Prof V L Antony - 4

I don't remember the year correctly. Sometime during the early 80's. One thing is sure. It should be after 1983. That was the year I bought a new Enfield Bullet-350. I remember that it was a Sunday evening. I was alone in the PG hostel, CMS college when a small announcement in the news paper caught my attention. M S Subbalakshmi will start her concert at the Maalakkara Ashramam in less than one hour. With not a minute to waste I started off on my Bullet. Those days there weren't any blocks or heavy traffic on the road. Yet by the time I reached the ashramam the concert had started. There was a big crowd assembled. All the seats in the huge pandal were occupied and many were standing. I joined the standing 'Rasikas' and settled down to listening. For the next three hours I even forgot that I was standing.

The next day I told Antony Sir of what happened the previous day. He didn't say a word and I even felt insulted by his disinterest shown so bluntly. But I was wrong. It was not disinterest. It was disgust. He said, "You should have told me. I may not get another chance in my life to listen to a live concert by MS". I couldn't speak anything and stood as if I had committed a crime. After some time, gathering some strength I politely told him, "Sir, hereafter we will  go together to 'Kacheries' ". And together we went to many places with Sir riding pillion.

After all these years I think I could reasonably make up for my 'crime' of not telling him about the MS concert. In fact I didn't know that Sir was so much interested in classical music. Music brought us closer and could remain so despite serious political disagreements. Once I told him of a lost cassette. It was the original recording of  a Lata Mangeshkar concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London. He felt very sad as if the cassette was his and to my surprise within a week's time he gifted me with a cassette with most of those Latha Mangeshkar songs recorded.

I made him sad once again! This was when I gave him a list of live concerts I had attended before knowing that he was a Rasika. I give the list below.

VOCAL:  M S Subbalakshmi, Semmangudi Sreenivasa Iyer, Balamurali Krishna, M D Ram.anathan, Maharajapuram Santhanam, Madurai Sheshagopalan, Neyyatinkara Vasudevan.....                                                                                                                                  VIOLIN: Lalgudi Jayaraman, M S Gopalakrishnan, T N Krishnan, M Chandrasekharan, Kunnakkudi Vaidyanathan .........                                                                                                    MRIDANGAM: Vellore Ramabhadran, Umayalpuram Sivaraman, Karakkudi Mani, T K Murthy, T V Gopalakrishnan ........                                                                                                 Later I had the good fortune of listening to N Ramani, Hariprasad Chaurasya (Great Hall, CMS College), Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma (Mamen Mappila Hall). L Subramaniam (Malliyoor Temple) .......

I cherish so many incidents. I cherish the love and certainly the respect he gave me despite being very junior to him in the college. 

He never believed in formal expressions. Yet, I am sure, he might have said in his mind "Thank You For The Music".

Prof V L Antony - 3

 After posting two stories on Antony Sar many more keep surfacing in my mind. As I wrote in the previous post, he had a deep knowledge in Electronics. The story I write here was in fact told to me by my friend Shaju Mathew George of the Chemistry department, CMS College. Many years ago Shaju and Antony Sar were in the University of Hyderabad attending a refresher course/workshop. The participants were from all over India. One guy from Kerala frowned at the two and with contempt and arrogance writ large on his face uttered the following non sense, " you should have come in attires suiting the occasion". Perhaps for the "learned professor (LP)" it was the prestige of Malayalees that was at stake. Shaju was a little upset over his respected senior being bluntly disgraced in his presence. But Antony Sar just smiled. Even today I can imagine that disarming smile.

After the inaugural function, the classes started. One or two days passed of peacefully. On the third day or so the resource person was a senior professor from Delhi University. His plan was to introduce and if possible make the participants experts in working with a variety of electronic equipment. But to his dismay most of the participants were staggeringly ignorant of even the basics of Electricity, forget about electronics. Most of them did not know the difference between current and voltage. None could differentiate between a resistance and a capacitor. Transistors and IC's were heart breaking aliens. The DU Professor was at the verge of abandoning the classes when he saw Antony Sar (in the back row - you guessed it right!), explaining things to a fellow participant. He invited Antony Sar to the front and talked to him personally for some time(certainly that was an interview to gauge Antony Sar's depth in Electronics). The participants, including our "LP" waited with bated breath not knowing what was happening in the front. The "LP" might have even thought that Antony Sar was being reprimanded for coming to the class clad in a dhothy.

After some ten minutes of talking to Antony Sar, the DU Professor rose from his chair and made the following announcement. "This man Antony from Kerala will be our leader for the rest of the sessions. He knows much more Electronics than any of us in the Chemistry department of DU knew. His classes will start now". Yes, the classes started and Antony Sar taught Electronics to an initially unwilling group Chemistry teachers in his inimitable style. By the end of several sessions spanning several days, the participants were a happy lot. While the smart ones became experts in operating the various equipment some became fairly literate in Electronics. I am sure, back in their colleges, the teachers would have transferred the newly acquired knowledge to their students. After all this is how a knowledgeable society is formed or created.

All credit to the DU Professor also for "unearthing" Antony Sar.

Prof V L Antony - 2

                           Soon Antony Sar and I became good friends. One day he invited me to his house and I went there the next day itself. Seeing me he invited me to his study (rather work shop). But I couldn't go in as the  drawing room floor was littered with radios, TV's, VCR's and anything that had something to do with electronics. Seeing the predicament I was in, he waved his hands signaling me to come in. Finally with some acrobatics I managed to get in without hurting any of those 'electronic creatures'. Watching this Chemistry professor being so at ease with electronics, my respect for him multiplied and I decided to ask him a doubt that was haunting me since my pre-degree days. Non-mathematics people may kindly excuse as this Chemistry professor now working in electronics is about to delve into some mathematics. The following was my doubt. In Physics there is a superposition principle which states that when a medium is simultaneously disturbed by two or more than two waves there will be a resultant wave which is the algebraic sum of the individual waves. Now, here is my doubt. In an orchestra there are various musical instruments and human voice each producing its own wave and the wave that falls on your ear drum is that  single resultant wave. Yet, you can hear each sound distinctly. That is, you can differentiate between the sounds produced by ,say, the guitar and the violin. How is this possible? This was my doubt. He just smiled and told me, "it's all because our brain has the capacity to Fourier Analyse". I felt spell bound by the answer. Genesis 1-3,and God said "let there be light". It was light all over with this Fourier Analysis explanation. This incident not just cleared a decade old doubt but completely changed my approach to teaching Physics and Mathematics. I decided to not leave students with such doubts that will keep them disturbing. But this was a task easier said that done. After all, the joy of learning Physics lies in understanding the meaning of the equations. Thank you Antony Sar.