Journalism of Courage
When R Rajamani sent a congratulatory note to Nobel Prize winner Venkatraman Ramakrishnan,way back in 2003 for being selected as the Fellow of Royal Society,he intuitively mentioned that it would be no surprise if he wins the Nobel Prize one day. When Ramakrishnan has bagged it now for the pioneering work on ribosomes,R Rajamani,his cousin,who is based in the city,is elated. Being conferred the highest honor is a moment of pride for the whole family, he says.
Although both of them have had scarce contact all these years,Rajamani remembers their childhood and the vacations spent together. He was always brilliant. In fact,the whole family is very talented. However,we never expected him to reach this high. I have been sending him congratulatory notes and poems expressing my feelings each time he has made it big and this time too,I am penning down a poem. My maternal uncles son,he is almost 12 years younger to me and we would meet during the vacations in Baroda where his father,C V Ramakrishnan was a professor at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and started the Biochemistry Department, adds Rajamani,who stays in Kondhwa.
Although not in steady contact with him,Nagarajan has been in touch with Ramakrishnans father and his uncle and adds,The family has been an inspiration for our generation. His mother Rajalaxmi is a Ph D from Mcgill University,while his father C V Ramakrishnan is a scholar in biochemistry and we met around six months back. It is a moment of immense pleasure for us to see someone from our family win the prize,something we had never dreamt of.
