From CoastalAndhra to Liverpool

 There were lot of bright people in coastal Andhra when I was growing up in 1940s and 50s. I remember mainly the villages of Gudavalli, Pedapulivarru, Chintayapalem and later Vullipalem and the town of Repalle. There were both Telugu and English books in libraries. I remember the books of Darwin, Faraday, Bertrand Russell in the Repalle Library and later books of Dostoevsky and others in Thullur in private collections. There were teachers who were pundits and one Prabhala Bala Gangadhar Tilak who played Chess for the state and an international bridge player. I had no drive or ambition with so many bright people around but there was always a passion to learn. Now looking back I did some mathematics some of which may remain for a few decades as a few pieces remain still which were from 1970s. I kept wondering what caused it. perhaps it was a trip to Liverpool in 1968. An older colleague M.S. Narasimhan was already famous. He started taking interest since he too grew up in Andhra for a few years and studied in the same college in Madras. He was already in various committees and found that there was a fellowship for UK for which I was eligible. I just had 3-4 papers but no ph.d. He knew I was interested in the work of Terry Wall in Liverpool, sent him my papers and got a letter of support. I did get the fellowship and Terry Wall said what I did was enough for a ph.d. I started loafing around talking to graduate students and some teachers, learning stuff but did not really work. In a conference I met a professor from Yale and started discussing a problem. We made some progress and he invited me to Yale for a semester. Those were the days of Vietnam protests. The mathematical work stopped and I took interest in the politics around and came back to Bombay in 1970 July. Work was sporadic, the atmosphere in the institute friendly and encouraging and social and mathematical interactions with Liverpool continued with Wall inviting for a conference in 1977. Nothing particularly exciting was happening but I was still struggling and trying to learn. Then somehow things started coming together and I found I could think and work on problems sometimes about sixteen hours a day most of it with Liverpool contacts. Somehow Liverpool became the centre of my mathematical and to some extent social world. It is possible that most of this work was futile but I learnt to work for a few years and still can think about mathematics. And it all happened probably due to an accidental trip to Liverpool.