Khagol_126_April_2021

high enough to touch his feet seeking his b l e s s i ngs and murmur ed wi t h awe and wonder, 'what a versatile researcher, teacher and humane par excellence called Kumar Chitre was'. As someone has rightly said: “A good education can change everyone but a good teacher can transform every individual into an integrated personality.” With sinking heart, I pay my respectful homage to Professor Chitre; every one of us would miss him a lot. I also take this opportunity to communicate my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family that he left behind, his wife Suwarnaji and his two sons. May his soul rest in peace. Sunita Nair The lights were just coming on in the auditorium at the Nehru Planetarium i n Mumba i , one day i n 1984 , where Professor S. M. Chitre was concluding a popular science talk entitled “Cosmic Illusions”, on the intriguing phenomenon of cosmological gravitational lensing. Two of us undergraduate students from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, were sitting in the first row, feeling suddenly all too visible. The talk had been beautifully put together, and as Professor Chitre descended from the stage, he came and stood in front of us for a moment and surveyed the now-illuminated audience that sat in mesmerised silence. He tilted his head to one side, holding the spell for a few seconds. Then he concluded, “For all we know, the whole Universe is.......Maya!” In the burst of applause that followed, his eyes shone, and I was utterly fascinated, for I could see that his two eyes did not appear to be of the same colour, an uncommon trait indeed. If anyone had told me at the time that Professor Chitre would be my doctoral supervisor, that too on the topic of gravitational lensing, that I would be his academic shendephal at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, I should certainly have disbelieved them, but that is exactlywhat happened. At St. Xavier's, our wonderfully inspiring Head (Physics), Professor R. V. Kamath, had done his doctorate, after twenty years of teaching, as an external registrant under Professor Chitre's guidance. After a year as a Master's student in Physics at the IIT Bombay, I had an offer of admission through the Visiting Students' Research Programme, to the Graduate School of the TIFR, provided I successfully completed my degree. I promptly turned to Professor Kamath for advice. He told me, “If you should ever find yourself in trouble at the TIFR, you must approach Kumar Chitre, for he has a heart of gold!” I joined the TIFRand opted for the Radio Astronomy Group based in Bangalore, dazzled by Professor Govind Swarup's plans for the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope. But in doing so, I found myself unable to secure a doctoral advisor. Ours was the first batch of students in the TIFR Graduate School to be served with a strict five-year time limit within which to complete one's thesis, and we had been told explicitly that if we failed to find a guide within the first year and a half, we would be out of the programme. Tomy horror, I found myself without an advisor and with time running out. Professor Kamath's advice came to mind. I sought out Professor Chitre in his office in the Theoretical Astrophysics Group of the TIFR in Bombay, and explained my predicament. He graciously lent an ear to my panicky ramblings, and reassured me that it would be sorted out. I asked if perchance I could remain in Bangalore; the academic environment of several institutes with diverse interests and in close proximity had been very stimulating for me, but he said, “Oh, come, come! You can't stay in the cradle all your life!” Imagine my surprise to find, shortly, that Professor Chitre himself had stepped into the gap and offered to be my formal guide for a thesis on gravitational lensing! With a genial tilt of his head, he explained that he was in his 'Stars' avataar just then (meaning that he was preoccupied with his original love, stellar physics, and not gravitational lenses), but that he'd 'bullied' his former student Dr. D. Narasimha, famous for scripting some of the world's earliest codes for numerically modelling gravitational lenses, and who was then a young faculty member in the group, into guiding me through the technicalities of | KHAG L | No. 126 - APRIL 2021 | 04 Professor Ajit Kembhavi became fairly visible in the IUCAA's annual report, and IUCAA meetings, etc. But the most delightful moment for me was to hear pleasant remarks from Professor Chitre, 'what did we teach you Pandey?' with his characteristic smiling face. This and other similar comments on my continuance in research in observational astronomy always inspired and encouragedme to do the best! Professor Chitre visited PRSU several times including his three visits for the DST sponsored INSPIRE camps. He thoroughly enjoyed interacting with the participating young school students of Chhattisgarh. He was amongst the most ardent admirers of the Center for Basic Sciences (CBS), which was established in the academic year 2015-16 within the PRSU Campus with full support of the Government of Chhattisgarh. After the completion of my term as the Vice-Chancellor of PRSU, he had phoned me just to express his appreciation of the achievements of the University during the tenure, especially, for the establishment of CBS within PRSU campus, which was something close to his heart all through his life. He also wrote in an email to me, which I couldn't resist reproducing here. ' You have done u s p r oud by your academic & administrative accomplishments over the years after you left TIFR on the completion of your Graduate studies. We hope you will go from strength to strength in the years to come enjoying sound health. --- Kumar Chitre' Whenever I read his emails and recall the conversations that I had with him, I wonder what an inspiring teacher and guide was he to say such beautifully worded lines, which was so pleasing to the ears and to some extent satisfying that I haven't done that badly! To me he was more than a thesis supervisor, as one of the few souls that I was extremely fortunate to meet and interact with, who had a profound influence in transforming me, a timid person coming from a rather obscure place, into a reasonably good teacher and researcher. But he was such a towering personality that I could rise