Joseph Henry - A tribute

On July 3, 2010, Wing Cmdr (Retd) Joseph Henry passed away leaving a large void in many people's lives.

How does one describe Henry, as we called him, even though we should actually have called him Joseph? A friend, philosopher, conscience keeper, one man social service organsiation, patriot, straight shooting critic of anything he found worthy of criticism and at the same time capable of large hearted, generous praise when something or someone deserved it? He was all that and more. He was someone most people would be proud to call a friend and eventually thankful that he was their friend.

When Henry joined our team, his name facinated me. What better name for an electrical engineer, I wondered.

When I met him first, his tall straight lean figure, excellent manners, wonderful smile attracted me to him right away. I thought that he looked like Omar Sheriff. I was, however, disappointed that the he did not respond warmly to my friendly overtures. He was distant and that disturbed me. I make friends easily and here was someone who was not willing. I left it at that. Later, I realised that it was a key to his personality.

I was at that time in some kind of managerial role in our team. I had no fancy title or anything. Henry, however, viewed me with suspicion or he did not want to be seen as being close to the management figure! Either way it was a key to what he was. He thawed and became a good friend later, when I no longer had that role. Then on, he was a whole hearted friend.

We spent many a coffee break together - on an average two a day. The conversation was always warm and interesting, thanks to him. He was deeply fascinated by Hindu mythology and philosophy. He was full of questions about it and trying to answer and satisfy his curiosity I learnt a lot more about it than I would otherwise have.

I said that he was a one man social service organisation. He was always at hand at occasions related to innumerable people - good, bad, sad - whatever the occasion may be. All the retired air force officers in Bangalore were practically his extended family. He would unhesitatingly go all out to help them in their hour of need. In his typical way he often referred to "vishwakutumbam" and in that spirit he was a citizen of the world.

He was a patriot in the larger sense of the word. Not the jingoistic kind. Petty regionalism elicited utter contempt from him. So did petty religious divisions and false claims of superiority because of caste and such. If he called someone a "fraaaaaud" you knew where the man stood in Henry's estimate.

He was a proud Malayalee proud of his non malayalee_ness - never wore lungis, for instance.

This is an unfulfilling attempt at describing and mourning a friend, a colleague and a good man. The last is a description that Henry richly deserved and would be truly happy and proud about.

In Appreciation of a Brave Bird

I was on my usual post-prandial at 10 last night. As I passed under a tree, I got a call. I stopped on the footpath and took the call. As I did so a small owl flew from a tree branch right above me and perched atop a telephone pole. I watched it as I talked.

I was engrossed in the talk and was also watching the beautiful bird and the fascinating way it turns its head around. Suddenly, out of the blue something hit me on the head. I gave out a cry of surprise and I saw another owl fly over me and perch on an electric wire. Did I really see it glaring at me or was it only my imagination? Perhaps it was staring at me since there was no movement of the head that I so love.

I beat a fairly hasty retreat and watched the birds from a distance, feeling my practically hairless scalp. It did feel wet but no blood. Apparently it was sweat.

As I walked away driven by a bird just larger than my fist, I could do nothing but admire its courage. It had deemed it fit to attack an opponent perhaps a hundred times its own weight and had successfully driven him away.

I have walked under the same rain tree a thousand times. Never saw an owl before. Perhaps it had recently built a nest and has a clutch and was protecting it from this invader! How powerful the instinct to protect it's off spring! Or, really, was it a friendly pat on the head with an unuttered “Hello mate”? The profile picture of mine at www.penciljam.ning.com is a thumbnail picture of a painting of an owl I did some years ago. (As an aside, do go to that site to see my pencil sketches). Have the owls too become net savvy and are welcoming me to their fold? Or were they insulted that a mere human had dared to use the picture of one of their species so?

Courage is perhaps the wrong word. It is perhaps the result of the "selfishness" of the gene that drove it to attack me. I am not proverbially scratching my head in awe and wonder. Its talons have left two inch-long scratches on my bald head. I am yet to consult a doctor to find out if I need an antibiotic to prevent an infection. After all it is a bird of prey not in the habit of washing its "hands" after a meal.

Once bitten twice shy - I was once bitten on the head by a wasp. I had ignored it after the stinging pain subsided but the wound got infected.

Godly E-mails

Among the many e-mail forwards one gets, there are many celebrating the greatness of god. I treat them as propaganda material. Atheists of all hues and intensities are often asked, "why don't you keep your ideas to yourself? Why do you impose your ideas on others?" But the question does not seem to apply to the mails referred above. No, I am not cribbing. I am amused and am stating a fact.

One such questioner asked the question of Richard Dawkins about his book "The God Delusion" after having bought the book and read it!

My reaction to such mails varies from quick read > delete to pointing out a fallacy in it, as gently as I can to an angry cutting retort.

The last mail I got was actually a good joke. It ran something like this. An atheist is walking in the woods and enjoying the beauty of nature. A bear attacks him and he tries to run but falls. As he is about to be bitten by the bear, he exclaims "Oh my god!". Time stands still and god appears and challenges him. "When you are in deep danger you want to cry for my help having denied my existence all the while?"

The atheist thinks a while and asks god to make the bear a Christian. Hey presto, the bear christian.

The bear starts, "Bless this food which I am about to partake..."

Now, that is very unfair of god, don't you think? He would have really known what the atheist meant. God let a christian become a man eater? Did he do that to teach a lesson to an atheist and was sure that other christians would not be watching?

This is why Richard Dawkins says, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

In this case, I replied to the mail, pointing out that someone calls him "a capriciously malevolent bully” for exactly these kinds of actions.

Now, people who know what religion I was born into may still think that I am targetting another religion. So, let me cushion that with another anecdote.

A friend of my father was invited to a "satyanaaraayana pUje". The myth around this pUje is that you do not even need an invitation to attend. If you come to know that the pUje is happening someplace you must attend. Otherwise the particular god would be angry and do unspeakable things. A part of the rituals is the telling of stories about this god who punished those who were not true to him or broke promises made to him.

When invited, the man said, "I do not want to attend the pUje and listen to the stories about that cruel, vindictive god. I will attend the lunch that follows, though, since I have no quarrels with that!" and did exactly that.

This man, to the best of my knowledge, cannot be classified an atheist. If he believes in any god at all, he expects him to be above such petty vindictiveness and cruelty. If god be like the local loan shark who wreaks havoc with a borrower that does not return a loan, why have gods at all?

Atheists Want the Pope Arrested

Richard Dawkins and other atheists thinkers are trying to make one sensitised to the fact that many of us automatically defer to things religious. I have seen this phenomenon first hand, being an atheist myself. People have no qualms about making snide remarks about my world view. But people with a religious world view are handled like eggs. (That figure of speech makes me wonder if it is because they are as fragile?)

Dawkins himself talks of actions that raise our consciousness, such as the women's liberation movement.

In this direction he and another prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens have hired prominent British lawyers to move the courts to issue orders to arrest the pope when he visits England later this year. Interesting action. Even if they fail, they would have made some people think about it.

I read the original article in German. The original article can be read here.

I have attached my translation.

You may read it here

Balderdash

Dhoni* says that the Dalai Lama's blessings made his team win in IPL, perhaps.

The last word in the sentence is the saving grace.

If Dalai Lama's blessings had such powers, Tibet would be free.

No, I am not making light of the Tibetans' plight.

The owner of CSK* is supposed to have invoked Vaastu and other hocus pocus, according to the papers. Dhoni says that many (all?) cricketers are superstitious and do "little things". Amazing that only one team wins! Isn't it?

One of these little things I was close to was that a classmate of mine wore the same set of clothes for all papers of engineering examinations, if he did well in the first paper. He could do that because he came by car and I went by bicycle. (I imagine that if I did any such thing, I would have got thrown out of the examination hall for being "a public nuisance" I guess.) He invariably did well in the first paper. He was placed either first or second in the University ranking and yours truly was way down below.

So, the difference between his 1st or 2nd ranks and I was a car - the late unlamented Standard Herald at that. How unfair. The fact that he studied some sixteen hours a day and I, sixteen hours a week, for the last four weeks, favoured him just a little perhaps.

* For those apologies for human beings from the large majority of nations that do not know Cricket, and who Dhoni is or what CSK is, here is something to set the scene: Dhoni is the captain of a Cricket team called Chennai Super Kings in a tournament, of a game called Cricket, called Indian Premier League (IPL)

Anand and IPL

Good start for the morning. Saw that Anand has won his second game against Topalov.

I watched the streamed version of the second for a while. I thought that Anand looked confident and Topalov looked tense. I am not sure if it was wishful thinking.

I watched the IPL final too till 11. I wanted CSK to win. Someone asked me why I wanted it to win. My answer? Because Dhoni is from Ranchi. I have a soft corner for Ranchi and that is a long story.

The contrast between the game of chess and IPL finals was striking.

The glamour, glitz and the bling of IPL. The deafening noise and physical energy of all involved. The colours, the lasers and lights and the dancing girls and the endless discussions about the nuances of the game. Even the murky happenings behind the scenes appeared to be erased.

The chess? Two immobile figures. One dressed as if he is attending a board meeting and the other looking almost ridiculously informal, in a formal shirt, in contrast. The display of the board on the screen in black and white. For those who do not have a deep understanding of the game, which includes me, the affair must appear incredibly boring.

The match itself does not lack drama. An Icelandic volcano erupts. Air traffic is cut off. The defender of the title reaches the venue by road. 22 hours in a bus. Three day postponement of the start requested. One granted. Defender loses the first game against a well rested challenger playing before his home crowd. The word crowd sounds almost irreverent and inappropriate. Does "the challenger playing in front of his countrymen" or some such thing sound better?

But! Imagine the happenings in the brains of the contestants. Neurons firing. Memory being accessed. Patterns being compared. Moves being evaluated. Imagining patterns that would emerge with a certain course of the game. Steely wills. Controlling the emotions and the thought processes.

The "fireworks" in their combined brains will perhaps put to shame the wildest creations of the pyrotechnic artists.

Coming down to the results, CSK won. Anand won. I feel happy.

I hope Anand wins and retains the title.

Ten Good Reasons to Learn German

I came across an article called “Zehn gute Gründe, Deutsch zu lernen” - Ten Good Reasons to Learn German, by Sebastian Sick, a columnist for the German Magazine Der Spiegel. He writes regularly about the German language. He is passionate about his mother tongue (Muttersprache). Interestingly, the Germans have a father land (Vaterland) but, a mother tongue.

I admire his passion, sense of humour and concern for the language. I wish we Kannadigas have our own Bastian Sick. Our language is sick and looks terminally ill when you look at the way it is used, misused and abused.

I have attached my translation of the article here. It is not a translation that would get me a first class in a German course or in a translation course. But, it conveys the meaning and humour at least a little bit. I hope you enjoy it.

Clerihew

I won a book "The Dord the Diglot and an Avocado or Two" by Anu Garg sometime ago and finally got down to reading it seriously. I came across the word Clerihew in it and Wikipedia defines it as:

A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The lines are comically irregular in length, and the rhymes, often contrived, are structured AABB. One of his best known is this (1905):

Sir Christopher Wren
Went to dine with some men
He said, "If anyone calls,
Say I'm designing Saint Paul's."

The sub-rule seems to be that the name of the person whose (purported) biographical work it is, appears in the first line.

So I cooked up the following Clerihew.

Mr Shashi Tharoor
Was shown the door
When he played on an unfamiliar wicket,
A game that does not sound quite cricket.

But, one more rule seems to be that it is not satirical. Perhaps mine does not qualify.

Catch 22 Inverse

A friend told me that RC (Oh no, not Royal Challengers (nor Rum n' Cola), you dummy, it's Roman Catholicism) does not allow divorce.

However, (Ah! How I love that word!) if one of the partners is mad, RC allows divorce.

In that case any marriage could be declared null and void.

Isn't getting married proof enough?

Celebration Time!

I wrote a short piece on British Chiropractic Association vs Dr. Simon Singh libel case. I wrote that piece being elated about the news that Simon Singh had won a case in which the judegment was that he could defend himself on the ground that what he had written was opinion and not a statement of fact.

Now the good news is that BCA has dropped its case against Simon. You may read all you want (and a lot more) here.

24 Hour Classical Music Channel

Yesterday, I attended a concert, a violin - Mohana veena jugalbandi, of Mysore Manjunath and Viswamohan Bhat. This was at the 72nd Ramasevamandali concerts held in the grounds of the Fort High school Bangalore. Before the start of the concert Bhat took the microphone and started talking. I usually do not take such talks seriously and only half listen to them (Don't ask me how that is done!!!). You may call me a cynic, but such talk is usually all about how the artist "loves" the audience of Bangalore (or Mysore or Pune or Timbuktoo where you happen to be and he or she happens to be performing)

But, this speech jolted me to attention with the second sentence. Here is a transcript of it as far as I can remember it.

"Good evening. I thank you all for coming to this concert. pause.... ignoring the two hundred TV channels ..... and IPL. I wish we had at least one channel devoted to Indian classical music. Even animals have three channels. (Said with a beautifully self deprecating smile)

In this place of Sri Vijay Mallyaji, I would like say that it will cost about 0.5 percent of his expenditure on IPL and Force India to run a channel like that. So I request Sri Vijay Mallyaji to ....."

I felt like crying. Now that World Space has been shot into deep outer space, this plea sounded more poignant.

As for me, if I have a 24 hr music channel on the air I will unsubscribe from the cable and will watch the four Tennis grand slam finals in some friend's house!

Are the Mallyas of the world listening?

Kudos and Congratulations to Simon Singh

The news of the day for me yesterday was "Simon Singh Wins Libel Case"

If you don't know what this is about, type the words Simon Singh libel in google and find out.

For those who are satisfied with a short report, here it is.

Simon Singh is a best selling science writer from England, of Punjabi origin. In 2008 he wrote an article in which he expressed his opinion that Chiropractics were offering a "bogus" cure for even children's ailments such as colic and childhood Asthma. The British Chiropractic Association sued him for libel. It so happens that the libel laws in England are such that it could drive the defendant insolvent.

After two years of fights in the courts and launching a movement to get the libel laws changed, he has won his case and also succeeded in getting all the major political parties to promise that they would work towards changing the libel laws in England.

He has had to stop writing and do this full time.

Bravo Simon Singh!

Paintings of Srinath Bidare

Today, I went to an exhibition of paintings and charcoal sketches of Srinath Bidare.

I found his works beautiful and executed with great skill.


I have posted some of them below. I hope you like them too. Of course, the photogaphs do not do justice to the originals. Look out for this artist and see his exhibition whenever you get a chance.


The one below is a landscape painted with hair dye. This brings to mind a sepia photograph.

The next one is a landscape in acrylic colours.

The artist calls this a seascape. Also done with acrylic.

The last one is a landscape done in water colours.

You can see more about the artist here: http://www.srinathbidare.com/

Art and Science

Does the following give you the feeling that someone is railing about something?

"It bugs me," Koop told the Guardian. "It's the molecular building blocks that shape these crystals and they can't form any shape other than a hexagon."

In a letter to Nature, Koop points out that the hexagonal shape of snowflakes has been known for at least 400 years when Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer, published his mini-treatise on the subject, "On the six-cornered snowflake".

"Beautiful photographs abound, including those taken by Vermont farmer Wilson A Bentley starting in 1885 ... Why then do many artists invent their own physically unrealistic snow crystals?"

Railing? Yes? No? At least, I do not think Koop was railing. It sounds like the voice of a man of reason who is troubled by bad art. 'Bad' is the operative word.

The news report published just before Christmas 2009, claims that the scientist railed. The dictionary defines railed as "complained bitterly". Well, diction is a matter of personal taste and I am ready to let go of it. But I take issue with the opening paragraphs of the report:

"The fragile truce between science and art came under strain today when common depictions of snowflakes threatened to divide the two cultures over the festive season.

In the latest salvo between the warring factions, Christmas card manufacturers, advertising agencies and children's book publishers are accused of corrupting nature with "incorrect designer versions" of snowflakes that defy the laws of physics."

Truce? Fragile? Salvo? Warring factions? Common depiction? What are we talking about?

How does this report matter to anyone and especially me? It so happens that I am passionate about science and I am passionate about art. If there was a war between them, I would be schizophrenic of sorts. But I firmly believe that I am no schizophrenic. There is no war inside my head. (Sure, most mentally ill people do not really believe that they are ill. So, you need not take my word for it!) And I see no war between the two cultures. Here is the origin of the phrase "The Two Cultures".

First, let us get one fact right. Most often, artists depict snow crystals with six corners. Frankly, I have not noticed the offending non-six pointed depictions. Of course, I do not receive many Christmas cards. When I do, what I see are six pointed snow crystals. That is neither here nor there.

Historically there have been numerous instances of collaboration of sorts between art and science. For many great scientists science was an artistic endeavour. Many of them were simultaneously artists and scientists. The biggest name of them all is, of course, Leonardo. If there was a war between the so called factions there would be debates about "Was Leonardo an artist who was also a scientist or was he a scientist who was also an artist", perhaps. I have not come across any such debate.

Science being an artistic endeavour brings to mind G H Hardy, the mathematician. He is perhaps famous in India as the man who discovered Ramanujan. Hardy was always very proud of the fact that his work was completely useless! For him, his mathematics was purely a search for beauty of numbers and their properties. Some years ago, one of Hardy's works was found to be useful in solving an esoteric problem in computing. The news paper report about it even wondered if Hardy would be turning in his grave! Art, quite often, is also completely useless. Like applied mathematics which helps people of other professions and pursuits find solutions to their problems, applied art helps people do other things, like selling a product or an idea sometimes.

A family friend who was a well travelled, brilliant biochemist once told me that in his experience he had met many really good scientists who could easily have chosen a career in music but, had chosen science.

Just for the record, I would like to list here some great scientist - artists of the world. I am sure no one will have an objection if I included creative writers in the art "faction".

The most prolific science writer of them all, Isaac Asimov, a doctorate in Bio Chemistry, was also a prolific science fiction writer.

Nearer home, you could count Jayant Narlikar in the same category.

Goethe, the greatest of German men of letters, once spent a few months in Goettingen working on a problem connected with the sun. I have no idea how good he was as a scientist but there was no war between the factions there.

Charles Darwin once regretted that once he started thinking about and writing the Origin of Species, he could no longer read novels and poetry which he had once enjoyed. This looks like a contradiction of my own claim that there is no war between the factions. We must note that Darwin said this with great regret. The war here is between the method of science and the madness (oh what beautiful madness) of art. (I must add that not all art is all madness. It needs hard work but of a different kind. For instance, Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and edited it three times. Each time, his wife made fair copy of the whole manuscript. Did these people have a different clock which ran much slower than ordinary clocks? I have postponed reading WaP to my post-retirement plans - not having enough time right now!)

Recently, Ruth Padel, Darwin's great granddaughter was in India and she writes poetry about her great great-grand-father and his life and work, among other things. No sir, no war between the two cultures there.

One of the most famous names in the visual arts and science is the German scientist-artist, Ernst Haeckel, whose pictures of plants and animals are perhaps unparalelled. You will perhaps never know if it was an artistic endeavour or a scientific endeavour for him.

A maverick of sorts and one of the legendary scientists of the modern era, Richard Feynman, learnt to play drums and while trying to teach some science to an artist ended up learning enough art to make some very good looking pictures.

Nearer home again, Kuvempu was very well read in science for laymen and had a lifelong interest in it. (He was instrumental in influencing my father to read popular science books and also take up science writing) Pu Ti Na, another great Kannada poet had an abiding interest in science and you can discern that in some of his poems too.

Is a naturalist a scientist? If yes, Audubon, perhaps, is known more as a painter of nature (See paintings here) was an avid nature lover and observer and painted it too. (The American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservancy is known as the Audubon society)

Perhaps the greatest name in science, Einstein, himself was a violinist of some accomplishment. I have always wondered how good he was as a violinist. Because he is a legend, his violin playing abilities could be the stuff of legend. But there is this story about how Einstein was concerned that an unknown young stranger next to him said that he did not understand music and took the trouble to give the young man a crash course in music listening shows that there is no war there!

Homi J Bhabha, one of India's greatest scientists, considered to be the father of India's atomic energy programme, was a trained pianist and a painter. Once, he painted a portrait of C V Raman and presented it to Raman. Raman was admiring it when Bhabha said, "That is the portrait of a great scientist by an artist". Raman retorted, "No, it is the portrait of an artist by another artist". Both took their art seriously and were proud of being artists! Raman conducted considerable research on the vibration of the membranes of percussion instruments. The interest in the topic was born more out of artistic interests than scientific interests, is my guess. Raman's wife was a well trained Veena player and Raman was very (inordinately?) proud of that fact.

If you make certain changes in the quoted passage about which I have 'railed' here, and replaced the word art with religion, it might make a lot more sense. That, of course, will also be contentious!

Yes Sir, art and science appear to be two divergent cultures. But at the heart of both is a search for truth and beauty. Their methods are different, means are different. But, NO SIR, there is no war between them and no salvos.

What Koop is "railing" at is not art but BAD art. He would rail equally, if not more, vehemently against bad science or non-science (sounds very close to nonsense, does it not?) and non-science trying to pass itself off as science, I am sure. I am certain that any self respecting artist who looked at five cornered and eight cornered (pentagonal and octagonal, Ahem!) snow crystals would be riled and would rail at it. Not at art per se.

Let me end with a piece of news that caught my attention recently. The latest Indian (born) Nobel Prize winner dashed to India recently to attend his son's Cello concert. Father and son at loggerheads and in opposite camps? No sir.

No Sir, there is and was no war, no truce, no salvos. Dare I say it? The report under discussion is as bad a piece of journalism as a piece of art depicting five cornered snow crystal?

Republic Day Musings

Every Republic Day has a certain things in common - watch the RD parade for a while on TV, watch "Gandhi", the movie, on some channel or the other, look at the list of Padma award winners and crib. This year, the crib started a day before RD because a friend called and asked if Romulus Whitaker has got any padma award. The answer unfortunately is no.

Awards are given to many deserving people, for sure. However the lapses - those of commission and of omission - are points for discussion and cribbing. This year, I was really happy to see the name of - Sheldon Pollock a very deserving recipient indeed. He is scholar of classical studies who is passionate about classical studies in India. My introduction to his name was fairly recent - through a very interesting article by him in The Hindu. There are of course people like Arundhati Nag who richly deserve it too.

The name in this year’s list that amused me was that of Resul Pookutty. I do not have an opinion on whether he deserves it or not. But, I do believe that he got the award because he got the Oscar. If not his existence itself would not even be known to the powers that be who decide on such matters is my guess. This comment does not take anything away from Resul I hope.

My problem is more with the names such as Aamir Khan and Sehwag. I am an admirer of Aamir Khan in general. His movies are good and he seems to be a good human being with social concerns and has done his bit about them. But does someone who promotes coloured aerated water deserve such an award, is my question. I know at least a few people who believe that he does not. If that is the case, one can imagine Indra Nooyi getting a Padma Vibhushan was just too much to swallow! I have already written about that here.

Now, coming to the other question - about Rom Whitaker; He has done more for Indian snakes and Gharials than anyone else. He richly deserves far more recognition than he has got. Or do environment and ecology not deserve such concern? When thinking about Rom, I could not help thinking of Valmik Thapar, Fateh Singh Rathore and Ullas Karanth. These naturalists, to find a common name, deserve the award, even perhaps more than some who have got it this year and before!

Giving them an award like that will serve an important purpose other than recognising their work and contributions. The matters are at least forced on the consciousness of people at large and hopefully something good will happen for the besieged environment.

I only hope that one day soon the actors against whom there are prima facie cases of killing black bucks!

Obama and Nobel

Let me be blunt. I felt let down by the Nobel Committee that decides on the prize for peace.

Let me make it clear. I am an admirer of Obama. Then why the feeling of having been let down?

When a colleague hurried to my desk to announce that Obama got the Nobel Prize for peace, my first reaction was, "It must be a hoax". He insisted that he had seen it on a reliable news channel. Until I saw it on the Official Nobel Website I did not believe it.

I talked to colleagues and friends at random and the reactions were uniform - "What?", "What for?", "Rigged?", "Nothing is reliable any more" . .

I told a friend, we will read the reports and the citation and then decide. The citation on the Nobel website reads " . . . for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". Not too bad.

I thought about the whole thing and realised that most of the previous laureates had a life time of achievement behind them before they were honoured. Many had contributed significantly for a number of years before they were awarded. The Fact that Obama gets the prize when he has not really been in the international scene for more than a year seems to be the reason for the disbelief and all the other emotions.

I recalled another fact now almost forgotten that the will of Alfred Nobel reads as follows.

"The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. . . "

The words in bold italics above (both mine) has been a problem for the Nobel committee and has been flouted than followed. The greatest scientific discovery of the preceding year would not have been peer reviewed, replicated and tested enough for the prize to be awarded this year. Hence someone like S Chandrasekhar gets a prize five decades (?) after his discovery. (Well, that is a long story but, good enough for the present purposes) Because of this, we are used to seeing prizes being awarded to recognise and honour life time achievements.

Suddenly, the Nobel committee decides to stick to the clause in bold italics and we feel let down.

Nobel peace prizes often seem "political" in the sense that the committee is trying to promote a movement or a line of thought. Quite often, anti-communist writers and activists have been honoured and most common people had not heard of them. Al Gore's is another case in point. In this case too, by awarding the prize to Obama, the Nobel committee seems to be saying - "What this man is doing is good" and quite often a Nobel laureate has an invisible aura that may help "him" in doing what he wants to do.

With all these things in mind, do I still feel disappointed/let down? No. Not as much as when I heard it first.

I am still thinking . . .

Loves Labours Lost

I received an SMS as follows: ninu + nanu + cenma + yavaga + pls + tell + me (you + I + movie + when + please + tell + me. I swear, Cinema was spelt so!)

I replied: ninu + nanu + cenma = DISASTER! Now the equation is balanced! May I know who you are?

An hour later, I got a call from the same number. I put on my deepest and gruffest voice and said "HELLO"

Line was cut.

Some poor lovelorn soul, must be deeply disappointed.

Nuanced Speech

I wanted to explore the language of the present day youth. The 'Y' generation. (Is that the shorter version of "Why is this generation like this?"). I had an idea about a post on nuanced speech. I decided to merge the two. Bad idea? Let us see.

OK. I'll tell you one story OK? (Where have all the indefinite articles signifying a quantity of one gone? They seem to have completely disappeared now a days, I mean, now one days.) I had gone to buy coffee powder and come OK? Sudden rain. Jumped into one shop OK? OK. Neat and clean and all. Standing standing suddenly, I started saying Chihuahua and by the time I wondered when to stop, dogs all around me. Raining cats and dogs they say no? That day only dogsOK? I am thinking, where they are coming from and oh s*** I remember. Below shop no? A vet shopOK? Rain means all dog owners and their best friends in the med shop. Then I see, shop full of doggy things. Oh! OK, now I know.

Standing there, I see two beautiful dogs OK? Same type both. Really really cute OK? Wondering what breed it is. Finally asked the dude catching one dog. (This is the Kannada to English translation that you hear very often. In kannaDa the verb hiDi means both hold and catch. As a noun, it means handle) What breed? I ask him OK? Bugger looks one type and casual like, "it is an Indian breed" he says. You know, like only he knows dogsOK? OK, bugger, I look seriously and tell, "It's like, I think it is Rajapalyam. That's why I ask". Thud, he comes down OK? Stupid grin he tells, “yaa, their father IS a Rajapalyam”. Awww bugger we also know dogs OK?

Well, even if you are not sick of it, I am. This really really ooooooops, .. This really happened to me. He did have the look that said, "Who knows about Rajapalyams other than the cognoscenti?" Subscript - like us. I like dogs, from a distance, preferably in books. I can recognize a few breeds and am fascinated by them. Once, in Germany, I ran away from the table in an open air restaurant. My companion was really scared that he has to pick up the tab for my beer too! I ran and talked to a girl with a really tiny dog on a leash. Learnt of a new (to me, that is) breed. It is called a Reh Pinscher. Reh means a doe in German. This breed was bred to be small, run after deer and bite them and hang on to them, to be hunted down easily by the hunter. Cruel! But, interesting. I swear! The fact that the girl was pretty had nothing to do with it!

I will now continue in "normal" English.

I was waiting at the "parcel" counter of a restaurant. (Take away or "to go" counter for those who do not know this very Kannada (south Indian?) term) I had a fairly long list of things to be packed. A young lady came to the counter and handed her order in. She then went out to talk to someone. Returned in a few minutes and asked the man at the counter if her order was ready. He said that it would take more time. She talked a little further to him in a friendly way that is unusual. She was obviously in a hurry and hence I apologised to her for my long list that was making her wait. Then to compensate for it, I complimented her on the easy friendly way she talked to the guy at the counter. She thanked me for it and said "I learnt it from my hubby". Must be an unusual man, that truncated husband. Not only does his wife learns something from him but is also ready to even acknowledge it!

See what I mean? She was telling me in no uncertain terms. "Look old man, do not get ideas, just because I talk freely! I am already married and am close to my (truncated) husband." She must have wondered if she was too touchy. She complimented me that it was a good idea of mine to bring a book along and read it while waiting for my order to be filled.

See what I mean by nuanced speech?

Message in a Bottle on the High Seas

I have had some success looking for long lost (to me, that is) friends through my blog. Let me try once more.

Look at the guys in the picture. In the middle is yours truly. The other two are Solomon Mechessa and Alemayehu Mechessa. Unfortunately I do not remember who is who! It is no wonder that I do remember their names. They sound so musical. They are such nice people and friends. The place is IIT Kharagpur and in particular the quadrangle of the Vidya Sagar Hall (VS Hall), Ca 1986.

These two were gentle gentlemen and cousins. They used to be quite isolated. Very few of the hostel-mates talked to them and I was the exception. We became good friends. Before I left Kgp, they gave me a lunch - authentic Ethiopian style. They were good cooks. Ethiopian cuisine is very close to South Indian food is what I remember other than the fact that it was a very good lunch. In the company of two very nice people.

I was never a good correspondent in the days of snail mail and am a much better one in the electronic era. Of course, I am not perfect but, I am a far better one. Else, I would not have lost touch with these two friends.

I searched for Alemayehu on the net and did find one - Dr. Alemayehu Mechessa. I tried to contact him through an international organisation that he is associated with but with no success. I hope, I am more successful here.

Dear Alemayehu, dear Solomon, I have forgotten which name matches which face in the picture, but I remember you clearly and with affection. Do contact me if and when you see this blog.

One more Ethiopian friend from VS Hall was one Ebenet. I do not know his second name. I just put it here increase the chances of this post being hit in a random search and getting to contact the Mechessas.

Sketch

Some time ago I wrote about Julia Lermontova here.

I made a paper and pencil sketch of her portrait and here it is.