Once again, the postman has been so busy that he has taken over the column.
* In a curious coincidence, ever since that brief note on U S Ramasundaram appeared (Miscellany, May 9), I have been bumping into one relative or another of his. And each has had a little bit to add to the story of his rather brief life. If he hadn’t died young, aged only 50, he would have become Chief Engineer, Madras PWD, if not Central PWD, mentioned one of them. In fact, he added, his assistant in most of those airstrip-building projects in South India, L G Selvam, became the Chief Engineer of the Central PWD. A daughter of USR, as he was popularly known, told me that he built as many airstrips in eastern India, if not more, when in 1943-44 he was transferred from the South to serve as Superintending Engineer, Eastern Aviation Circle, to build runways in Bengal and the Northeast. These Aviation Circles were specially established by the Central PWD to build airstrips on an ultra-urgent basis to meet the Japanese threat to India. The airstrips, another kinsman of USR told me, were, because of the urgency, built without following the usual tendering practices. The Superintending Engineer could pick and choose his contractor and negotiate the rates. Thus, an enormous amount of trust was placed by the Government in the Superintending Engineers it selected for these projects. And Justice Prabha Sridevan, his grand-daughter , who brought out a little booklet to commemorate the centenary of his birth, and who sent me today’s pictures, writes that after his eastern posting he was transferred to Delhi in 1944 where he was responsible for developing Lodhi Estate apart from other “landmarks”. She adds that when the Chief Engineer, Central PWD, post was his due he decided to return to Madras as “his health was failing”. She adds, “It seems unfair that this seemingly invincible man should succumb to a duodenal ulcer, which present day medicine has brought under control. He had suffered the pain all his career and his achievements were in spite of this handicap. He was too proud a man to let the world know of his ordeal.”
* Referring to these airstrips that Ramasundaram and others of his ilk built, Dr. G Sundaram, a former Union Secretary of Tourism, writes that there were more than 150 of them, and most of them are in disuse now. As Secretary of Tourism he had recommended to Government that these airstrips be revived in order to promote tourism. The Ministry had suggested that this development be done “without the usual paraphernalia of a schedule, staff etc. as they do in Alaska, Kenya, Nepal etc”. Sundaram adds, “He was glad to hear in Finance Minister Jaitley’s Budget Speech this year that the Government of India planned to take up with State Governments the revival of 160 such airstrips.” There is already an offer from the Sripuram Golden Temple Swamiji to revive at his expense one such airstrip, the one built near Vellore, Sundaram writes.
* Also reacting to the same item, a retired PWD engineer writes to say that URS was one of the elite engineers recruited to the covenanted Indian Service of Engineers (ISE) during its 40 years of existence. Curiosity aroused by the mention of such a service, I got down to following the trail. Till the establishment of the ISE, engineers graduated in India, it would appear, could not rise above the level of Assistant Engineers (Subdivisional Engineers) in the biggest employer of engineers at the time, the PWD. The special category was introduced to recruit the brightest engineering students and train them for higher posts in the engineering services. The recruits, to be given higher pay and quicker promotions, were, as a matter of policy, an automatic choice every year: the top of each graduating class from the colleges of engineering in Madras, Roorkee and Poona. The first recruit from Madras was A V Ramalinga Iyer in 1893 and the last were Vepa Krishnamurthy and A R Venkataraman in 1933. Only 38 were recruited from Madras during this period. URS was number 30, recruited in 1926. Selected the same year as him was J M Frederick who went on to become Chief Engineer, Madras (1953-56). The differences in salary during the last years of recruitment to what was considered the “Heaven Born Service” were quite substantial: Assistant Engineers (ISE: State) Rs. 375:190, Executive Engineers Rs. 625:405, Superintending Engineers: Rs. 1,750:750, and Chief Engineers: Rs. 2,750:1050.
* Regarding recent recollections in this column of ‘excommunication’ for crossing the seas (Miscellany April 4 & May 2), K V S Krishna points out that even Motilal Nehru had to undergo purification rituals before he was accepted back into Hindu society after he returned to India from Britain. Krishna then goes on to relate a more positive story. His grandfather was the village purohit, astrologer and Vedic scholar, greatly respected but penniless. Yet, he put his son through college, the first graduate from the village. When the son got a job in Malaya, he very tentatively broached the subject with his father. He got no immediate reply, but a few days later his father summoned him and said, “We astrologers have been following a traditional practice for ages. I now feel you will be doing a service to the community and to the family by going overseas and helping to eradicate poverty as well as putting a stop to this age-old tradition.” This was in 1934, says reader Krishna. When the emigré returned to the village some years later, after his father had passed on, his mother greeted him with a glass of buttermilk and the whole village turned out to greet him. Excommunication had become part of history.
* The film recently screened in Madras on mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan reminded Dr. N. Sreedharan how an institution named after the mathematician was set up in Madras. Sreedharan sends me that story as narrated by Dr. S Chandrasekhar in a speech in the U.S. in June 1987 (long before he became a Nobel Laureate). Dr. Chandrasekhar said: “When I was a student in Madras one of my classmates (who came from a very wealthy family) was one Alagappa Chettiar. We became friends; but our lives diverged along different paths after 1930… During the late Forties after the War, Sir Alagappa Chettiar (as he was then) wrote to me inquiring if it might be useful for him to found a mathematical institute in Madras named after Ramanujan. I enthusiastically supported the idea; and when I returned to India briefly in 1951, the Ramanujan Institute had been founded a few months earlier. Its first Director, T Vijayaraghavan, was one of the most talented among Hardy’s former students; he died at a comparatively early age in 1956. C T Rajagopal, a student of Ananda Rao, took over the Directorship from him. Already at that time the financial state of the Institute seemed shaky, since Alagappa Chettiar’s fortune had melted away.
“In April 1957, when Alagappa Chettiar died, the fate of the Institute hung in the balance. Rajagopal wrote to me that the Institute ‘will cease to exist on the first of next month’, whereupon I wrote to the Prime Minister (Jawaharlal Nehru) explaining the origin of the Institute and the seriousness of its condition. Nehru’s prompt answer was refreshing: ‘Even if you had not put in your strong recommendation in favour of the Ramanujan Institute of Mathematics, I would not have liked anything to happen which put an end to it. Now that you have also written to me on the subject, I shall keep in touch with this matter and I think I can assure you that the Institute will be carried on’. And it was; but haltingly and precariously for the next 12 years, it is narrated.
The Ramanujan Institute, founded by Alagappa Chettiar in 1951, was in time merged with the Department of Mathematics of the University of Madras and became the Centre for Advanced Study in Mathematics. What had been first housed in Alagappa Chettiar’s home in Vepery, Krishna Vilas, has been, since 1972, functioning from its own building opposite the Chepauk cricket grounds. It is now called the Ramanujan Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics (RIASM).
* Film buff Yogananda Rao draws my attention to the fact that the bridge over the River Kelani “might not quite have passed into history” (Miscellany, May 9). In fact, the bridge built for the film classic Bridge On The River Kwai had, to all intents and purposes, passed into history when it was blown up not once but twice during the shooting of the film in 1956. All that was left of it was remnants of piers, and those relics and memories were what tourist guides in the area had converted into a handsome living. That living became even better when white water rafting was introduced near the site of the bridge. That sport will be affected, say enthusiasts, by the dam the Ceylon Electricity Board proposes building here. The Board, reacting to protests, has promised to build a new bridge at the same spot and release water during the day to make white water rafting possible. But which tourist wants to see a brand new bridge and indulge in a river sport in what in effect will be a lake, question the tourist guides who will be most affected by present plans. A new bridge cannot make up for relics and ghostly memories, they add. Perhaps this paper’s Colombo correspondent T. Ramakrishnan will bring me up-to-date with this story.
