From Thekuas to Theorems: Notes from Slow Conversation with HC Verma

Recently, I have started listening to Slow Conversations with Neelesh Misra (especially since Satinder Sartaaj showed up for a three hour conversation). The show is quite unique. In the age of TikTok, shorts and Instagram reels which are trying to maximize the content provided per second, Neelesh Misra does two to three hours long interviews, and engages in deep conversations related to the guests, their childhood, upbringing, fond memories, how they got where they are today and everything in between. True to its name, the conversations are deliberately slow. Neelesh takes his time in asking questions and would just ask the guests to elaborate where he feels like they should spend more time. Personally also, I feel it would be so nice to just sit on a charpai/manji (a traditional bed woven with natural fiber ropes) in a village in India, surrounded by greenery, have guests over and record interviews with them, while sipping tea or lassi. Anyway, coming back to the show, I recently heard an episode with Prof HC Verma. HC Verma is a name that probably every student who studies Physics in India would have heard of. I personally didn't study science past tenth standard but still found the conversation quite fun. The conversation had many interesting stories, so I thought I'd share some of them here.

Prof. HC Verma (Harish Chandra Verma) has been awarded Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award, for his contribution to Physics education. His famous book, Concepts of Physics got published in the year 1992, coincidentally my birth-year, and even all these years later, the book continues to be the go to book to study Physics. The book hasn’t even had another revised edition and the original edition just continues to be relevant even today. In the interview, we learn about how that book came from the need to explain Physics using examples from Indian context, from showing oscillations of the long earrings women in India wear to showing the speed of collision using marbles (kanche) that kids play in India. Ironically, the originally intended international publisher of the book had backed out because they thought that the book won’t sell well, but then he was reached out by a local publisher in the state of Bihar, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Before Prof. HC Verma became a household name, he had quite a unique childhood. If you read his wikipedia, it says that he was born to Ganesh Prasad Verma, a teacher. This may give an idea that he was already from a well educated family where his father was a teacher. But what we learn from his interview is that his father actually never really went to school himself. He dropped out after spending a month there as he wasn’t interested much in studying. But then at around the age of 15-16, he started enjoying theater plays, and started reading some plays on his own. From there, he developed such an interest in reading that he started reading subject books as well of Mathematics, Social Science, and other subjects. He would start with level 1 book of a subject, then move on to the next level book, and so on, all by himself without going to school. He enjoyed all this so much that he ended up opening his own school in his village with some financial help and was the only teacher there. At a young age, Prof. Verma also studied from his father before he moved to proper schooling in sixth grade.

We often tend to think of our professors being amazing students themselves. I remember in my tenth grade, I asked my Maths teacher that given how good he was, he must have spent his school years solving Maths questions day and night. He told me that he was pretty average in Maths at that time himself, and developed a stronger interest much later. It turns out Prof. Verma wasn’t a star performer in his school years either. While he was decent at studying and paid attention in class, he didn’t really study much after school, which showed up in his average exam results as well. His family used to ask him to study after school so that he could do better, but he didn’t see much point in that. “Why spend that time studying when I could have spent that time playing?”, he says (fair point actually). Then, it was his mother who came up with an innovative solution.

During the Chhath festival in Bihar, thekua is a common snack which is prepared (people from Bihar may feel offended by this description but it is something like a cookie). In his ninth grade, Prof. Verma’s mother made plenty of thekuas in their home. Knowing Prof. Verma’s love for thekuas, his mother offered him a deal. He would get a thekua for every hour he would sit with his books by his mother’s side. Given he wasn’t interested in reading books much, he checked with his mother if he just had to sit with his books, or if he also had to read the books to get a thekua. His mother made it easy for him to say yes, he just had to sit with his books, no obligation to read. Prof. Verma happily agreed. The first day he sat, within five minutes, he was bored. His mother was busy doing her sewing work, and he didn’t have anything to do. He thought that he might as well read the books that he is sitting with. Doing this day after day, he started enjoying reading the subject books. His mother’s trick worked and the thekuas paved the way for the illustrious academic career he ended up having later.

There were also some small bits that resonated a lot from the conversation. Talking about his childhood, he says that “gareebi bhi charam par thi, sukh bhi charam par tha” (poverty was at its peak, happiness was also at its peak). Neelesh Misra also starts smiling and says that you usually don’t hear such positive correlation between poverty and happiness. Prof. Verma explains that they didn’t feel the effect of money much around them, so its lack also didn’t affect much. In his own words, “jab dhan ka prabhaav nahi hota, toh uska abhav bhi mehsoos nahi hota”. At another point, when Prof. Verma doesn’t do well in the first school he goes to for his sixth grade, his father tells him that this school is probably not good, so let’s find you a better school. Rather than scolding him, or getting disappointed in him, his father puts his entire faith behind him, and that’s probably one of the strongest backing one can receive.

The interview also had some explanations of simple Physics experiments. In one example, he talked about how a vehicle doesn’t move on its own, it’s the friction in the road that makes a vehicle move. I obviously didn’t understand it much, but then I reached out to another friend who is a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, and had an hour long lecture with him understanding what he actually meant. He very patiently explained the difference between rotation and translation, and I would look at a road with much more respect now.

To sum up, it’s a fun episode to listen to, regardless of whether you have studied his book or not. And you would enjoy it more if you have read his book and enjoyed learning from it. Personally, I really enjoyed the simplicity of the conversations, the little back stories and just the positive vibe of the episode, as highlighted by this quote by Prof. Verma:

Saara jeevan itne acche se guzar gaya ki pata hi nahi chala ki kasht kahan hai (My whole life has passed so beautifully that I never really felt the pain of it.)

Favorites of the month

Movie: I recently watched the movie Hanuman, and loved it. The movie uses parts from Hindu mythology and builds a modern day story around it, which I found pretty cool. Another similar movie that I watched along these lines was Kalki 2898 AD, which also I liked, but I found Hanuman much better.

Song: My recent favorite has been the song, Aaja Dil Janiya by Amrinder Gill. Even though the song is in Punjabi, everyone who I have made listen this song has really liked it (sample size of two, but still!).

Song: In July, I also got to attend my favorite Satinder Sartaaj’s live concert, and that concert continues to be the best concert I have attended. Surprisingly, from the concert, the one song that has stuck is not his, but a 1993 song by Kumar Sanu called Dil Tera Aashiq. In the concert, in the middle of his own song, he started singing this song, and I have also been listening to the original one a lot. Here is a clip of Sartaaj singing this song that I recorded.

Thank you for reading!

Until next time,

Sagar