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.
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