The 'Crack of Doom'
A few weeks back, I happened to read an article on the first ever Indian Test Cricket team that went to England in 1932. The inexperienced team did very well and earned the respect of the hosts. Top English batsman Wally Hammond remarked: "(Indian pace bowler) Amar Singh came off the pitch like the crack of doom!"
'Crack of doom' - that was an interesting phrase; had never heard it before! And it got more interesting in another few days when a friend from Delhi mentioned on the phone a locality he was moving into - Karkardooma.
"Come again!" I asked him. He spelt it out and I said:"Karkardooma, weird name!".
"Sure enough, even for a Dilliwallah like me!" said my friend.
Karkardooma and Crack of Doom churned up memories of a story in Malayalam by S K Pottekkat. I summarize the relevant passages, relying only on the grey cells:
------------
I woke up from what must have been a lousy dream, feeling totally drenched and a salty taste in my mouth and mightily uncomfortable. Looking around, I found myself lying in a rickety boat rocked by choppy waters. An old man in absolute rags rowed. All around there was dense fog...
"What's this? where am I?" I asked in disbelief.
"Lie still, will you? we are almost there!"
"Where?"
"We are about reach the 'Karkadhruva'. Have patience!"
"'Karkadhruva', you mean the 'pole of cancer'? But there is no such place. There is only the 'Karkarekha' (line-tropic of Cancer)!"
"I have no time for georaphy lessons. Stay quiet!" said the grumpy old man, between vigorous strokes.
"'Karkadhruva'... what the hell is that?" I mused. Suddenly something that sounded like calls of sea birds rang out from within the shroud of fog. They went: "KrakkatuVVaa! krakkatuVVaa...!".
"Krakkatuvva...heard it somewhere!" I tried to place what seemed a familiar name. The fog thinned rapidly. We were clearly out in some unknown sea. And presently a huge rock rose before us...
The old man was sitting motionless - a strong current seemed to be pulling us close to the rock at a very fast clip. We were soon washed up there. The old man got off quickly. I hauled myself ashore as well. All of a sudden, a giant sea wave broke all over us and swept away our boat!
"Hell, do something!" I yelled at the old man.
"We have reached; nothing left to do!" said the ancient mariner and suddenly seemed to vanish into thin air!
And then, his voice rang out loud and clear:"This is the island of Krakatoa. And today is the 20th of May, 1883. Just watch!". And with an immense boom, the rock I stood on disappeared into the ocean. A gigantic tidal wave swept me out into the depths. "Help!" I yelled, smothered by gushing seawater, gasping for breath...
------
Google with "krakatoa "crack of doom"" and you will be swamped by literally dozens of pages!
Moreover, as I just found out, the 'Crack of Doom' first rang out from Macbeth, the darkest of all the Bard's dark tragedies!
Note 1: The Sanskrit words 'karka', 'karkata' and 'karkataka' all mean 'crab', the Latin cancer.
Note 2: Wally Hammond, from whom I learned 'crack of doom', was not much of an academic or scholar. And he was said to have been a social misfit who was very miserly with good words for others. So, that he praised an Indian rookie thus is multiply remarkable!
Note 3: While on the oddity place names, I could recall another similar instance. When I first heard about the Pak city of Bahawalpur, I felt it sounded like 'Bowelpur'. And later, I was surprised to see Paul Theroux express pretty much identical thoughts about the place name (and being Theroux, about the place as well!) in 'Sir Vidia's Shadow'.
-------
Caste Trumps Caste!
Sometime back, I had written here about what (to me) is a most absurd throwback to the old Indian caste system - the hierarchy among Engineering branches. For nearly half a century, this has been the ordering in descending order of 'pedigree': Computer-Electronics - Electrical/Mechanical - Civil/Chemical - Aero/Metallurgy/Naval Arch.... In August this year, I started a YouTube channel and in a video there, lamented the lowish status now given to civil engineering, a branch that is along with mech and met, the primordial engineering branch. The video triggered the following response from a civil engineer:
--------
"Your video concentrates on what it calls the caste system among engineering branches - how top rankers in the entrance exam are under a stupid social pressure to opt for computers and never for civil etc... IMO, this is a very minor issue. But let me mention a far more serious problem:
We Indians have a false notion that engineering branches can function in different closed compartments. That is why we never design new products.
Indeed, to design a new car, all sorts of engineering inputs is needed - mechanical, chemical, electrical ...- and at least the manager who heads such a project should know the interrelationship between all branches. And such a vision is totally absent here.
In fact, civil is one branch where India has done ok! Most of our infrastructure, factories, offshore platforms, nuclear plants were designed by desi civil engineers. They were built from Indian materials using Indian knowhow - only some machinery which our mech engineers could not build had to be imported.
Such an attitude is not cultivated among other branches. For example, we do a lot of software but we have no operating systems, no browsers, hardware, or sofware in any specialized area that is Indian and is sold worldwide. The reason is lack of interdisciplinary appreciation, this working in closed compartments!"
----------
I have some further queries on this: Isn't this lamentable lack of synergy between engineering branches itself a by-product of the same caste system that prevents entrance toppers from opting for civil? After all, ours is an ancient civilization where different castes would not dine together!
Anyways, as I figured out only the other day, the caste hierarchy among engineering branches is actually often attacked and subverted by another caste hierarchy - the one among engineering colleges! Indeed, *even* civil in IIT is said to be superior (in a very platonic sense) to Computers at NIT; even civil at NIT is better than computers at a 'saadaa' Engineering college and so forth. This other caste system, although just as irrational and despicable as the one between branches in any one institution, actually ensures that even the lowly brances do get some of the cream among our students. Ergo, one caste system is antidote for another!
----------
Good Tidings
Last but not the least, Anand of Locana (better known now as Prof. U K Anandavardhanan) has won the Bhatnagar Prize in Mathematics. Let me offer him a junior blogger's salute!
'Crack of doom' - that was an interesting phrase; had never heard it before! And it got more interesting in another few days when a friend from Delhi mentioned on the phone a locality he was moving into - Karkardooma.
"Come again!" I asked him. He spelt it out and I said:"Karkardooma, weird name!".
"Sure enough, even for a Dilliwallah like me!" said my friend.
Karkardooma and Crack of Doom churned up memories of a story in Malayalam by S K Pottekkat. I summarize the relevant passages, relying only on the grey cells:
------------
I woke up from what must have been a lousy dream, feeling totally drenched and a salty taste in my mouth and mightily uncomfortable. Looking around, I found myself lying in a rickety boat rocked by choppy waters. An old man in absolute rags rowed. All around there was dense fog...
"What's this? where am I?" I asked in disbelief.
"Lie still, will you? we are almost there!"
"Where?"
"We are about reach the 'Karkadhruva'. Have patience!"
"'Karkadhruva', you mean the 'pole of cancer'? But there is no such place. There is only the 'Karkarekha' (line-tropic of Cancer)!"
"I have no time for georaphy lessons. Stay quiet!" said the grumpy old man, between vigorous strokes.
"'Karkadhruva'... what the hell is that?" I mused. Suddenly something that sounded like calls of sea birds rang out from within the shroud of fog. They went: "KrakkatuVVaa! krakkatuVVaa...!".
"Krakkatuvva...heard it somewhere!" I tried to place what seemed a familiar name. The fog thinned rapidly. We were clearly out in some unknown sea. And presently a huge rock rose before us...
The old man was sitting motionless - a strong current seemed to be pulling us close to the rock at a very fast clip. We were soon washed up there. The old man got off quickly. I hauled myself ashore as well. All of a sudden, a giant sea wave broke all over us and swept away our boat!
"Hell, do something!" I yelled at the old man.
"We have reached; nothing left to do!" said the ancient mariner and suddenly seemed to vanish into thin air!
And then, his voice rang out loud and clear:"This is the island of Krakatoa. And today is the 20th of May, 1883. Just watch!". And with an immense boom, the rock I stood on disappeared into the ocean. A gigantic tidal wave swept me out into the depths. "Help!" I yelled, smothered by gushing seawater, gasping for breath...
------
Google with "krakatoa "crack of doom"" and you will be swamped by literally dozens of pages!
Moreover, as I just found out, the 'Crack of Doom' first rang out from Macbeth, the darkest of all the Bard's dark tragedies!
Note 1: The Sanskrit words 'karka', 'karkata' and 'karkataka' all mean 'crab', the Latin cancer.
Note 2: Wally Hammond, from whom I learned 'crack of doom', was not much of an academic or scholar. And he was said to have been a social misfit who was very miserly with good words for others. So, that he praised an Indian rookie thus is multiply remarkable!
Note 3: While on the oddity place names, I could recall another similar instance. When I first heard about the Pak city of Bahawalpur, I felt it sounded like 'Bowelpur'. And later, I was surprised to see Paul Theroux express pretty much identical thoughts about the place name (and being Theroux, about the place as well!) in 'Sir Vidia's Shadow'.
-------
Caste Trumps Caste!
Sometime back, I had written here about what (to me) is a most absurd throwback to the old Indian caste system - the hierarchy among Engineering branches. For nearly half a century, this has been the ordering in descending order of 'pedigree': Computer-Electronics - Electrical/Mechanical - Civil/Chemical - Aero/Metallurgy/Naval Arch.... In August this year, I started a YouTube channel and in a video there, lamented the lowish status now given to civil engineering, a branch that is along with mech and met, the primordial engineering branch. The video triggered the following response from a civil engineer:
--------
"Your video concentrates on what it calls the caste system among engineering branches - how top rankers in the entrance exam are under a stupid social pressure to opt for computers and never for civil etc... IMO, this is a very minor issue. But let me mention a far more serious problem:
We Indians have a false notion that engineering branches can function in different closed compartments. That is why we never design new products.
Indeed, to design a new car, all sorts of engineering inputs is needed - mechanical, chemical, electrical ...- and at least the manager who heads such a project should know the interrelationship between all branches. And such a vision is totally absent here.
In fact, civil is one branch where India has done ok! Most of our infrastructure, factories, offshore platforms, nuclear plants were designed by desi civil engineers. They were built from Indian materials using Indian knowhow - only some machinery which our mech engineers could not build had to be imported.
Such an attitude is not cultivated among other branches. For example, we do a lot of software but we have no operating systems, no browsers, hardware, or sofware in any specialized area that is Indian and is sold worldwide. The reason is lack of interdisciplinary appreciation, this working in closed compartments!"
----------
I have some further queries on this: Isn't this lamentable lack of synergy between engineering branches itself a by-product of the same caste system that prevents entrance toppers from opting for civil? After all, ours is an ancient civilization where different castes would not dine together!
Anyways, as I figured out only the other day, the caste hierarchy among engineering branches is actually often attacked and subverted by another caste hierarchy - the one among engineering colleges! Indeed, *even* civil in IIT is said to be superior (in a very platonic sense) to Computers at NIT; even civil at NIT is better than computers at a 'saadaa' Engineering college and so forth. This other caste system, although just as irrational and despicable as the one between branches in any one institution, actually ensures that even the lowly brances do get some of the cream among our students. Ergo, one caste system is antidote for another!
----------
Good Tidings
Last but not the least, Anand of Locana (better known now as Prof. U K Anandavardhanan) has won the Bhatnagar Prize in Mathematics. Let me offer him a junior blogger's salute!
posted by R.Nandakumar @ 2:28 AM
1 Comments:
At 10:36 AM,
idle musings said…
An ominous vision indeed, sir, from Pottekkat's tale. Such strange names do make one wonder about their origin; there could be some interesting stories there, though natives must be accustomed to their oddity. I recently heard of a town called Knockemstiff (!) in Ohio. Regarding the hierarchy in different branches of the same stream, I think this lack of interdisciplinary exchange exists in most disciplines, sir. This is sad since it stymies a comprehensive understanding and innovative possibilities that could result from such inclusion. I cannot comment on engineering, but science and the arts have long been considered mutually exclusive, when many of their greatest proponents have drawn inspiration from both.
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