Khagol_126_April_2021

the subject. Professor Chitre travelled abroad often, so our meetings over the initial two years were a few and far between. However, when in town he would pop by at the door of our Students' Room, and make a few inquiries as to progress. He usually ended the meeting with a cheery “Pretty good, pretty good!”, or even an “Excellent!”, whichmade himeasily one of the most encouraging persons on the floor. One Christmas Day he opened the door and stood back in surprise, for all three of us students who shared the office were somewhat dressed up. “Celebrating Christmas, are you?”, he asked. I replied, quite without thinking how arrogant it would sound, “No, we are celebrating our birthday!” -- - which was strictly correct, since all three of us students shared the same birthday, and that too, on Christmas Day. He said, “Happy Birthday!”, arched both his eyebrows, then disappeared down the corridor before I could correct the impression of having used the Royal 'We'? Professor Chitre's talks and lectures were always well-crafted, and made for entertaining listening. His didactic lectures were presented with coherence and clarity. I found out quite by chance just how much work he put into the preparations. He would write out the material for his talks word for word in longhand, a neat small script covering a single side of the page, and these would be typed by the group secretary, again single-sided. He brought these typed notes to his talks but rarely seemed to consult them. The pages of already delivered lectures would ultimately end up in the hands of us students, to use the reverse for our scribblings. This system was not entirely without its little pitfalls, beyond the control of even a perfectionist professor. Reading the earnestly transcribed sheets that emerged from the group office, one might chance upon some remarkable statements. Once I read, 'Among the various lectures at the centre of our Galaxy, we now know that there is a massive Black Hole, about a million times the mass of our Sun', and another, about a gravitationally lensed radio source, went, '....Radio Lobe E has been multiply imagined'. Maya indeed! But regardless of such occurrences, especially in his talks, Professor Chitre alwaysmanaged to keep his sang-froid. I never once saw his eyes flash in anger. Doubtless, there were many trying circumstances that he would deal with, and I myself would have contributed more than once to these, yet his demeanor usually reflected nothing but calmness. But his eyes did flash in amusement, like the time when I grumbled that my thesis on gravitational lenses was lacking in focus! Just once, when a very insistent student almost derailed one of his lectures, desiring an immediate discussion on how he thought Chandrasekhar was in error regarding the formation of black holes, did I see the slightest suggestion of impatience: a slow rhythmic tap-tapping of the chalk on the edge of the table, 'tak.....tak.....tak', and that was it. Although he always struck me as thoroughly Indian at heart, Professor Chitre slipped seamlessly into the refinements of other cultures.At my first conference, in Hamburg, in the company of both, Professor Chitre and Dr. Narasimha, I had a close view of this enviable quality. We had dragged our jetlagged selves to the conference banquet the day we'd arrived in Germany. Foreign food those days was a tricky issue for the strictly vegetarian Dr. Narasimha, who sought my help to identify pure vegetarian dishes at the buffet. It was quite a challenge, but we made several trips to the buffet table together andmanaged to locate a couple of items. Dr. Narasimha drank only water, and so did I to keep himcompany. Towards the end of the evening, as we rose to depart, a hostess appeared at our table and asked me, courteously, “Would you like to pay for the water, or would your husband?” My “husband” rapidly stepped backwards, completely grey in the face. For my part, I was baffled that water was a chargeable drink. The poor hostess was mortified. Then, even as I struggled with unfamiliar German currency to come up with the right sum, seemingly out of nowhere, Professor Chitre turned up with a gracious, “No, no, please allow me...!”, forbade any protest fromme by a small gesture of his hand, and planted the perfect sum in the palm of the relieved hostess. He was a very gracious host (and Mrs. Chitre, Suvarna, a most excellent cook), and we had a delightful time when they entertained. Equally, he was a charming guest indeed. He possessed the knack of being approachable to anyone, and yet appeared to retain a core of significant reserve. His understanding of situations and people was nuanced. Once, commenting on a junior researcher who had been under scrutiny for alleged academic misconduct, he observed that such behaviour could be an indicator of high ambition, and need not always be met with harsh punishment of dismissal, but that sometimes a suitable warning might suffice. Time has certainly borne out his wisdom in that matter. He had a keen instinct for which academic seeds might sprout in the Indian climate, and successfully seeded two schools of activity among his proteges, deriving from his two loves, the stars and gravitational lensing. It surprised me that despite our relative isolation from the world of academic community those days, we still managed to attract some international attentionwith ourwork. It is hard to imagine that Professor Chitre is no more. He stood tall among us and touched somany lives, and by his ministrations, made a difference. My heart goes out to Suvarna, and to Yatin andYougandh, in their time of grief. | KHAG L | No. 126 - APRIL 2021 | 05 Seated: Govind Swarup (A pioneer of Radio Astronomy, and Former Centre Director, TIFR - NCRA ) , a n d B i n a Sw a r u p ( H i s w i f e ) . Standing (from left): S.M. Chitre (Formerly from TIFR, and CEBS, Mumbai), Naresh Dadhich (Former Director, IUCAA), Anil Kakodkar (Former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission of India), Raghunath Mashelkar (Former Director, CSIR - NCL), and K. VijayRaghavan (Principal Scientific Advisor, Government of India) at a special event to commemorate Govind Swarup’s 90th birthday, and the formal inauguration of the upgraded GMRT (uGMRT) atSPPU. (Pratham Gokhale/HT Photo). From Hindustan Times 22 March 2019