53. TWO IS BETTER THAN
ONE
Most of my
School and college days were spent in the balmy city of Madras Bay of Bengal , the Santhome
beach being just a stone’s throw away. As
the youngest at home, it fell on me to run little errands for my aunts, uncles,
and grandparents, buying household provisions, odds and ends from the Bazaar
street round the corner. I loved this
Bazaar street with its myriad little shops purveying all kinds of goodies. Their offerings to my various senses was
equally pleasant : rhythmic thump thump thump of the motorized pounding machine
releasing to the atmosphere pungent odour of red chillies, the heady aroma of
roasting coffee beans, the sweet smell of roasting chickpeas from
Panchaksharam’s Pattani shop, a
sudden draft of cold air while passing by the Manickam Ice candy factory. Ramanathan the ice candy man was also the leg
spinner of our underarm street corner cricket team.
Our Lady of
Bon Secours school ( upto 5th Std. only) was at the farthest end of the Bazaar street
from our home, and this was my daily commute to school, a walk of about 15
minutes each way. I knew each and every
shop on this street like the back of my hand and every roadside vendor
including the petty vegetable ladies displaying their wares in neat small
stacks ( kooru in Tamil ) for retail
sale and no bargaining.
Basha Bhai’s
roadside stall was the favourite of the little boys, with a small mob always milling
around him. For reasons I cannot fathom
till today, there were well defined seasons in the year for various games and
toys : for marbles, for gilli danda,
for the spinning top ( a thumbtack
delicately hammered in on its head for perfect balance) for colorful toy kites and special pink and
orange manja to go with the kites :
and Basha Bhai had the best of these goodies.
His catapults made out of seasoned wood from the guava tree was the
best, or so he claimed. Although I had
no Algebra at that time, I was the first on the buzzer to answer one of his
trick questions on this subject and was rewarded with that catty, and a
prophecy that one day I would become a great man. Basha Bhai had come to Madras
But all
this is digressing. Once in a blue moon,
I would sally forth to Bazaar
street
Of course,
in those days Grandfather had all the time in the world to do the sharpening,
pick the correct edge of the blade, unscrew the razor handle, remove the top
plate, sandwich the blade in between the two plates, screw it tight again,
ready for the shave.
A few
decades later, Gillette came with the very handy disposable razor for people on
the move. Many more years of serious and
sustained research led to the development of the twin Blade razor, the underlying
theory being two blades are better than one, and certainly better for the
Company’s bottomline. The Gillette Mach
3 was but a natural evolution from the twin blade contraption : How could three
be any less than two ? I doubt if even a
master marketeer like Gillette would dare to venture beyond three. One cannot fool all the people all the time.
Taking a
cue from Gillette ( two is better than one), a simple biological Sewage
Treatment Plant in Bangalore
Dr. Ananth
S Kodavasal August
23, 2012
