Why is the geometry box so central to today’s school education? Okay, you didn’t ask the question. But still read on.

Geometry Box

There is no more handy educational tool for a young student than the humble geometry box, especially since it contains the most useful implement to scholastic life, the ‘Divider’.

After years and years of geometry classes, no student is still any wiser as to how to use the ‘Divider’ as an actual mathematical aid. Yet, it has to be the Divider which is most coveted by students for the simple reason it has pointed needle-sharp ends. For young students, this is godsend, as it can be helpful in myriad imaginative ways, but nothing more inventive than when they immortalize their current crush by carving the name on their study table. Were it not for this wonderful practical diversion, mathematics classes would be more unbearable than they are actually.

The divider also helps students to scrawl out obscene words on teachers or engrave choice expletives for no particular reason. Most of such students in India, I suppose, are now leading a productive and contented life as commenters on the ‘Rediff’ site.

With its sharp, piercing ends, the Divider has the potential to cause immense bodily damage, especially when handled by impetuous young boys. So if the educationists still persist with the Divider, it means only one thing: They are far stupider than we imagine them to be.

The geometry box also involves the Setsquares, which, as the name correctly implies, are triangular in shape. Along with the Loch Ness Monster and T Rajendher, the Setsquares have stumped humanity with their enigmatic mystery. Till date, no one is actually clear on the precise need for the Setsquares in real schoolroom situations.

Conduct this simple test on yourself: Ask yourself the question: ‘Have I ever, truly ever, felt the need for a setsquare for classroom assignments?’ If you answer ‘yes’ to the question, then you can be sure that you are lying. As a general information, I must venture that this is first question in any narco analysis.

On the other hand, the use of the Protractor, which is another of the constituents of the geometry box, is clear —- it aids students in lining out exact angles when they are carving in some interesting human body parts on their desks. Perhaps concerned that the protractor is actually practical in its performance, the braintrusts behind educational tools thought it fit to mark up on the protractor the degrees of the angles in reverse order, too. This has led to many interesting situations, including, I guess, the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The Compass is a convenient widget to curve up exact circles at all times, by which I mean, on occasions when the student actually manages to tightly screw and hold in place the pencil. But if it is plumbing, it has to leak, and if it is the compass, the pencil has to come unhinged. This is the real Pythagoras theory that defines the core of geometry.

Anyway, if by some miracle of nature, the student pulls off what he or she thinks is the perfect circle, the geometry teacher will eventually break the news: Technically, there can never, I mean never, be a perfect circle in this world. It is fair to say that the compass was so named because it makes all a, well, complete ass.

The geometry box also contains the humble scale, which the Americans term as ‘ruler’ possibly due to the fact it will be too stupid even by their standards to call their ruler a scale.

Graph sheets

Geometry boxes are most essential when a student is preparing statistics-filled graph sheets. During those moments of creative challenge and artistic experiment, a student cannot afford to be lax. He or she has to be smart enough to put the geometry box to its best use possible: That is, use it as a paperweight and prevent the graph sheets from being scattered around.

Anyway, graph sheets are vital to learning in schoolrooms for the easy convenience of conveying mathematical truths in a manner that involves the fundamentals of modern-day teaching: Killing time.

Naturally, this has found favour among today’s corporate corridors, especially with the MBA-type honchos, who fall back on the clarity that PowerPoint presentations bring with them to convey their names. You ban PowerPoint presentations and meetings, I think, you have saved the world 23,00009,8877,5679,85700 of manhours. Of course, you also send 23,00009,8877,5679,85700 men out of work. As you can see, graphs are needed to save the world from a deep economic crisis.

Mankind, right since the caveman age, has been more comfortable with pictorial, graphical representations for obvious reasons. You put a photo of a woman who has left nothing to imagination. Alongside, you also put a few imaginatively brilliant erotic lines. You know which will attract attention? Well, I don’t know, but you will certainly draw the attention of the police and be arrested for running pornography business.

The point is pornography is fun. NO. Sorry, I meant to say graph assignments are fun especially since numbers confuse people more than words do. That’s why economists and the Finance Minister use them.

One of these days, I must also attempt the graphic version of Cranks Corner with dazzling Venn diagrams and impressive pie charts. And if you ask me whether I will use the Divider at least then, well, thanks. Actually, no thanks. I’m comfortable with Johnson’s earbuds.

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.

But one day, the King was in a mood for deep philosophy as he was perhaps enduring a bad-hair moment. Anyway, he summoned all the erudite Ministers, and scholars and philosophers of the land and posed the most important question that any bored person is bound to ask: ‘Gotta some porn?’

No, seriously, he wanted the learned group to find out what is the one real truth, that one underlying fact, which is at the core of all humanity. Most likely the King wanted to enjoy rompy moments of passion in his harem without the pesky presence of the so-called scholars. History is silent on this aspect.

Anyway, the motley mix of men travelled far and wide, straddled across continents and seas, and did not mind any expense, not because they were searching for the deepest truth, but because the royalty was footing their bill. They were the first team that created the expense account budget, a tradition that forms the bedrock of today’s corporate travel culture.

And after years and years of fully-paid junket, the wizened whizs were ready with what any group of researchers always come up with: Wads and wads of verbose prose, not unlike what you encounter in this column.

The mighty emperor was mighty angry as the dense foliage of words was difficult to penetrate into. The scholars too couldn’t escape the situation through the biggest presentation trick that is so hugely popular now: Powerpoint display.

The researchers, still not to miss an opportunity for making more money, sought more time and budget from the king who, needless to say, was keen on for that one line of true wisdom which he can remember when having fun at the harem.

Off went the intellectuals, and it was cue for more expense accounts and travel bills. Eventually, after more years on the road on public funds, they returned to the king’s court, ready with that distilled bit of collected profundity.

As the king sat on his throne, his head and hair gloriously hidden under a resplendent crown, the researchers cleared their collective throats and began laying out the quintessence of their search.

‘Oh king, the mightiest of the mighty,’ they said. Of course, this was not the truth they had come up with.

‘We roamed the riches of the land, we scoured the depths of the oceans, we scrambled through the forests, we winnowed the deserts, we….’

‘Stop it,’ the King growled, because Kings can’t speak normally. ‘Don’t beat around the bush’.  He would have liked to say ‘cut to the chase, fellows,’ but that would have been too street slangish and hence unbecoming of a King.

Chastened, the researchers collected their wits and said what they thought they had figured out.

There was a deafening silence. All eyes zoomed in on the king, who for a moment might have thought that the researchers were taking the mickey out of him, for what they had revealed seemed to make fun of him.

But the emperor was not angered, probably because, well, we don’t know. It is unrealistic of you to expect us to remember every little historical detail, especially since we have been painstakingly making them up as we are going along.

Why am I recollecting this old fable today? Good question. But remember, you didn’t ask it; I posed it rhetorically to myself.

Anyway, I always try to remember this story whenever I go to a ‘saloon’ to have my regular haircut. The ‘saloons’ may have become ‘salons’, but one ‘o’ less hasn’t exactly altered the predicament that I have been carrying since my school days.

A flashback to my childhood: Clad in a smelly white shirt, whose whiteness would be highlighted by the shreds of black hair bits that had fallen off from different heads sticking on it, the chief barber (rather the owner) would have one look at me and my head and then summarily nominate the junior most man in the shop to take care of me. For, young heads are where apprentices and neo barbers practise their tentative lessons on.

The apprentice would disinterestedly look at me and then place a wooden plank across the handles of the revolving chair and then ask me to sit on it. Draping a patchy, musty hair-specked cloth over, he would pivot his fingers on my hand and turn it back and forth as if it was some convenient revolving globe. He would survey the head like a master spin bowler would a pitch.

Having had a close look and decided on his approach, he would then pull out a bottle fitted with a pump and proceed to spray the water in it on my head with the ferocity of a fireman trying to extinguish an inferno.

But in my case, the fire was to follow.

He would then violently proceed on my head using a steely combination of scissors, knives, clippers, and sometimes even hand. In his novice enthusiasm, he would take out my skin and scalp many times. But I would sit uncomplainingly lest one wrong, jerky move would leave me ear-less for life.

He brought to his craft the finesse of a sheep-rearer. At the end of it all, it was no coincidence that I used to emerge looking no better than a shorn sheep.

I would not dare look at the mirror; I knew my head would resemble a patchy grassland in summer hardly any growth left and with hardly any hope for growth.

But my father, who would make me proceed straight to the bathroom through the entrance at the back of the house, would survey my head from his height, and smirk his disapproval. ‘Could have cut more,’ would be his succinct response even though it would look like an Australian forest after a terrible bushfire. But I couldn’t summon the courage tell him that if the barber had used the knife any further I would have had an unintended cranial operation.

Now I have grown old, my encounters in the ‘saloon’ have by and large struck to the same script with minor differences here and there: The final outcome is me emerging out with my hairs standing unbending like the Quitab Minar, arousing the same fancy and discussion that the Quitab Minar does.

Whenever my hair seems to induce ridicule, I always remember what scholars and sages thought to be the eternal fact of life. That day those philosophers told the King: ‘As far as we have realised, the one truth involving all men in this world is: Well, no man is truly happy with his hairstyle. He can never be’.

So there, I know your hairstyle too is not giving you any pleasure.

Gotcha?

©2012 Crank's Corner. All Rights Reserved.