guess it is part of the Hippocratic Oath.
When I was at my University in Vizagh, the only non-Western authors we heard of, and bought books by, were Bengalis...their names were exotic for us Moorthies, Reddies, Raos, not to speak of mere Sastries. I was asked to buy Saha and Srivastava (giant size) and P Ray (Chemistry). And my medico friends were happy when they found Chatterjee & Banerjee et al's affordable books on Medicine and Surgery. All in all Bengal nurtured what SDM called the "likha-pora" culture as against the "taka-paisa". He himself was writing till his last breath, just like his chela DB. And as I said the other day, when I read that an Indian wrote a monumental book titled: The Emperor of all Maladies, I knew it must be a Bengali.
My Chief Engineer (Naidu) Friend told me one day that he is praying daily that he should be born a Konkani Brahmin next time around. I don't believe in reincarnation, but who knows? Well, I would rather be a (vegetarian) Sengupta.
Coming back to Medical Shops at KGP, I found this inversion:
In AP, every private-practitioner Doctor would open his shop, however small it is; and as it grows into a popular Clinic or Nursing Home, pharmacists would vie to open their medical shops attached to them.
At KGP it was the other way round: Pharmacists would open their Medical Shops and keep a small anteroom for Visiting Specialists...these dingy cubicles are called by the high-sounding name: Chambers. As the shop grows and expands, the Chamber doesn't. On the other hand, there would be competing Doctors aspiring for a time-slot in these Chambers. And there would be discreet pimping.
The exception is Psychiatrists. These poor guys wouldn't be welcome in any Medical Shop, perhaps as the shop-owners think it would be a bad omen...Bengalis are fond of para-sciences...you would find them wearing several rings with all colors of stones on their fingers and malas around their necks...from veg beads to glass and crystal ones...my hero is Bhappi-da:
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=bappi+lahiri&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=617&tbm=isch&prmd=imvnsol&tbnid=2PA_jT3F1wYMvM:&imgrefurl=http://www.glamsham.com/movies/scoops/11/oct/31-bappi-lahiri-i-have-become-vidyas-fan-101108.asp&docid=h_V3QPAMJa0kFM&imgurl=http://www.glamsham.com/movies/scoops/11/oct/bappi_lahiri.jpg&w=450&h=338&ei=siTBTuusC8HirAeZ08DLAQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=174&vpy=325&dur=42&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=125&ty=152&sig=110171882230473958487&page=6&tbnh=124&tbnw=167&start=114&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:14,s:114
So, the 'mental doctors' have to fend for themselves by opening their own clinics...and hope that some pharmacists ask for a room. In the good old 1960s the drugs prescribed by mental doctors were dead cheap; and they worked too. But I guess globalization has changed all that.
And Dentists too have to fend for themselves.
The only authentic Nursing Home we had near IIT in the Chota Tengra area was the Dandapat Nursing Home. It was very popular then because the (granpa) Dr Dandapat was a wizard very renowned for his abilities. His services were sought for each and every trouble, including pregnancies of all subtleties.
Talking of Dentists, there was this Dr Pathak, son of the BNR Hospital Dentist, whose services I gladly sought as soon as my teeth started giving me trouble one by one (thanx to the classy products of W.D. & H.O. Wills). His charges were surprisingly nominal...just Rs 10 for Consultation and Rs 30 for Extraction. He was (and is, I guess) a wizard and saved my wife from serious surgical and other intervention. It so happened that her lips were gradually cracking and their tender skin peeling off making it impossible for her to eat and drink. The wisemen of BCR finally gave up and suspected the worst, gave it a very highsounding name, and asked her to consult the Bigwig in Cal. We got an appointment and were ready to travel the next day. But that morning she developed toothache and I took her to Dr Pathak. He said at once: "Ma'am, you got scurvy...eat lots of oranges." We canceled our Cal trip and she started recovering after a couple of oranges.
A couple of years later, she developed absolute weakness and was hardly able to walk or work at home. The wisemen again referred to a Specialist in Vellore and we booked our tickets. And, as you can guess, she developed toothache that morning and had to visit Dr Pathak. He looked at her and said: "You look so anemic, Ma'am, drink bottles of the Iron Tonic Tonoferon"...the hemoglobin count, we found, was 50%. Bye to Vellore!
Moral: First eliminate mental and then dental.
As I said long ago:
Red Pills for ills mental
Green Pills for dental
Li'l Blue Pills: Fundamental
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/10/whowritit.htmlGreen Pills for dental
Li'l Blue Pills: Fundamental
===========================================================================
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
