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Journalism of Courage
Jan 13: Ratan Tata stood at the entrance of the Central Crystal Room of Taj on Wednesday night. There were other industrial luminaries around him: Nadir and Adi Godrej, A Krishnakumar, MD of Indian Hotels, Anand Mahindra, Justice Bhagwati, SEBI chairman D R Mehta, Britannia’s Sunil Alagh and Ashwin Chowksi of Asian Paints among others.
The occasion was a cocktail party to honour three renowned theoretical physicists – David Gross, Edward Witten and Stephen Hawking. The Indian scientists were also there. Conspicuous among them was R Chidambaram, recently retired secretary of Department of Atomic Energy. Gross and Witten had already arrived. Everyone was awaiting the arrival of Hawking.
Tata looked exasperated as a couple of journalists – only select journalists and photographers were invited for the function – pestered him with questions. Finally Tata exclaimed: “Look, I have come here in the capacity of the chairman of the TIFR (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) and not as an industrialist.”After a while Hawking made his entrance and was expectedly mobbed by India’s industrial glitteratti and posed for photographs. The other scientists largely ignored him except for a token acknowledgement. Incidentally, the Ambanis too were invited but failed to turn up. Chairs were reserved at the dining tables for Alyque Padamsee and Shobha De who also failed to turn up, preferring instead to make their appearance at the cocktail party held on Saturday, this time by the British Council.
Rued one of the organisers, “The corporates are not interested in funding fundamental physics. They prefer to invest in areas like bio-technology instead. Attracting corporate funding for research in fundamental sciences was one of the aims.” And Stephen Hawking was the principal showpiece.
Saturday’s do was a British Council show at Taj’s rooftop The Rendezvous, this time to honour British scientists Ian Hutchinson, professor of Immunology at the University of Manchester specialising in the genetics of immune response, Dr Tom Wakeford of the Faculty of Science and Health, University of East London, both in India as part of the Bright Sparks programme on Genetics – and of course Stephen Hawking.
This time the cream of the media including celebrities were present. The Des, Shobha and Dilip, the D’cunhas, Uma and Gerson, the Correas, Charles and Monica, Sharon Prabhakar, Alyque Padamsee, Bachi Karkaria, were all present – sans photographers. While the TIFR invited only photographers and select media persons, the British council invited no photographers and only celebrities apart from a couple of scientists. It proved to be a serious problem.
A lady walked up to this correspondent and introduced herself: “You are from The Express, I am told. I am the wife of Dilip and mother of Rajdeep Sardesai. I want to be photographed with Stephen Hawking. Could your photographer take our photos?” The irony was delicious, for this correspondent was himself wondering how to get photographed with the celebrated scientist.
Manjula Rao, one of the two event managers of the British Council, along with Anjanee, solved the problem. They asked Farosh Engineer, the hotel’s photographer to hold fort. Engineer became an instant `celebrity’ much sought after – after Hawking, of course!
Flies around a piece of jaggery will not be an appropriate ideology to describe comrades-in-pens, but that was exactly it. Hawking remained mobbed throughout as Engineer clicked away. The other scientists, including Wakeford and Hutchinson, quitely slinked away unnoticed. Hawking himself abruptly whisked his wheelchair around having had enough, rolled his eyes as is his wont spanning the field from end to end and wheeled himself away from the party.
