My first trip to the west

From Facebook: Ramarao’s post below reminded me of my first trip abroad to England in 1968. My English was poor (then and now) even by Indian standards and the first problem was English. I grew up in villages, studied in Telugu medium. When I went to study in Madras, the college authorities appointed an English tutor to coach me. It did not have much effect I think. I had the naïveté and stubbornness of the farming community I came from and was not fazed by what others thought of me. The reason for going to England was mathematics. When I was in Madras, I came across a book called ‘Set Theory’ by Felix Hausdorff and Brouwer’s theorems fascinated me. And I decided to learn topology. When I Joined Tata Institute, MS Narasimhan took some interest in me perhaps because he too grew up in Andhra for a few years. After I showed some promise he decided that I should go abroad for further studies. When he asked me where I wanted to go, I said Liverpool because I already read several papers of C.T..C. Wall. Then I got a Nuffield Fellowship after a bit of coaching by him and landed in London. If language was problem, food was more difficult. Only thing I could eat was toast and butter and coffeee was undrinkable. It was cold; it was September I think, and Nuffield people gave me some money to buy warm clothes and sent me off to Liverpool. By that time there was no place in university hostels and Wall took me home. Though one read books and saw films about foreigners, I did not really know or was coached about everyday living. MSN greatly neglected this aspect. I did not really understand the sleeping arrangements. I just covered myself with the bed cover and it was still cold and kept the heater on through out the night. Instead of a shower, there was a bath which I did not know how to use. But the food was better than in the hotel. The family must have got tired of cleaning the bath tub and after a couple of weeks, they found me accomodation in a seminary, where there were plenty of rooms since theology was not too popular. Thus my sojourn abroad started. A bit more about my life in Liverpool. Life in the seminary was good. The students showed me how to get in to the bed and how to make the bed. The food was ok. Not all the students believed in god. They introduced me to Bob Dylan and the pub culture. Terry Wall ( coming from india it was difficult to call him by his first name which I generally avoided) told me what I did was enough for a ph.d. So I took it easy and read what I liked and made friends in the department. One of the things I read was Wall’s long paper which was coming out then called ‘Surgery on non simply connected manifolds’. I even gave a course on it in Yale. I do not know how much I understood. Kervaire who listened to a lecture by me later told Raghavan Narasimhan that I did not know what I was talking about. But the English do not tell you that you are a fool even if they think you are. So I got along splendidly. I started going out with students for dinners and with some staff for lunches. With students I often went to Indian restaurants where the food was not that good. I asked the staff why they were making such food which was not really Indian. They said that it was the way the English liked it but they made a separate curry for themselves called ‘staff curry’. From then on we started having staff curry and the food problem was partially solved. The food situation has improved considerably since then. Soon I met a girl and it seemed better to shift from the seminary and I shifted to a room near Sefton Park from Birkenhead. I thought I was too old to fall in love. My office was next to women’s toilet and soon I started recognising her presence by the way the taps turned in the toilet. By the time I realised that I was in love, it was too late and it was time to leave Liverpool for Yale in America. So the last few months in Liverpool were tough. Even though I was always a bit rebellious, it was only in Liverpool that I realised how Indian I was. The first few months were lonely. I always hated Indian classical music and dance for what I considered gymnastics. But Ravi Shankar came to Liverpool and I attended the concert with John, an American. He thought that it sounded like cows mewing but it was all very sweet and like homecoming to me. Also I met Jo Marks and Peter Scott there and the friendships endure to this day. But Jo refuses to tell me any thing about that girl.