Remembering Raja

As Nominated Members to the Rajya Sabha, we were accommodated on a separate bench. The group included a social worker of the eminence of Nir...

As Nominated Members to the Rajya Sabha, we were accommodated on a separate bench. The group included a social worker of the eminence of Nirmala Deshpande, film luminaries, Mrinal Sen and Shabana Azmi, Jnanpith laureate Narayana Reddy, senior journalist Kuldip Nayar, noted educationist, Selvi Das, and the renowned nuclear scientist, Raja Ramanna — the tallest of us all and yet the most humble. In an early get-together at my residence, we were deciding how we were going to address one another. I said, “It’s simple, I shall call you Raja Sahib.” “Don’t you embarrass me,” came Ramanna’s response, “Just Raja would do.”

For six long years, we sat next to each other. Not for a moment did he give me the impression that he had already sat in the same House as a minister. It was only while reading President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s autobiography did I come to know that Ramanna was senior to him as a scientist and had more than once been responsible for getting him included for a special assignment.

Fond of reading, he had read almost all of my books in English. Deeply touched by the Partition stories, he would observe that the division of the country could have been avoided. As a close friend, he himself volunteered to preside over the ceremony when my book, God Is, was released by Najma Heptullah.

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Our times in the House brought back memories of our teenage years. We sometimes behaved like freshers in colleges, turning around and talking to each other. I don’t know what I did, but at one point I seemed to have alienated the Chair. However much I tried to attract attention, I was never called upon to speak. Everyone on our bench noticed it and it became quite a scandal. I would raise my hand, but the Chair would ignore me and call someone who had registered his name after I had done, to speak. It so happened that Ramanna, too, was ignored a couple of times. Frustrated, he said in jest that he was now going to write on a placard that he was no longer a friend of Duggal’s and display it for the Chair’s benefit!

An avid pianist, he would invite me whenever he gave a piano recital at his residence for friends. On the eve of our retirement from the Rajya Sabha, he gave a performance in the auditorium of the Nehru Museum, under the auspicious of Delhi Western Music Society, and kept his audience spell-bound for over an hour. While taking his leave after the performance, I told him that it was only now that I realised how close we had become towards each other. He responded with a warm hug. As people of many pasts, we had indeed endeared ourselves to one another.

As the prime minister dedicates the Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore, to Dr Raja Ramanna’s memory, I remember my friend Raja.

The writer is a noted Punjabi litterateur

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