Blinded by Infinity

Ramanujan8217;s life story is all the more enigmatic because his friendship with Hardy could not transcend the language of mathematics. But is that any reason for a biographer/novelist to desist from making an effort to know him?

The Indian Clerk
David Leavitt,
Bloomsbury, Rs 495
The story of the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan who went from a sinecure given to him by friends who had seen his genius at Madras Port Trust to fellowships at Trinity College, Cambridge, the Royal Society and the London Mathematical Society and died in his 30s is the stuff of legend. It is the sort of story which should inspire the young much as Superman does, except that the subject8217;s achievements are in abstruse topics like Number Theory and Combinatorics. He could only be advertised as a man who could calculate rapidly and recall large numbers.

He was, of course, not just a man with a prodigious memory but a genius who wrote down a large volume of results most without proofs, which even 85 years after his death serious mathematicians are still trying to prove. In a sense, Ramanujan is India8217;s first true global hero. Yet if you go to Chennai, his 8220;museum8221; is a disgracefully scruffy affair. There are devotees who still collect archival material on him but neither the Tamil Nadu government is it because he was a Brahmin? nor the government of India cares. But his life remains clouded in obscurity. Robert Kanigel wrote a fine biography, The Man Who Knew Infinity. David Leavitt has now written a novel that is more 8220;faction8221;, since he has drawn on the ample material available on the subject. But even so, Ramanujan is not the hero of this novel. It is G.H. Hardy, the British genius, mathematics professor at Cambridge and fellow of Trinity who managed to get Ramanujan to Cambridge and who wrote many papers with him and colleague T.E. Littlewood.

Hardy above is the perfect example of the Oxbridge don, a genius in his subject and a complete failure in the art of living. Shy and incredibly defensive of his homosexuality, he was awkward with people and hated himself enough to never look in a mirror. Apart from those 8220;qualities8221;, there is nothing much worth retelling about Hardy, except his mathematics which is beyond all but a few top mathematicians.

Leavitt tries to enliven the tale by supplying tidbits about the famous whose names he drops like litter 8212; Russell has bad breath, Littlewood has an affair with a married woman, Hardy8217;s sister has a glass eye, Hardy is obsessed by an affair with a young classicist colleague, Gaye, who shares rooms with him and dies young. Hardy is distraught that he has not topped the Maths

Tripos and hence not Senior Wrangler, which Littlewood was. Hardy remains the centre of this story despite the title and the problem with the novel is that despite Leavitt8217;s ferreting around with titillating details, Hardy remains an uninteresting nerd.

Ramanujan is seen entirely through the eyes of Hardy, whose voice dominates the book. Even when we go away from Hardy8217;s voice as narrator, it remains determinedly western, refusing to get inside Ramanujan8217;s head. He is exotic and obviously a genius. But everyone regards him as some 8220;Hindoo8221; curiosity.

Ramanujan was a lonely soul while in England. He was shy and fiercely proud as only Tamil Brahmins can be. He may have described himself as a poor clerk but these are the ploys you use in India to attract the attention of the undeservingly powerful whose help you need. Leavitt has read all about Ramanujan and he retells it with little addition. His temper tantrum when the women guests at his dinner will not have a third helping of his lovingly cooked rasam, his reluctance to unmake the bed so he could sleep under warm blankets, his stay in sanatoria around England are all retold here. But there8217;s no attempt to empathise with his predicament. Just as Hardy failed to understand what ailed Ramanujan despite his sympathies, Hardy was socially dysfunctional, Leavitt also makes no effort to see what makes Ramanujan tick.

Story continues below this ad

The only interesting bits in this novel are when Leavitt leaves Hardy and Ramanujan. Even Littlewood, with his affair with a married woman, comes alive. But Hardy and Ramanujan remain opaque.

It is a pity because Ramanujan needs and, indeed, deserves someone who can make him human. I think only a Tamil author, writing in Tamil or English, will ever accomplish this task. We need to see his mother not as an ogre 8212; which Leavitt thinks Hardy saw her as 8212; but as central to the Ramanujan story. We also need to fathom his strong belief that it was Goddess Namagiri who inspired him with those fascinating mathematical discoveries. Modern rationalists myself included resist this story and want to replace it with some mocking alternative.

Leavitt also perpetuates the idea that Ramanujan came from a poor family. But if you go to his house in Kumbakonam, it is quite spacious. For a 19th century house, it is dark but it is on the main street leading to the temple and one can see that the family must have been comfortable in it. The schools he went to were fine 8212; they could give him a good education 8212; as was the college on the banks of the Kaveri, 8220;the Cambridge of the East8221;, which again had a long line of distinguished English principals and is again a beautiful college. We need to rethink the idea of Ramanujan as an obscure poor clerk rescued from his miserable life by the chance accident of his writing a letter to Hardy.

He was a proud Brahmin, sure of his genius and knew that one of these days the world would see it. Of course, he had to struggle since he failed in many subjects except mathematics. Yet his fellow students saw his abilities and had got him a job at Port Trust so that he could carry on with his maths and then a research scholarship even before E.H. Neville came to fetch him.

Story continues below this ad

It is the failure of people in England to understand Ramanujan8217;s belief in his uniqueness and his pride as a member of the elite 8212; as select as any that Hardy belonged to 8212; that must have depressed him. Here were people he had been told to look up to as superior to Indians 8212; and indeed were so thought by many in the world 8212; and they proved to be parochial and dull. His depression led him to attempt suicide and yet no one saw it as a cry for help. Hardy did what he could but what he could not do was to put himself in Ramanujan8217;s place because he had no imagination whatsoever.

We have to see the Ramanujan story as a tragedy of two geniuses who, for different reasons, were incapable of forming social relationships outside a very narrow confine where their cultural presumptions were met. It is a pity that in over 485 pages, Leavitt has failed to see it that way. His Indian Clerk is actually just a Cambridge Don.
Desai, a member of the British House of Lords, has researched Ramanujan8217;s life for a film script