Memories of Dr Tara Chand

My first clear memory of Dr Tara Chand goes back to July 1984, when I had just entered my third year in college. He was going to teach us atomic and nuclear physics, but that day - the first day of the term - he smilingly remembered what former students of his had done. “The students we are proudest of”, he said, “are those who go to the United States to do research in physics”. That must have made an impression on me — that is where I ended up a couple of years later. My next meeting with Dr Tara Chand came nine years later, when I joined the faculty of St Stephen’s. He was now my colleague, not just in the department of physics but also in residence, of which he was the Dean and where I had moved in as the block tutor of Allnutt South. I now got to know him much better than I had known him as a student. The tutors and the dean would meet fairly often, and what I appreciated about Dr Tara Chand was that he always sought our suggestions and incorporated them into his decisions. I am usually fairly vocal at meetings, but if for some reason I remained silent on an issue, he would turn to me and ask – “and what do you think, Bikram?”. Some of these tutors’ meetings were held at Dr and Mrs Tara Chand’s house, and these were the ones we really looked forward to. The Chands were such lavishly hospitable hosts that we were all softened and happy at the end of those meetings. There were other occasions every year at which not just we tutors, but half of residence would turn up at Dr Tara Chand’s. One such occasion was Holi, when his garden would turn into a kaleidoscope of multicoloured students and teachers chomping away at jalebis and pakoras. The other occasion on which we made a beeline for his house was Diwali. The fruit chaat was always delicious. And Dr Tara Chand, in keeping with the spirit of the occasion, would press a stiff drink on each adult visitor. It would chase away not just the blues, he insisted, but colds, coughs, and all other manners of winter ailments. We spent a lot of time together in the department too. For more than five years, he, Dr Swaminathan and I looked after the firstyear physics laboratory and this threw us together for several hours every week. Of course, frisky first-year students can keep you pretty busy, but in the lab there is always time to chat. This is  how I got to know Dr Tara Chand, the storyteller. We would be talking desultorily about something or the other, and suddenly a train of memories would be set off in his mind. “You know, Bikram,” he would say, “when Rajeev Krishan Kamilla, our record holder in… finished his Ph.D. at Stony Brook and joined Goldman- Sachs” … or - “when so-and-so joined the merchant navy and wanted to make a change of career…. “He remembered his former students not just with fondness but with an accuracy that I found utterly astonishing. If you named a former student, he would often be able to tell you who his or her lab partner was! And this affectionate remembering was reciprocated by a lot of his students, who kept in touch with him for years after leaving college and sought his advice on various matters. We talked about other things too. There were stories about Fermi Lab, about his student days in Delhi University, the IT phenomenon, management schools, buying houses…. Sometimes he would talk about the Partition and Pakistan, and the loss of his younger brother in a road accident. And, like all fond parents, he liked to tell stories about his children. In fact, one of my favourite Dr Tara Chand stories is one in which he was asking his elder son what he wanted to be when he grew up. Dr Tara Chand had just read a story about a famous scientist, and his eyes were aglow with ambition for his child. The boy, however, said that he wanted to be a police man. “You want to be a police man? No, no, my son, — see this famous scientist, this great man, don’t you want to be like him?” His hands twirling in the strength of his vision, he said – “bete, kuch aisi, waisi cheez bano.” There was a moment of silence, after which the boy asked “Papa, aap kyun nahin ek aisi, waisi cheez bane?” The way Dr Tara Chand comfortably settles into the telling of a story is of a piece with the rest of him. There is a certain embonpoint about him, not just about his physical person but about the way he shakes his hand, his rounded gait, his unhurried speech, the warmth of his hospitality - all the little things that add up to the outer man. Dr Tara Chand’s cheerful and cheer-giving fullness comes, I am sure, from an inner contentedness. As he moves into retirement, he will have to find new moorings. Such changes are always fraught with uncertainty. We hope that the wellspring of contentedness that has sustained Dr Tara Chand for so long will find him a new equilibrium.

Bikram Phookun