On Hero and pens

               Thanks to a conversation with our friend, we got reminded about pens. Fountain pens, specifically. They used to be a cherished possession of ours, long back while in junior school. A handed-down Hero pen from our pitAshrI was our first ever brush with fountain pens. Till then we had been using pencils in school and for our work at home.

We used to have a bunch of pens in our own little cupboard, not all in working condition because our six year old self never gathered the heart to throw away an instrument so thoughtful, so functional and so easy to use. For the Hindi lessons that we have mentioned earlier in these pages, we used to stand in front of our cupboard to decide which pen to take for the day. A mild fluorescent green Reynolds ball point won most of the times.

So, when our school "allowed" the usage of pens, not ball but fountain, our go-to was the Hero. It was an Emerald green beauty with a polished golden top. It had this characteristic smell, a divine mix of inky wonder – impossible to describe but only to be felt. We used to take out the cap and smell it now and then, just to soak in the aroma. The shape of it amazed us, the smooth cylindrical top, ending in a fine tip and the end tapering down to a smaller circle fitted with a golden cap. The golden, polished cap standing out like a crown on a king. It was unlike other pens, where the nib stood outside prominently. Instead, the Hero had a concealed nib and that added to it a sense of mystery. There were more secrets inside. The ink holding pouch was much simpler compared to other common fountain pens. Dip and press - simple. We recall our very first session of sitting down to learn fill ink into a fountain pen with pitAshrI. We had bought a bottle of Chelpark ink – emerald blue. Creaking the sealed bottle open, checking the underside of the top to make sure no ink was there, smelling the raw ink inside in all its blue-blooded glory (there, I said it! ). These feelings are hard to describe. If you can relate to it, you will smile.

But we felt that, after all it may not be a good idea to take the cherished Hero to school where the chances of it getting lost/stolen were considerable. Instead, we got for ourselves a Camlin pen with a barrel bottom for the ink.

Our tryst with pens other than Hero was not always smooth. The fountain pens had to be nurtured very carefully. If they drop from the hand and hit the ground, the nib could be damaged irreversibly. We have had to encounter some of those mishaps. The issue of leakage of ink was always there, like a Damocles' Sword. The mounting dictation volumes in our classes meant we had to write a lot and write fast. Fountain pens were never writing fast. We feel they are for composing, not writing. They are for a slower world. We discontinued them when we reached upper middle school. We wish that we had used it more, but sadly that hasn't been the case. The ball point was quicker and easier. One thing replaces the next. But we carry the great memories of the by gone past.

The Hero stayed with us, only used very rarely. To delight us once again when we were rummaging through our stash of items from old times. We used to, like a child, take it out and smell its nib, its insides. The aroma bringing up for us to relive, once again, all the pleasant memories it is associated with. It never stopped delighting us. The characteristic arrow on top had faded over the years, giving in to time, but with pride. It was a very sad for us, when the pocket clip broke one day while we were examining it. We felt very guilty, as if we had done some great mistake in our zeal. We just put it back in the pen stand and moved away.

The kAla chakra turned and we had moved to college. Once when we were back home, we got reminded of it again, but could locate it no longer. 

Bicycle diaries

               It is a great source of embarrassment for us, but fact remains that we hadn't acquired the skills to balance ourselves confidently on a bicycle until we were in our mid-teens. We had several attempts with it ever since a kid, but for some reason we couldn’t get the hang of, well, hanging in on it.

Chapter 1: Introduction

               

We got our first bicycle when six or seven. Memory fades us as to when exactly. It was a BSA Champ, with trainer wheels. We loved it, as it had a colourful seating with a high back rest. We can vividly recall in our mind's eye the trip to bring the new thing home. Our seven year old self was careful enough to leave the plastic wrapping on the seats intact, although it caused us to slip on the seats occasionally. And so, we took our first ride in the uneven patch of path leading onto our home of then. We never mustered enough courage to try after removing the trainer wheels, we were just happy to ride around in the safety it offered.

Chapter 2: Big boys' league

               

As our itinerant lifestyle carried us over to a new place, we had grown in years and the old BSA was below our league. We had at home our pitAshrI's bicycle – an Atlas - , which to our then little self, looked fit to be ridden only by giants (pun intended). So we had to come to terms with leapfrogging straight from the kids' league to the big-boys'. This was large quantum jump for us. We were also quite intimidated by the cross bar frame in the bicycle and the potential cause for hurt that it held. This meant that, for our height we couldn't just turn our leg over the seat and sit. In fact, the technique is that we had to pedal up with just one foot, with the other dragging for a few hits on the ground. Once the bicycle had gained sufficient momentum one had to just turn the other leg over the seat and sit. That is how it is done in our part of the world. We had the fortune of learning what sufficient momentum was the hard way, when we tried to hop over a little too fast and hit the ground with the same hurry.

Chapter 3: Big boys' league continued

               

So every weekend we used to make the long journey with our pitAshrI riding us in pillion to a huge open field surrounded by a few bamboo trees. The purpose was to impart the essential Man skill of riding a bicycle with ease. We were a very slow learner, but thanks to our pitAshrI's abundant patience progress was made and we grew in confidence, but still were too scared to ride without supervision. Things were not helped on by our own lackadaisical attitude. We were very reluctant, partially because we still entertained a fear of getting hurt.

               And then we moved to a new place. The observant reader may notice that constant movement has been the leitmotif of our life. Even with our bicycle education. Lack of practice meant we lost what little we had gained. Our cerebellum had not yet fully established the neural pathways needed for this skill, only a vague outline of the path. We practised some more, on and off, whenever we felt like it.

Chapter 4: Hardware update

               

After our shift to the RajDhAnI, we won a bicycle as a prize from chandamAmA. Luckily, it turned out to be of an appropriate size for us and so we took to riding it with ease. It was magical for us almost. With the right hardware our long forgotten neural pathways lit up once again, this time with renewed vigor and fluidity. We think it was the removal of the fear of falling that did the trick, as in this bicycle even if we lost balance for a moment we could seek support by balancing our legs on the ground. With the previous one, the bar in the middle and the height made it very difficult to do this.

The instinct for survival and self-preservation of the brain are remarkable indeed.

Genetic musings

               This evening, walking back home after an intellectually charged session in Machine control, we witnessed a kid of maybe 12-14 years walking with her mother. Our attention was drawn to this mother-child duo because the facial features of the kid looked very familiar to us. For a moment, it was surreal because we did not expect to see that face so far away from home. It took a few seconds for us to realise that it was indeed someone else and in fact the similarity in features was most probably due to a case of Down's syndrome. It is a genetic disorder where an extra copy of the 21^st chromosome is present. Instead of two of it, three are present. This anomaly expresses itself by resulting in delay in growth, a relatively low IQ, language disability, etc.

               

The kid we knew from home was very active. Although we read from literature that Down syndrome causes low IQ, we can say from experience that, that kid was not lacking in it. He was very well-behaved and had a decent memory.

               

We find it very remarkable that, what is essentially a copying error can lead to such a dramatic affliction in humans. In fact this error is quite common, occurring once in every 1000 babies born in a year! To date, we do not know what leads to the presence of three pairs of the 21^st chromosome. The result of the extra chromosome is that, since the chromosomes hold the genes, the bodily functions regulated by the 21^st get over-expressed. Meaning - the increased production of certain chemicals. So, at the most fundamental and critical level, our existence is not controlled by us. Our consciousness is housed several layers above. To borrow a computer systems analogy, the hardware on which the software of consciousness runs is not autonomous. The software cannot correct for any hardware changes no matter how advanced it may be. We don't like it, but we cannot deny saying that we are 'being kept alive' by a machinery about which we understand very little and have a superficial control. That is our position.  

Reminiscences

               The time we'd like to recall here were the days in the early turn of this century when we had made our new home at the RajDhAnI of Delhi. For our 12 year old self, the experience was frightening, as our command of the rAshtrabhasha of Hindi was dismal at best. Although, we had a not-so-brief period of evening Hindi lessons when we were six or seven, those really did not amount to much. Having enrolled for prAthmic, we had to drop classes after a few months as our itinerant lifestyle involving a move every three years, necessitated another. But as a consolation, we did not have to scratch from start, as our command of the basic aksharas of Devanagari was quite good thanks to those lessons.

              

  As preparation, our pitAshri quizzed us on simple Hindi sentences one night. We still recall one of those – "Sonia Gandhi Congress party ki adhyakshA hain". We were intelligent enough to make out that it was something about the Congress party and the said lady, but 'adhyaksha' was beyond our comprehension or deduction. So we got mildly irritated and brushed it aside saying we knew enough to manage somehow (!)

               

First few days in our new class were difficult. We spoke good English, but it is difficult when you don't know the language. To our advantage, the school where we enrolled had a good number of students from the land of parashurAma, as the school was run by Christian missionaries from there. It was also our first brush with learning Sanskrit – it was our third language after English and Hindi. For several days we were clueless in the rAshtrabhAsha classes, satisfying ourself with disturbing our neighbour to ask a few meanings here and there. We concluded that nothing was going to change unless we took extra tuitions outside of class. And so, for the next year or so we used to go two days a week to a very nice lady in our apartment society, to get the hang of Hindi.

               

This period also saw us display a general slack in academic performance. Till before coming here, we used to be among the top three places of our respective class. Now, we found ourselves in the late tens, and even early twenty once. It still is a wonder to us that we managed to pass our very first Hindi exam. What surprises us now more than this fall-back was the fact that we couldn't care less about it. In hindsight, we feel that this attitude may have arisen due to the drastic shift in the education systems that we had seen so far and were seeing now. Until then, we were schooled in the art of cramming. The better you cram the more you are rewarded. But in this new place, focus was on knowing, at least to a reasonable extent, what one was studying and not just cram. We did not realise it then, but we sense now that we did not adequately see this difference and continued with the method that we were familiar with; so the result was less than good. This was quite apparent with the subject of Mathematics, where we got hit quite hard.

              

An important factor, which we see now, with the benefit of hindsight, was that of the difference in the curricula followed. Earlier we had the one prescribed by the Matriculation board of the Dramila (Tamil) desa. But at the RajDhAnI we were put through what is an ICSE curriculum. We had no idea about all this during our time there. We were a normal teenager who found himself having to adjust to a new environment. The Maths was very different, some of which we had never seen were had been done by the class here. This early scar has, we are afraid, remained with us. Not as a lack of ability, but as a lack of fluidity. It is one of the facts that we regret, because it is our belief that excellence in mathematics happens only with an early foundation. There may be exceptions, but this is a general trend. 

The Fall

The object accelerated purposefully towards its unknown destination, displacing millions of air molecules. A windy spring morning had coaxed it out of its home in the skies, on a course to cause hurt and history.

Fortunately (?) the journey was cut short, hitting a young lad's head with some force. "Ouch!", cried a startled Newton.

Mr. Kejriwal's power struggle

                The decision of the newly-sworn Aam Aadmi Party government regarding slashing of power bills by 50% for consumers, by offering to finance it through a government subsidy clearly shows that they stand to offer nothing new in terms of radically new governance.

There has been long allegations and protest by people of Delhi that they are being overcharged by distribution companies. The present CM himself, in his more radical days, went around tearing off power bills, asking people to not pay their bills. But an important issue has been glossed over in the name of rallying against the alleged "corporate harassment" of power companies. The fact of the matter is this – Delhi is largely seen as the power theft colony of India. Estimates vary, but the AT&C (Accumulated Transmission and Commercial losses) in distribution ranges from a staggering 30-50%! These are essentially from people, illegal housing colonies putting a hook on power lines and drawing power, without paying. Imagine, if 100MW is available for distribution, the company can't recover costs on this 30-50%. So essentially, they can recover the full cost on only 50% of the electricity they distribute. This leads to a pricey bill for middle-class consumers who are regularised/metered consumers. This illegal power theft is politically patronised. It is not a practice common to Delhi alone but a common fact of life across India.

                

        So, Mr.Kejriwal instead of offering to take institutional measures to curb this spurious theft has followed the oldest trick in Socialism 101. Offer subsidies. Train people to pay less for what costs more in the market. The problem is once people get used to this artificially supported cheap power, it is very hard to get them to pay as per market realities – check the issue of Petrol deregulation for starters. While his steps towards forcing companies to a CAG audit is welcome, he should go ahead for a Social Audit for all parts of Delhi and take strict action against people drawing illegal power. That would truly be a step in the right direction to help the Aam Aadmi.

2013 in Books

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested" 

                        reads an old quote attributed to Francis Bacon. I move to make an alteration to the same- Some, if not all MUST be shared! Paulo Coelho believes in not owning more than a fixed number of books in his collections because he thinks a book has its own journey to make, from one hand to the next, like how the writer's mind wanders from one idea to the next as he wrote the book. While I am not so generous, I feel that I should at least spread ideas about the books I read in 2013 and feel others should read

Ten books. So, here goes.

ENGLISH

BeingDifferent: An Indian challenge to Western Universalism

            I found this a tough read. Rajiv Malhotra, an eminent Indian intellectual based in Princeton, USA has been championing the cause of an Indic perspective to India for almost three to four decades. He feels the academia is full of Western interpretations of Indian philosophy, so he turns the table and dissects the same from the Indian point of view, extending the same to Western or Abrahamic philosophy. A very serious read, but rewarding.

The Cuckoo's Calling

            A sensational debut by the unknown Robert Galbraith, this crime thriller has a very languid, lazy pace to it. Proceeding largely through interviews of the same incident from multiple characters, Det. Cormoran Strike tries to piece together the suicide of a starlet- Lula Landry. Although not racy, the plot the writing is charming, packed with details and an unexpected twist at the end. Hope we see more of Galbraith in the coming years.

Stories of your life and Others

            A short set of science fiction stories by American author Ted Chiang. These stories have fetched him multiple Hugo, Nebula and Sturgeon prizes. No wonder they are real gems. All novella lengths. The subjects range from Babylonian cosmology to linguistics; from mind-control to medieval time travel. A fascinating range of tales, all told in a very engaging manner. An unputdownable this!

Maximum City

            Suketu Mehta return to the Bombay of his childhood to find not just its name changed, but quite a lot. Yet, some things never change. He chronicles the city's dizzying pace of life, the gang-wars, the Shiv Sena, Bollywood. The narration is lively, interspersed with history and anecdotes. The parts about the '93 blasts make chilling read. Overall, an outstanding piece, on India's financial capital.

Inferno

             Dan Brown's latest offers a 600 odd page guided tour book to the city of Florence, Venice. Langdon runs against the clock trying to retrace the events of the past few days, with his memory failing him. He must refer to the Italian master Dante's works to find his way out of all the travails that are invariably directed with him at the center. A very engaging read, with the climax faltering. Better watched as a movie.

Bhitti

            This is probably my favourite read of this year. A translation of SL Bhyrappa's Kannada autobiography. Prof. Bhyrappa needs no introduction- a bestselling Kannada author, Sahitya Academy winner. How often do you find a Southern Indian regional writer feature in the top five of Hindi bestselling authors? In Bhitti, he traces his life from his birth in a poor inner Kannada household to his ultimate success as an author. But this journey, as in all cases, isn't without setbacks. Losing his father at an early age, being abused by his uncle, having to starve for days without money after being defrauded, everywhere we see Bhyrappa confront the challenges life throws with an indomitable will and ultimately triumph. More than anything, it is amazing how he delineates the lessons he learnt from all these experiences. Words can't describe this long book. Please read.

The Lowland

            Jhumpa Lahiri weaves a tale of love and revolution in Calcutta of 50s and 60s. Two brothers from a lower middle class family are the focus. The younger is a daring guy, while the elder is reticent. In college, their paths diverge. The younger brother is idealistic and gets involved in the Naxal movement. The elder moves to America for doctoral studies. They grow apart, both in distance and in world view. He gets in to a relation with a divorced women only to be deserted by her. One day, he learns the his brother is no more. He goes back to his homeland to find the reasons. What he gets there, what happens form the crux of this very emotional tale.

The Strangest Man -The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum genius

            Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac is without doubt, one of the greatest physicists in Britain after Newton. An engineer by training, a mathematician by ability and a physicist by choice, he made fundamental contributions to the development of Quantum mechanics and the mathematical machinery underlying it. Yet, he was a strange man. This biography explores his personality quirks- his extreme reserve and literal-mindedness. He spoke very little. A humorous unit of measuring speech is dubbed the Dirac, with one Dirac meaning one word per hour(!). We get to see his human side as well- his upbringing and his routines. A very refreshing book this by Graham Farmello.

TAMIL

            I did not read too many Tamil works this year. The few I read were not all great.

ஜயமோகன் சிறுகதைகள்

                Tamil writer Jeyamohan has carved a niche out for himself with his wide ranging works. This is a collection of his short stories. The tales are based mostly in and around his hometown of Nagercoil. The setting is rustic and the characters are not too layered. Makes for casual read. The tamil is a bit difficult to get, because of the local dialect words used.

சுஜாதா

            Sujatha Rangarajan is one writer who continues to be a best seller even after his passing away. I read three novellas of his and an anthology of tributes to him, by eminent personalities who had worked with him. In his novels, his attention to details, are what stand out. The style is conversational; the bi-polar characterisation of the serious lawyer Ganesh and his rib-tickling side kick Vasanth provide for a perfect setting.