Gorblimey!

At least two have asked me if I'm the author of the latest TFE IP, basing their suspicion on the army of PJ's in it. I amn't.

And, do contribute! If your piece is good, it'll directly get published. If it's bad, it'll be touched up before it sees print. If it's worse it'll be bounced. If it's perfectly pathetic, again, it'll directly get published -- along with your photograph, room number, and the location of hockey bats in your hostel.


My attitudes toward the delusions notions of God, Religion, Spiritualism, etc. underwent phases.
When I was as tall as my hip, my mother* gave it to me in a shot: 'God can do everything.'
This gave rise to several complications. For instance, could this God person really handle a calculator? Yes, vouched the parent for Him. I was quite impressed. A flurry of questions sprang over the following days: Can He read magazines? Does He know how to use a mixie in the kitchen? Does He speak English? Can He type as fast as my mom? The answer was always a why-not-of-course-yes.

The real clincher came when I had a groundbreaking conversation with her during, I reckon, my First Grade. I distinctly remember its gist. Allow me to paraphrase.

Son: Free me from ignorance, mother. Are foeti conceived in wombs by themselves at unexpected moments? Or is it that women are equipped with the power to calve at the time of their choosing?

Mom: Spoken like a prodigy, my gold brick. Your second hypothesis is closer to the truth.

Son: Indeed. So thought I. But could you throw light as to how you mothers decide when to populate your uteri? How, for instance, did you have me, not to mention my brother, in your belly, just the time you wanted us to be there?

Mom: I prayed... to God.

Son: Oh?

Mom: Yes. Time will tell all, jaggery lump. Now show mama your homework.

This little chat sealed any doubts I had on the omnipotence of the Chap. My piety deepened. I dared not get into my parents' bad books for fear of ending up having my eyes punctured by Him. In temples I put up my best behaviour, lest He be lurking in a dark corner with watchful eyes.

And then the father factor set in. That my papa's papa was a supervisor of temples in TN and was an ardent, if not fanatic, Hindu, was outweighed by the astronomy lectures he (my dad) had attended in his college. When I was still in my single-digit years, he opened my mind, in little degrees, to reason. Practical difficulties faced by ten-handed goddesses here, an elementary anomaly in the concept of omnipresence there, and so on. He never forced his atheism on me, merely pointing out the common sense-defying postulates of the God theory now and then. This kept me on think mode, and I turned agnostic. My faith and a temple in the neighbourhood followed an inverse-square law.

In the summer of Fifth Class, I was hospitalized for a fortnight. My maternal grandfather had me run prayers on a daily basis. And my eventual cure rendered me a whole-hearted believer again.

God existed for the next three years.

Books by Tamil writer Sujatha and Lankan rationalist Kovoor, further god-gossip with my father, and the due course of lifely events later transformed me to what may be best described as an agnatheist. Belief peaked a few days a year, always coinciding with exam dates. Whenever asked about my ideas on God, I came to mumble 'I don't exactly call what I believe as God... But I am sort of half-convinced that something -- something -- controls the network of events and things in the universe and the beauty of it all, if you know what I mean, you know. A pattern, I mean. Kind of arragement of coincidences, et cetera. Well, there is a lot of deep thinking left. I have to do it sometime. But I'm also open to--' and so on till the listener would halt me with a quick 'Okay-okay-okay'.

It was only after joining the institute did I fully realize that quasi-atheism and poinephobia were synonyms. I soon started calling myself a 'non-believer', for saying "I'm an atheist" (despite being a staunch one) somehow implied coming across as one who pooh-poohed others' intelligence by virtue of their faith alone and who took it upon himself to breathe logic into his fellow men. I've seldom attempted to bring people to my side of the God line. I don't see why G H Hardy, Dawkins and the rest waste/d their valuable time and cerebral resources in disproving the existence of God -- atheists would applaud their works and others would cling to their own faith anyway. Once you're absolutely convinced of His/Her/Its non-existence, why care? 'Rabbit's horn' is the phrase that leaps to mind. Thus, to me, apatheism is the highest form of atheism.

Some cool links:
(1) FAQ
(2) Dragon
(3) Spaghetti
(4) IPU
(5) Paradox
I particularly want you to read (2).

A request. If you're writing a counterattacking comment, please spare the catch-line 'God can only be sensed / realized / intuitively felt.'

*a semi-theist

F.A.Q. on E.P.

The name being quaint for a B Tech branch, our bloods Boyle every time we're asked these Millikan Dollar Questions:

"Watt do you do in EP?"

Every working week (from Monday to Faraday), our time is spent Moseley in exploring nuclear physics, statistical physics, quantum physics and curvy physiques. Not to mention making PJ's, Poynting out profs' blackboard errors, thieving lab equipment and Hawking them in streets.

"Do you have a bright scope after B Tech?"

A difficult Curie to answer. All we can say is our early seniors' success Gibbs us some hope.

"Why just about 10 people in your branch?"

Our small strength is our biggest strength. That's Gauss we believe too many cooks spoil de Broglie.

"Why was this branch created in the first place?"

That's a Rayleigh nasty question. It Hertz our feelings. Anyway, a necessity to Hooke Physics with Engineering was felt. Hence our dept. profs, both old and Young, went to ESB with their Bose and arrows and said: 'Next time it will be LASER-guided Tomahawks and H-bombs if you don't agree to our terms.'
Thus EP was Born.

"Your contributions to IITM?"

We don't want to Bragg about ourselves and Bohr you to death.

Keeping The Record Straight

Drinking glasses in CR are cylindrical.
I asked Akhil to pass me one as I settled down for lunch. A spot of silence prompted me to contribute to the din of the mess.
'Why', I philosophized, 'are these called glasses? They are made of steel...'
'OK, tumbler', said somebody [I don't remember who].
'Again, why are they called tumblers? They don't keep tumbling always!'
'Then what will you call them?'
I eyed the thing for an instant.
'From its shape, I'd call it a metal beaker.'
A quiet agreement went around the table and I bent down to dig the meal.
The thunder changed hands. Vikas, in his spookily polite manner said: 'Why is it called a beaker?'

* * * * *

[Fishy asked me to give a detailed description of this episode. Let me do just that.]

I dismount at the Gurunath parking lot, kick out the side-stand, slip the key into my pocket and walk towards the coffee vendor.

As arranged, Fishy awaits me, and we purchase the ersatz coffee IITM has got accustomed to.
We find no chair unbottomed.
I suggest the Himalaya lawn.
He prefers to walk.
Which way?
He asks me to pick between left and right.
I vote for the latter.
We beat the path a bit.
Before you could say 'Flippitty Chip', we sit at the Narmada bus stop.
We chat on this, we chat on that, we chat on this and that.
We empty the cups and bin them.
The all-important topic of British sitcoms comes up as we walk back.
He contends that I would get addicted to Coupling.
I try to draw him to Blackadder through quoting.

"Your brain, Baldrick, is like the four headed, man-eating haddock fish beast of Aberdeen."
"In what way, sir? "
"It doesn't exist."

"You're the worst cook in the entire world. There are amoeba on Saturn who can boil a better egg than you."

"Now why in heaven's name are you dressed up like that, Baldrick?"
"There's a long answer, and a short answer, my lord."
"Tell us the short one first."
"Whim."
"And the long answer is -- ?"
"It was a whim."

He in turn sells me Coupling and quotes its punchlines.
They are unprintable.
We cross the Alumni Association and reach the mouth of the road that leads to Sangam and Alakananda.
We promise to watch each other's favourite sitcom.
We trade goodnights.
We part.

I amble toward Saraswathi, all set for the hit-bed-get-shuteye routine.
Sangam comes in view.
My mobile buzzes.
SMS from Fishy.
'Come back'
I go back, full of curiosity.
I see him at the T junction.
'What is it?' I cry.
He runs a finger or two through his hair.
'Didn't you come by your cycle?'

* * * * *

Half the Physics Dept was watching Dhoom in the bus returning from SHAR [Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota]. In the climax, John Abraham, the fastest biker in the movie, dodges the good guys, hops on to his Suzuki and zips. He tears a straight line at top speed -- but by a logic unique only to the ollywoods, Uday Chopra and the Small B, from whom Abraham made his escape only now, stand yards in front of him.
I raised the point.
Immediately Fishy responded:
'They went around the world and came back on the other side!'

* * * * *

We start out on Monday energetically. But when we reach Friday evening, we get weakened.

Animalia

Suspending for the moment the ubiquitous squirrels and crows, and the tusked duo that, after a heated dispute over Linux v. Windows, turned their backs on each other forever in the heart of the institute, and the residential zone's Pomeranians, Pekingeses, Pugs, Poodles and Profs, the exceptional fauna of Chennai-036 deserves an essay in every blog run by its citizens. Allow me to share my sensations.

Ever since I got kicked into this engineering school, I've chanced upon numerous nameless fliers and reptiles, listened to unfamiliar chirrups, beheld fawns leap forth like springs and stags lock antlers. This fever of studying the animal kingdom from close quarters was at its apex in the first few weeks of my freshman year. My eyeballs felt like National Geographic cameras. I pedalled far and wide in the evenings just to ensure I hadn't missed monkeys or blackmoney [some call it blackbuck] in action, or a strange species at perch or aslither. Hence, while I was indulging in rich zoological pursuits as these, when one nature-loving friend of mine, after calling me to witness a 'superb thing' and having me hurry there with colourful visions of a possible doe in labour or a kingfisher riding on a mongoose, ardently pointed his finger at the course of an ant -- an ant -- the natural fallout of momentarily losing two French words, to wit, sangfroid and savoir-faire, may be excused.

Lately, I visited a cave in the campus, amassing piles and piles of dust, throbbing with coloured bugs and beetles and laced with cobwebs in every cranny. It gave me a thumbnail view of the wide spectrum of insects the emerald woods of our varsity gives asylum to. I set out to spring-clean the grime and sweep the poor invertebrates out as it happened to be my hostel room [update: This was during the summer vacation]. While so doing, I saw, for the umptillionth time, a bug-couple Doing It. I had always wanted to know the name of these perennially charged organisms and, like all, had sworn at Google for not inventing Picture Search. Branchmate Raghu slaked my curiosity one day: they're officially called 'sexbugs'. I couldn't wonder less.

Sitting at my table at the far end of the room one afternoon, I was discussing light issues with Jayavel, who was leaning against the door frame. Since I was, as well, sketching an ME112 regular solid on my A3 sheet, I wasn't looking into his face during speech. The conversation reached a pause that wasn't pregnant, and taking the cue, J left. A bit later, out of the tail of my eye I perceived that he had re-entered and was standing in the centre of the room beside the bedfoot. I resumed the chat and kept at it for about 45 seconds, until I came alive to the feeling that J had considerably thinned down from what I had seen minutes back. I turned sharply.
'Jayavaaeell! Jayavaaaaeeellll!'
It was a cry for help. On the rail of the cot stood upright a rhesus monkey. My panic screams neither scared it away nor reached their addressee. I made an effort to strike my calm, with some success. My fright was not zoophobia; it was merely a shock, an abrupt realization of an animale presence. Typical of his race, the primate ignored shooing gestures with disdain, made a hollow mouth and surveyed the shelves. Only when I swayed my rifle (in the form of my mini-drafter in its canvas case) did he scoot.

A year elapsed. Mozart was treating my ears from the computer abutting a bunch of polythene packets. They contained candies of ginger, thulasi, vallarai and thoodhuvalai [the English names of the last three herbs are not in my cranial word-kit]. I was reclining on the wall by my bed. The subtle notes of the sonata completely mellowed me and more than once I caught myself yielding to the sandman. The world stood still, the sinews were limp with fatigue... It was (wink-wink) a moment of inertia...
All of a sudden a hairy hand appeared through the ajar door. I came to my senses with a start, and scampered to my feet. The monkey behind the hand entered. My pulse escalated. In a moment's notice, my precious gingers were in his clutch! Heavens! You could've felled me with a toothpick! I let out a war cry and sprang at him. He did not, contrary to my expectation, drop the parcel. I kicked air. He took flight. I gave chase. However, when the slapworthy tree-dweller's comrades joined him in the garden, ripped wrappers apart and popped toffees in, I had but to concede the triumph of Beast over Man. Inji thinna korangunga!

Fishy goings-on are taking place at the grassfield near S.A.C. Or rather, under the grassfield near S.A.C. Perhaps a bunker of ballistic missiles, perhaps a subterranean vault for unaccounted bullions. I don't know. All I can say is that the establishment has worked out a shrewd way to keep us off those plains by planting a board reading 'BLACKBUCK ZONE. NO THOROUGHFARE.' For I have sighted more fire-breathing dragons in that area than blackbuck. It is, as Prakriti wails in its mails, that their numbers dwindle by the week. And the buck keep coming up with inventive means of dying. Sigh...
Serious things apart, were Al Gore to look at the resource-squandering in the handful of green spots like ours, (I'm tempted to say) he'd be spinning in his grave. Of frogs, the acts of which I've already chronicled, and of the two kittens Raghu, Sriram and I rescued from the teeth of danger, I shan't blog.

Animals, thus, never fail to provide me with amazement, but when such provision comes from the monkey population, I take it with a pfoot of salt.

Punnishable Offences

$Question: What does 'P.P.' stand for?

Why did the gloomy man go down to the wine-cellar?
His spirits were low.

Traditional sheep-fodder is no longer in ewes.

What is the difference between (a) a crocodile let loose among goat shelters, and (b) a glycerine-eyed actor playing a kindly vicar?
(a)A crocodile tears apart prey's sheds.
(b)A part prays, sheds crocodile tears.

A novelist tried to write a story while bungee-jumping.
He was killed in the proses.

How come lions appear in groups only in summer?
Pride cometh before the fall. *

Why was the drunk skipper of the ship petrified when he spilt red wine on the right-hand rails?
He saw his port touch the starboard.
___________________________________________________
I fancy this is the, or at worst my, shortest sci-fi piece on record...

The Time-Trotter

Twice upon a time there lived a physicist.
_____________________________________________________________

Why did the multiple ship owners chuckle at the newbie setting out in the industry?
He was a one-liner man.

The Special Theory of Relativity:
A rolling stone gathers mass.

Can you name 02 two-hyphen-containing nineteen-letter-words?

How does a urinal behave like a (wo)man?
When it gets pissed, it flushes.

Change in kinetic energy =
Integral v1 to v2 of mvdv
mv = momentum = p
⁂ ΔKE =
Integral v1 to v2 of pdv ...(1)
Work done [by a gas] =
Integral V1 to V2 of pdV ...(2)
From (1) and (2), merely by changing lower case of v to the upper, we have proved that
Work done = Change in kinetic energy, thus establishing the Work-Energy Theorem.

$Answer: Read the papers. She stands for Indian President. So does B.S. Shekhawat.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*(i) I gently remind verbal amnesiacs that a collection of lions is a pride.
(ii) Erudite circles will scorn at the usage of the in a's stead. Can't help it, sorry.

Chicken II

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?

   But come on! The chicken is not an albino!

Aashish Dattani

   It had a bladder problem, but at mid-road it realized things were constipated.

Dr Flea

    The chicken with a soulful heart
    Paused with a silence fraught.
    'Twas waiting for a winged friend
    To emerge from the next bend.
    Here came the awaited footfalls,
    And oh! the ear's hope was false...
    Sight yielded but a perfect stranger,
    As the bird's heart dipped nether.
    And then did it with right wrath fume,
    Stuck breast out, flurried the plume,
    Thrust out foot, and stiffly strode!
    Thus did the chicken cross the road.

Pratyusha

   On this side of the road was Gates, on that side Torvalds.

Mathew

   A road and a chicken struck a partnership to arrange an accident of a car with a briefcase full of cash. The chicken secretly made to run away with all the money without giving the road its cut of the loot. What you saw was just the first half of the chicken's plan to double-cross the road.

Sriram (EP)

   Asin was giving autographs across the road. She's beautiful, no?

Narendranath

 

   Researchers in Reykjavik have finally come out with a decisive answer to the unsettling behaviour of chickens crossing roads frequently between mid-July and late August.
   From the website of University of Iceland:
        || Gallus gallus, or the domestic chicken, has increasingly become a traffic menace all over the world. Two out of every ten[1] bicycle topples are caused by their running into the rider's way. What is the root source of the instinct that drives these bipeds mad as a, well, wet hen? A four-member team of the Zoology Department [2] set out to unravel these mysteries, and their findings bring to light most shocking results. It was discovered that the age-old medical gospel, that chickens had nothing to do with chicken pox, was a sham. As a matter of fact, the seed of the fowl's impulse (to dash across bitumen) is a hybrid of two viruses -- one causes chicken pox, the other chikungunya! Reports of .... ||
    Note:
    [1]  'One out of every five' would do.
    [2]  Its Ornithology Wing (a bit of a pun, eh?), actually. The webmaster prudently so tailored the wordings that it didn't sound like the chicks were stared at by a bunch of bird-watching guys.  

Upcoming post in Chemical Siddharth's blog.

  The aviator desiderated to galvanise tribulatory predicaments in the precinct-abarticulative for a consuetude of chlerdipsylzubonemaphinschgretion.

'Frame' Santhosh

Mutespeak

Santhanam's Laws of Reaction:-
 
Law One
   Every chemical reaction remains under equilibrium or takes place at a uniform rate unless and otherwise an external catalyst acts on it.
Law Two
   The rate of a reaction is directly proportional to the molecular mass of the reactant and its k a value at room temperature.
          R α M
             α ka
          R = S.M.ka,
          where S = Santhanam's constant, of value 3.1415962 x 10^(-23)
Law Three
   Every oxidation has an equal and opposite reduction.
  
                ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Dreams fail. Take, for instance, Conversations of The Big Deal , a book I dug out from a shelf of archives. Its preface is longer than its inner contents! One of its authors didn't pen one word in it. Another lent twelve. It was the third chronicler that furnished the rest of the volume, from the leaves of which I retrieved a piece of paper my idle hand had, at some distant past point of time, filled with the aboveblogged Laws of Reaction. The Big Deal was a legion of three in pursuit of a common end. Each was sufficiently proficient in one stream apiece to coach the other two on his forte. The association didn't stay intact for long.
  I present here the book in its entirety.

Page Zero

First edition 2004
Final edition 2004

©The Big Deal™®

    This book, or any part of this book, is strictly prohibited from reproduction or republication in paper, microfilm, magnetic discs, etc. without prior written permission from at least one of the authors.

Published by
   POLAR BEAR PUBLICATIONS
   (Penguin Books and ours are poles apart)

Page One

                   Conversations Of The Big Deal
M. NAIR
S. BHATTACHARYYA
K. N. RAJ

                                           PREFACE
   Books have been written never without an idea in the head of the author(s). In this aspect, we are indeed dignified in presenting a book totally out of the genre. For we, the authors, ourselves do not know as yet the contents of this edition. It will be authored in the coming days on its own, with spontaneity, and with no premeditation. Conversations amongst us shall be in the written form, at least during class hours, and thus what should be called an oral expression shall be penned down hotly from our minds.
   We hope our readers will find the book interesting and useless.
   Finally, we thank our teachers for keeping us together in the same classroom, making this book possible.

Authors

S.B.O.A. School and Junior College

Chennai - 600 101

Page Two

25.05.2004.
Somu, here is the bullet train you told me of.

27.05.2004.
At home, you two try with cuboids, cubes, spheres, etc.
(G.L .)
Insulators are WEAK conductors, actually. Sundari miss told Krishnakanth.
English.
Induction.
Check if my H20 bottle is under your feet.
Isn't it capacitance?
Thanx.
Q = q 1 + q2
Q/t = q1/t + q2 /t
I = I1 + I2
Nearly Kirch's Jn. Rule. Nearly.

18.06.04.
Let's not forget this book.
Muthali yest. gave limit sum.
I will give TRS sir's worksheet note.
x¹⁰  -- 10^{x
------------------}
x^x -- 10¹⁰
Assuming the ammeter is ideal.
I want to do only March 2005.

Page Three

28.06.04.
That was exactly what I did.
One suggestion: "Bargainable" instead of "Bargains can be made".
I should have guessed.
Well-spacy-ventilated-hyphenated HOUSE.
Tomorrow I'm going, but I'll be back by half the day.
Good only. Have some fun.

   The letters in the dissimilar font were off the second author's pen. Sentences were not, unlike the above transcript, in the horizontal direction alone.
   Hard copy available.

Poor Jokes

Local

What did junta say when Mr Goodman was sacked?

   That it was a fitting punishment.

 

Why did Michelangelo refuse to deliver us an EML?

   He was told the lecture was extra-mural.

 

Why did the IIT-ian refuse the top position in the Army?

   It was a Gen job.

 

Why did he decide to take up a job in a Japanese bank?

   'Yen cash are there...'

 

How come he didn't land that job despite slogging diligently and converting all days to work-days?

   He never had proper fun-days.

 

An election in the insti or hostel is a secs-change operation. (courtesy: Nikhil)

 

How is ISM Dhanbad luckier than us?

   All they do is miner courses.

 

What is the difference between a prospective undertaker and a dead-serious Mysorean?

   One will dig a grave, the other is a grave Dig.

 

How is the polar bear better than MS Windows?

    Polar bears continually crash only in winters.

 

How did the Elec prof find complete job-satisfaction by becoming the bartender at Gurunath Nescafe spot?

   Now he could give EVERYBODY a cup.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  

Global

Why did our cricketers apply for membership in other national teams?

   They were bored of control for cricket in India. 

How did Proxima Centauri console its infant neighbour when it didn't clear the filming auditions?

   'Cheer up, my sun. Some day you will be a great star.'

Using cribs during examinations is thirteenth hour preparations.
 

'Veni, vidi, veni'

  -- Drooler at Miss Universe pageant

 

Excerpt from the diary of an underground water-table: 'I am getting bored these days...'

Name one left-handed Indian batman.
   Gotham Gambhir.