For all practical purposes, he was my cousin. It was his mother, my aunt, who first drew me close to the family; fascinating me with her habit of reading endless books armed with a magnifying glass to cheat the diabetes that had affected her eyesight.
Rajappa, and his wife, Padmini, were in age between my mother’s generation and mine; there was no real reason for a friendship. I knew he was a top scientist, who had lived overseas for many years and had many firsts to his credit, but that was that. But when one day they phoned to tell me the amazing story of waking up to find an elephant exploring the back garden of their Goregaon home, and I wrote about it, a bond was established.
Often my mother would visit them in Pune where they had shifted, when he took on the post of head of division of Organic Synthesis at CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory. I went along, and saw the walls lined with books and the exuberance of their terrace garden; the gap between our years melted away. I would, on later visits, wake up at dawn to trot along beside them on their morning walks, and listen entranced as they recounted family stories.
When in recent years, age crept upon them, the morning walks stopped and their lives grew more and more cloistered, I took to visiting them more often. The tenor of our visits remained the same, only my mind would grapple late in the night with the fact that they were fading away. On my last visit, Rajappa looked frail. Shockingly so. He claimed he had lost his appetite to worry about his wife, that she was frail and keeping poor health.
And a week after my visit, he was gone. First to the doctor, then to the hospital, the ICU and then forever. It was a personal loss. A deep one. And my turn to worry about the spouse, equally dear, left behind. But luckily their daughter from the US flew in and took her mother in hand. To me he was Rajappa. Simple.
Described by the man he was. His eyes twinkling, ready with stories that belied his erudition and fame which he had hidden in some bottom drawer, along with a book he was writing about the different parts of the brain.
And then, I read the obituary someone closer to him than me, had published. It said Dr S Rajappa was the author of more than 85 research papers in top international journals, was awarded the KG Naik Gold Medal by MS University of Baroda, and Lifetime Achievement Award by the Chemical Research Society of India. He was also elected as a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.
The obituary added that ‘Dr Srinivasachari Rajappa contributed significantly as a synthetic organic chemist. His major contributions include the synthesis of cyclodipeptide monoimino ethers, a novel synthesis of thiophenes and thiazoles, synthesis and structural studies on push-pull systems, especially nitroenamines, the discovery of a versatile synthesis of nitroacetamides and the elusive nitrothioacetamides from nitroenamines, new synthetic strategies for carbamates and thiocarbamates, including a viable non-MIC route to carbamate pesticides, and the first demonstration of the existence of non-bonded attractive interactions involving sulphur in solution phase.’
How little I knew of these achievements. How little might the world of science have known of the man behind the scientist. Two sides of a coin minted of rare metal.
Sathya Saran
saran.sathya@gmail.com