A Chance Encounter

by S. Ramamoorthy
Perfectly, a month before his demise, this incident took place, written as it is:
1. The incident took place at Madurai Airport. The boarding was called for and self was second in the queue, first was a distinguished elderly person standing, the Airlines staff encountered a problem with the server and tried his best to retrieve the printed boarding pass, time was passing by and it was almost 20 minutes that we waited for the process to get over. Self being a frequent flyer and a Senior Executive ( then ) with a leading MNC lost his cool and started taking on the Airlines staff, at this moment this distinguished elderly person cooly turned around and touched my shoulder and said young man take it cool they are trying their best they are also human. He advised the staff to produce handwritten boarding pass which they duely agreed. At this point of time self noticed a small writing on his e-ticket " Prof SK Rangarajan."
2. That particular day the flight was delayed by 1 hour, so we had to wait for the flight, at that moment, self went to Prof SKR, and gently enquired at to where does he teach as I saw that he is a Prof on his e-ticket. He quietly looked at me eye to eye and smilingly said that it was 15 years back he used to teach in many places.
Self : Where did you teach ?
SKR : IISC, BangaloreSelf : What brings you to Madurai ?
SKR : I am coming from KaraikudiSelf : I asked him is it CECRI ?
SKR : Yes !, do you know CECRI ?
Self : I said yes, my father used to be a visiting prof. at CECRI 15 years back.
SKR : What is your fathers name ?
Self : I said Dr. J.Sundararajan
SKR : Instantly he asked Where is he now?
Self : I said that he died in 2002, do you know him?
SKR : He was one of my best friend and we studied together, and since last 10 years I have been trying to meet him, tears in his eyes he gave me a warm hug.
It happened that we travelled on the flight sitting together, he told me about the heroics, adventures, brilliance of my father ( who was a product of IISC, Bangalore, Ph.D in Electrochemistry in 1960 under the giant Prof. TL Ramachar) later he went to Loughborough University, London to do his Post Doc and went to Caltech Pasadena to Teach.
About me , I started my career in 1989 after a MS from USA, so did not get a chance to know of the academics side of my father, the 1 hour & 40 minutes time with SKR at Madurai Airport and on the flight was the best part of my life where I understood the greatness of my father Late Dr.J.Sundararajan, I only come to know from Prof.SKR that my father was the first Indian to do a P.hD in Electrochemistry has 9 symposiums in the same subject .
I offered a ride to SKR at Bangalore but he declined that his son shall be picking him up. He gave his address and telephone number and asked me to come home with my family . He still remembered the filter coffee my mother used to prepare in 1961, my fathers Non-Veg Jokes, and very importantly the meeting with Late Prof. Raja Ramanna, Dr. Abdul Kalam ( Ex-president) and my father, not to talk about Science but to talk about Music ( my father was an exponent in Astrology and Karnataka Sangeetha ( disciple of Late GNB))in 1971 during a course of a Seminar, that night ended a musical night.
At the outset, I got a call from my elder brother Dr. S.Janakiraman an expert in Polymers who lives in Canada that there is an insert in the news paper about the demise of Prof. SKR my fathers best friend, he knew SKR well . I was shocked, surprised and called up my mother and told her about my meeting Prof. SKR in the flight, his demise and so on so forth, she starting telling me about how close my father was to SKR, and many stories.
I still do not know why God made me meet SKR, was it to know about about the greatness of my late father, this process has made me to think about writing a book on my father , i am in the process of collecting details from his friends and relatives. The best thing was to know about a great man from another great man.
I had spoken to family members 5 days after the demise of SKR over phone, and heard them saying that SKR was very much thrilled meeting me and he was very happy and spent couple of days without sleep thinking about the fond memories of my father.