A Mist(r)y Presentation.

Do tell me, why is it that people spend a good part of their day in college, when they could be easily spending that time sitting on the grass, inhaling fresh air, without as much as a care in the world? People tell me that is because they learn something in college. As to what that could be, is a big mystery.

It is quite possible to go thru college without learning anything, but then you do not appear to be intelligent or hardworking. To keep one surrounded by an aura of brilliance and appearing to be clever and sincere is not as hard as one thinks. Why I have been doing that for the past 15 yrs. The key is not to let anyone actually see you working, otherwise your cloak of intelligence will melt away faster then an ice-cream in the middle of summer.

When somebody expects you to do some work, that is when you have to use all your resourcefulness, and your tact is bought to test. Let us take an example from my own life.

Imaging that college has just begun after a long summer vacation, most of which you have spent in wandering all over the countryside, doing nothing productive. Your bunking has already started and you finally show your face to your teachers only on the fourth day of the week. This happens to be Mistry's class and he is going to take Relativity this year. Nothing wrong in that, except for the fact, that Pattu in his missionary zeal to make a theorist out of each one of us, has already, with no regard to the syllabus, tried to cram down our throats, MSc. level relativity including G.R.

When Mistry heard of this, he declared that Pattu was a fool, and he would now take on the duty of teaching us proper relativity. In the break, he sent out word that I should meet him, he still being under the illusion that I was a sincere student. When I went and met him, he asked me, "So what did Prof. Patwardhan teach you in Relativity last year?" If you think that answering this question should not be a problem, you are forgetting two important points. Firstly the question presupposes that I paid attention in Class, which simply was not true. Secondly, even If I paid attention, deciphering Pattu's thought process, his language and his handwriting, making sense of all that gibberish and finally understanding what he exactly wanted to teach, would be Impossible. Infact Some Indian historians are recruiting Ex- Pattuites, to help with the decoding of the Indus Valley Script. They Believe that he who can make sense of the blackboard after a Pattu lecture, could easily understand the Indus Valley script while enjoying a cup of tea.

I threw all caution to the wind, and threw as many relativity related terms as I could recollect, at Mistry. Surprisingly Mistry found this Barrage of words to much to handle, and asked me to write them down on a piece of paper. This is when my Mind decided to abandon me, and I just about managed to write some basic words on that sheet of paper. Mistry on seeing this remarked that Pattu had not done much, and the he suddenly he asked me," Have you done the comparison of Newtonian Laws and Maxwell's Equations?" I had no idea what he was talking of, so I safely assumed that no one would mind even if he repeated it. "No sir."

"Take that Resnick, and present the topic in class on Monday."

So this is how I accepted to do a small presentation in class on Monday, this day being Friday. I happily put the book in my bag and forget about it till Saturday Evening. This hardly served as a wake-up-call only causing me to further delay opening Resnick.

Sunday morning was spent in sleeping, and then reading some newspapers till lunch. The Sunday lunch is a usually a special occasion, and that day was no different. The Sacred Indian Texts instruct a man to have a siesta after a sumptuous meal, and I followed these instructions both in letter and in spirit. The evening was spent is watching Alanso race around in some European circuit. Finally I accepted the inevitable, and once again delayed the preparation till the next morning, after resolving to get up early next morning.

As expected, I reached college by about 8:45, without touching the book. My plan was to read up the material in Veda's lecture and present it in Mistry's, which was to be the second lecture of the day at 9:40.

You can imagine my surprise as well as panic when I saw Mistry standing in Lr 14. He looked at me and asked, "So have you prepared?" This would have been an ideal situation to retreat and say, no I haven't. But in situations like this, my tongue grows a mind of its own, which is hell bent upon getting me into trouble. "Of course sir; I'll present whenever you want." I could hear my voice saying. "Ok. I'll introduce the topic and then you present." He said.

I sat at my place, mentally strangling myself. I opened up the index pages in Resnick franticly trying to find the proper page. I finally managed to find it. On opening that section, I saw that what I had to present, was hardly about one and a half pages. I quickly read through them, trying to cram as much as possible into my short term memory. I reached the last line not a moment early, because just as I closed the book, I saw Mistry just about finishing his introduction.

I got up from my place with as much enthusiasm as a goat ready to be slaughtered. I had heard about Mistry from a lot of ex- students, and I knew that it was not very difficult to impress him, as long as you followed certain rules. I began talking about Galilean transformations and I took care to draw V and the arrow at the proper place. Whenever I was talking about light, I managed to use the word 'Laser' repeatedly. I also took pains to talk very rapidly, because it is well known how fast he talks, and how much he detests silence.

This is when I saw some girl waving to me, from the corridor. Now I was totally surprised, because of two reasons. Firstly, because of cramming everything into my memory, I was concentrating with every neuron that I had, on not forgetting this relativity stuff. Secondly, it is not every day that some pretty girl waves out to me from the corridor.

By the time I managed to recognise her face and recollect her name, my memory was wiped clean. I managed to acknowledge her presence and I turned to face the class. I saw them all attentively looking at me, as if they had understood what I had said upto then. I don’t know what I said after that, but I remember talking for a few more minutes, and Manu nodding his head vigorously, as if I had explained something lucidly to him.

I remember looking at Mistry after I had nothing more to say. He said, "Good Presentation, but you haven't drawn the tree diagram."