the 9.30 from tollygunge

The Tollygunge terminus of the Calcutta metro railway is busiest between 8 and 9 am in the morning. The train takes fully eighteen minutes to travel the ten stations from Tollygunge to Central Avenue. This, of course, extends to nineteen, sometimes twenty, if country bumpkins get stuck in the sliding door, when the driver or the guard walks down the entire platform. The walk from the Central station to the back gate of Presidency takes ten minutes, eight with the shortcut through the Medical College. Class starts at nine. That meant, in order to slip through the rear entrance of Physics Lecture Room 3 and avoid the tongue lashing that inevitably came with a late entrance, Biplab had to catch the 8.30 from Tollygunge. Missing that train meant missing the first lecture. Now that would be a pity as the first lecture was either Classical mechanics or Mathphys, both of which were rather well taught. Biplab was one of the few of Presidency who did not actually have either the self confidence that came from obvious natural ability, or the non-self confidence that came from being a member of the ‘canteen honours’ clique. As a result, he had a somewhat large chip on his shoulder, but managed to smile and hide it well.

Ankita lived in Golf Green. She was beautiful in the soft toned way that most Bengalis chose to define beauty. She was also somewhat well off, at least by the standards of those who make do in a matchbox sized flat in south Calcutta with four other family members. She studied sociology, had all the right friends, most of them from the same posh school that she came from. For these, and other reasons that Biplab was perhaps afraid to admit, even to himself, she was unattainable. She took the same train as him, but she didn’t have to. Her classes started at ten, and the first hour was spent over cha and adda at the canteen. Nevertheless, Biplab waited for her each morning. The only time he had ever come close to even talking to her was when her season ticket died in the machine and she had to buy a day ticket. After rummaging in her handbag for a bit, she turned to him, standing patiently in line behind her and said, ‘can you lend me a rupee?’ This was the opportunity he had been waiting for, mentally rehearsing for. And instead of chatting her up the way he should have, he mutely handed her the change and said all of nothing.

Avinash suffered from juvenile diabetes. No sweets; none of the delicacies that only Bengali cuisine excels in. That also meant daily injections of insulin. Avinash was the only one of the three Ganguly boys who had stayed at home. Borda was an engineer at Jamshedpur, working for Tata Steel and Mejda was a something or the other at Uco Bank in Bangalore. Maybe he should have also left, but then someone had to look after the parents. Maybe if they had had children, things would have been different. But Mina was,.. well, was infertile. It wasn’t that dramatic at all, but something had gone wrong, slowly and surely. Perhaps it started when Borda and Mejda started bringing their children home in summer. Amidst the laughter and jostling, the children first picked up the smell of sorrow. Their parents caught on soon enough. And then, they stopped coming. After the grandparents passed away, there was no reason to keep visiting Calcutta either. And so Mina and Avinash became strangers. Yes, she cooked and washed, packed his lunchbox and kept the flat clean. Her best hours were at the primary school where she taught. And he started hating having to come home.

The ‘Up’ platform at Tollygunge. 9.25 am. Passengers line up at picked spots. Commuters know which doors on which compartments will open closest to the escalators at their respective stations. The little morning gossip that one had time for competes with some silly advert for chewing gum on the overhead TVs and the soft Rabindrasangeet from the PA speakers. Studies have shown that Rabindrasangeet ‘calms’ people down, whatever that means. This and the white line which one is NOT supposed to cross until the train has come to a halt and the doors have opened are the steps that the authorities have taken after some hapless person jumped to his death just as the train was pulling in a few months ago.

9.28 am. The train is pulling in. the conversations have been temporarily paused as passengers jostle for space on the crowded platform. Ankita is standing a few feet further down from Biplab, just in line for her favourite spot, standing near the vestibule. The driver’s cabin passed Biplab and he heard a girl scream. He turned just in time to see someone jump straight into the path of the incoming train. And in that moment of incredulity, all that registered was that the jumper was still holding on to his lunch bag. And then all hell broke loose as people trying to get away collided with people trying to get a closer look. He saw Ankita stumble and then get knocked down. It wasn’t easy, pushing through the crowd, but he got to her, put an arm around her and led her out. The turnstiles had been opened, no one was checking tickets. She was shaking slightly, he saw. “Can I get you a cup of tea or something?” he asked. “Tea would be good”. There was already a crowd growing outside the station as they walked to the cha-wallah. “Jhontu duto doodh cha. Aar ekta Gold Flake.” He lit up and she said, “I didn’t know you smoked.” Reaching out for the tea he replied “trying to quit.”

then and now

professional behaviour:

a long time ago, ,almost a lifetime, i might say, i used to be routinely amazed by the ease with which my seniors, say R, R, A and A used to work out math which i found mind bogglingly difficult. they said that it was just a matter of perspective.. i disagreed and was inevitably depressed. at the point when i realised that my days of turning around and screaming for HEEEEELP!!!! are forever gone, i found myself in a wetlab. me. the bloke who can hardly make a decent cup of tea without mishap. and again find myself screaming for HEEEEEEELP!!!!! this time somewhat louder.. cos with math, the worst that can happen is you get it wrong. in a wetlab, the worst that can happen, no lets not go there. and so i look at Q, my senior who setup a gel inn what looked like 30 seconds. it takes me half and hour to do the same. and wonder whether professionalism is ever going to be something i achieve?

cats again, and morning walks

my father finds some exquisite pleasure in dragging me out for morning walks. ever since i left home, i have been prone to wake up at sensible hours like 7.30 in the morning. i dislike nightouts, but somehow, can't seem to avoid them. so my father drags me,, kicking and screaming for morning walks. actually it is not as much kicking and screaming as it is simply this vague out of body experience which involves exchanging early morning small talk with friendly neighbours. sometimes the morning walk ends with a small detour to the market where we end up chatting to the machhwalla, whatzisname Sushanta? anyway, thats mostly it. watching southpointers picking fights at their bus stops while their moms copy their homework. always fun to realise that i will never go through that again. this once, while looping around the high school maath, this beral came walking by. of all things, it was wearing a liberal daub of laal shindoor on its head. for some reason, it reminded me irresistably of a barir bou out to get flowers for the morning pujo. and as if to keep that impression intact, it stopped and very politely meowed a good morning to us and then went on its way.

idocy and thereafter

Sping break came and went, without much sign of spring. The snow was still making its presence felt, by making the “path of the desis” slippery and difficult to navigate. In better and warmer climes grad students went out and had fun. Me, I hunkered down with a few new novels and movies. And of course, break doesn’t mean “break”. One still comes to lab and all that. Anyway, this offensive period was soon over and things are back to normal. Or almost. One exam down. One prelim to go.

A couple of days back, I decided it was time to hake of the ennui and get back to work. Hence, I tried to run a DNA gel. Now this setup is almost idiot proof. It takes a certain amount of intellect to actually mess up. There are notches where we put in the different components, so there is no way one can start out trying to assemble a gel setup, and end up with, say a machine gun. I went through all the steps without mishap, and although my mentor winced when she saw the way I had loaded the DNA, she said that it will probably worked. Then, I went and plugged in the positive to the negative and vice versa. And the gel ran for half and hour. Sending the entire DNA into the buffer. The only comment that the boss made was that I am finally beginning to behave like a ham-handed physicist. Which, is of course, true.

disappointment

The doors opened to let in a swarm of twenty-somethings. With them came an overpowering smell of stale deodorant and breath freshener. All the would be’s hanging on to their luckier friends. For a few short hours, trying to forget the existence of a world not lit up in garish party lights. Enter the Friday night.

historical documents 7- after the comprehensive

After the comprehensive. There are few experiences in life which burn
their way into your memory and hard code themselves for all eternity. I
thought I had seen the absolutely worst way back in third semester. But
this is so much more interesting that, well, you should hear the whole
story. Third semester. This theme keeps cropping up where it is not
needed. I remember a singularly horrible book by Ludlum called 'the Bourne
identity' where the hero, one Jason Bourne remembers the jungles of Tam
Quan or something similar sounding every now and then. Third semester
again. A horrible four months which gave me three Cs, and an F. Kind of
bad for an experimentalist. Whispers in the corridors. Consternation in
the cloisters. Hurried glances quickly averted. I could go on like this,
but you get the drift. Then the MS project began, I joined the FTNMR lab
and life made sense. So standing outside the committee room and feeling
much the same as I did three years back, when they had grilled me in that
same room along with some fifty odd hopefuls, it all comes back full
circle. The last sentence was way too long and ungrammatical as well. My
boss called me in and then proceeded to talk at some length about my
course work and grades (me staring intently at my shoes; barefaced
shamelessness is an art that I should have perfected by now..). Then
begins the presentation with the admonition that I have thirty minutes.
Anyone who has flipped back and forth between product operators, density
matrices and population diagrams fifty times a minute knows what I am
talking about. One of the profs disappeared for a bit. When he came back,
he appeared surprised to see me still talking. Then he noticed the
footnote : 23/93, and flipped. 'you have NINETY THREE SLIDES?????'.
Anyway, the presentation was over at last. Then they got out the heavy
artillery. Coursework. After a year and half of pure NMR, do you really
expect me to remember any cond mat? Apparently yes. And mark my words,
mathphys is one of those topics no one, yes, no one should every have put
on his courselist. My courselist was not suggested by me. My boss put it
together; so I had classical mech, quant phys, mathphys, condmat, quantum
computing and of course spectroscopy. A simple 'all of physics' would have
done as well. Anyway, to cut it short, I proved to the distinguished panel
that I have forgotten all the physics that many teachers have taught over
the last six years. Including how to FT functions and the linewidth of a
Lorentzian. But I passed. The Heavens be praised!


The evening. Passed uneventfully. After dinner, a friend suggested coffee.
I suggested a brief detour to get an umbrella, at which she assured me
with full confidence that it will not rain. And then, of course it poured.
At a quarter past ten, we left the coffee shop and hopped into an auto.
Which proceeded to break down halfway over Sankey bridge. This ws one of
those newfangled LPG autos. So the driver changed the cylinder, then
pushed for a while. Then I pushed for a while. I should have mentioned
that I had been standing and hopping around for close to three hours for
the exam. And here I was, pushing an auto. In the rain. About the rain. I
have seen a lot of rain. Five years in Shillong makes one an intimate
acquaintance of rain. I have seen the heavy fast downpour that turns a dry
nullah into a roaring mini river in less than an hour. (Tust me on this
one, I was once caught on a dry nullah bed and it began to rain, it can
get quite scary). Then there is the holiday rain which starts on Friday
afternoon and goes on till Tuesday morning. A must mention is the Calcutta
special. This one makes you sweat in the heat, while you are also getting
drenched. Effects are best achieved after a long days work, standing at
the Gurusaday road bus stop waiting for the No. 45 which will be full of
other wet people who just louvv standing on your toes. (I just have to
tell you about a strange phenomenon we have in Cal called water logging.
Its like this, the furniture has to be dragged to the second floor, and
you can give up on the scooter in its garage. Schools are off: no
teachers, no students. The 'para' guys are out having fun. The periodic
shriek is that of some poor unfortunate falling down an open manhole. All
those Ganga crocodiles are planning an invasion of the city. Its totally
awesome. For those living in South Calcutta, it is not as much fun as
those in the North. I know places near Fulbagan where you could have
respectable sized boats on the streets. Dogs swim side by side with
disaffected communists and University students necking in the water.)
There are those who feel romantic in the rain, others paint, some write poetry. I wait for it to get over. Rain holds no romance for me, only a
bad case of the sniffles. But lets get back to the bridge and the auto.
After pushing for a while, I gave up and with the blessings of the auto
wallah began walking it home. This involved, at the behest of my friend,
crossing the road. Normally such an operation is not fraught with too much
danger, even in this lawless neck of the woods. However, rain either makes
owners of big cars incredibly brave and willing to test their machines to
the limits, or incredibly romantic (read horny) and desperately wanting to
get home. Whatever be the case, it sums up to them driving at almost
relativistic speeds on slick, wet roads. Crazy buggers. And my specs. Aah,
got to tell you about my specs. Remember Harry Potter and how Hermionie
put an 'impervious' charm on his specs during Quidditch which made them
repel rain? Well, someone has sneaked my specs and put an 'suoivrepmi'
charm on mine. When it rains, raindrops deflect from an otherwise
Newtonian trajectory and splatter themselves on my specs. Rendering me, to
all intents and purposes, temporarily blind. Then there is this huge
shadow with monstrous headlight bearing down on us. Hop, skip, jump, three
heart attacks, and we are out of danger. My pulse slowly climbs down from
the kilohertz rate it has suddenly acquired. Then we walk back. Halfway
through, another big car (There should be a study of car shapes and the
effects they have on people's psyches. Why is it that an SUV driver
suddenly feels like he is Rambo? Why aren't all cars shaped like Morris
Minors? Life on the roads would be mildly easier if you don't allow every
random idiot with ten lakhs a hundred and fifty horsepower.) This next big
car goes straight through a huge puddle and before I know it, I am all wet
from toe (canvas shoes) to head in ditchwater. And my friend found it
funny. Women are like that.

historical documents 6- random demented thoughts

ok so maybe i am, going crazy, but look at the facts:
1. the keyboard that belongs to the computer i was just using has an
interesting problem- the key 'x' does not work. i didnt realise it until i
tried to send a message by ctrl-x. and it didnt go.
2. the movie they are showing at the gymkhana tonight is called kismat.
that must be fate!
3. i fell asleep after lunch. tired. that is the explanation.
incidentally, after the reports of iisc getting 100 crores, people are
sayingthings like the onus being on us to prove that we are worthy and all
that..... so i was asleep. my plane then crashed. ok, i dont have memories
of my plane crashing, but i did wake up in this rainforest place with
trees and animals. and i was convinced that it was all a tv reality show
and that i would be paid real big money for getting my face on axn. turned
out the plane had actually crashed. all this was a dream, so this is like
double dose of imagination at work.
nevertheless, who wants to see kismat. and who the hell is some movie
director to tell people whether they should kiss or not?

historical documents 5- before submission

something i wrote i believe in the last week before submitting my ms thesis..

thesis writing is a bore
it eats the soul to the core
your fingers ache and your head spins
but in the end your supervisor wins
the spirit screams for rest,
but to no avail.
for without a thesis,
the senate will give you a fail.
others have run the gauntlet, they say,
and so must you.
but in the face of such reckless terror,
what can a mere iphd do?
pretty soon it will all be over,
they say with a smile.
having no idea of course,
how hard is the last mile.
till at last doomsday arrives
taking off a few of your nine lives,

i dont know how to finish this so i will send you the rest after my
submission.

historical documents 4- searching for manasi

while reading this i wonder what i was on while writing this... obviously not somehting potent, i appear to have been in lab.. so my only conclusion is that a combination of sleep deprivation and trying to implement some hideously complicated quantum error detection code could have made me write this....

this mail is about mansi.
who is mansi? wrong question. which mansi is the real question. yesterday
at the atm, i had an interesting experience. graffiti turns up on walls,
calcutta, my ol' town has some of the most intelligent political graffiti,
poems and stuff gracing its walls. residents complain, but who cares, when
the print media is expensive, and the net is just not exclusive enough,
the walls will have to do. graffiti is actually art of a very high
standard. but the topic of the day is not really graffiti, atleast, not
in the form u imagine. nope, this is more like the random scribbles u see
in toilets run by sulabh and at railway stations. in this genre, one of
the greatest i saw was at vidyasagar college. way back in the hot summer
of 2002, our part 2 bsc exams closing, the pracs was at vidyasagar. two
adjacent toilet cubicles had a whole conversation centred around the
dubious parentage of the physics head honcho and what the students would
happily do to him, given half a chance.

this is the kinda graffiti we are talking about. so, back to the atm. the
first message was: 'mansi was here'. the second was 'mansi was not here'.
strange. mystifying. me stuitably impressed. now comes the killer. 'look
inside the f-in atm machine'. wow! mansi was here or not. kinda like
shrodinger's cat. and then she entered the atm machine. obvious
comparisons are with alice jumping down the rabbit hole. a less obvious
comparision would be with the bloke in 'the long dark teatime of the soul'
who jumps out from behind a molecule and slays people. wouldnt want to
meet mansi alone in a darn alley. or in an atm for that matter. make that
atm first. or maybe she is just some guardian and ganashakti reading
diehard cpi(m) babe out to redress the economic disparity by direct means.

but who is mansi?
there are only a few other mansis that i know of. the first is the manashi
(bong) who appears in the song 'dekho manashi' by fossils. pretty good
song that. usual stuff about being dumped by the babe and asking her is it
was right of her to dump the bloke. i wonder is so much creativity would
ever have been unleashed unless most girls were such heartless creatures.
but with all due respect to womankind, thanks for the inspiration.

the second manashi is the manashi who is indrajit's flame in the landmark
badal sarkar play 'ebong indrajit'. its a different matter that she is
also his cousin, the incestuous bastard, but whatever, if u louvv ur
cousin, then society, or genetic fallback should not stop u.

the last manashi who will grace this mail is the mansi (hindi) who was
akshay khanna's flame in the supercrap subhash ghai movie 'taal'
(yeuckkkk!)

incidentally, i saw colalteral yesterday. people told me that it was crap
and boring, but i realised one thing, that the american accent is bloody
difficult to follow, this movie had english subtitles. which iis pretty
good, cos it had a lot of dialogue. not a great piece like, sat fight
club, but ok in its own way, cruise does an interesting role as a contract
assassin.


i especially like thw way the spelling goes haywire and then some.

historical documents 3- garlic at dinner

the third in the series... this was when murali had come ovr to hobnobb with us lesser humans...
here begins the sad tale of yesterday's dinner. starts out some time late
in the afternoon when a bunch of disaffected nmrists are sitting sround
and cribbing about not having statphys bags. not that it occurred to any
one of us to enlist as volunteers for the event: when people from other
depts are pitching in.... no, it suffices to sit in our lab and crib. so
murali wants to go out for dinner, manu and i want beer, and bds is open
to any idea. the atrium is suggested, and we all promise to meet at 8.30.
come 8.30, me twiddling my thumbs at the rendezvous, no sign of the
others. some fifteen minutes later, i see bds walking down. so now its the
two of us twiddling thumbs. respective thumbs.then, just to make things
really perfect its starts raining. you know, that kind of rain u hate..
starts out in a very inoccuous 'let me get ur hair wet' way and finishes
up with a 'drown! drown! u SOB drown!'. so we decide to go to viking. why?
time, pockets, everything. anyway, a brief digression on the etymology of
the name. the owners family god is ganesha.. that is vinayak or vi-nayak
and nayak is king so vi king or viking. yes, viking: they've started out a
pseudo continental joint there. we make it in. just too many happy
families there, sunday eveing and all.. giggling away insanely like they
are all part of some air conditioner or fridge ad. a place in the
corner... where it is naturally difficult to attract the attention of the
waiter... so after feeling suitably ostracised, and having tried to draw
his attention by all possible means.. polite 'ahems', coughs and all that,
i am forced to stand up and pretend to be a semaphore. it works. the
orders are a little adventurous. the soup is chinese, or whatever passes
for chinese in this backwater.. the starter is a paneer dish.. passes for
northie in rasamland..and the main is a sizzler. then murali and manu call
and the inevitable where are u ensues.. so they turn up.. and murali is
furious cos he hates his dinners going the wrong way. anyway, so he is
kind of muttering into his soup.. and threatening to kill the waiter... so
ultimately, the main arrives.. and of course my sizzler fogs up my glasses
is nothing flat and is busy depositing a thinfilm layer of meat sauce
residue on the (formerly) white ceiling. after having attracted the
attention of the entire clientele.. all of whom have been wiser in
choosing simple paneeers and koftas.. we dig in. eventually something is
lacking. garlic bread. i mention this in passing to our waiter. he pops
away and is back with toast. toast! TOAST! i explain very clearly what
garlic bread is. he gives me an old fashioned look. u know, the kind which
tells me that 'sorry, i didn't know u were buffy the vampire slayer'. the
after a looooooooong time he is back with toast. liberal;ly laced with
grated garlic. murali is snorting into his dal.
was not the best of possible evenings out.

historical documents 2-nandi hills

another one of them historical documents. this one was written around july 2004, when statphys was in progress and all of calcutta was hanging around the institute. this included my sis and her research group.

\documentclass[12pt,a4,epic]
\maketitle{so i went to nandi hills. }
\begin{document}
statphys happened... went to the banquet on wednes night. not impressed.
correction, badly let down by the food. thence to drama practice. then at
some point my sis suggested that we all go to nandi hills on the morrow.
chump that i am, i agreed. so on thuirsday morn, we hopped into the
triwhhelers and heigh ho for majestic, where it took us a little while to
find out that the last bus for nandi hills has left. finito, i thought.
nyet, they said. so we grabbed a bus for dodeballapur, halphway there. the
conductor yelling something which sounded like 'goromjol' as the bus
filled up. hot water, the babelfish sez. my feelings exactly. now i will
wax lyrical: the gathering thunderclouds slowly climbing up the horizon
filled me with a sense of foreboding. so off we went, witha merry song on
our lips and joy in our hearts. well, not quite, we were actually fighting
over the last pack of biscuits, and no merry song made its presence felt
(i won the fight).an hor and two and a halphe dreams later, the conductor
told us that we better get off now.

\section{dodebbalapur}
is not even a one horse town.. more like half a tired donkey... just a
waystation for tired truck drivers. and some kinda grand central station
of kanthals. more than i have ever seen at one go in a life. something
like psmith in billingsgate....'anything that has nothing to do with
fish'. more kanthals. still more. piled up in huge heaps by the road. a
walk to the next busstop. a conversation with a panwalla. mostly
handgestures and repetitions of the words 'nandi hills'. ok, this is the
deal, twenty od kays to nandi cross. then what? we ask.. he
replies...'climb mari'. silence. wait for the next bus to nandi cross.
this sucidal puppy crossing the road, nope actually out for a walk on the
divider, completely oblivious to the cacophony of a hundred truck horns.
there must be a god who watches over sucidal puppies. working hard. then
the bus turns up.

\section{to nandi cross}
the bus. a ramshackle arrangement that moved more by willpower than
internal combustion. it is one of the irrefutable laws of nature that such
buses which ply the vilage roads will invariable be packed full of honest
son of the soil folk, who will ensure that some of the soil rubs off on u.
and such crowded buses will, occasionally carry skawking chickens. this
one, thankfully didnt. but it did carry this homo who tried ummmm...
getting too close to me for comfort. i panicked. then the music. such
buses will also play, at sound levels high enough to violate local
strategic arms limitations treaties music which has never been heard
inside any metropolitan district. this one played a song where the bloke
periodacally breaks out into a series of 'excuse me's before relapsing
into his, thankfully incomprehensible default lingo. the other song had,
possible the first bloke's best freind telling his dame that he was sorry.
this much i got. the rest was, again, sorry to say, beyond me. oh, he did
tell her that he was sorry some 378 times during the song. hey, we are at
nandi cross.


\section{the long climb}
nandi cross. the howl of the wind sweeping across the desperately bleak
landscape chilled us to the bone. presentiments. ok, back to normal mode.
it was cold. it was windy. and there were no buses. and the signpost said
nandi hills. 8 km. get the idea? but there was kanthal. what doez a man do
when he is being controlled by forces so vastly beyond his comprehension
that he scarcely understands that he is being controlled? some one wanted
us to have kanthal. we did. then we negotiated with a cattle van driver to
take us to the top. a leetle while later, we are whizzing up. the driver
must have been in f1 in a previous life. or his normal passengers do not
register too much protests when the side wheels skid across the gravel on
a hairpin turn, and ur whole life flashes in front of ur eyes. then its
started raining. big fat droplets that actually hurt when they hit.
incidentally, remember the bus? it also carried kanthal. ok, after some
time, we are at the top. not quite. the vanwalla tells us that for twenty
rupees more, he will take us to the summit. this is where the state buses
stop. pecuniary absolution having held away, we are forced to decline.
nyet, my genius sister tells him to go take a hike. interesting, in the
light of later events.... uphill now. ok, this is a strenge hill, u gotta
get tickets to climb. climb we do. it rains. once we are firmly on the
road, backpacks secured, umbrellas at the ready, the clouds growl sotto
voce. then roar. then the great deluge begins. noah had no clue. having
lived for five years in shillong, and having made the necessary
pilgrimage, i thought that i have seen the worst that rain could do. heh
heh. the rain soaked us down to the skin, and then some. soon, i was
walking in my own two personal puddles. my shoes. a few monkeys huddled in
the trees saw us. and burst out laughing. they really did. the raindrops
drum a staccato beat on ur head. trust me, i have had nightmares of rain
since. we climed two hundred steps after a kays hike along the road.

\section{at the top}
THE top. the summit. a paragliding centre. closed. the mist closes in. we
cant see beyond our noses. we have lunch at the hotel 'ranjitha fine top'.
ok, so ranjitha, bless her soul, has a fine top. big deal, the current
goes the moment we enter. lunch by candlelight. wow. rather, meals by
candlelight. ok, at this point, i can certify that the worst southie meals
ever arte to be found here. go and despair. eat and regret. we ate. the
papad had the consistency of a roti, soft. and the roti needed pliers to
tear it. or shears. the badam milK saved us. twas still raining. meal
over, out we went. and discovered that there was a much better hotel a few
hundred feet away. that was for tourists, this was for the drivers.
hmmmmm.. and through the mists, the dreary cliffs did send a distant
sheen. nor shapes of men, nor beasts we ken, the fog was all between.
(sorry coleridge). then after wandering around aimlessly for a while
longer, we came down. waited for the bus. wrung out the socks, smoked,
looked for booze, unsuccessfully. u want booze on the hilltop, you better
bring it urself. waited while the rain suddenly decided to change tack and
come through the open sides of the shelter almost horizontally. i found
out that u can never be so wet that u wont get a little more wet. a cow
walked by, gave us a glance of kindred feeling, and walked off to its
destiny.

\section{back home}
the bus came. we clambered on. fell promptly asleep. got home. boring huh?
but there is a lesson. thou shalt not bunk thy labmeeting to go
sightseeing. or thou shalt get soaked.
Ps- the kanthal was quite good.

historical documents-madras diary

i came across this list of stuff i had written while at the institute. historical documents of no poccible interest to anyone except, of course for me. so i decided to plug them into the blog. here's the first of them- madras diary. this was written shortly after a trip to matscience with roghu.
madras diary.
I'm back. not that it makes an iota of difference to the universe at
large,but for what little it is worth, in the words of arnie, I'm back. an
early morning visit to the feeding trough also known as c mess, someone
told me that he had a long and detailed conversation with me over the
weekend. which naturally leads to either one of, or more than one of the
following conclusions:a. he has been hallucinating. b. my phantasm has
been doing the rounds here, while i have been in madras, not unlike the
case of pizpot gargavarr on frogstar b; the body liked fishing, the mind
liked sex, hence an attempt to mix the two lead to untold disasters, thus
the two went their own ways. and the last explanation is that of the long
lost brother, apropos innumerable amitabh movies and kumbh melas.

anyway, madras.
roghu started the trip by telling me that tickets were for an insane 375.
after getting my heartbeat down from the radiofrequency rate which this
amount had sent it to, i asked if they were providing a portkey. no.
turned out to be a peculiarly disgusting bus which had no springs, and the
seats, while reclining had a tendency to spring back, thus sending u
hurtling into the seat opposite. face first. we got there. incidentally,
the joy of travelling with a couple of smartypants nonsmokers cannot be
overemphasised. we got there. back creaking, red eyed.,but we got there.
now what? tally ho for matscience. now, on my last trip, two years back, a
trembling interview candidate then, they were building this huge monorail
track. thats what vijay told me. well.... no monorail. plain old suburban
trains. which dont run on a weekend. (at this point, i should say
something like 'my cup overfloweth', but as we go on, u will see why i
have opted to stay silent. this calls for a bloody swimming pool).

autos in madras.
they dont run by meter, as in blore. nor do they run routes, like cal.
here, the delicate and subtle art of negotiation has been perfected. (no
wonder there are soo many tams in the union govt.) whatever price the
autowallah mentions, point ur finger at him and laugh. after a while, he
reduces to a more manageable fare. then the bargaining starts in earnest.
only when u have threatened to walk away thrice and he has invoked the
names of ur 14 forefathers can the business be considered concluded and we
are on our way.



at matscience.
aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!! the joy of waking up old pals, who had been whiling
away the night hours engaged in earthshattering research activities
involving the comp and some unmentionable sites...... imsc pongal is
better than the c mess version, they actually have cashew nuts in it. but
it's still pongal. this is one of those small cosy places where everyone
knows everyone, and its impossible to sit grouchily in one corner of the
mess and mutter into ur tea without any interference. life forms at matsc
come in four varieties: faculties, jrfs, postdocs and dogs. the dogs, i
was delighted to learn share the same hostel privileges as do the
students, and most of them have sat through enough classes to fulfill the
credit requirements for an msc.

the toilets.
must devote a couple of lines to them. on the whole, good. ample water,
unlike f block back here. shower door doesnt bolt. bu there have been no
recorded cases of intrusions, so.....

the beach.
the sight of pure blue from horizon to horizon for someone whose
visibility is limited to 40 feet on campus is awesome. i could go on for a
while about the crashing waves and all that, but I'm sure u guys get the
drift. so, we braved the (i would like to say towering waves, but i must
be honest) little surf there was and bathed. hunger, crept up unsuspected
like a mugger--- and wham! turbasu suggested a buffet at 120 per head at
planet yum (now, this took some time to register, i thought this was the
tam way of pronouncing planet m). yum. i think not. this place was
splashed with violently clashing orange and yellow colours. i digression
abt places to eat. having been fed at at all ends of the spectrum, one can
appreciate the grandeur of those places where the chandelier has crystal
pieces and not plastic. or where slightly frayed cushions join teak and
pinewood to create the right kinda atmosphere for pipe tobacco and
whiskey. but planet yum. one of those great places patronised by the kind
who wear their cultural bastardy on their sleeves. the kind who think kfc
and macdonalds is the best form of cultural emancipation. so we ate.
started with panipuri/phuchka, called the best this side of the vindhyans.
the water was jal-bloody-jeera. then a chat which tasted of rasam. then
the main course: nans and some nonveg preparation, which left my fingers
red. after a liberal dose of soap and water. 160 per head. not that i am
complaining. yet. but when roghu started practically singing and dancing
around in circles howling how great the foods was that i gnashed my teeth.
let it be noted that it was only the code of the bhattacharyas which
stopped me from terminating the mazumders. (roghu is aprotim mazumder).
then roghu insisted on stopping to photograph, of all things, a small and
rather smelly dog. he stopped, it stopped, there was a passage of some
signal between them, the shutter snapped, and the little canine sauntered
on, its life undoubtedly enriched thus. probably a kindred feeling between
two smelly creatures.

back to matscience.
came the eveing, came kinjal, via the coromandel. brought grass. we went
out, ate. closest approximation to north indian nonveg possible, good
actually. came back, visited their workplace. good comps, good net. me had
begun to show withdrawal symptoms, not having played tetris for a day.
back t the hostel. then smoked grass. in a kolke. roghu, him of the three
hour lectures on the evils of booze, smoke, grass, grabbed the kolke with
both hands and puffed like it was his last act on this earth. sleep. their
hostels are cool. i dossed in this room whose occupant was off on some
school. huge pencil sketch of feynman on the wall. turbasu wandered into
some lady's room (the lady being absent). apparently she came in at six
thirty and kicked him out.

sunday morning.
was bright. coffee on the roof. then a lie in. then more coffee. then
lunch. another lie in. finished a pg wodeh in the meantime. then afternoon
coffee. then, before we knew it, was time to go back. so bid goodbye the
humans, the dogs and the institute, got a couple of snaps of kinjal and
turbasu, and heigh ho. fast traffic. long wait at stn. stn has
flatscreens. wow. new train. fundu loos. hand shower and everything. back
in blore. now in lab.

now the persistent obsesion with clean loos has a meaning. which will be explained at a more opportune moment.

louvv letters

the first and last time i had ever tried my hand at writing a louvv letter was in... ummm.. class 11. no, sorry, class 12. that would be way back in 1999. fully seven years. the lady in question was this person called K.(now lets not get carried away and be all kafkaesque) nice lady, in fact. one year my junior, and rather pretty in a somewhat .. robust way. as in, the kind of fair damsel you might want by your side whilst wandering through caverns which may be inhabited by dread monsters. as, the kind of fair damsel who would rip the aforementioned dread monster from limb to limb. while yours truly, would tremble behind the nearest pillar. but, before we get ahead of ourselves, let me also tell you that this letter was written on behalf of my esteemed comrade V. in this noble task, i had the help of I, I and S. one of the Is also had a computer(back in those days when we hardly knew what computers were). so i wrote the letter. as well as i could. put in as much "substance" as possible. tried to put myself in V's shoes, as a matter of fact(no, that i didn't..).. well, yes, i wrote a whopping good louvv letter. I's computer was then used to get this letter printed out. V then arranged for someone to deliver it. i should mention at this point that V already had some history with this gurle. exactly how complicated this history was he had never let me know. in fact, it was only three years later, while at university that he did. if i had known that he had pulled the stunts that he had, i would have dissuaded him from trying to get there with mere letters. but, yes, the letter was either never read, or never understood. the first option is less painful to me. if in fact, the delivery system failed then it is not my fault that the payload misfired(something, which i believe happens routinely with antiaircraft missiles). if, on the other hand, the girl read the letter and then proceeded to give V the boot the way she did(yes), then, that does cast some aspersions on my skills as a letter writer. i will grant you that i am no romatic poet, but i do remember not having put a single equation in it. gaah! some people just do not understand three syllable words.

A's birthday

A is my labmate. So are Q,C,M,Al,L,Y and M. As it was A's birthday yesterday, Y made plans for a surprise lunch. this also involved an ice cream cake, which, as i found out is not cake after all, but just an ice cream shaped like a cake. oh well, new things. so around noonish, we made our way downtown to a little italian place. (which turned out to be closed). A had been hijacked by her friend D, who was supposed to bring her to the restaurant without her knowing that the whole lab was waiting to yell "surprise". anyway, she got there, the place was closed and so we went to the Mongolian barbeque. i expected to see hairy little men on horses carrying spears and trying to destroy everything of that side of the Hind Kush. but, to my surprise there were regular american people sitting around and regular american people serving them and regular american people cooking stuff. so this is how it worked: we each grabbed a bowl, filled it up with veggies, and meats from aself service line. we then filled up a tiny little cup with random sauces. then we waited in line to get to a huge tawa. there, the cooks standing around took our bowls and cooked them on the tawa with the sauces we had chosen. comes together really well. after the plates were cleared away, the icecream cake was brought out. apparently the lab tradition requires one to cut the cake with the handle of the knife and scream while doing so. don't ask me, i just work here. well, this cake turned out to be more than mildly recalcitrant. as in refused to be cut. like Jarasandha, in fact. but, we finally got it done, or well, she did. and everyone lived happily ever after.

andy, galois, anika

ok, lets first talk about galois. G is a cat, somewhat fluffy and these days bad tempered. he belongs to, or rather(as he would put it) shares his lebensraum with L, a mathematician and M, his wife, an engineer. G is called G after a french mathematician. These days G is bad tempered because of the existance of Anika. Anika is a sweet, much smaller and less fluffy cat who has recently moved from the humane society to the residence of L and M. G perceives A to be a threat to his autonomy in the four legged domain of that particular house. As a matter of fact, G hisses in a rather pointed way whenever A violates his personal space, which, given the fact that A is a somewhat boisterous cat happens quite frequently. G, on the other hand, has the temperament of a french film star(i dont know that much about french mathematicians, ok i dont know much about french film stars either, but isn't "temperamental as a film star" something of a standard phrase? and the french are supposed to be highly strung, or was it the italians?) relations between the two cats are somewhat strained at the moment, with L and M having to play the role of overworked UN peacekepers.

Andy belongs to two people I don't know, S and J. but i do know their friend C(crikey, we are eating up the alphabet aren't we?) so C does catsitting for S and J when they are out of town. The last time she was catsitting, she took me along. Andy is a short fat cat who aappears to be wrapped in a black rug. he jumps when a soft toy is thrown at him. he runs rounf and rounf in circles chasing the light spot from a laser pointer. C gets chocolate for catsitting A. I got some chocolate too.