Family fame: (Left to right) S. Das, N.K. Mitra, M. Basu, R. Ramnath and director S.K. Chakrabarti at the discussion with descendants of great scientists at ICSP
It took us a while to grasp the events that unfolded on our campus the other day. Descendants of the giants of astrophysics of Indian origin were sitting before us, candidly sharing their family life. There were the grandchildren — Malabika Basu and Nawal Kishore Mitra — of Satyendranath Bose who is known for Bose-Einstein statistics; Sumantra Das, grandson of Meghnad Saha, known for his Saha ionisation equation and Radhika Ramnath, niece of S. Chandrasekhar, distinguished astrophysicist and mentor of our director, S.K. Chakrabarti whose student life at Chicago was literally shaped by “Chandra”. With Manas Pratim Das conducting the session, these figures we read about in textbooks became human. Basu and Mitra clarified that there was undoubtedly a healthy competition between classmates Bose and Saha. They spoke of how Bose spent on charity, treated his favourite cats to the best sweets in North Calcutta, concocted “French” perfumes at home and loved playing the esraj. Das told us that Saha was from a very needy family and once earned a handsome amount by winning the Bible memorising competition. As an MP, he was part of the Planning Commission and took up the refugee cause. While he made long-term plans for the nation, he ignored his ear ailments of which Russian doctors had forewarned him. Ramnath spoke of Chandrasekhar’s love of Bach and how he would dress in Indian clothes while in India. Chakrabarti mentioned that Chandrasekhar also wrote a book on how truth and beauty go hand in hand. He also revealed that his mentor had taught Chakrabarti to do scientific writing correctly, treating even equations as English sentences.
Sayak Chakraborty and Sudipta Paik
Indian Centre for Space Physics, Calcutta
Colours of music
Aikyam, the annual day celebration held on December 20 at Techno India Sima Devi Public School in Guptipara, Hooghly was a much-awaited event. It was kicked off by the guest of honour, co-chairperson of Techno India Group Manoshi Roy Chowdhury, who handed out awards to students for their outstanding performance in scholastic and co-scholastic activities. Then students of Nursery and KG presented a cute enactment about the seven different notes that together create music. It was followed by a dance performance, featuring students from classes III to VIII, presenting the different emotions of life through the colours of the rainbow. Next, characters from Jungle Book took the stage. Then we had a musical celebrating linguistic diversity in India and finally a chorus recitation celebrating the five elements, or panchabhoota, that make up the universe. Santa Claus also visited the school and distributed gifts.
Debarima Dutta
Class VIII, TISDPS, Guptipara, Hooghly