Some tales from my life

Old age blues: Joblessness still haunts me. About 40 years ago I was without job prospects in US with Possible visas to faraway countries blocked by TB rest. A friend got me a summer teaching job in his university four hours a day away from the family. I still get dreams about those days. P.S.I do not remember whether I formally resigned from ISI, Delhi Centre or what happened to my pension. I was told by the then director that I had up to give up my allotted flat before leaving. So, it is possible that I had a job but forgot about it. But job in Delhi without assured apartment would have been difficult. More details: Usefulness of economists: It was early 1988 I think. I had to spend a few months somewhere or other waiting for Australian visa and was in Stoney Brook for couple of months. This was when Bernie Maskit showed me Susskind’s thesis and also collaborated with me. I had to go to some office for authentication and while coming back, it started raining. I put my passport in A copy of New York Times which I used to read those days. I came back to my office and placed the newspaper on my table. After a few days, the newspapers accumulated and I threw them down the chute along with the passport. And panic ensued. Luckily the economist Veerappa Chetty ( of Chetty money fame and fathers of Raj Chetty) was also in Stoney Brook at that time. He could sound important and phoned the Indian Embassy in Washington and got me some temporary paper identification. During this time I also visited Mark Feighn in New York. Mark asked me whether I knew about Gromov convergence and started explaing to me and said that it is something that I should know. This resulted after a few years in a paler with Martin Brideson ‘On Hausdorff-Gromov convergence and a theorem of Paulin’. Meanwhile another ecomist Atul Sarma in Delhi arranged an authentic new passport. I still had a few more months to spend and ended up in Toledo teaching summer calculus courses thanks to Rao Nagisetty. Rao almost got me a job in Toledo but it seems that the president decided to hire a cook and I lost out. In spite of the tensions, it turned out to be a good period for learning some new mathematics, mainly Perry’s thesis and Gromov convergence.