Here is a simple principle from Punjab (aalways pleej to faalow) that comes to us through the embassy of Rajiv Singh Chhatwal: "Samajhdaar ko ishaara. Aur moorukh ko chapait." 

    To the wise man, a sign. To the fool, one tight smack. 

    Last night Dadabhai Naoroji came to see me all the way from the "other world" (as they say in Russian folk tales) and gave me a good chapait. This was during the course of a rather complicated economic and political dream which also featured Satyesh Chakrabarty, Itmaduddaula (Jahangir's chief minister), Manmohan Singh, Damodar Dhananjaya Kosambi , and my late grandmother. 

    Once Vish wrote me to say that he was going "channeling with my clients". I sent mail back to him to ask if he could please try and raise the ghost of my grandmother and ask it for her black nimboo pickle recipe that I had been trying to duplicate without success. My silly nimboos were growing beards! I didn't even know that fungus could survive in that sort of pH, leave alone prosper. But there were the hyphae branching profusely from the mycelium, happy as can be, and I could see them plain as my nose even through Boogerbai's much-abused $6, 30x, Radio Shack microscope. 

    It turned out, however, that Vish was into a different sort of "channeling". Something to do with marketing and distribution. My preposterous nimboo-achaar request irritated him so profoundly that the next time I went to San Jose he clean "forgot" that we were to meet for dinner, even though it had all been planned well in advance. On top of that he wrote me a good-sized essay explaining the significance of proper "channeling" to trade and commerce, to Hewlett-Packard, and to western civilization at large. Never before had he, and never since has he, ever forgotten that he was to dine out with me. Now I must always try and remember that channeling is a respectable commercial activity that has nothing whatsoever to do with bhoot-purate. 

    Nimboo achaar came up again last night. My grandmother asked Satyesh a question about the price of nimboo achaar that he couldn't answer quite to her satisfaction. In order to keep her happy, Satyesh did attempt an explanation of the movement of Rahu and Hilsa prices in Calcutta fish markets, but my grandmother wasn't interested in that. She had never ever in her life eaten fish. And she wasn't about to begin, now that she has moved on to the other world. 

    In order to drive home the true significance of this event, I should tell you that I almost never dream. In the entire course of my forty-four years at the wicket, I have had exactly five dreams. My domestic (but not, alas, domesticated) psychologist tells me that that is nonsense. You dream, but you don't remember, she tells me. This subtlety, to the clickety-click engineering mind, is like rain in Spain. If it happen, but I don't know it happen, then it don't happen baby. Not to me! Freudian mumbo-jumbo no cut ice with real engineer, I say. Me logical positivist, I say. 

    Daniel Garrett, our good friend in St. Louis, would sometimes drop in on us in the evening. He and I would hang about in the kitchen, drinking cheap Cobra beer (tastes a lot like our favorite Kalyani Black Label from Calcutta), $1.19 for a huge glass bottle, while Abha did the cooking. Our share of the deal was that we should keep her entertained. And wash up afterwards. This was at 716 Heman Street, apartment 3 North, St. Louis MO 63130, near Washington University. I was a student. Close by, in a block of apartments on top of QD, there lived Yukiko Takahashi, now dead, whose good friend Daniel was before Abha and I met him. 

    Yukiko's apartment building was inhabited largely by very old people that doddered about on the sidewalk with the help of four-legged aluminum walkers whenever there was any chance of soaking up a little sunshine. It was rumored that their rent was underwritten by QD. That when they passed away, a chute carried the bodies down to QD where they were sort of recycled --- shall we say. What is undeniable is that those QD hamburgers were real tough and stringy, with amorphous globs of glutinous glump entombed in their fibrous matrices. There may have been some meat to the rumor is what I think. 

    We met Yukiko through Rajeev Kathpalia. Rajeev lived in a block of apartments on top of Paul's Books at the intersection of Delmar and Kingsbury, which dear store has now passed into history. He was studying architecture. Yukiko was a student of Chinese literature and taught Japanese language. Daniel studied Japanese from Yukiko at Wash U. At night he worked as a doorman at a local hotel. He grew up on a little farm in Texas (Umreeka da jutt!) but his mother moved up to St. Louis with her three sons after her husband passed away. He was the youngest of the three. He's a dreamer. A wonderful, kind, warm, and gentle person. Always full of impossible plans. He'd give you his shirt off back. That sort of a person.

    When Abha was once away in India, I would go over to Rajeev's in the evening and we would cook up some dinner for the two of us, for there is nothing sadder and lonelier than dining alone. I have actually wept, grown man that I am, stumps mostly intact, when I have had to dine by myself for a few days in a row. Rajeev and I were very good at making chicken tikka kebab and "pajame-ka-paneer". Sometimes Yukiko would also drop by for dinner. Rajiv's mom came to visit all the way from Delhi and of course we made her our world-famous pajame-ka-paneer. But she refused to even taste the stuff! 

    The paneer was strained in an old pair of handloom pajamas from a Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan outlet in Vadodara, that I had once regularly worn, but that had since been put out to pasture. They were now dedicated entirely to the cause of paneer, and were nicely laundered after each use. There was no reason for apprehension. Personally, I think, she just took a dislike to the name of the dish. The pajamas worked much better than the "cheese-cloth" available at the local grocery store, which withered after two paneer-cycles. The pajamas went on and on. But Rajeev's mom wouldn't listen to reason. She had made up her mind, and that was that. She ate her roti with leftover baingun and bhindi. Rajeev, Yukiko, and I ate up all the paneer. Hey, we had grown up on that stuff. For the rest of mom's stay we made our paneer in cheese-cloth and didn't call it by "that" name. Whenever we mentioned paneer, mom peered at us suspiciously from under her brows to see if there was an associated smirk. There wasn't. Give her my love, Rajeev, but don't tell her I said anything about the paneer. 

    One day Yukiko called Abha to say that she would like us to meet a good friend of hers, and could they both come to dinner. That was how we first met Daniel. Daniel was much into dreams. He was very exercised about the fact that I did not dream. It is such a shame, he said, to just sleep all that time. Like a bloody cabbage! When you could get in a few dreams for free. When he put it like that it made sense me. Yeah, I said, yeah! Free entertainment. Personal cinema. Shots from your life. Mirror of the soul. Channeling. Space and time. Psychological potential. Know thyself. Why not? 

    It is all very well to decide that you want to dream, but the mechanics of the practice are not at all obvious to one as untutored as I. So Daniel cooked up a method. This is his recipe: Before you go bed tell yourself two things. One, that I shall dream. Two, that I shall remember. It is that simple. Then it shall follow that you will dream, and you will remember. The wonder of it is that his method worked for me both times I tried. It was responsible, single-handedly, for 40% of all the dreams I have dreamt! Try it, and tell me how it goes. 

    When I resolved to dream and remember, there also rose inside of me, unbidden, quite of its own accord, a thought that thought that I was going to dream up an orgy, a richly sexual feast. This thought, since I had not consciously fabricated it in the laboratory of my mind, since it did not therefore belong to me in any legal or statutory sense, I did not feel compelled to share with the friendly unsuspecting psychologist that slept next to me. In any case she can read my mind. So why bother? 

    Here are the two dreams I dreamt with the Garrett Method. 

Sueno Numero Uno:

    I was locked out of my apartment. I had lost my key. ("Aha!" exclaimed Daniel when I told him. I could almost hear his Freudian tumblers click. Lost your key, did you? You old fruit!) The apartment was on the second floor of a building that had four apartments on two floors. There was no other building almost as far the eye could see. This building was surrounded by a few large trees in an otherwise largely-barren and desolate landscape. Mine was the only apartment that was occupied. I went up the stairs and checked the door --- just in case I hadn't locked it when I left. But I had. 

    Suddenly, there was something behind me on the stairs that I more felt than heard. I turned around quickly but saw nothing. Or did I see a shadow? I was a little anxious. Perhaps even a little scared. What had that been behind me? Or who? I went softly down the steps. 

    There, near the entry, on the inside, I saw a little baby monkey, who I would have felt kindly towards if it hadn't shadowed me, or startled me so. I felt a sudden surge of anger at the little creature. An inappropriate sort of anger, quite unwarranted, like a stab, quickly flaring. I yelled at the it. I waved my hands and stamped my feet. I scared the wits out of the poor little fellow. It had clearly not expected this sort of behavior. It just wanted to be friends, but had shied away at the last minute and scampered down the stairs, to wait a little while before it said hello. I could feel his feelings, much as I felt my own. 

    I chased it, and it ran away quickly, not once looking back. 

    I went out and walked around the building. I felt my fear and anger ebb. Their place was taken by a sense of calm. The trees looked beautiful. How large, how leafy! How beautifully the sunshine filtered through the foliage. How wonderfully fragrant, moist, cool, and dark it was near the cores of the trees. How wide and strong and coarse those trunks. The Neem, the Pepul, the Mango, the Imli. The harsh sun was mellowed and tempered by them. I climbed up one tree and jumped from a branch onto the balcony of my apartment. I wasn't there long when it was time to leave again. I went out of the front door, locked it, climbed down, and walked out into the oppressively bright sunshine. 

    Suddenly right behind me there was a great uproar, and I saw that same little monkey, and a whole vengeful army of its bigger friends, right there behind me, baring their teeth, advancing on me. I turned and ran as fast as I could with that whole hujoom behind me, screaming and howling and raising a cloud of dust. Then I woke up in a sweat.

Termino.

Sueno Numero Dos:

    I was in a little town somewhere in Rajasthan. On the main street there were a few shops, a temple built into the lee of a tree with whitewashed bricks. There was hardly anyone around. Just me. I was very thirsty. Suddenly the wind picked up. The sky went a few shades darker, the temperature fell by a fraction of a degree. I sensed the approaching sandstorm. I thought I should get home before it struck with full force. No time to stop for a drink. 

    I passed by the shops, went past the temple, and trudged along the street. There I saw a dog and he saw me. We were both happy to see each other. I smiled at him and he wagged its tail. I patted his head and he nuzzled me. Then I walked on. The dog followed close at my heels. The wind was picking up now. The sand was flowing in sheets across the street. I was the only person in the world. This was the only dog in the world. The sand blotted out everything else. The wind howled. The sand stung like a million darts. We couldn't see where we were going. My eyes were gritty. I could hardly see my hands. The wind carried me where it will. I had lost all sense of direction. I had lost my vision. I was thirsty and exhausted. The dog was still at my heels. 

    Suddenly, as if by magic, we were at my door. I opened it and stumbled in and shut the sandstorm out. The dog came in with me. I lay down on a couch, my eyes shut, my body trying to recoup some strength, my mind numb. The dog was thirsty. Even thirstier than I was. He put his paws up on my knees and whimpered. I know, I said. I know you are thirsty. Give me a minute and I'll get you water. But he wouldn't wait. He licked my face, and asked for water every way it could. That dog wouldn't wait. An anger rose in me. I am thirsty too, I said. I slapped him twice across the muzzle, and he slunk away, surprised and hurt, and lay down a few feet from me, his muzzle on his paws, looking up at me as if to say he was sorry. 

    When I saw that look I was filled with shame and remorse. Here was an animal, just like me, asking for water. And I had behaved like a beast. I went and sat near him on the floor. I stroked his head and his back. He knew I was sorry and he consoled me and told me that it was all right. Not in words, but as dogs will. I went and got him water in a big deep dish. Then I went and got some for myself. We were one, that dog and I. He was a part of me. I was a part of him. Then I lay down and went to sleep.

Termino.
 

    Freudian conclusions I will not strain from this thin paneer of my dreams. But I might be persuaded to fry a Vedantic fish or two. "Tat tvam asi" (literally, "that you are"), the Vedantists like to say. I too sometimes try and look at everything I pass by and say: "This is me. That is me". The pajamas, the keyboard, the starving child, the dying insect. I will not say that this is an easy thing to do. It is not. Especially the dying roach. Or a live and vigorous one, for that matter. But I will say, that, in as much as I have been able to cultivate such an attitude of mind, and for however long, it has brought me peace and happiness. In very commensurate measure. 

    We are all related. We are all children of the stars. The dog, the stone, the tree, and you, and me. The photons that come to us from the stars, to rest briefly in our retinas or in the skin of the stone, those are a gift from the stars. That is the stars' way of telling us that we belong to them, and they to us. It is their way of touching us. It is their way of telling us that the Universe is one continuous chain of being. 

    The color of a star, that is the dominant wavelength it radiates, tells us the temperature at its surface right off the bat (Wein's Law). Knowing that temperature we can calculate the amount of power a star radiates per square meter of its surface (Stefan-Boltzmann Law). Both Wein's Law and the Stefan-Boltzmann Law are actually consequences of a phenomenon called Blackbody Radiation, that was discovered later. A blackbody is a body that does not reflect any of the light that falls on it. Stars are thought to be blackbodies. All the radiation (photons) they spew out is generated by them internally. All incident radiation is completely absorbed. 

    I should add that this blackbody business sounds like complete fiction to me, given everything I know about the classical view of electromagnetic phenomenon. Which is not all that much. I did bug a physicist about this once, but instead of him convincing me, he came over to my side. Big help that was! I need to catch another physicist about this --- one that will stand his or her ground. If I look at this problem from the modern point of view, with the attitude of the sixties and later (the Q.E.D. point of view) then it seems like every body is a blackbody, and there is no need for a distinction. If someone gave us a lump of stuff advertised to be a blackbody, how could we go about demolishing that claim? Or establishing it? All suggestions welcome. 

    Let us accept the blackbody hypothesis for the moment. 

    Blackbodies, they say, radiate energy with a characteristic unimodal distribution that changes with their temperature. The peak of that distribution moves from microwave through infrared through visible to x-ray wavelengths, as blackbody temperature moves from a few degrees Kelvin (microwave), to room temperature (infra-red), to thousands of degrees Kelvin (visible) to millions of degrees Kelvin (x-rays). This fact is captured by Wein's Law in a simple formula. 

    The area under the blackbody radiation curve is the total energy radiated per unit area by the blackbody in a second. This energy is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature measured in degrees Kelvin. This fact is captured in a simple equation by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. 

    (To those that I bore with all this star nonsense, I apologize. You can short-circuit this crap by a go-to to here. However, if any of this catches on the imagination of one of your kids, do ask him or her to send me email with questions or comments. I had in fact once started on a simple little picture book for children called "Atoms, And Stars, And Everything In-between" that I abandoned for lack of time. I have a mere two pages done with a paint package somewhere on some disk. Are your children looking at the magnificent Hubble pictures on the web? Are you?) 

    For a long time physics failed to explain the experimentally-observed blackbody radiation curves. This gap between theory and observation was know as "the ultraviolet catastrophe". Any disagreement between experiment and theory means that the theory is wrong. No two ways about that. This potentially-catastrophic embarrassment went away when Max Planck finally explained blackbody radiation. In so doing he invented quantum theory, which was such a radical departure from classical physics that Planck had trouble believing himself. It was only when, in 1905, Einstein explained the photoelectric effect with the help of Planck's quanta, that quantum theory became a respectable part of physics. 

    When starlight is spread out with a prism or, even better, a diffraction grating, we see a continuum of color with a few bright lines. These lines make up an emission spectrum. They tell us the color of photons that are strongly emitted by the outer layers of a star. The continuous spectrum is produced deep in the core of the star. Photons are produced when electrons fall from high energy orbits to lower energy orbits around an atom or a molecule. The energy liberated by any such electron-transition is carried away by a photon. 

    Every atom and every molecule has very definite energy levels that the electron must confine themselves to. Therefore every atom and molecule has a set of spectral lines that make up its unique signature, or fingerprint. So the colors of the lines in the emission spectrum tell us what elements (atoms and ions) and what molecules are present in the star. From the intensity of spectral lines we can also tell the relative quantities of different types of atoms and molecules. 

    If the starlight passes through a cloud of cold matter (or "dust") then we also see dark lines that constitute an absorption spectrum. These lines tell us that photons with a certain energy were eaten up (eaten up and spat out in a random direction, i.e. scattered) by cold matter. The cold matter used those photons to kick up its electrons for a while. The absorption spectrum therefore tells us what the constituents of the intervening dark matter are. 

    Both the emission and absorption spectra were observed and explained by Kirchoff in mid-1800s, following the invention of a new colorless-flame burner by Bunsen. 

    The lines in an emission spectrum are usually displaced from their normal position, as observed in a laboratory on the earth. This shift is towards the red part (red-shift) or the blue part (blue-shift) of the spectrum, and is due to the motion of the star away from us, or towards us, along the line of sight. The shift is the result of the so-called Doppler effect: the whistle of an approaching train is pitched higher (blue-shifted) than the whistle of a stationary train. The whistle of a receding train is pitched lower (red-shifted). 

    When a star rotates, its spectral lines are thickened because the approaching edge of the stellar disk is blue-shifted relative to the overall average Doppler shift, while its receding edge is relatively red-shifted. Therefore, by measuring the thickness of the spectral lines we could calculate a star's angular velocity --- if we only knew its radius. 

    So far as the Sun is concerned we can study the motion of its surface very closely with Doppler methods. Thus we know that its surface is made up of thousands of convective cells that give its surface a granular appearance. People (helioseismologists) also study how the Sun rings like a gong. Leonard Tauro's beloved Bessel functions would come in very handy here, I imagine, just as they would come in handy in studying the vibration of a drumhead. 

    When an atom or a molecule is placed in a strong magnetic field its spectral lines split into doublets or triplets or more (the Zeeman effect). Electrons have a magnetic moment due to their orbit. This moment tries to align with the external magnetic field, leading to precession, just as a top will precess as it tries to align its angular momentum vector with an external gravitational field. Unlike the case of the spinning top, electron precession angles can have only a few allowed values, a consequence of the quantum theory. Each permissible angle has a slightly different energy, leading to split energy levels. The splitting of spectral lines therefore gives us information about stellar magnetic fields. On the Sun, the Zeeman effect tells us, that sunspots are associated with very large magnetic fields --- about 6000 times the magnetic field at the Earth's poles. 

    For stars that are close by, within about 150 light years, we can measure their distance by triangulation, by observing them from different points from along the Earth's orbit around the Sun. For stars that more distant, it is real tricky to estimate their distance. For such stars one method for estimating their distance is also based on spectroscopy This method goes by the name of spectroscopic parallax. I don't think that is a good name for it. But no one asked me. From the elements we see in the spectrum, we can obtain a good estimate of the star's energy-generation process, therefore of its luminosity. A comparison of this estimated luminosity with the luminosity observed at earth gives some fix on the distance. From the distance and the power output per square meter (from the Stefan-Boltzmann calculation), it is possible to get the star's surface area in square meters, hence its radius. 

    It surprised me greatly to learn, a few years ago, that most of the stars we see in the sky are binary systems: two stars that orbit each other but appear as one. Some of these can be seen to be two star systems when a large telescope is trained on them (visual binaries). For others, their binary nature is less directly inferred. We know that emission spectra are related to stellar temperatures. (Some of the work relating stellar spectra to their temperatures was done by Meghnad Saha in Calcutta. The Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics is named in his honor.) If we see a line called the Hydrogen Lyman-alpha line in the emission spectrum, the star must be very hot. If we see the Titanium Dioxide set of lines it must be a relatively cool star. If we see both sets of lines, could it be two stars, one cool, the other hot, each orbiting the other? 

    In order to check that, we could watch the Dopplers of their emission spectra. If the Doppler shifts oscillate in time, the stars are in turn moving towards us and away. They must therefore be orbiting some massive body. And if the Dopplers of the H-alpha and TiO₂ spectra are synchronous, locked in step, it must be that the two stars are orbiting each other. Such binaries are called spectroscopic binaries. 

    If we can estimate the semimajor axis of the elliptical path of one of the stars, and having measured the period of orbit, Kepler's third law gives us the sum of the two stellar masses. If we can measure how much one star moves in relation to the other, we can calculate individual masses from the sum of masses --- much as we would infer the relative weights of two children by the location of the fulcrum at which they balance a seesaw. It is hard to believe how simple the mathematics of much of astrophysics is. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and a pinch of trigonometry. That is it. 

    I don't mean this to be an exhaustive catalog of how much we can learn from a few old photons. All I'd like to say is that when we put together our physics and our observations of the stars, it becomes clear that the matter we are made of has existed since the beginning of time. The Universe was all Hydrogen and Helium, in a 3:1 ratio, about a million years after its birth. All the heavier elements have been forged, in the intervening fifteen billion years (we'll have a better number for that when the Hubble space telescope gives us a better estimate of the Hubble constant), in the furnaces of the stars. There are stars, like the Sun, that burn Hydrogen to Helium, then die when their Hydrogen runs out. More massive stars will burn Helium to Carbon. Still more massive stars will burn Carbon to higher elements. Not to CO₂, as on the earth. This is nuclear "burning" we speak of. Not chemical burning. Chemical burning just rearranges electron orbits. It leaves the nuclei untouched. 

We know that in their death throes, some stars, exploding as supernovae with the brilliance of a million Suns, spew out their atoms and the photons into the black void. We know that new stars are born of the body of the old. We know that this will happen again. We know that the stuff we are made of will go on to eternity. In that sense we are eternal, immortal, imperishable. Yesterday I was a potato, tomorrow I shall be the dust that blows everywhere. Some of me will be, and some already is, a part of a grass, a tree, some water, some another animal. Some of me is a part of Buramani and Gobindrao (which is Teetee by another name). That water that became the dog, it could have become me. The whole Universe is a continuous chain of being. It is I. All this matter and energy, coiled and draped and joined and shaped by the strange, beautiful, and mysterious laws of Mother Nature. We are all expressions of her dance. 

    That is the meaning of those dreams. 

    Back to Dadabhai. He gave me a chapait because he thought I was screwing up his numbers. But the fault really lies with the publisher, Viking (Penguin) of New Delhi, of "The Indian Struggle for Independence: 1857 - 1947", 1988, and the authors of the book, Bipin Chandra et al. On page 99 I read, and this is an accurate reproduction: 

    "Dadabhai wrote: '... To carry away from India, and to eat up in India, her property at the present rate of 30,000,000 or 40,00,000 pounds a year ....'." 

    I first take issue with the Indian system of commification. This business of putting a comma first after three, and then after two digits, means that you have to allocate at least two words in your RAM for storing the comma format information. That is one too many. I don't have that much RAM. Also, it is easy to make errors, because we all have to deal with the Indian standard and the incompatible international standard. Fix that India. 

    Then also I must take issue with the publisher. A publisher must have someone there that will not let this sort of stuff slip by. But the people that really deserve the chapaits are the authors. Saale galley proof nahin paDte. Mike Frazier and I wrote the second chapter of a book called "Wavelets: Mathematics and Applications", in which the first chapter was written by John Benedetto, professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland. There are so many typos in John Benedetto's chapter that someone who doesn't already know the subject will never ever make it to the second chapter. Saala pahle chapter mein he guzar jaayega. I go through my galley proofs meticulously. Equations are especially confounded by typos, much more so than text. I have seen other books by these same publishers, CRC Press of New York, that have the same problem. Books cost a whole bunch in the US. CRC volumes are in the $75 and higher range. A customer should expect some minimum quality for that kind of cash. I have twice sent CRC some email to this effect. 

    Even more serious than an equation-wallah-error is the sort of mistake in this Bipin Chandra book. A rate of "30,000,000 or 4,000,000 pounds"! Yeh kya bukwaas hai? Iss case ko kharij karo: that is what a judge will say. Apart from the typos, this book is so poorly written that it is sometimes hard to make out even on a second and third reading of a passage what it is that the authors want to say. 

    I explained all this to Dadabhai, but he wasn't much mollified. I did ask him what the asli number was. He mumbled something that I could not catch. There was a lot of fog and general confusion and nimboo achar everywhere. The bottom line is this: I still stand by the calculation I reported. 

    Bond wrote something about Indians crapping in the street. My feeling is that anyone would crap in the street if someone stole 409,000,000,000,000 Pounds from them. When they have to pay this back, the English will likely start crapping in their pants; while the Indians daintily wipe their residues with four-ply acid-free boff paper embossed with the Queen's coat of arms --- the shield, the scepter, the diadem, the gules, the E.R., the lion, the unicorn, the works --- perched on sang-e-murmur thunder-boxes with temperature-controlled bidets, and exhaust fans that carry the odors in transcontinental pipelines all the way to Whitehall ducts. 

 Till next time,
Arun Kumar