NOTE FOR SALE

This is a sequel to the previous post “AN EVOCATIVE NOTE”.  The incident happened during one of those most memorable annual tours of the MSc students while I was in CMS college. It was the tour of  Suresh, James Raj, Rajalakshmi et al. The scene now is the street in front of  the Mysore palace. Almost all of our tour party had entered the palace but I was drawn towards the source of some instrumental music.  I found a person sitting on the ground playing the toy violin (chiratta violin with just two strings). His mastery over the instrument was spellbinding. There was a small crowd around him with a keen ear for the music. None ventured even “trying” the instrument, but in their eyes I detected an urge to play it the way the man did it. Realising this urge I had this naughty thought in my mind. Those days I used to regularly practice my violin. Therefore it should not be difficult for me to play this toy. I sat on the ground beside the man and learnt how the two strings were tuned. Thereafter  it was easy and I started playing film tunes. I played the then Tamil hit song “Ennedi Rakkamma......” with reasonable ease. Then it was “Kuttanadan Punchayile......”. That was more effective. I had deliberately chosen these two as they were fast numbers and I can skip the finer details without getting noticed. The trick really worked. Some among the crowd came forward and started “consulting” me. And I with my “innate humility” advised them to  buy one and back home, practice simple songs which can be played with three or four notes.  I even suggested some simple songs to them. And what ensued was to the greatest delight of the musician-cum-vendor. Some thirty violins were sold in no time as the little children in the crowd started demanding. No doubt these demands were not music to the ears of the parents and they might have said in their mind “to the hell with this dirty long-fellow!!!”. They could not air their anger aloud, as by that time I had become the darling of the children and of course, of the musician-cum-vendor. Now our tour party had come out of the palace and was surprised to see me sitting on the ground doing business. Yes, I was selling the violins and collecting money too, as by then I had acquired the status of a God sent Messiah in the mind of the musician. The man had made a killing in no time. The sense of gratitude in the man’s eye’s still lingers in my mind.

From among our group only James Raj had the sense of music (!!!) to buy one. I thought he bought it to decorate his showcase in his home.  But back home (ie, in CMS) he expressed his strong desire to become a Chiratta Violinist by playing at least “Kuttanadan Punchayile....). I quietly shouted (!)  “At least Kuttanadan Punjayile??......, what do you mean???”. I did not express my rage at his insult of music as, so strong and sincere was his desire. We started our first class sitting on the veranda of Thomas Chettan’s mess in the PG hostel.  That was a nice place to sit for music with the lush green meadow extending from the PG hostel up to the  Teacher’s hostel. I kept teaching and James tried learning putting in all efforts at his command. Days gave way to weeks. But James continued to remain weak. Finally we two agreed upon stopping the misadventure as not even the “Ku” of “Kuttanadan Punchayile.....” refused to come out. I do not know where James Raj is these days but I am very sure that he might not have tried “it” again.

A word about James Raj. He was from Kottarakkara. Immediately after his MSc he passed GATE and did his M.Tech in Electronics at the CUSAT, Kochi.

NOTE: James Raj should not be mistaken for the more famous James Raju. Dr James Raju is currently a senior Professor at the Hyderabad Central University.

AN EVOCATIVE NOTE

I wrote about the Baker junction, the bottle neck of Kottayam town, in a previous post. The din and bustle, chaos and commotion produced collectively by the vehicles, all at this small junction, is to be seen to be believed.  Added to this is the quite frequent shrill bang of the (prohibited) air horns that pierces one’s ears.  I don’t remain there for more than ten minutes lest I should faint.

Recently while I was standing at the junction, from this sea of maddening noises I could differentiate out a musical note. That was not any serious music being played anywhere. But I heard almost the same note repeated after irregular intervals. As if someone was tuning a violin. With great difficulty I could get the direction from which it emanated. Though a violin note cannot be expected to condescend on this junction I walked towards the source of the note. There was a pleasant  surprise awaiting me. I could spot a frail old man with a typical Rajasthani turban with all the looks of a nomad  playing a toy violin (Chiratta violin) with just two strings and a small bow. On a long staff resting on his shoulders hung at least a hundred  chiratta violins. By this time he had started playing some old Hindi film songs with amazing purity of notes. I was slowly getting absorbed into the music and lose my sense of existence as I am wonted to every time a note touches my heart.  But this time I lost my concentration and my mind and thoughts slipped into some distant past, 1986 to be precise.  I have heard the same man playing the same old Hindi film songs with the same ease and grace, Oh God “age has not withered the beauty” of his music. I was completely lost in time and space. I felt like standing in front of the “Hava Mehal” in Jaipur listening to this man’s music. Occasionally when reality and wisdom prevailed upon me I told myself, “How come”? Thirty years ago this man was as old as he is now?? Impossible. This man might be some descendant of the man I heard in front of the Hava Mehal. The gene might have been transmitted to a son or a nephew. Or this man might be a much younger brother. I decided to ask the man his name and inquire about  any relation with the man I heard in 1986. But alas, the man was nowhere in sight as I switched back to reality. And the music was not heard, not even any trace of that from anywhere. I did not hear him stopping the music. Nor did I hear the waning music as he walked away still playing tunes. I felt very sad. The reason, I feel incapacitated to explain. This loss of sense of space and time often happens with me when I have an evocative sight, sound or even a smell.

Once upon a time this campus was "A Thing of Beauty"

A little more than three hundred meters walk from the CMS college campus, one reaches the Baker junction.  The scene shifts from the serene to the atrocious.  The junction is the bottle neck of the Kottayam town. At any time there are at least a hundred vehicles waiting  for the traffic police man’s permission to crawl forward.  Yet I will not say that “if there is ever a madding crowd on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here”.  It is almost the same everywhere in India. In any unplanned  city in India one can see such long vehicle queues burning hundreds of thousands of gallons of scarce imported fuel each moment. And adding to the misery forever  to the bottle neck of Kottayam, right in the midst of it came up a shopping Mall called the “Mall of Joy”. I think any chance for a little joy for the junction in the future too has been sealed. This junction would still have been beautiful but for the indiscriminate construction of the shopping complex bordering the Baker Memorial High School for Girls during the 80's. My writing abilities are far too limited to describe the beauty of the then school campus. You have to go back some thirty thirty-five years in time.
 

In 1981 I came to Kottayam to attend  the interview for the post of Junior Lecturer in Physics in the CMS college  I alighted the bus near the Thirunakkara Maidanam  and started walking towards CMS not knowing the exact distance. There was only twenty minutes left for the interview.  I walked in the direction given by a stranger and was walking past  the Baker school campus. The present shopping complex was yet to come up and hide what was a “Thing of beauty” which would have remained a “Joy for ever”. I was awe-stricken by the beauty of the campus. I stood there for a while oblivious of the fact that time was ticking away.  Then also, I didn’t have the habit of reaching a place in time.  I, then in my twenties, could not be blamed as the beauty was simply mesmerising.  A sprawling campus with a low fence with vintage buildings in the shadow of trees transcended me to romantic levels, but I had to leave. Walking three hundred meters to the west I reached the CMS campus. My Goodness! I couldn’t believe. Despite coming from St: John’s college, Agra, the picturesque campus took me to sublime heights of aesthetics. But the impending interview forced me to crash land to reality.

I joined the CMS college and felt lucky to be in a place like that. The Baker School campus as much beautiful as the CMS campus, suddenly developed a look of gloom as if by some premonition. Danger happened soon. Globalisation and market economy were still Greek and Latin to most Indians. But the mandarins of the CSI establishment thought too much ahead of their times and decided to build a shopping complex almost around  the Baker school campus. The campus that breathed the air of freedom for centuries and blew the air of life into the near dead slavish existence of the oppressed class and imparted liberal education to girls when none in this part of our country ever thought of such a revolutionary idea, was soon to be caged. Even the caged can see the world and air can, though not freely, flow into it. But the money spinning citadel built around the Baker school isolated and insulated it from the rest of the world for all times to come. It did not stop there. I had mentioned about the vintage buildings. I should tell about the tragic fate of the most beautiful edifice there. Even the CMS campus cannot boast of having one like that.  This majestic structure now houses a tea shop called “Jewel Box”. Yes, this jewel of the campus has been reduced to a “Chayakkada”, of all the things in the world. I have heard many an alumnus lamenting over the cruelty meted out to the campus.  This certainly is a “Paradise lost”. With a “Pay and Park” place at the POOMUGHAM of the campus (of course whatever remains there as a campus) you never feel like entering a place sacrosanct.

 A thing of beauty is a Joy for only as long as it is preserved with love and veneration. The very few vintage architecture  that still remain are just the specks of tears on a glorious past. Sense of beauty or sense of history might not bring in dividends that can make the money chest ringing. But these alone will help the present to pass on to the future what was inherited from the past.

CMS COLLEGE, KOTTAYAM. A CAMPUS SOAKED IN MUSIC

Every evening I walk for forty minutes to one hour in the CMS campus.  People advise me to walk in the morning as there are  any number of morning walkers and I can “walk the talk”. In fact this precisely is the reason why I have chosen the evening time.  The myriads of mundane issues discussed threadbare during these morning walks are often nauseating for me. This is not to say that I will discuss only esoteric topics like global warming, rising sea levels or thermonuclear explosion by North Korea.  Far from  that. Though I am genuinely concerned about the issues mentioned above, I do not consider myself competent enough to discuss such issues at the level I have defined as the lowest for any discussion worth that name. This is one reason why I refuse to be an appendage to the moving  morning crowd in the CMS campus. The horrendous ado, most often signifying nothing  deprives  one of the warmth of the sun at its golden grace in the east and the cool gentle breeze so characteristic of the CMS campus. But the greatest loss is the music of the campus. Though early morning is the most ideal time with all the “musicians” playing with strings and wind in divine unison, the divinity is so cruelly lost in the cacophony resulting from human interference, that it becomes inaudible to the ordinary ear drum.  Since this music descending from the heavens inundating the campus is seldom heard by anyone, none realises the loss. The loss is indeed huge, if only you have an ear for the seven notes. Aren’t these seven notes the greatest gift of God to not just humans but to all living beings?

The evening time when I walk ,ie, from six to seven is not time for music. But being “far from the madding crowd” by  itself  is a source of peace of mind.  But there is music a little later. I have written about this in some previous post. I have heard this many a time towards midnight standing alone before the Great Hall. Chaurasia’s  Bamboo  or Amjad Ali Khan’s Sarod. But quite a little after mid night Shiv Kumar Sharma’s Santhoor  is packed with notes of hope, enthusiasm, vigour and dreams for a new dawn !!! If you feel all these very surreal, I can only invite you to walk in the CMS campus all alone at that time of the night when none except the college is there!!! (....and of course, a romantic heart and quite a bit of aesthetic sense is assumed). I can honestly tell you that this is, inadvertent though, an intellectual exercise soaked in aesthetics. If you still doubt I will venture quoting Amir Khusru though it will be a little too much for a college campus. And if ever it suits a campus, for which one other than the CMS? I quote.

"Gar firdaus, ruhe zamin ast,
 Hamim asto, hamim asto, hamim asto".

Which means,

"If there is ever a heaven on earth,
 It is here, it is here, it is here".

   NOTE: This post is in fact a prelude to my next one. I hope to write that soon.

AN IDEA FOR A CHANGE. A call to final year B Sc (Physics) students

I have been harbouring a certain idea in my mind for the past three or four years. Over these years I shared this  with a select band of people whom I considered very sensible.  I did not  receive the kind of unreserved encouragement from anyone, which would have given me the strength for a take off. Some even told me that the idea will not “sell” in Kerala. I respect and hugely value all the comments and suggestions by the people I talked to.  In many ways they are right. But I believe that there are very many more ways beyond those “many ways”. Primarily I am not a salesman trying to impose a useless product on an unwilling buyer. As far as my idea is concerned it is not a transaction where sellers and buyers are involved. It is in fact very  sacrosanct for me. That is one of the reasons why I feel very dejected when people do not understand its importance or neglect it or even reject it.  If you are one who was a part of that marvelous programme at the George Sudarshan Centre (GSC), CMS college, you have guessed it right. The matter is academics. At the GSC you all were PG students or students who completed PG.  Now my PET PROJECT targets Degree students  aspiring for doing PG in Physics and ultimately having a career in Physics. I think I should explain the matter in detail.

MOTIVATION FOR THE VENTURE

Every year when I meet M.Sc first year students for the first time I quiz them to ascertain where they stand in their preparations  for a PG programme in Physics. It is a poignant fact that more than 90% of them are too ill-equipped . The foundations are very weak and most of them never even tried to build anything on that.  This I have been observing over so many years. The students I surveyed are from all parts of the state and hence I can conclude that this is a general pattern rather than an aberration here or there. The reasons for this tragedy are shocking . Even though I will put only 20% of the blame on the students let me start with them. During their BSc days, back home from the college, 90% of the students do not spend even half an hour daily on their studies. And if ever they spend twenty  to thirty minutes it is for writing records ( a useless exercise, mandatory though !!!). Now I have a reason for restricting my blame on students to 20%. Don’t the parents see their children wasting precious time? Are they not worried about the negative progress of their children? Thus the unconcerned parent rightly deserves a neat 40% blame. And the rest goes to the teacher. In my previous post "The Fifth Of September" I have described  how or where the teacher falters.  They fail in their solemn duty to motivate the student with quality teaching. Even when I sound a little cruel, my sympathies are with the good teacher. I know their predicament well. 90% of the students of the BSc class do not want to learn anything. They hate being taught. This is a shocking irony. Just imagine a patient consulting a doctor with no intention or desire of getting cured and considering the doctor as an unwelcome foe. My heart throbs for the good, discerning teacher because I know how helpless, disgusted, dejected and eternally disturbed  he or she is. Though the fundamental process or phenomenon of teaching and learning cannot ever change, the “modern” student is anything but that vintage “alpaahaaram, jeerna vastram, swaana nidra, kaaka drishty or beka dhyanam”. If you want to argue with me over this issue, please do. I welcome you to.  I agree that in this modern era the teacher need not be that organic entity of the past. The teacher is what one learns from, be it a book or some electronic device or whatever. (Recently someone told me that the modern dictum is "MATHA,PITHA GOOGLE !!!) Thus the form of the teacher has changed, indeed it has to, with time. But the fundamental  process of learning cannot change.  I have digressed a little. Let me come back to the plight of the ill-equipped student of the first class of the first semester of the PG programme in Physics. That the student is ill-equipped is a fact which we shall not debate. 

ABOUT THE VENTURE - CATCH THEM YOUNG

Let me now elaborate on the venture. I have explained how the BSc course in Physics is a shambles. But the tragedy does not stop there. The BSc examinations are over by the end of March every year. I will not say that with the examinations over, the students close their books, as they have seldom opened it. Now the MSc admissions are over by September last !  These six months will wipe out (delete is the new jargon) the Physics, if any, left with the students. And they come to the first class of their MSc as total strangers to Physics. Thus the battle is lost even before it starts. The students are too naive to realise this. Ultimately they realise this when the first semester results are announced and this often happens  towards the end of the third semester. Yes, first semester results by the end of the third semester !!! And there after it’s a total mess.

My programme is for the  student who has just completed the BSc course. Of course the student should have a strong desire to pursue PG in Physics. My only demand is that the student should be prepared for hard work. The idea in my mind is the following. The intervening six months between BSc final examination and MSc admission shall be used in a constructive  way with intense teaching and learning.  Let me be very emphatic about the fact that this is not a bridge course for those who did not do well during their BSc days. Instead this shall be MSc itself and beyond. The classes will be such that with strong emphasis on understanding the theory, problem solving skills too will be developed. By the time the MSc course starts formally, the student should have gone a long way with the syllabus and have reached an enviable level in problem solving. For the next two years they can, with or without my help, equip themselves to meet the challenges posed by examinations like UGC-CSIR NET, JEST, GATE and the selection processes (written examination and interview) by BARC, DRDO, IGCAR or ISRO. The same preparation will suffice for all these examinations.  These are problem oriented examinations which need systematic training in the first place, followed by real hard work. The students should be prepared for such a work culture rather than wasting their time and talents. 

A LITTLE REMINISCENCE

I am very sure of the programme.  If the programme fructifies I can relive those “GSC days”.  I think it will be nice to make a small mention of the “GSC days”. Those days I and my students used to spend long hours at the GEORGE SUDARSHAN CENTRE, CMS COLLEGE, learning Physics, by working out problems. After all these years I wonder how we sat almost all through the night struggling with problems. Those were the most satisfying years of my teaching career. It all started with a Hari  in 2002 and ended with another Hair in 2015. The first Hari joined IISc Bangalore in 2002 for his PhD which he eventually completed and currently he is a post-doctoral fellow in the US. The last Hari is pursuing PhD at the IIT Chennai. I have lost count of the number of students between the two Haries. It should not be less than fifty. Almost all of them have completed their PhD from various IIT’s or reputed universities in India. Some had gone to Universities in Germany, France, Netherlands, Ireland or the US.

If you are a BSc (Physics) student interested in knowing more of the programme, please post you comments or queries. I shall answer.

GSCians are welcome to post their comments. They should, in fact.