Whatever it is, her visits are like that of comets, periodic and mostly predictable. On one such a visit, she found me serious, pen poised over a blank paper, eyes staring fixedly at an imaginary spot on the wall and sitting like a statue.
I was struggling to complete a write up and she was determined not to allow me to do so. Otherwise, she had to come back at another time. It was highly un- acceptable and running counter current to her plans of swimming along with the flow to have fun.
Fearing no consequences, she went about disturbing my ‘tapas’ - pulling out the papers, snatching the pen and then standing in front of my unseeing eyes to block the wall out of sight. I lost my focus and she had the stage set.
The first object she noticed was a Visual dictionary. She riffled through the pages and stopped to look at the topic (pictures) under formation of mountains. Naturally, she wanted to know how these mountains were formed in the first place.
Welcoming the diversion, I started to demonstrate the concept of mountain formation. I folded my hands at the elbow, kept them parallel to the ground, palms facing downwards and at about chest level. Then, I asked her to stand in front of me and watch carefully the palms facing the ground. Both she did - without a demur. Surprise number one!
As she watched, I brought my palms nearer, and stopped when the middle fingers touched each other. She confirmed the contact, in a jubilant voice, usually heard from a mission control centre announcing the completion of a critical manoeuvre.
Then, I started gently pushing my palms against each other, from the wrist portion, keeping the rest of my arm –elbow to wrist joint, rigid and parallel to the ground.
After completely folding my palms together, I paused for awhile, so that she will get a mind’s picture of the folded palms. Then I let in the concept that, in a similar fashion, the mountains were created by the natural movement and collision of tectonic plates against each other.
A heavy subject and inept handling must have made her to loose track of the concept. This became evident when, after a long silence, she simply stated that I had shown her a ‘namaste’ and not a mountain formation.
She had formed her own opinion about the issue and stated it boldly - Earth was made in to dough and then God pulled up lumps here and there to make mountains. He put them in different places so that all of us can look at these mountains. Surprise number two!
The next few pages contained pictures of ocean, clouds and rivers in flow. Her doubt was how the rivers got the water supply? Here I had a doubt – whether she would ask such questions in the class room?
Using the illustrations, I explained about evaporation of water from the oceans, transport of vapour in to the atmosphere, cooling & forming into cloud masses. I let her know that rain bearing clouds will be grey or deep grey and just formed clouds will appear snow white. On further cooling, the water vapour in the clouds condenses and falls as rain – I completed my narration.
She accepted that rain comes from grey or deep grey clouds but had reservations about the source of water in the clouds. By her logic, the grey and white colour of the clouds did not match with the source - bluish or greenish appearing ocean water (courtesy the idiot box?).
Seeing predicament writ all over my face, she ventured to offer her own opinions about rain, grey & snow white clouds. Clouds are made in the sky. Grey and white clouds mix together, get purified and fall down as rain. To add further weight to her argument, she said that water in the ocean always remains there and it cannot go up. Only rain water can come down like in a shower bath!
Simply stated – clouds are not made with ocean water but rain water is made in the clouds. Can any logic beat this opinion maker’s opinion?
(This is where I laughed…fun unlimited)
The next interest turned out to be on ships and boats of modern and medieval times. Remembering her recent boat trip, to a nearby island, her face lit up like Christmas tree. She excitedly narrated how the knife in front of the boat tore the water and helped it to go faster and faster. She had already firmed up an opinion, logical or otherwise, that the observed phenomenon of prow wake was nothing but the effect of water being cut with a knife. I kept quite with out offering any explanation.
Lack of response is not taken kindly by this opinion maker. Deciding to educate me a little, she patiently explained “vegetables are cut with a knife, butter & bread is sliced with a knife. In the same way the boat cuts water with a knife - that is all”
After setting my thinking straight, she just left me alone to contemplate on these issues- her perspective opinions. I simply lost my sanity on the examples and arguments used to explain her view point (read opinion).
I restarted the struggle, to catch my inspiration train, after gathering the papers, pen and then focusing my eyes on the wall. Focusing proved futile after the brainstorming session the opinion maker had with me.
The series on the 'Little Typhoon' is excellent
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