HYDERABAD: A portrait of Faiz Ahmed Faiz shaded by a bougainvillea twig in a glass pitcher sits against a plain wall. The artwork by Rashida Kalangi stares at the stack of books on Holub, Faiz, Ghalib, Chakbast, Sartre, Nietzsche among others. A closer glance shows several other collections on Astrophysics along with white sheets bearing astral diagrams. There sits Pranav Sharma, the 26-year-old astrophysicist quoting Allama Iqbal on the vast possibilities of science communication, “Sitaron ke agey jahaan aur bhi hain…” The brain behind the Space Museum at BM Birla Science Centre in Hyderabad, he is the youngest person to have curated a science museum in Asia.
He shares, “You have to understand facts in great detail to simplify it for a six-year-old. I was majorly dealing with the history of science along with technological innovation(s). History must be written objectively to share stories of people, times and circumstances.” He further adds, “Science communication is a mix of journalism and scientific research.”
He has been awarded three times the REX KarmaVeer Chakra and Global Fellowship by ICONGO and United Nations for science popularisation and communication. Enter the space museum and the lines “Lights will guide you home /And ignite your bones,” by the British rock band Coldplay glisten from a frame holding purplish nebulae. Moving ahead there are lines by famous American poet Walt Whitman: ‘O Captain! My Captain’ below which is a portrait-painting of Vikram Sarabhai, the creator of a new frontier in the field of science and technology.
A few metres ahead is a dark corner lit up with stars and on the wall hangs a white canvas with every child’s favourite ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ Says Pranav, “Children love this corner and get amused to know that the poet Jane Taylor penned these lines.” He has been organising interactive workshops and lectures for youngsters as to how poems, especially verses in Urdu, offer a study of astronomical motifs in some lines.
He cites the example of Faiz’s poem ‘Zindan Ki Ek Shaam’ (A Night in the Prison). “The line ‘shaam ke pech-o-kham sitaron se zeena zeena utar rahi h raat’ has connotations of the light of the sun reaching the earth step by step, layer by layer through ionosphere to surface of the earth. Metaphorically it is in the reverse order because he was in jail at that time,” the scientist from Agra explains.
Pranav used to organise poetry trails in his hometown Agra at Taj Mahal premises, Agra Qila, Agra Books Club, BM Birla Institute, among others. He was also part of a theatre group which has won him several accolades. But how did he develop a penchant for poetry? “My maternal grandfather was a scholar in Philosophy who used to quote Faiz, Ghalib, Dard, Mir, and other legendary Urdu poets along with lines from Bhagavad Gita.
My paternal grandfather was a royal priest in Bharatpur during early 20th century,” he says. That’s how he can switch from couplets of Urdu to shlokas of Sanskrit as swiftly as he talks about the celestial bodies in crisp English. He came to Hyderabad in February 2017 for a science conference and was invited to join as Space Museum curator and Scientific Officer at the BM Birla Science Centre.
Before that while he was in Canada for a visiting graduate fellowship he and his prof Shantanu Basu were discussing that there are not many research and exposure opportunities. “We were cooking butter paneer and lamb curry in London, Ontario. He asked me to bring students and Astro professors together. That’s how we started Winter School on Astronomy in 2016,” he says.
So how did he do his research bringing in so many stories put up on the walls of the museum starting from portraits of Nehru, Tagore and a quote by astronaut Rakesh Sharma on being asked how does India look from the space as he famously said: “Saare jahaan se achha Hindustan hamara.” Pranav shares, “I have been around with Prof Yash Pal and have heard so many stories, I just had to revisit them. I contacted the families and asked for data, files, facts, etc.
ISRO was helpful in bits and pieces in terms of content. I will always give them credit getting us the exhibits which make the museum really beautiful.” It took him one year and ten months to curate the 6,000 sqft museum before it was thrown open to public in July 2019. And what makes him happier about this place? “When little children come and recite the poem ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’,” he signs off penning a few lines in Hindustani, couplets perhaps.
SCIENCE COMMUNICATOR
He majorly contributed in communication of sciences by conducting workshops, lecture series and exhibition reaching to almost several hundred thousand people in the past seven years. Starting with ‘Romancing with the Stars’, a series of 25 sky-watching and astronomy workshops followed by Bramhanaad, a series of seminars, symposiums and exhibitions tracing the universe form its primeval sound in association with ESO and CERN. He has been conducting Wittgenstein Lectures–a series on logic and philosophy of sciences for the past five years.
GUIDE AND TEACHER
Pranav has been instrumental in creating academic opportunities for students by providing training platforms conducted by globally renowned scientists like Winter School on Astronomy–2016 (Agra), Physics–2019 (Hyderabad), Astronomy–2020. He also serves as a research advisor to many startups, helping them build new and better products for society.