Although they owe their origin to another language, a vast number of us have heard (and used) the words ‘Alpha’ and ‘Omega’ — The A & Z of the Greek alphabet.

I’m going to hazard a guess that not as many have had the opportunity (unless scientifically inclined) to encounter the word Lambda — not to be confused with lambada, the 1980s dance form featuring short-skirted, perpetually-whirling dancers.

The lambada had its origins in Brazil. Lambda, however, is a Greek letter — the 11th — and it has found use in physics to signify wavelength.

Interestingly, in Portuguese, which as we know is spoken widely in Brazil, the term lambada may refer to the wave-like motion of a whip. So in essence, lambda and lambada find themselves tenuously linked.

But to dance away from lambada for the moment and get serious with the physics of things, a wavelength (if the dim and dusty memory corridors of my mind are still to be depended upon) is simply the distance over which a wave’s shape repeats. I can still hear an old science master intoning in the classroom: Waves of higher frequencies have shorter wavelengths and waves of lower frequencies have longer wavelengths.

Wavelengths, as we also know, are used to measure sound, light. But that’s not all, for how often have we heard two people claim to ‘be on the same wavelength’ or exclaim, despondently, ‘You and I are simply on two different wavelengths.’

My sisters, for example, will never engage in a conversation on literature because it happens to be the least favourite of their ‘subjects for discussion’. They couldn’t care less that George Eliot was actually a woman writing under a man’s name in a time when women weren’t meant to display such writer’s leanings. Or, that Moby, the musician, is the great-great-great-grand nephew of the great Herman Melville who wrote Moby Dick.

On the few occasions we have embarked down the ‘literary road’ for a bit they’ve ended up staring vacantly out of the window, nodding mechanically and (secretly hoping, I’m sure) I’d shut up and suggest having a coffee.

For my part, I honestly have no clue what they’re talking about when it gets to the subject of Tamil TV serials. In the field of the arts and Tamil cinema, I am proud to say that both my sisters hold their own. They know an incredible amount about the actors and their professional and personal foibles, the directors, old forgotten plot lines. When they both sit and natter about such matters it is my turn to turn and gaze out of the window and they, on their part, recognise that it’s not worth trying to draw me into a conversation about which I know nothing at all.

Only one time have I managed, much to their open-mouthed surprise, to find a synchronicity with their thought-wave patterns. On that occasion they were both talking about the famous actor Muthuraman when I said, “Didn’t he die young of a heart attack, in the Nilgiri Hills, while jogging and exercising?”

It’s at those moments that one wishes one has a camera handy, for the shock-on-the-face is one short-lived, instantaneous flash that can never be captured again.

They’ve had their moments too, I admit.

Once, I was chatting to a friend, within their hearing, about historical fiction when my younger sister piped up and said: “You know that writer who won two big literary awards in two or three years, the Booker or something? Hilary Mantel? I’ve got her book, Wolf Hall.” With a heart-vaulting leap of hope I asked if she’d gone out and bought. “Oh, no,” she replied, “Somebody gave it to me on my birthday. I’ve kept it aside for you.”

Oh well, for a little while at least on those occasions we were all on the same wavelength. In thinking about it, I guess that happens a lot with everyone. Despite our disparities, suddenly something will click, however momentarily.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.