Gurnam Singh Sidhu Brard

 

Dr Brard obtained his MSc Honours School in Physics in 1956, and worked at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory from 1966 to 1986. He lives in USA. E-mail: gurnamsb@yahoo.com

 

Author’s note: Up to 1950 I wrote my name as Gurnam Singh; from 1950 to 1982 as Gurnam Singh Sidhu; and 1982 onwards  as Gurnam Singh Sidhu Brard. It is the last part of the name, Brard,  that my old acquaintances may not recognize.

  

Irregular Start in Education

My path to Panjab University College, Hoshiarpur was an unlikely one. I was born in 1930 in the village of Mehraj, which was attached to Ferozepur District in Punjab during the British rule, and later when Patiala State and PEPSU were dissolved, our village became a part of the Bhatinda District. I had anindifferentattitude toward education just like other rural people in those days. People in the rural areas had a defensive attitude toward the educated, urban people, and pretended as if their lives were better thanthose of the ‘weak, uptight, and effeminate’ men who were literate. When it came to people from other regions, other castes, other religions, other occupations, it was common to deride and demean them in their absence, to treat them like aliens and to talk up your own people, of course with some exceptions. In songs, jokes or anecdotes they found ways to degrade the urban life and build pride in their own ignorance. I did not have such mentality to any extreme but was never the less influenced by it.

My father was one of the few farmers in our village who was literate, since as an orphaned youngster he lived in the town of Bhatinda, with his uncle who had become a Sadhu (Hindu monk). Before the 1930s, in the rural Punjab almost all the Sadhus came from nominally Sikh families, and also they were supported and followed by the Sikh families who were following the traditional ways. And for many reasons it was easierfor my father to attend school in a town than in the village environment. My older brother was the first in our family to be sent to a boarding school and then to college before his joining the British Indian army during WWII.And my father had a serious intention of educating me also, in spite of the resistance from our joint-family members who wanted me to work on the family farm.

After attending the Vernacular Middle School in our village, I did pass the eighth grade examination in 1943, but with that education without English I could not be admitted to any high school, unless I spent two additional years in some special school and passed the Junior-Senior examination in English. Our joint family politics would not allow me to go to such a school, and I seemed destined to plow the fields.But after I had spent six months herding buffaloes and cows, my father found a private teacher named Kesho Ram at RampuraPhul, about four miles away. Kesho Ram used to coach students at the ninth and tenth grade levels in a separate room in his home, to enable them to pass the matriculation examination privately, without going to a high school. Kesho Ram was one of the most remarkable teachers and I have written more about him in my book, “East of Indus.”He was reluctant to spend time on a single student (me) when he could be teaching a whole class during that time. My father earnestly requested him to accept me, as we had no other practical path to education. He told my father: “Your son can study here but this education is not going to be as good as in a regular high school where he could learn science, participate in sports and in other activities.” Anyway, after about six months of sporadically going to his house which had a school room in it, I had learned some words and sentences in English and then Kesho Ram allowed me to join his ninth grade class. After a couple of years in Kesho Ram’s classes, I passed the Matriculation examination in March 1946.

I did not want any more education. My heart was set on village life, activities, friends, songs, animals, crops, drinking, celebrations. But then I was pressured by my family into joining Khalsa College, Amritsar where my older brother had studied. In April 1946 I registered inKhalsa College for some easy arts subjects, jokingly called The Royal Road; but even those classes, I rarely attended. My activities in college were about sleeping late, going swimming in the college pools, getting dressed to go to the City or to the movies, strolling through Company Bagh with friends, sharing meals and shooting the breeze with other non-achievers. Then came the summer vacation, and after that I refused to go to college, as I was sixteen years old and big enough to defy my parents. I wasted the rest of the year 1946 by getting drenched in the village life. Later, in cooperation with my uncle, I started my farming operation by hiring a share cropper and by gathering the necessities of farming, just as I became 17 years old in 1947. That was the year of the Independence and Partition of India.

 

Change of Course to Ahmednagar College

I stayed in the village doing farm work although my father never stopped lecturing me about the value of education and about the miseries of farming life. There were stresses and setbacks, but I still wanted to continue that life. Then in October 1949 my brother Kartar, then a military officer, convinced me to come just for a visit to Ahmednagar where he had been posted. Within a short time in the new environment at Ahmednagar, my attitude changed and I did not have the courage to tell Kartar that I wanted to go back to the village. He arranged for me to stay in the hostel of Ahmednagar College, without being a student. Six months later in early 1950, I registered for some arts classes, to legitimize my stay in the hostel, as I prepared for an examination to enter the Indian Military Academy. As apart of the registration in that college they required that I use my family name, since up to matriculation I never used any last name. My brother had used Sidhu Brar as his last name. I chose just ‘Sidhu’ to fulfil the requirements. Much later in 1982 I changed my name to Gurnam Singh Sidhu Brard, which my earlier friends will not recognize.

In 1950, I appeared in the written tests for the military academy and the subsequent interviews and following the medical examination I was told that I had been selected for the Military Academy. But somewhat late in 1950, I found out that I was not high enough on the merit list to enter the military academy and a plan B had to be thought about. My brother wanted me to join the army as a bottom level soldier with the hope of becoming a commissioned officer some day. I had to convince him to let me continue in college, and Kartar agreed although somewhat reluctantly. I had to switch from the arts subjects to science classes in order to have better prospects of getting a job. It was late in the year to switch to science, but after one more year I got the Intermediate Science diploma and came back to Punjab.

 

Unplanned Entry into P.U. College

I had less than average awareness of educational institutions in Punjab, and would have probably tried to join Mahindra College, Patiala, or Government College, Ludhiana, as they were the nearest to our village. But when in 1952 I was on a train to take my younger brother Gurdial for admission to Mahindra College, someone in the train told us that the Government College in Hoshiarpur might be a better place for him to enter. We changed the train to go to Hoshiarpur instead of Patiala. We still did not know that the Government College there had become the Panjab University College but were glad that he got admitted there; later in the Summer of 1952 I also joined the Panjab University College in Hoshiarpur as a third year BA student in Physics and Math. After I completed my BA in Physics, I applied for and got admission to the third year of the Physics Honours School of the Panjab University on the same campus. A wider world of higher aspirations, new opportunities, and interesting experiences had opened up for me, as a result of joining the Panjab University College.

With the Partition of India had come a complete disruption of all institutions of government. The military, the banks, theuniversities and many other assets, had to be divided with Pakistan. In the Indian part of Punjab, a new university had to be reorganized in 1947, partly by some of those faculty members from Lahore who escaped Pakistan alive and reached India. It must have been a bewildering task for the fragments of the Punjab University departments from Lahore, to set up some teaching facilities in Delhi in temporary structures and tents. Delhi was on the boundary of the old Punjab and had a substantial Punjabi population which increased due to the refugees arriving from Pakistan. I heard that the teaching location was called Camp College, intermingled with the Delhi University; and in Hoshiarpur there was some prestige attached to the students who had attended Camp College in Delhi. I understand that some University departments moved to Hoshiarpur about 1949 viagra belgique sans ordonnance. The University administrative offices were located in Solan in Simla Hills. In our days the Vice-Chancellor of the University was the elegant and aristocratic looking DewanAnand Kumar, whom the students would see only on special occasions.

When I entered the Panjab University College, some new buildings had been constructed and everything there was above my expectations, and considering my background, I was impressed easily. The Physics, Chemistry and Zoology departments of the University were established there; other University departments had to be located in other colleges in the state. As the Panjab University and the Government College were on the same campus in Hoshiarpur, some of the University students took courses that were taught by the Government College professors. The combination seemed to work seamlessly so the people who reorganized the Panjab University after the Partition, deserved a lot of credit.

 

Notable Personalities and Friends at P.U. College, Hoshiarpur

VishwaNath, a formidable personality on campus, had relinquished the job as the Principal of the Government College and had been appointed head of the Zoology Department of the University on the same campus. He used to lead the recitation of the Bhagvat Gita in the college auditorium in the morning; B. M. Anand had returned after a PhD from England to head the Physics Honours School; K.K. Dewett was the principal in my days; D.C. Sharma was a professor of English and also a member of the Parliament of India; he could operate on campus pretty much in the style of his choosing. There was the ever smiling professor Hans Raj Gupta in mathematics who was known for research in esoteric topics, but could also prescribe natural remedies for some chronic maladies. Professor Sarna taught us physics and was very approachable.New professors with high qualifications, such as Dr. Mathur in economics, who also livened up the Drama Club, and Dr. Bambah whose sister was also a student there, were some of the new arrivals.

On that campus, girls were only about ten per cent of the student population, and there were conditions to limit interactions between boys and girls. Some professors felt entitled or duty-bound to control the students’ social behavior and to improve them in other possible ways too. One extreme example is Professor Handa who taught mathematics. He looked like he had an over-active thyroid, and was known to be opinionated, temperamental and harsh in his language, although he was usually polite to me because of my performance in his classes. One day Handa came to our class and started haranguing about the behavior of students: “It is Spring time and you are getting in the romantic mood. Your character becomes loose and you start chasing cheap girls. You know what is a cheap girl?” Andpointing to a very nice and bright girl, whose name I am not writing here,” he said dramatically “HERE IS A CHEAP GIRL!”and then went on moralizing. On hearing those words, we were all shocked, and the girl felt crushed and humiliated. She was actually very proper in her conduct; she had scored highest in the Panjab University FA examination. All she had done was to laugh heartily at a joke that another student had told while Handa was entering the classroom, and he thought that kind of levity indicated bad character.

Professor Handa was also an N.C.C. official while the debonair and charming Professor Mehta was the N.C.C. commanding officer. Handa had other opinions that could also be questionable. For example, he would say, “Too much poison may kill you but small quantities of poison can work like a tonic to improve your health.” I had no inclination to try various poisons to improve my health! When it came to health matters, the Hindi language professor C.L. Kapoor was probably more helpful to us as he taught yoga free of charge with the dedication of a missionary. He also gave demonstrations of various techniques of clearing body problems.For example, he would show how to rinse off your sinuses to ward off cold; he would demonstrate how a cotton string passed through nose and brought out through the throat could clean out the nasal passages. Some of these seemed too extreme to me but I still remember some of the most useful yoga positions that he taught us.

There was Miss Stock in the English department who helped start the TKT (Talk over a Kup of Tea) Club that used to meet at the Tuck Shop/campus restaurant. Only the confident, sophisticated and witty students, who could charm others with their flowery English, would feel comfortable attending the TKT chats. The TKT Club was open to all; but what kept the Club a manageable size was that ordinary students were too shy and inarticulate to associate with such elites and sophisticates. In addition to such activities, there was also something cosmopolitan about the University College, as there were many foreign students, several of the professors were “foreign returned”, which in those days was a mark of prestige, and there were many activities with international flavor. The American embassy would send their representatives to speak and show films about life in America. Campus activities provided rich experiencessuch as stage performances, variety shows, humorous speech contests, debates on important topics, student clubs, etc.

Debates were one of the ways for us to find out who the outstanding students were. I don’t remember all such debaters, and won’t mention all those that I do remember, but one of the most balanced, rational and inspirational debaters was Kuldip(?)Nayyar; he seemed so clear headed, fair minded and ethical that we thought that more people like him could drastically improve the working and fate of new India. I surely hope he had the opportunity to make his mark somewhere. Partap Singh, a zoology student, became president of the Student Front which then dominated student politics. Narender Luther, an all round charming fellow, BrijinderGoswamy, a quiet but brilliant student, and Manmohan Singh, mentioned later, had all their own debating styles.

The conditions for admission to the P.U. College were not particularly stringent yet. Some students from prominent families attended the College in my days. Both sons of Partap Singh Kairon, the Chief Minister of Punjab, were students there and stayed in the student hostels; Manmohan Singh an economics student, went from there to England for advanced study and much later became the Prime Minister of India. Although we were in different departments, I occasionally found myself across the table from him at lunch. In the hostel, we even had three brothers who were princes from some Hill State; one of them named Shanti Singh was with us in the N.C.C. During some summers, I lived in the Model Town Hostel, but otherwise for four years I lived in the hostel which was the abandoned Islamia High School, and closer to campus. In that hostel, I became friends with R. K. Pathria who was a brilliant student but also of sociable nature, poetic and of romantic temperament, versatile in his interests and two years ahead of me in the Physics Honours School. Later he got married to Raj Kumari Gulati from the Chemistry Honours School, who was from a family of prominent physicians and at my class level as we attended the same physics classes in 1952-54. I also became friends with Pathria’s roommate Sham Lal and another classmate R. K. Bansal, who was originally from my area of Punjab.

The alumni of Hoshiarpur from those days have gone on to high achievements and notable careers. Many of them later joinedat the top of the Indian civil services, such as IAS, IFS, IPS, postal service and other government services. Many went abroad for higher education, others into medicine, journalism, law and other professions. Many from P.U. College became national figures in India and others made their mark in foreign countries. Looking back, Hoshiarpur, although a small town, was a pretty special place in the 1950s.

In those days,the leftist and communist inspired activities dominated student politics. Some students could win elections by their personal charm and popularity; there were some fire brands like Dev Brat of Jan Sangh related party who did not have enough support; but by 1954 it was The Students Front party, a leftist group, that started winning the student body elections. They could call a strike and disrupt campus life, and the Principal of the P.U. College had to be very flexible in dealing with them. Some of the brightest students were the leaders of this leftist organization and they had support from some faculty members as well. The passionate belief among them was that communism promoted fairness, equality and justice and they wanted to end the exploitation of the poor working people, by the rich and aristocratic classes.They also felt that communism was a more efficient system to bring economic development and prosperity and they wanted communism to prevail all over the world. Some of the activists in The Student Front that I remember were fellows like Partap Singh, KuldipNayyar, Nandi, Misha, JitBhango, GurdialMander, JagdevBrar, and even my younger brother. But since there was also some stigma attached to communism, because of their terrorist activities and advocacy of violence to overthrow the government, many of the sophisticated students and those mindful of their career prospects, generally avoided the leftist activities. Not surprisingly, all of those bright communist students completely abandoned that ideology after they became government officials or successful in other professions.

 

Proceeding to Study in the U.S.A.

From the beginning, my education had been irregular, inadequate and disrupted by circumstances. And when I had to appear for the M.Sc. examination of the Physics Honours School in 1956, I had a severe illness and could not get out of bed to take the examination. The illness was serious enough so that some outside doctors had to be called and it lasted for weeks. The head of the Physics Honours School, B. M. Anand and Dr. P.N. Kalia, a senior professor there, came to my sick bed in the hostel room and expressed sympathy. Some effects of that illness lingered with me for years. I had a roommate named BaldevSahai who suspected that my illness could have been caused by the pickled pork meat that our roommate Naginder Singh had brought from his home in the Hill States, but this might not be true. In our family, eating meat though not forbidden, was quite uncommon, and pickled meat was un-thinkable in our climate; obviously, the Rajput people in the hills had different customs.

 

Any way I was not able to take the M.Sc. examination. Unlike America, there was no system of giving examination to an individual student, or a make-up examination since in the Indian system the entire class for that year had to take the examination simultaneously on a specified date. In that situation the University did not want to give me a FAIL grade, but without my taking the examination, they could not give me a First Division either. So they placed me in Second Division based on my work during the year, but it reduced my chances for higher education or better jobs in India. After the MSc degree at Hoshiarpur, I did short stints as a lecturer in physics at Government College, Gurdaspur and then at Khalsa College, Amritsar.

Under the circumstances, it made sense for me to try to get admitted toa PhD program in some university in the USA. My classmate, Faqir Chand Khanna, who had become a research fellow inPanjab University after his M.Sc. degree at Hoshiarpur, gave me an application form for the University of Washington for their Ph.D. program in Physics, as he himself had no plan to apply for that year. YoginderAnand, the younger son of Prof. B. M. Anand, had joined that program the previous year. And it was just by the great generosity of the authorities at University of Washington, and not by my academic record, that they also offered me a teaching fellowship, which would be a source of financial support. I joined the University of Washington in Seattle as a graduate student in September 1957.

In Seattle, I had to take some make-up courses in Math and Physics, as I was not adequately prepared for the graduate school, but so did some other American graduate students. Education standards in the USA could be somewhat higher than in India, but they were not uniformly better in all US colleges. The students arriving from India had about the same degree of success on the average as those educated in the US. What clinched for me was the General Examination in physics subjects which had become a requirement for the graduate students just that year. After the Americans were shocked by the success of the Sputnik launch and feared themselves lagging behind the Soviets in science, they took steps to strengthen their educational programs; the General Exam was one such step to weed out students in order to provide opportunity for those who would bring better results. If a student scored high in the General Examination, he (They were still mostly men in those days.) would be automatically on track for the PhD;if he scored low, he had to leave the department. To my surprise, I scored the second highest in the department in that general examination, because I used common sense and the basic principles of physics, rather than any complicated mathematical equations to solve the problems. After passing the general examination, I was free to pick a topic of research for my Ph.D. degree.

My thesis advisor J.B. Gerhart and I, had selected the study of “Decay of Oxygen-14” as a topic for my Ph.D. dissertation. During the second year of my thesis project, the spectrometer that was being used to study the positron spectrum from the decay of O-14, could not be operated anymore in spite of the best advice of experts and the support of engineers. Obtaining materials to build a new spectrometer, then its testing and satisfactory operation took a very long time. But there was no time pressure on me to finish the project as the research fellowship provided adequate financial support for me and my wife, who was also a student at the University of Washington; we lived in University provided housing, could afford an automobile and we became a family with two sons when we were in Seattle.

After finishing my graduate work in late 1965, I got a job with the University of California, which used to manage the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. I worked there for twenty years. I was not really an outstanding physicist but I enjoyed working in the Livermore Lab which had a very supportive atmosphere for research in those days under the management of University of California and according to the policies of the U.S.A.E.C.Some of my research projects were related to radiation transport from nuclear sources while others were the kind of nuclear reactions work one would do in a university laboratory and could be funded under the A.E.C. budget. We published some unclassified papers as well as classified ones during those years.

 

Early Retirement and Leisurely Life

I retired from the University of California at arelatively young age; after that I never did any scientific work but have had an active life in other spheres. Living in the San Francisco area has provided many cultural opportunities. After retirement I also took up long distance running and completed about thirty marathons, including the Boston Marathon in 2005, and the last one being the 26.2-mile San Francisco Marathon in 2014, at the age of 84. I have visited India frequently, but in recent times I have had little or no contact with anyone from my Hoshiarpur days.