A Rosie By Any Other Name

"Even on your death bed when mommy asks you, "what is the spelling of "athlete"", all you need to say is "Mommy, no "e"!". That's it! The rest is obvious. No one makes a mistake in "athlete" except for putting an extra "e"".
Mr. Rosario, High School Doyen of all things English, Don Bosco Park Circus 1986-87.

I will grant the skeptical reader that the probability of my mother, were she to be beside me on my death bed, asking me the spelling of "athlete", is low. That said, my ability to recite these words almost verbatim 23 years after they were uttered tells me just how much of an influence Mr. Rosario has been on my use and misuse of the Queen's language. Even without data from copious in-depth focus groups at hand, I can guarantee that a good percentage of the thousands of others he taught would tell you how they owe their language skills more to Mr. Rosario than to Msrs. Wren and Martin. Better still, since I have never mis-spelled "athlete" since school, his form of English instruction was clearly effective. In fact, more than just effective - measurable, trackable, and very targeted. Heck, he could have taught a marketing class.

Mr. Rosario taught us English Language and Literature for the last two years in school. He was an avuncular, Anglo-Indian gentleman who looked and talked a little bit like Anthony Hopkins. Generally cheerily disposed, and with an excellent grasp of the language to boot, he was a permanent fixture in school, having seen generations of young men like yours truly graduate. Like with all our teachers, we gave him a nickname. His - "Rosie" - was particularly pleasing for a whole set of sordid reasons. For one, we were in an all-boys school, and anything that allowed us to imagine we were associated with the opposite sex was particularly exciting. Even if it meant naming a 50ish gentleman Rosie. For another, actual engagement with that half of the species required walking down the road to my sister's college (Lady Brabourne) or to a high school a few blocks away (M. B. Girls) or others further away like Modern High. And most of the time encountering a real live female was not without risks - one might actually have to say something intelligent and couldn't get away with just throwing chalk at them as some of the crew were wont to do from classroom windows on high. Don't ask me how or why that particular ritual found its way into the Bosconian bag of tricks. Let's just say that like God, the onset of testosterone works in mysterious ways.

When the movie is made, I would like to see Rowan Atkinson play Rosie with express instructions to project himself as an average of Mr. Bean and Black Adder. For the more precise minded, Rosie = (Mr. Bean + Black Adder) / 2. Or maybe Hugh Laurie could play him - the Jeeves and Wooster version of the man that is, not the guy who shows up in House. I say this because I think those two could do better than even Anthony Hopkins in bringing to life what I affectionately refer to as "CRM" - the Classic Rosie Move.

Classic Rosie Move (to be henceforth referred to as CRM)*: When addressing high school boys and asking a question, do four things at once:

1. Open eyes wide and look deep into eyes of principal subject being addressed. Rosie seemed to believe this was part of GAPP (Generally Accepted Public-speaking Principles)
2. Lift one forefinger skyward to draw attention to fingertip. Eckhart Tolle type stuff, the power of now and such.
3. Open mouth and let hang open for a few seconds without saying anything. Let world hang in expectant, or as Rosie would put it, pregnant silence
4. Start sentence slow, but say last three words really quickly. Sting at the tail.

* When this definition becomes more generally available in places like Wikipedia and such, remember you read it here first. However, do not try CRM related manouvres at home without professionals present.

Rosie used this move several times a day, one supposed because he felt it worked for him. In fact a typical screenplay of aforementioned movie would include at least one scene that went like this:

Hushed silence in class. Rosie (played by Laurie or Atkinson) looks at yours truly (played of course by Elijah Wood). Insert first instance of CRM.

Rosie: "So....ooo Mister Agrawal...." the long, lingering look, mouth open and finger pointed skyward to accentuate the importance of the words about to be uttered. Religious riots could have been happening in UP, Bihar, and Orissa at that very moment but time stood still as the 17 year old me awaited the task about to be bestowed with the eagerness of a pending knighthood. "What is.......the..... figure of speech....... in "long, lingering look"? The last three words spoken at rapid-fire pace.

Self: "Er.. sir.. "Long Lingering Look" is an alliteration?"

Rosie looks pleased. Maybe other kids than just Saibal might consider a future in English. Not as good as Saibal's but then not bad for a transplant from Uttar Pradesh (a subject we shall explore in some depth in future chronicles.)

Rosie: "Yes sir it is. Yes sir..... "Long lingering look" is indeed an alliteration. Good Mr. Agrawal. Now...... (insert second CRM here)... what is an alliteration, Mr. Agrawal?"

Self: "Hmm.. er.. when the first sound is alliterated sir?"

A ghastly look while the blood flushes from Rosie's already pale face. The early promise shown by boy fast waning, I suppose you can take the boy out of UP but not UP out of the boy. Introduce touch of sarcasm when he speaks next.

Rosie: (insert CRM #3) "I see. I see, Mr. Agrawal. You say....an alliteration .... is when the first sound is alliterated? I see. I think we can do better than that Mr. Agrawal"

As we have established elsewhere, I am quite experienced with logical fallacies and once spelled out in legible handwriting, I usually am able to discern when I have made one. Realizing the obvious circular logic in this situation, the smart young scholar recovers.

Self: "Repeated sir, I mean an alliteration is when the first letter is repeated. Like "till tomorrow then".

Ok so in hindsight the second half of that statement wasn't necessary. But delivered as it was, that certainly came as the final crushing blow to Rosie's hopes of developing a future Tennyson. CRM # 4, 5, and 6 at once as he tries to pick words carefully. You could see him trying to fight off a mixture of anger, displeasure and pity.

Rosie: "No sir!.... No,.... no, no sir. "Till tomorrow "th"en is not an alliteration!"

Slow raise of finger, pointed skyward, mouth open for a few seconds. CRM #7.

Rosie: "Please repeat after me... Mr. Agrawal. Alliteration is when the first consonant sound, not the first letter in a phrase is repeated" So "Till Tomorrow Ten" would be an alliteration sir. "t" "t" "t". Do you understand?"

And that's how we learned the English language, CRM by CRM you might say. And not just the language, literature too - one could go on for hours about "The Lord of the Rings" and what Rosie thought of Piggy or the thespian rendition of Richard II. If you are keeping track, there were about 12 CRMs in going through Richard and John of Gaunt's chatty banter in the following passage:
Richard: "Lions make leopards tame".
J of G: "Yea, but not change his spots".

But there is this other unfailing memory about Rosie that needs to be chronicled. His role as self-appointed school proctor. His office used to be directly in the path of where hundreds of kids assembled every morning, and then proceeded in immaculate formation like the Blue Angels to their respective classrooms. As they passed by, Rosie would stand tall, looking for those out of uniform and pull them out of line. "No belt", "No PE shoes", "No blazer" whatever the fault of the poor unsuspecting little fellow, Rosie's unerring eye could spot a violation of the dress code from afar, revealing a unique skillset long before Olympic shooting glory bestowed on any Indian the formal title of "keenest eye". I was once sent home with an entry in that dreaded school diary that said "No pants", a comment that would require a signature from a parent. It took some convincing as I presented the diary to my mom, trying to explain that Mr. Rosario considered a black leather belt as a native part of the trouser, not unlike a navigation toolbar might be viewed for a browser. Absent said belt he felt completely justified in proclaiming that I had come to school without required leggings. To this day my fingers feel for metal buckle every morning no matter what I am wearing. The fingers sometimes stray to the neck checking for maroon tie and closed collar, although thankfully I can avoid that particular restraint in my current incarnation.

While I make light of Rosie and the idiosyncracies that accompanied English instruction, one thing's for sure: For good or for bad, for richer or for poorer, in bad writing and in good, a lot of what I am able to express today is Rosie's to blame and his to take credit. Not to mention the shorts I regularly wear to work in utter rebellious defiance of an era gone by when blazers, maroon ties, crisp ironed shirts, and gray flannels were part of the wonderful regimen called school.

Surely You Are Joking, Mr. Pathrose

Freud would probably have something to say about it, but for some odd reason a number of my memories about school relate to totally dumb moments, mostly involving my own angelic self. Some have been just outright funny, others embarrassing, but the indelible memories are the ones that have been truly humbling. Simply, incredibly, humbling. Or humiliating. Or both.

While I would readily admit that I was seldom the smartest kid in class, in my own defense I wasn't totally dumb either. (For those that know me today and would argue that point, the total dumbness you witness didn't come till I discovered alcohol in a meaningful way). It is true that angels did not break into spontaneous aria when I walked into class, but the affirmative-action-for-the-stupid recruiting team also didn't have my parents on their A-list. So when Mr. Pathrose in his unique way let it be known that the probability he was trying to teach was not the version I was imbibing, the words remain etched in a corner of my brain. It has taken 22 years but finally I think I am ready to tell all.

To introduce Mr. Pathrose (affectionately known as Patty by all who loved him), try imagining a combination of Hercule Poirot, M. C. Escher, and Professor Calculus. It was well known he built electronic circuits as a mode of relaxation, his form of deep breathing as it were. One thing was clear - Mr. P. had forgotten more mathematics than most of us would ever learn. To give you a sense of how good he was, even Anindya Nandi didn't practice his cricket strokes to imaginary good-length balls from Imran Khan at the back of the class when Patty was in action.

This Mr. Pathrose was the architect of all things math in the last two years of school including many a week he spent teaching us combinatorics and permutatorics (ok, permutations and combinations if you insist). He apparently felt that before graduating high school it was important for people to be able to write things like 7! and that the path to happiness lay in being able to mind your Ps & Cs. Well, ours not to reason why. Ours, as you will see, but to do and cry.

His teaching methodology included frequent examinations euphemistically called "quizzes" to gauge the limited extent to which his tutelage had been imbuing his genius. Most of these quizzes contained 3 - 5 questions with typically the kinds of things you could answer in 10 - 15 minutes, and so naturally by some fuzzy logic, he would give us 5 questions to answer in the first 5 minutes of class and call it a quiz. He would then nonchalantly proceed to spend the rest of the period discussing why Euclidean geometry failed on a sphere - a subject of import to those one assumes destined to draw lines on spheres (one can but hope, since if it doesn't help them, I can only scratch my head as to the point of the exercise).

Anyway, typical quizzes would be of the following variety:

"You are given 24 square tables, but the tables must be used as rectangles, not squares i.e. two together. How many combinations can be made with the 24 tables? (3 points)

What is the maximum number of people that can be made to sit at the tables and under what combination? (4 points)

What is the least number of people that can be made to sit at the tables and under what combination? (3 points)".

Notwithstanding why one would ever put tables together in this rather pointless way or how it actually matters whether there are 2 or 274556 ways to combine these tables, we agonized over such questions for the 5 minutes we were given and then agonized for the remaining 45 minutes of class over just how stupid we had looked with our responses. Disapproval from the master was not a thought one enjoyed, although it was unclear if there was a legitimate way to avoid it.

So anyway this is the Patty we talk about.

Question: "What is the probability that a random 4 digit number is divisible by 7?"

That was it - the question that did me in. The one that has stuck to my brain like a leech on steroids. One that after years of supposedly growing up I have never been able to expel from the little cerebellum I possess. As alluded to earlier, littler though that cerebellum has gotten through constant infusions of alcohol but that question has not been erased from its confines. (My research into this intriguing subject has indicated that said painful memory could be lodged elsewhere - I seem to remember other useless facts like brains have cerebrums and medullas as well. I take clear exception with why some silly biologist would break an already tiny organ into 3 differently named parts, but in the interest of staying on point we shall save that for another day and another diatribe. Regardless though of the number of pieces you might say my brain has, I doubt it should in normal course have allowed the following humiliation to stick on anywhere - since one hopes it is prioritizing what it retains. It is evident the entire organ has shrunk in inverse proportion to age. Hmm or should I say "grown in inverse proportion with age?" Or "shrunk in direct proportion with age"? Heck if I know, go ask Patty.)

In any case, Patty started class that fateful day with this one question. Simple, straightforward and so seemingly innocuous that yours truly looked at it with contempt, shrugged, and wondered if Patty was highly over-rated after all. If the gentleman from the post office who we had introduced in a separate part of this treatise had been around - the one that had politely inquired whether I was from Delhi - he could have confirmed that the attitude I exhibited at this moment was identical to the one he had experienced. You see, no matter how you examined the problem, which angle you saw it from, it seemed like this was so rudimentary that I couldn't believe Patty himself had offered it up as a real problem to brilliant minds like mine. Clearly the shine was off, the man I had revered for so long falling off in one fell swoop from the pedestal I had raised him on. All this build up and one simple quiz question had burst the bubble. I will mix other metaphors as soon as I can remember them.

Answer: "A number is either divisible by 7 or it isn't.
Hence, P(random 4 digit number is divisible by 7) = 1/2"
QED (Quite Easily Done)

I got the quiz back the next day - it had a number, that looked like 0, a clear mistake obviously. He had meant to write 10/10 of course. I continued to read on, expecting some trivial error on his part, driven by the senility of the has-been Math teacher. The short remark that followed stung like a two-by-four into my stomach.

"Surely you are joking Mr. Agrawal. Even by your Quixotic standards, this lacks logic. Just so you know, 14 of every 100 numbers between 1000 and 9999 are divisible by 7. Next time, take your time and don't do it quite so easily."

Math Class With Mr. Adhikari

Mr. Adhikari taught us Math for a while. I think the best way to describe him is a man with a brain of a Math PhD with the attitude of Lucabrazzi in The Godfather. Or for those in the know, Saif Ali Khan in Omkara. He would walk into class, head low with hands behind his back, smelling of fresh cigarettes and cologne. 56 of the city's best and brightest would rise in attention and wish him good morning, which would typically be met with a look of disdain and an exasperated "yeeessss yesss good morning". A cherubic, phenominally talented man with a short fuse and a tongue to match.

There were days he'd just go straight to the board and start writing - anything from a quadratic equation to a geometry rider he wanted us to solve. On other days, he'd pick out his favorite text, OP Sinhal and before the 56 pairs of legs had found there way back onto the seats start reading out a problem "ABCD is a pentagon..." to which some smart-ass would immediately interrupt "Pentagon.... ABCDE you mean sir?". Adhikari scowles... "Arrre vvvai Sambit, E is aaanderstood".

Then there would be days in the middle of class he would pick on random people - we'll call one of them RS to protect the innocent. RS was, well lets just say his career trajectory seemed to be pointed in a direction other than a PhD in Math. After a vigorous game of soccer over the lunch break where he defended the goal expertly for 50 minutes, an afternoon siesta would very much be in order. The slight problem being he wasnt at the back of the class, rather in row 1 of the 8 rows of desks, and in column 1 next to the door. Or as Mr. Adhikari's brain worked, at point (-4, 0) since the Cartesian coordinate system started with him at (0, 0).

The exchange would go somewhat like this:

Mr. Adhikari: "So Raoooul, whaat is the cosine of 47 degrees?".

RS as we had mentioned before, would, if we were all lucky be asleep - and I mean literally asleep with his mouth open and quite possibly a little trickle across his chin. Supine with his elbow and shoulder across the wooden desk on which he had carved names of all the girls who loved him, the teachers he hated, and other memorable doodles that would make the Google homepage proud. Mr. Adhikari would at this point, as he was wont, pick up a piece of chalk (the soft kind which he usually preferred) and throw it at RS, nailing him somewhere on that rather long, defenseless frame.

RS, awoken from the deep slumber would flail out his arms, knock a few pieces of paper and look up, with the afterglow of a man who was so far into the dreamy love scene with Madhuri he wished he had been left alone. But in true Bosconian spirit, he would recover... "yyyessss... sirr.... yess... yess".

Mr. Adhikari's scowl would have grown at this point to a full fledged look of distaste, as if the coffee he just had was just that one cup too many, his pH level close to 5. "I saiiiiiid WHAAT is the cosine of 47 degrees?!"

By this time, a number of indicators would have suggested to RS that it was 2ish in the afternoon, he was in math class, and Mr. Adhikari was asking him a question which could be related to one of three things: arithmetic, algebra, or geometry. Drilling down and picking trignometry would not have occurred to him this early on in the proceedings. The other obvious aspect to this whole thing was that the options at hand were limited. It didnt seem like a "Yes, No" question. Also the mean bastard wasnt exactly offering him multiple choices one of which he could pick. Even the IIT entrance folks were less devious.

So what RS would do is fidget into his little school bag and pick up the log table.

Now one may argue that of the ways to try and deflect the question or even as a delaying tactic, this was not a very good choice. Be that as it may, we now had a scene set up for a classic confrontation - the Math whiz teacher with a student who had just picked up a table of logarithms to answer a question about the cosine function. Some of the rest of us may have considered that perhaps genius was at work here and we all just didn't know it - RS would magically come up with an answer to the question using log tables. But seeing Mr. Adhikari's face made it clear he had not placed a non-zero probability on an Euler-like being casting its mighty shadow close to (-4, 0)

Now, Mr. Adhikari's options were also not boundless. The school discouraged capital punishment, and for all we knew RS was connected. Not sure to what or who but he could have been connected to something or somebody no one wanted to mess with. You could almost hear the grinding wheels of an exasperated man wishing someone was dead but not having the power to execute on such lustful thought.

Mr. Adhikari: "Arrre vaaai I am aasssking you what is cosine of forty sav-aiiin. And you are picking up logarithaaam table?" Al Capone shake of head follows. A cricket bat not being close at hand was a good thing. "ARRE VAAI RAOOOUL, YOU SHOULD GO TO VAVA ATOMIC RESEAAARCH CENTER - THEY USE LOG TABLES THERE. AND NOW JUST TAKE A DAANDA AND HEET ME ON MY HEEAD!" The anger turned inward, heck the Buddha would have been proud.