The science of humour.

I always thought scientists were serious, humourless individuals.
You know, men with their minds brimming with equations and formulae.

Till when I was in ninth standard and came across tuning forks.
You bang a tuning fork against a block of wood.
And when the tuning fork starts vibrating, you hold it close to another tuning fork.
The second tuning fork now starts reciprocating in a phenomenon that is scientifically known as a ‘sympathetic vibration’.

What a gag.
One tuning fork is banged and vibrates.
And the other feels sympathy and starts doing the same.
I mean, which guru of frequency and related studies thought this up?
The man’s Hyde must have been Groucho Marx.

This convinced me that scientists must not be taken lightly.
(Though science, I did. And am paying for.)
And I was reading somewhere about this botanist who insisted on following binary nomenclature off the beaten path.
He insisted on naming discoveries in the botanic kingdom after female genitalia.
(This doesn’t qualify as funny, but is a little weird.)

Mimosa pudica and hibiscus rosasinensis do not really have the average 13 year old falling off his chair.
But sympathetic vibration?
There he falls, off his bench!

There are many more.
Half-life, for example, is the molecular equivalent of middle-age, but then again, not really.
Mole is not the ugly protuberance peering out of your collar but is something to do with the mass, in grams, which is numerically equal to the substance’s molecular weight or something equally unquantifiable and has something to do with Avogadro’s number.
But why ‘mole’?

Or the most misspelled word in India, ‘vulcanisation’.
Every self-respecting, entrepreneurial Mallu has a different spelling for it.
But why name this simple process, attended to with the least attention in dingy stalls across the country after the Roman God of Fire?
Is the smart-arse who invented and named vulcanization looking at your friendly neighbourhood ‘tire-punchr’ and having a ball?

Maybe.
These guys were wicked.
Most of them.
The guy called Clark who was in some way associated with logarithms definitely was not.

Somewhere 6 feet under, his tibia and fibula clash as he rolls over and over again.
Cursed by the millions he inflicted his torture tables on.
The tuning fork man, may he soul rest in peace.
He made science a little enjoyable.

On the virtues of patience.

Ever since I can remember till my teens, I was chastised at home for low levels of tolerance.
Not that one was the short-tempered, loud, abrasive kind.
But was not a child gifted with the ability to grin and bear it.

Very soon, the smile would drop.
And an attempt would be made to change the topic of conversation gently.
I could also get up and slink off if served vegetables.

Over years, this was drilled into me.
Repeatedly.
And again.
That I had to be patient.
And that to not be, was rude.
And crass.
So you had to endure, whether you liked it or not.
To not endure or to ask why, was to be anti-social.
Un-child-from-a-good-home like.

The ability to suffer was Christian.
And the patience to grin through it, Catholic.

And believe me, I did change.
Over the years, I became what could well be called docile.
Evolutionary, my dear, you could say, as a man matures.
He puts the child behind him as he puts on the years.

My father, I believe, was one such.
A short-tempered youth who grew up to be an adorable gentleman.
(Though the frown, the handlebar moustache and the forearms bulging from his folded sleeves said otherwise.)

Today, I am worried.
Because my Hyde is trying to find his way up through the capillaries.
Maybe that explains the sudden rushes of blood.

Which makes me wonder, why should patience be a virtue?
As long as you do not take a hockey stick and beat up people till the slimy roots of their idiocy spill onto the streets, why should you keep grinning?

Tell me.
Why agree to like something you don’t?
Can’t you just not comment?
Why sit and listen to some joker espouse views you do not share?
Can’t you just get up and walk away?
Why reach home with a boot full of road rage?
Can’t you show the fool the finger and reach home happier?

Why be forced through a gathering you don’t like?
Why drink whiskey if you don’t like it?
Why perform favours you don’t want to?

We do all the above to be considerate.
To be known as nice people.
To belong.
To be accepted.
To be liked.
To be good Catholics.

And if you put an end to all this, what then?
Nothing much, really.
You’ll find that nobody would even notice.
You might not be enshrined as the paradigm of socially accepted behaviour.
But you will spare yourself a few blood vessels.
Have a few less ulcers.
And on the whole, be a much happier man.
Selfish, maybe.
But a lot happier.

The next kid who comes to my house and picks up the TV remote will get a long stare and a walk-away.
I won’t hit him with the bar that came off the window.
But no attempt shall be made to pacify him as I split a few arteries either.

I don’t think patience is a virtue.
Maybe my second childhood and senility have arrived earlier.
Convince me otherwise.

O captain, my captain.

Not long ago, a billion Indians were cheering their abrasive, aggressive captain in Australia.
He was a very un-Indian cricketer. But he was the one.
In Australia, he set the tone with a typical, I-dare-you-to-bowl-short century that set the tone for the tour. He was the one.
In England, he bared his chest and his intent. He was the one.
From a bad start, he almost took us to the top of the World Cup heap. He was the one.

And then came, the cricketer’s curse. Loss of form.
And when big trees fall, we look at statistics.
Now that the embers were dying, we concluded that all of the above had to be attributed to team effort. After all, it is not just one flannelled fool, there’re 11.
And did Sandy Gordon not have a hand in motivating the team?
And how can we forget John Wright? He had a hand as well.
And look at the figures! Rahul Dravid had a major hand in each of the captain’s victories.

And then came, the Chappell Diaries. Let’s not get into that.
High-handedness, insecurity, games other than what cricketers play, cowardice and everything else was leaked to the country at large.
Maybe not Chappell’s fault.
But the nation was shocked.

And the captain fell.

Now, we loved this snooty captain.
We loved him because we felt that his brand of aggression is what we always needed.
Why should we be meek?
Why should we not take on the rest?
Why should we not sledge?
Why should we not keep the opposing captain waiting?
We loved him because he had the balls.
We swore together when he misfielded.
We swore together when he got caught behind yet again.
We loved him.

But when we saw him struggle into 20s and 30s, we had had enough.
Because we don’t want to see an icon struggle.
Because it’s embarrassing and a blot on our collective potency.
Because you watched every ball not in anticipation of a divine drive through cover but in fear of a swipe and a caught behind.
We were not heroes in front of TV any more, we were a bunch of yellow livered supporters.
And that, hurt.

He should have retired then.
He would have been our most successful captain ever.
And he would have been a legend.
Venerated in a country that adores its heroes and reveres sacrifice.

He was dropped as captain then.
Dropped in favour of a very worthy successor.
He should have retired at least then.

But he did not.
He hung on.
To our collective shock, the man who only God could out-drive on the offside was now in the team as an all-rounder.

And yesterday, he was sacked from the team.

He could have been everything Chappell called him.
And some more.
Everything we feared. And some more.
But yesterday, was pathetic.
And the excuse, his performance, even more so.
It defies all logic, except the whispers that say vengeance.
It was a mockery of the selection process.
A mockery in every which way.

I wouldn’t wish this exit on my worse enemy.
And not long ago, he was my hero.

Saurav Ganguly deserved better.