Lingua Franca

So, the British thought that they would be able to make English our primary language. 

I have spent time in three places - Calcutta, Pilani and Delhi - and have collected some gems of English from these various places. I am trying to enlist as many as I can recall. Most are from first hand experience.

By the way, this is not supposed to poke fun at either Bengalis or Marwaris or Punjabis. These are just plain funny and if you can't take it like that, maybe you shouldn't read any further.

A (C),(P),(D) will tell you where the collectible originated.

And Words Are All I Have...

Plantick (C) : What the other team gets when you foul their player in your own 'D' area in a game of football

Bridge (C) : Wind

Breeze (C) : Man-made structure connecting two non-contiguous land masses

Cambis Ball (C) : A tennis ball (I guess it comes from canvas ball)

Pum (rhymes with bum)-chaar (C)/Pin-chaar (D/P) : What you have when air leaks out of your vehicle tyre

Krunt (rhymes with grunt) (D) : The quantity you get when you divide voltage by impedance

Sport (D) : To prop up (emotionally or physically or mechanically)

Cartilage (P) : The small container inside your printer which holds the ink

Now For Some Phrases...

Jeevan Matrill (P) : Not Marwari for Life Insurance, but an alternative pronunciation used by some instructors for g-i-v-e-n m-a-t-e-r-i-a-l

Double up (C) : Used with abandon at a school in Calcutta (where I spent two years) by teachers (and hence also the students) to imply "Quicken your pace". Everytime I have heard that I have wanted to tell them that it should be either "On the double" or "Hurry up" but I usually laughed so hard that I actually doubled up...

Banging : Oooh! This is a good one. 95% of the faculty at a certain institution use this to imply castigation. I actually had to listen to this from a warden with a straight face - "Every night I am out with the students and as a result my wife bangs me. Every night I get banged by my wife and these buggers are still making a noise outside". Kinky!

Go For Togetherness (P) : Do something simultaneously. Example sentence construction - "Since the dates for the two conferences we are about to host are clashing, we will go for togetherness"

Complete Bloopers...

"It gets very hot in Goa in summer so the campus there is air-cooled"

One of the erstwhile hot-shots at an institution (who thankfully left the same) in a public gathering to students. The average maximum temperature at Goa is below 34 degrees Celcius by the way.

"I can't understand why we need research."

Another erstwhile hot-shot of the same institution (again who has left) in a faculty meeting during a discussion on research at the institution. I was so traumatised that I like to believe till date that I heard that wrong. I am sure its because he had difficulty conversing in English.

"Together we will have a huge technical orgasm" (D)

The speaker in his genuine attempt to inspire our design group to greater heights left out the "ni" syllable in the last word.

"The engine is very spacious" (D)

A very attractive girl to me in the showroom when I was trying to decide which car to buy.

"The electronics industry was bludgeoning then..." (P)

Ummm...I said that to a class of 250 students. I meant burgeoning.

Icing on the cake...

And finally, the jewel in the crown. 

For over a year, my phone bill from Airtel Rajasthan has arrived with a peculiar line in the address. They spelt my name wrong and I forgave that but this line really got me doubting that I didn't know enough about Pilani even after spending so much time here.

For a year I remained convinced that Pilani was referred to as the City of Inwar by the locals.

Till I remembered that I had once told the Airtel Rajasthan Customer Care that I lived inside the college campus. And then it dawned on me.

I'm including a snapshot of my phone bill address area. Can anyone crack this one? Cryptic crossword solvers should have a head start.

History Demystified

In case you didn't realise the revolution I was talking about in the previous post, here's what was happening in the world.

The oldest radio that my grandfather had was built with vacuum tubes - the only "switches" available to the world of electrical engineering then. The smaller ones which came after this had these vacuum tubes replaced with transistors. That meant that it took less space and transmission was immediately available as the transistors were devices which required no heating up time.

'AM' or Amplitude Modulation was the only medium of radio transmission for a very long time. 'FM' or Frequency Modulation came much later on. The communication engineers had been in a phase of great creativity. (I remembered all this vividly during my Communication Systems course at BITS Pilani. I made a 'D' in that course.)

I also had shivers up my spine when I read Tom Lee's book a few years back and he talked about the 'V.HOLD' (vertical hold) control on old television sets and how it was the first rudimentary phase locked loop (PLL) which needed to be manually locked from time to time. 

The BMW toy car that I had was one of the earliest things I saw which had put to good use the advances in mechanical and electrical engineering and the first example of a decision making (feedback) circuit that I saw.

Sinclair Research was a spectacular company. The early 1980's saw a spurt in commercial products utilising man's ability to make transistors smaller and fit on integrated board in chip form - and Sir Clive Sinclair was one of the first on the bandwagon. My cousins' computer was a ZX Spectrum. A massive commerical hit. It's heart was a VLSI chip known as a microprocessor. It was called the Zilog80 - Z80 in short.

(I shall be forever grateful to these cousins of mine. I knew about microprocessor machine code when I was 12 years old. Too bad I didn't own a computer then.)

Sinclair Research failed because of one solitary reason - it was incredibly ahead of its time. It was trying to do things technology would be able to realise only in the future. 1984 was really the year of doom for Sinclair.

More so, because in 1984 a young feller by the name of Steve Jobs introduced to the world a revolutionary new machine. It was called the Apple Macintosh. It used a new input device called a "mouse" and ran a "graphical user interface" operating system called the Mac OS. (My owning the MacBook today is my way of being a part of this legacy.)

The PC's which followed were a result of the rapid shrinking in transistor sizes. They stayed the same size but became more and more powerful. For example, the 486 microprocessor used the same area as the 386 but also had a mathematical co-processor on chip. With the 386 if you wanted faster math, you'd have to fix a separate processor on your motherboard. It was called the 387. 

I didn't know when I tried my hand with 'V.HOLD' on my grandfather's TV set, that I would work for a chip design company in a group which dealt with PLL's. I didn't know that I would specialise in integrated circuits which brought my beloved computers to my doorstep and eventually on to my lap. When I saw the first "transistor radio" I didn't know that many years later I would have the opportunity to teach to hundreds of people, the nuances of the device that made this fascinating gadget a reality.

When in 2001, I stood for the first time in front of more than two hundred people and proudly said, "The first edition of the Pentium has 42 million transistors on two centimetre square silicon", I knew that in a way I was fulfilling a prophecy. I was paying silent homage to the solitary transistor in the famous transistor radio.

Do you see how proud a flagbearer I am?

When I Witnessed History...

My life has been extraordinary. Not at all because of what I've made of it, but because of the many wonderful things that I have been able to witness and experience. Once I saw a historical transition. I didn't know how much it would have to do with my life today...

Back in Calcutta, we still did the joint family thingie then. My father stayed in the same house with his two other brothers and my grandparents. My grandfather had a radio. But if you try to think hard and think of a radio, you wouldn't be able to imagine my grandfather's radio. It was a biggish box. Really big. It would occupy a tabletop all by itself. There were lots of dials and a mystic yellow light came out and there was a band of bright green line of light on a dial somewhere...

Anyway, there were family get togethers in front of the radio. 

He later got a smaller one which you had to shake really hard from time to time to keep going. It was like a fat book. The design on the dial was terrible and a nightmare to use. It eventually broke and something in my subconscious memory tells me that I had a hand in the anti-engineering feat.

My father tells me that one day my uncle walked in with a small radio held to his ear. The excitement in the Mitra household was palpable as everyone converged to see this new marvel, which could be carried around wherever you went. It was the size of a grown man's palm and about an inch thick. Radio on the go!

It had another name though. It was called the "transistor radio". This became such a rage in Calcutta that very soon people began to forget part of the name - the more important part in my opinion. They started calling it the "transistor". I don't know if this happened throughout the rest of India also. (If you could tell me or find out, I'd be interested. This would be around 1980 I guess.) All radios were promptly identified as "transistors" - irrespective of caste or creed or operating frequency!

Oh I forgot to say. There was a switch on the newer transistor radios you could flick (well force to click actually, it was an extremely hard mechanical switch and required considerable force (considerable to a three year old at any rate!) to flick between the two markings of 'AM' and 'FM'. I spent a remarkable amount of time doing this flicking and as a result of this initimate dalliance with the intricacies of communication theory, I stayed confused for a very long time between the AM/FM and AM/PM pairs...

Did I mention the household TV? Colour TV's were unheard of and only very rich men had them. We had a black and white set. It was more blue and grey set actually. And sometimes the pictures just rolled from top to bottom and wouldn't stay still. You were then supposed to turn a spiky poky dial called 'V.HOLD' and things returned to normal. If that didn't work you could slap the top of the TV a few times. Last resort - switch off the TV for some time and switch it back again. Rebooting always worked - a practice Microsoft adopted with great success later on...

And then Mamma Mia and Va Va Voom! Gifts from the West! My maternal cousins (two of them) had come back after quite some time abroad. They were the foreign returns, loaded with and giving everyone absolutely fabulously amazing gifts. I got a model car (first time that I heard of BMW), battery operated and it turned and went another direction if it hit something in its way. I was a stingy child and didn't let it run for too long for fear of using up its batteries. But the coolest thing about it was that I could turn a mechanical knob on the underside of the car to make headlights pop out of its bonnet. They were battery operated as well and shone two dense circles of light. I thought that was the coolest thing anybody had ever thought of.

Then it happened. My cousins fixed up a typewriter like gadget (to their Sony colour television) and you could play games on the TV after that. It was called a computer. To load a game you had to insert a cassette and press rewind and fast forward to spin to the parts you required. Then it would display "© 1982 Sinclair Research Limited" on the screen. You could write something called a "program" and make the computer do stuff. My cousins wrote one that would draw a TV set inside the TV set - and then it would continue to draw repeatedly but each time with a different colour. I was fascinated.

I wanted a computer very badly. I was about eight years old then I think. In a year or so this same computer debuted in India and I would stare at the newspaper advertisements. My parents at that point in time could not afford the machine (it was Rs. 4500) and soon I realised that I wasn't getting one any time soon.

I can't tell you how painful the next eight years or so were. My mind was dealing with the myriad possibilities of programming and the stuff I could do with a computer. I read up programming books and knew the keyboard of this computer by heart. Sometimes I would take out my father's mechanical typewriter and pretend that it was a computer.

I begged people to let me use their computers. I knew everything about BASIC by then but had never had the opportunity of typing out a program on one. The rich kids even had "printers". These were "spark printers" and printing on them was literally a violent process because it made an awful noise and emitted sparks (hence the name) and filled the room with a mild burning smell. All that was normal of course as the printer magically transferred what was on the screen to paper.

Soon the landscape changed. Computers began to be called "personal computer" - 'PC' for short. They shipped with dedicated "monitors" and "floppy drives". The floppy diskettes were flexible (hence floppy) things (magnetic platters) which could store your programs and the monitors were miniature TV sets with seven green scan lines for each character. St. Xavier's purchased a few PC's and I shall be ever grateful to them for it, because I could finally get legal and quality time in front of these fantastic machines every week at school.

In 1994, I wrote my Class 10 board exams. As in I went in for battle, my parents said that if I did decently they would consider getting me a computer. Amazingly enough I stood first from my school. (I remember the almost decade-long wait even today. As I write this from my prized MacBook, I look up heavenwards and say "Thank You".) 

My machine was a 386DX. It had 128KB of memory and new storage device called the "hard disk" which was much faster and could store more data than the floppy - mine could store all the way upto 260MB. The monitor was no longer green but true black and white and could display upto 16384 different shades of grey. The clock speed was 133 MHz and the entire rig was assembled by a local outfit and cost over Rs. 30,000. Very soon, people started coming over to my house to use my computer - much like I had gone over to others' till recently.

Round about this time, I also heard of Apple Computers. As if the name wasn't funny enough, they sold computers named the Macintosh. My friend Chirodeep's father was an Apple computer dealer in Calcutta and all I remember is a select circle of people claiming elite status because of their association with Apple. Those were powerful machines which "professionals" used...

I don't really remember any other big technological change after that. There was the Palm and the mobile phone of course, but by then I had lost my childlike wonder.

More than two decades later however, I came back to the "transistor".

If you forgot about the historical transition that I talked about in the beginning, and didn't see it, I have another version of this story coming up.

Ode to Dada

by Anurup Mitra

(published earlier as an ode to Abraham Lincoln by Walt Whitman)

But one should be able to take a well-positioned plagiarism.

O Captain My Captain!

our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather'd every rack,

the prize we sought is won;

The port is near,

the bells I hear,

the people all exulting...

Cinderella Man

This story starts in 1989 - which is definitely a pointer to the fact that I started blogging rather late in life. But I needed a really powerful push...

I am from St. Xavier's Collegiate School in Calcutta. I am going to be proud of that fact till the day I die.

In 1989 I moved to the Senior School building at St. Xavier's. That's because I was in Class 6 and I had to move. The Senior School housed upto Class 10 (in those days) and my classmates and I were not without trepidation at being the youngest lot.

We had inter-section football and cricket matches after school and while I was abysmal at the latter, I wasn't bad at the other. I often loitered around after school to watch the Class 10's play football. They were fast movers and seemed wickedly good at the game.

One day as I watched, the crowd seemed bigger than usual. My father said that that many people were watching because of a certain footballer and pointed him out - an ordinary looking chap in a white jersey and black shorts, darting all around. What's he done, I asked and was told that he had been selected for the Bengal Under-19 Cricket team and was making lots of runs for the state.

That was the first time I saw Sourav Ganguly. At 12 years of age, I wasn't sure how important playing for Bengal U-19 was. I also wasn't sure how a footballer could get selected for a cricket team. But like all 12 year olds, I borrowed from the admiration evident in my father's voice and decided that Sourav Ganguly was a great cricketer.

I car pooled in getting to school every morning. It was from there that I learnt that he was the Xavier's cricket team captain. As things would be, Raja Lahiri (name unchanged) in my car pool was in Class 10 and he was in the school cricket team too. He told us a little about this Ganguly. Stubborn as an ass, arrogant, but on the off-side, very very good...

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In about 2 years time, in 1992, Sourav Ganguly was selected to play for India against the West Indies. I knew about his Ranji performance in those 2 years and was old enough to decide that this Xaverian had indeed done well for himself. Bengal watched with rapt attention as one of its sons went in for India. Heightened expectations soon turned to disgusted disbelief - LBW on 3 runs! 

I mean 3 runs? Who gets out on international debut on 3 runs? My father and his friends thundered and blamed and cursed and said that it was one more Bengali who was going to disappear after an insignificant appearance for the country...

I was heartbroken. Sourav-da out on 3? How could that be? He had been captain of Xavier's - didn't that say something? We are all waiting Sourav-da, for you. Please, please - for us, for Xavier's at least?

Sourav Ganguly was dropped in the next match and wasn't seen for a long time after that. I did see him though during that long absence though...

It was the middle of Class 9 and things were heating up for me on the academic front. In the sweltering Calcutta heat, my best friend Siddhant took me out for an afternoon swim to Tolly Club and athletic blessing that I am, I was panting within a couple of laps and decided to rest a bit on the sides as Siddhant toiled on in the waters. 

There were just two other people in the poolside. One fairly attractive looking girl and her bearded and grumpy looking companion. Once in a while I managed to take my eyes off the girl and see if her companion had caught me looking at her yet. After a few furtive and anxious glances at the boy, I realised that I knew him. 

What's become of you Sourav-da?! Beard and grumpiness? Where's the sparkling, smiling footballer I had seen on the St. Xavier's Senior School field 3 years back?

I wanted to go up and say that I believed and I cared - but didn't have enough courage. 

I called Siddhant to come with me and say hi to him. He, for reasons unfathomable, refused. Now Siddhant is the easy, outgoing type and a person I owe most of my social skills to. But back then, I just got tongue-tied with new people and without Siddhant, I was just part of the scenery. He didn't like Sourav Ganguly in the same way I did. Possibly. I don't know.

I came back home excited and disappointed. I told my father about it. Largely reflecting the general opinion, he snorted that swimming with girls was all that Sourav Ganguly had proven himself fit for. I was aghast, hurt and angry.

Smarting with the insult, I went the next day in school to my favourite teacher - Elphage Rozario. I told him, I had seen Sourav Ganguly the earlier day and I asked him why most of Bengal seemed to think of him as a villain of sorts. Rozy (that's what we called him behind his back) laughed that off and went on to tell me how a few days prior, Sourav had stepped out of his car on sighting Rozy and stopped in the middle of the road to touch his feet.

Satisfied with this simple example, a very happy 15-year old left Rozy that day. In a way, in my mind Rozy allowed me to say what I had earlier been unable to :

"Sourav-da, I care and I believe..."

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Life undulated along. I heard about Sourav Ganguly now and then in the local papers and remembered him fondly and wished him well. It was 1996 and I had finished Class 12 and had been admitted to BITS Pilani. I was to leave Calcutta in a month's time. Near the end of June as I lazed around, my father rushed into the house clutching the newspaper and red with excitement...

In a faraway country and on a majestic cricket ground, Sourav Ganguly had reaffirmed with a hundred runs, the faith put in him by an unknown 15-year old.

He was the Cinderella Man!

You know the rest of the story. You should be well aware of what he gave us and what we gave him in return.

William Shakespeare wrote that you could become great in one of three ways. You could be born great (as is Sachin Tendulkar), you can acquire greatness (as did Rahul Dravid), or you could have greatness thrust upon you (as VVS Laxman did - and came out with flying colours I may add).

But old boy Bill didn't know Sourav Ganguly. For then he would have mentioned the person,  who inspires all around him to greatness.

When Sachin retires, people will hail him as the World's Greatest Batsman. When Dravid retires, people will remember him for his resilience as The Wall. When Laxman signs off, he will be labelled the Australian Nightmare and the Indian Dream.

When Dada blazed into the sunset, a certain 15-year old (now more than twice that age) looked on in pride and awe and admiration and in the gratitude of a never-given promise kept.

Kept by the Cinderella Man.