Prof R. K. Pathria obtained His M Sc Honours School in Physics In 1954.  He is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University Of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada & Adjunct Professor, University Of California At San Diego, San Diego, California, USA. E-mail: rpathria@yahoo.com

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Prologue

(A) I was born in a small town named Ramdas, District Amritsar, in the year 1933. My real date of birth was September 19; however, when (in the first week of April 1938) my father took me to the local primary school for admission, he was told that I was too young to be admitted at that time. Even so, the management of the school was willing to take notice of the fact that I had already been going to that school unregistered (in the company of my elder brother Parkash Nath) for a year or so, with the result that there was a prevailing opinion that I did deserve admission right away. To bypass the age factor, a clerk in the admissions office suggested to my father that we better push my date of birth back by a period of six months or so — so that I could become duly qualified for admission on that very day. My father agreed to that suggestion, and my official date of birth became March 30, 1933.

I matriculated from a local high school [named “Baba Buddha Khalsa High School”]  in the year 1948, breaking all previous records held at that school. My memories of the time I spent at that joyful institution and the knowledge I received from its competent teachers, are a pleasure to hold — and a joy to recall.

I learnt Mathematics and Science from Pt. Ram Dutt Sharma, English from Masters Amar Singh, Sehj Singh and Arjan Singh, History and Geography from Masters Ajaib Singh and Sehj Singh, Urdu from Masters Jagir Singh and Bhagwan Singh, and Punjabi from Giani Mewa Singh; unfortunately, I didn’t learn Hindi at this, or any later stage, of my student life.

I must say that all the teachers mentioned above were highly knowledgeable and taught their respective subjects extremely well. For my high-school education, I owe them a lot.

Since our school was run by a Sikh foundation, we had to go to school with heads covered, so I generally wore a cap — occasionally a turban. Every morning, we would sing a ‘shabad’ and perform ‘ardaas’; every month, on the day of the ‘sankraant’, the whole school would go in procession to the local gurdwara and receive ‘prasaad’ from the priest. Other than that, the school operated on a very secular basis, giving full recognition to anyone who deserved it. I am glad to say that, while I was at that school, I was perhaps the most popular student among the whole staff.

(B) After matriculation, I joined the Hindu College, Amritsar, for my FSc studies. It was quite a transition for me to go from the rural environment of Ramdas to the urban set-up of Amritsar.  Since I came from a family with limited means, I was one of the most modestly dressed students in my class. For a while, this hit me as a bit of a handicap but not for long — for, in a very short time, I was able to establish myself as a student of considerable merit.

By and large, this happened somewhat gradually but at one time it happened rather swiftly. That was when, after a written exam in Mathematics (where Papers A & B carried 75 points each), Prof. B. D. Gupta announced his results in the class. When my name came, he said: Raj Kumar Pathria — 75/75. The class gasped and, believe it or not, some of my class-fellows of that time still refer to me as “75/75”!

Some of my teachers at the Hindu College were really good. Other than professor B. D. Gupta, there were professors like Drs Raj Kapur and Mehr Chand (of Chemistry), Jugal Kishor Trikha and Tilok Chand Kapur (of English), and Manmohan Lal Mathur (of Urdu). I am sorry I don’t remember the name of my Physics teacher there.

One nagging memory of those days that continued to bug me over time was concerning a scholarship that the Hindu College had announced in its prospectus — a “scholarship of ten rupees a month for a period of ten months in the second year of a Science student who, at the end of his first year, had stood first in his class”. By all counts, I was that student — and, in those days, a sum of one hundred rupees would have meant a lot to me. But, alas, I have yet to see that money!

It so happens that, in those days, the financial matters of that college were being handled by an accountant named “Dhan Raj” — no pun intended! However, whenever I approached Mr. Dhan Raj on this issue, he pointed his finger at the donors (saying, “these guys make pledges, but they don’t back them up”).  One day, I asked him to tell me who those donors were, so that I could talk to them directly. I don’t know why, but he just kept quiet.

On a positive note, when I was at the Hindu College, Amritsar, I had the good fortune of having Manmohan Singh and Brijindar Goswami as my classmates. They were both in the Arts faculty while I was in Science; despite that, we often ran into one another in the college corridors and were always mutually friendly. It is small wonder that, in due course of time, all three of us went to Hoshiarpur for our graduate studies and, finally, to Chandigarh as Professors in our respective fields — MS in Economics, BG in the History of Fine Arts and I in Theoretical Physics.

(C) Having done my FSc at Amritsar, it was now time for me to decide where I go next. Everyone knew of my deep interest in Mathematics, so most of the people who knew me well were sure that I would go for higher studies in Mathematics. However, the final decision in this matter rested with my elder brother, Parshotam Lal Zia, who had been a Professor of Urdu/Persian at Lahore and now held a similar position at Ambala.

Professor Zia was a man of exceptional intellect. He was born in the year 1917 to the same parents as I, so he was my real brother — 16 years my senior. However, unlike me, he had no one in the family to guide him, so he had to find his way in life by himself. Even so, he did remarkably well.

Zia sahib passed his MA exam in Persian from the Sanatan Dharam College, Lahore, in the year 1938 and right away became a lecturer in Urdu/Persian at that very college. Apart from being an excellent teacher and a first-rate scholar in his chosen subjects, he was a ‘political activist’ too. So, over the years, he not only wrote a lot of Urdu poetry and a lot of Urdu prose, but also a number of provocative articles in the leading dailies of Lahore — with the result that, within a short period of time, he became a well-known figure in the intellectual circles of that famous city.

After partition, Zia sahib (along with his college) moved to Ambala, where he spent a number of unhappy years — unhappy because he felt so tormented at having had to leave Lahore and, in return, seeing no real future for Urdu/Persian in the post-partition India. Unfortunately, he never recovered from the shock of migration from that side of the border to this. In desperation, he left his job at Ambala, moved to Delhi where he served as a part-time lecturer at the Panjab University Camp College and wrote series of columns for the Urdu dailies of the capital but, for most of the time, he simply ran from pillar to post. Eventually, he got so depressed at the bleak prospects of his professional life that we took him back to our ancestral village Ramdas where, in 1959 (when he was just 42), he passed away.

After this bitter-sweet account of one of the most illustrious members of my family, let’s get back to my plans after I finished my F.Sc. studies at the Hindu College, Amritsar. For that, Zia sahib consulted several of his colleagues at Ambala and came to the conclusion that I, instead of going to Mathematics, should go to Physics — which, among all natural sciences, was closest to Mathematics; at the same time, it afforded significantly better job prospects. Hence, my ——

Move to Hoshiarpur

In October 1950, I set out for Hoshiarpur, seeking admission to the Physics Honours School. I didn’t have proper shoes to wear for that trip, so one of my brothers in the village bought me a pair of canvas shoes, which was indeed an improvement over the slippery chappals I had been wearing so far. On the day of travel, I arrived at Hoshiarpur in the late afternoon and, having no place to spend the night, I went to a ‘sarai’ on the road that goes to the town Haryana. I paid the owners of that ‘sarai’ a sum of eight annas for the night and, next morning, walked over to the Panjab University College for my interview.

The interview was straightforward; I was readily admitted, but I didn’t have a regular place to stay yet. So, on prior instruction from Zia sahib, I showed up at the residence of Professor Diwan Chand Sharma, Head of the English Department and an influential senator, who had been a friend of Zia sahib from their Lahore days. Professor Sharma was very hospitable to me and let me stay in his guest room for the night. More on Professor Sharma later.

Next morning, I booked residence in a six-bed room at the ‘Islamia High School’ hostel where I thought I’ll stay for only a year or two but, in fact, I stayed there for full four years — first year in a room for six, second year in a room for four, third and fourth years in a room for two, all the time having my classmate Sham Lal Mallick as my room-mate. In our last year, Sham and I were the only Masters students who had persevered to reside in that hostel till the end!

It is worth mentioning here that not only was Sham Lal Mallick my room-mate in the years 1950-54, he was also my hostel-mate during the years 1954-57 when both he and I were post-graduate students at the University of Delhi. Subsequently, he moved to Dehra Doon to work for the Geological Survey of India and finally ended up at the Henri Poincare Institute of Optics in Paris.

Instruction at Hoshiarpur

To everyone’s dismay, the Physics Department at Hoshiarpur at that time was so inadequately staffed that the less said the better. Year after year, they would admit the best possible students (mostly ‘toppers’) from the intermediate class all over the state and, year after year, they would let them down.

When I joined, I found my department so poorly staffed in comparison with the other Science Departments — especially, Chemistry — that I was taken aback. While those departments had a significant number of ‘big names’ serving on their staff, we had none!

Keeping in mind the standard ranks — Professor, Reader, Lecturer — we, at the Physics Honours School in 1950, had no Professor, barely one or two Readers, and perhaps two or three Lecturers. Among those, there were only two Ph.D.s — Pran Nath Kalia and Krishan Kumar Nagpal. Even the Head of the Department, Lala Bal Mukand Anand, was a non-Ph.D. Reader, who had just left Hoshiarpur for his post-graduate studies at Bristol. He returned in 1953 with a doctorate on his resume and was subsequently promoted to Professorship. The other faculty members were: a full-time lecturer Uma Dutt Khosla and a part-time lecturer Bansi Lal Juneja (who taught us mathematics as a subsidiary subject).

That is all the faculty we had, except for two college staffers — Hans Raj Bhatla (who gave an occasional course in Optics, which our class never had) and Hari Ram Sarna (who gave a sporadic set of lectures on Magnetism, which I did have a chance to attend).

In the last year of my Hoshiarpur stay, the Physics faculty was mildly strengthened by the addition of two lecturers, Parma Nand Trehan and Baldev Singh Sood — both fresh from their Master’s studies. Despite these late additions, the department never had enough staff to teach us the most vital areas of Physics. For instance, throughout the period 1950-54, we didn’t receive the benefit of a regular course in Quantum Mechanics or Statistical Mechanics or Solid State Physics or Electrodynamics or the Theory of Relativity!

It was a minor satisfaction that, in the month of February 1954, a professor named Vidya Bhushan Anand, who taught at some degree college in the state, came to Hoshiarpur for a period of two weeks to give us a short course (of about eight lectures) in Wave Mechanics. We were already familiar with the concept of particle-wave duality — but his lectures were the first to introduce us to the Schrodinger wave equation and to some of its most remarkable consequences. While at Hoshiarpur, Prof. Anand also gave a public lecture on the ‘particle-wave duality’ in Hindi, which was highly appreciated.

A short while later, Professor F. C. Auluck of the University of Delhi visited our department. He too stayed for two weeks and gave us a series of lectures on Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Statistics. Thus, we did finally have an occasion to enjoy a glimpse of these important areas of Physics, but only a glimpse. I’ll say more about Prof. Auluck’s visit later, but first a few digressions.

Digression 1

Towards the end of my first year at Hoshiarpur — more accurately, during the last week of May 1951 — I was invited by the Hindu College, Amritsar, to attend their annual convocation where Manmohan Singh, Brijindar Goswami and I were going to be awarded tonnes of books in prize for our performance in our respective sections of the intermediate class of 1950; at the same time, we three would be the first ones to sign a “Roll of Honour” that the college had just created.

It is worth noting here that fifty-three years later, in May 2004, it was the same “Roll of Honour” that got splashed on the pages of some of the daily newspapers of North India when Manmohan Singh became the Prime Minister of the country. I remember that day with joy, for it was the first time that I saw the names of all three of us written together at the very top of that Roll.

The function at the Hindu College went splendidly well. All three of us got tonnes — literally, tonnes — of books in prize, which turned out to be a rather heavy load for us to carry. Not surprisingly, there were several old classmates present at that function who came forward to give us a helping hand. In the prevailing melee, Manmohan approached me to find out if I was going back to Hoshiarpur that very evening. I said, “I would like to, but it is getting rather late — I wonder if I’ll be able to get a bus from Amritsar to Jaalandhar in time, to be able to get a connecting one from Jaalandhar to Hoshiarpur in time, to reach my destination tonight”. Manmohan said, “forget about those buses, come with me and spend the night at my house in Majith Mandi”.  I said, OK — so we called a rickshaw, loaded it with our respective piles of books, jumped into it and drove off to Manmohan’s house.

While at Manmohan’s house, I was treated like a prince. Manmohan’s father, the senior Kohli, was falling all over me, with the continual prodding: “kaka ji, kuchh khaao vee naa” —- meaning “the little one, please do eat something”. I knew that Kohlis had a lucrative business in dry fruits, so little wonder that there were plenty of dry fruits in their servings but what impressed me most was the handsomeness of their generosity, not the abundance of their dry fruits.

Next morning, it was time for me to head back to Hoshiarpur. I got up early in the morning to get ready for my departure — Manmohan and his mother also got up early. They served me a sumptuous breakfast, after which Manmohan called a rickshaw, came down from his pad to put my luggage in the rickshaw, gave me a hug and bade me farewell. That was the last time I saw him!

Subsequently, when Manmohan was at Chandigarh (while I was in Canada), he regularly enquired about me from my brother-in-law, Dr. Des Raj Gulati, who was a neurosurgeon at the local PGI. And, in 2003, when Manmohan was a member of the Rajya Sabha and I was planning to publish my first book on Urdu poetry, he (through the good offices of my old Amritsari admirer, Dharm Vir Mohan), agreed to preside over the opening ceremony of my book anywhere anytime — but, alas, circumstances changed. When, in December 2005, my book entitled “Sahraa Sahraa” came out, Manmohan had already become the Prime Minister of India and, for no fault of his, had become utterly unapproachable.

For those who may not know it, the word “sahraa” means a “desert” — not to be confused with the “sehra” that a bridegroom ties over his forehead. So, “sahraa sahraa” means “desert after desert” — conjuring up the unending wanderings of Qais (aka Majnu), the fabled lover of the Arabian damsel Laila. Please note that this title of my Urdu poetry book makes a lot of sense to me, for my pen name as an Urdu poet is indeed “Qais”!

Digression 2

While at Hoshiarpur, I had the good fortune of listening to a number of lecturers who instilled in me a true sense of  ‘intellectual curiosity’. The first and foremost among them was an affable gentleman, Professor Hans Raj Gupta, of the Mathematics department, whose lectures on “ Srinivasa Ramanujan”, the “Partitions of numbers”, the “Calendar” and the “mysteries of pi” were a delight to hear and a treasure to hold. While lectures on some of those topics had become a staple diet in India, Professor Gupta’s take on the “Calendar” was astonishingly refreshing.

If I’ll be excused for a bit of technical indulgence here, I’ll like to remind my readers that our Earth revolves around our Sun in very nearly 365.24219 days. Now, if our calendar has 365 days in each of the three successive years and 366 days in the fourth — we have accounted for the Earth revolving around the Sun in 365.25 days. However, denying each of the three successive centennial years a leap day but letting the fourth one have one, we’ll have accounted for the Earth revolving around the Sun in 365.2425 days. Clearly, with the calendar as we have today, we’ll have to apply to it a suitable correction some time down the line.

In this context, Professor Gupta’s suggestion to improve our calendar was fantastic. He suggested that we better focus our attention on a cycle of 128 years — rather than 100. That way, we’ll let the first 124 years of this cycle have 31 leap days and skip the 32nd one, with the result that we’ll have accounted for the Earth revolving around the Sun in 365 + 31/128 days, i.e., 365 viagra et prix.24219 days. I wonder if anyone could have done a job better than that!

I must admit that my initial reaction to Professor Gupta’s suggestion was a bit lukewarm — for the simple reason that, like everyone else, I was living my life in the world of decimals, so why on Earth would I be interested in a number like 128? On subsequent reflection, I realized that, since the numbers 4 and 128 were both exact powers of 2, this suggestion of Professor Gupta would have fitted very neatly into a scheme of things that had adopted the “binary system of numbers” right from the start.

Subsequently, in the years 1958 and 1960, Professor Gupta published two volumes of his un-aided enumeration of the “Partitions of numbers” under the auspices of the Royal Society of London. So, when in 1962 I happened to be in Chandigarh, I went over to his house to congratulate him on those publications. During conversation, Professor Gupta told me very gladly and proudly (and somewhat boyishly) that the English mathematicians (led by the famed authority in the field, Professor J.C.P. Miller), who checked his manuscripts before acceptance, found just four ‘errors’ in his voluminous enumerations. However, on double-check, they found that all those ‘errors’ were due to their own computer’s glitches — and none due to Professor Gupta’s enumeration. I still remember the glow on his face when he told me this marvellous story!

Other than Professor Hans Raj Gupta, I remember two professors whose lectures held a very special appeal to me. One was Professor S.B. Rangnekar, of the Economics department, whose lecture on the “Economics of Scientific Research” was an eye-opener. The other was Professor Hari Ram Gupta, of the History department, whose synopsis of the “History of Punjab during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh” was both informative and hilarious.

Digression 3

Among the teachers who taught me at Hoshiarpur, I have special admiration for some whose mention in this memoir would be highly appropriate.

(i) I admired Bansi Lal Juneja who taught us a number of topics in classical mathematics in a most disciplined manner — going from the beginning of a topic to its end via a most logical route. It is a pity that he could not teach us the more modern stuff, such as “complex variables”, “tensor analysis”, “non-linear differential equations”, “integral equations”, etc. But that wasn’t his fault at all, for what could a single person teaching Mathematics to two successive classes do when, in all fairness, we needed at least two or three persons to do that job?

At most universities, this task of making Physics students conversant with the basic knowledge of Applied Mathematics is shared by ‘lecturers in physics’ who have some level of expertise in Theoretical Physics; however, at that time and place, there were no such persons available.

(ii) I admired Krishan Kumar Nagpal who taught us modern physics at different levels. I remember, in particular, his lecture on the photoelectric effect that brought home to us the corpuscular nature of light so vividly that I still feel the tickle!

When I was a 2nd year student, Dr. Nagpal asked me to solve a transcendental equation that he had encountered during one of his lectures to his 3rd year class on the “thermodynamics of the blackbody radiation”. Using Horner’s method (which I had learnt from Mr. Bansi Lal’s lectures), I solved that equation in no time — with the answer 4.9651.

Dr. Nagpal was highly impressed with the rapidity of my response as well as the correctness of my answer, which he announced in his class the next day. But, to my knowledge, he kept wondering about the accuracy of the last digit of my answer — for the answer he had seen quoted in the famous “Treatise on Heat” by Saha and Srivastava was simply 4.965.

A year later, when I became a 3rd year student, I read not only the Saha-Srivastava “Treatise on Heat” but also the famous book entitled “Heat and Thermodynamics” by the British physicist J. K. Roberts. As luck would have it, I saw the same equation in Roberts’ book, with the answer 4.9651!

I lost no time in running up to Dr. Nagpal’s office, showing him the relevant page of Roberts’ book. His face lit up, and he almost hugged me.

(iii) Another teacher I admired very much was Professor Diwan Chand Sharma, who taught us English as a preliminary subject. He was supposed to teach us once a week but, considering the number of times he didn’t show up for the class, we might have heard him no more than 20-25 times in the year.  Even so, he left on us an indelible mark by the depth of his scholarship as well as the quirkiness of his temperament!

To highlight these points, I give here two examples of Professor Sharma’s idiosyncrasies.

(i) One day, Professor Sharma asked us as to which popular Hindi song we liked the most. Not surprisingly, we all had a clear-cut answer to that question (which each one of us could have written down in a few seconds), but Professor Sharma spent the whole hour listening to our silly answers and responding to them in total seriousness!

For the record, my answer to his question was:

“tasveer tirii dil miraa bahlaa na sake gii”,

meaning “your picture won’t be able to please me (the  way you could)’.

Professor Sharma loved my choice very much and said that that was one of his own favourite songs    too. Little did I know that, some 45 years later, I would give this line a twist and write a hilarious poem entitled

 “tasveer tirii dil miraa bahlaane lagii hai”, meaning  “your picture has (after all) begun to please me (the way you would have)”.

(ii) Another time, Professor Sharma asked us to write an essay entitled “My visit to Hell”,which was a strange assignment — for it challenged us to share our thoughts as to whom (among the so many dignitaries of the past) did we expect to see in Hell? All students in my class wrote their essays in total seriousness, but Professor Sharma took them in sheer jest; instead of grading them numerically, he read them aloud in the class — though, to everyone’s amusement, he did make a lot of witty remarks on each and every essay.

The reason I chose to mention this incident here is because, some 55 years later, I wrote an epic poem entitled “marne ke ba’ad”, meaning “after death”. In that poem, I gave an unusual twist to our age-old script — in that while the celestial judge of the day found me too bad to deserve a place in Heaven, she also found me too good to deserve a place in Hell. On balance, she decided that (in view of my poetic abilities) she better give me a place of honor in the celestial court itself, where I would have all the facilities I needed to pursue my literary interests  — provided that I give up writing those ‘silly Ghazals’ that I had been writing on the Earth and, from then on, devote myself to writing only ‘hymns’ that praised her and her court.

Not a bad bargain, I thought!

My ticket to Delhi

Going back to Professor Auluck’s visit to Hoshiarpur, the Department of Physics — while the learned professor was still there — arranged, in March 1954, a special function to celebrate the (somewhat belated) 70th birthday of the eminent astrophysicist Meghnad Saha, to which a number of dignitaries from within the college as well as from outside were invited. The former Principal of the college, Professor Vishwa Nath (a well-known Zoologist), was the chief guest at that function, while Professor Auluck was the main speaker. A few days before the event, Professor B. M. Anand suggested to me that I too say a few words about Professor Saha’s work at that function — to which I hesitatingly agreed. At the same time, it was decided that, after the function, ‘high tea’ would be served to all the participants, and several students (including myself) would wait at different tables to see that everything went well.

At the start of the function, Dr. Anand made a few introductory remarks about Professor Saha and then invited Dr. Auluck to speak on the importance of Saha’s work in the field of theoretical astrophysics. After that, it was my turn to say something about Saha’s insights into the problems of stellar structure and the emergence of his theory of thermal ionization. I went onstage with considerable nervousness, performed my task as well as I could, but left the stage with some good feelings. I was followed by Dr. Vishwa Nath, who made a few concluding remarks on the function; to my surprise (and delight), the major thrust of his remarks was on my speech.

Dr. Vishwa Nath praised the contents as well as the delivery of my speech in glowing terms and said, “if I had closed my eyes, I would have thought that it was some highly learned professor that was speaking but, with eyes open, all I could see was a young man who looked hardly beyond his teens”!  Yes, indeed, I was just 20 at that time.

After the formal part of the function, so many people came forward to congratulate me on my performance; most notably, Dr. Anand (whose demeanor showed very clearly how proud he was of me) asked me to forget about my duty to wait at one of the tea tables — rather sit with him (and other dignitaries) at the special table reserved for them. I couldn’t believe it — it was so dream-like — but I had no choice, except to ‘just go with the flow’!

Dr. Anand also invited me to join him and other professors at a celebratory dinner at his house that evening. I reluctantly agreed and, equally reluctantly, joined the event as planned — but I must admit that, throughout the evening, I felt that in a crowd of so many well-placed dignitaries I was a lone youngster who was ‘every bit a misfit’.

In any case, it was towards the end of that dinner that Dr. Auluck asked me as to what my plans were after I obtain my Master’s degree at Hoshiarpur. I said, “I am very much interested in going for a PhD in Physics”, at which he asked, “what kind of Physics”? I said, “Theoretical Physics”. He said, “in that case, come to Delhi”. I said, “sure — so long as I can get a scholarship”. He said, “no problem there, I’ll talk to Professor Kothari about that”!

Next day, I met Dr. Auluck in the department to assure myself that things were indeed the way I had heard them. I told him how glad I was at our conversation the previous evening and asked him, “what kind of Theoretical Physics will I be doing at Delhi”? He said, “Statistical Thermodynamics”. I asked him if he could suggest some books on that subject, which I might start reading right away. He said, “for the time being, just start with Schrodinger’s book of the same title”. I thanked him and went straight to the college library — lo and behold, a copy of that book was indeed there. I lost no time in getting it issued to me there and then, and started reading it with rustic zeal.

Little did I know that, one day, I myself will be writing a book on the same subject that will go through three editions (1972, 1996, 2011) and will continue to be a hot favorite among graduate students all over the world decade after decade!

A ‘lasting outcome’ of my Hoshiarpur days

I passed my BSc Honours School exam in 1953 and my M.Sc. Honours School exam in 1954, both with a ‘First Class First’ standing. Not surprisingly, during my last year of  school, namely 1953-54, I was appointed a student demonstrator to look after the Physics subsidiary lab for the second-year Chemistry Honours School students. This was a very lucky appointment for me — not only because it made my last year of studies tuition-free but also because the most beautiful student of that class eventually became my life-partner!

The name of that student was Raj Gulati; she hailed from Amritsar and, in her Physics lab, she worked in tandem with another girl named Kamla Goyal (who hailed from Moga). I supervised their lab only once a week but the fact remains that I always looked forward to being there on time and spending some (uplifting) moments with those girls — especially with the ‘’one from Amritsar”! It is quite possible, even plausible, that during that year Raj and I developed some sort of a liking for one another but, contrary to most people’s surmise, there was nothing going on between us —– at least, not yet.

The way Raj and I got linked up was nothing short of SERENDIPITY! After obtaining my Master’s degree at Hoshiarpur, I moved to the University of Delhi where, at the behest of Professors Auluck and Kothari, I started pursuing graduate studies in Statistical Physics. My old friend, Sham Lal Mallick (who had been my room-mate all my years at Hoshiarpur) had also moved to Delhi to work with Professor Kichlu and was now my hostel-mate.

One day, in August 1955, Sham and I went to the area surrounding Rajpath — the pathway that connects the Rashtrapati Bhavan with the India Gate — and somehow felt an urge to take a boat-ride in the canal that runs parallel to Rajpath. Unfortunately, we were too late, for the last boat of the day had just been released and was about to depart, leaving Sham and me unhinged.

Miraculously enough, this last boat of the day had been rented by Raj Gulati’s family and, while Sham and I were standing there in a state of despair, Raj noticed our plight, got out of the boat, walked over to us and (after a brief courteous greeting) suggested that we could ride with them, if we so wished. We readily agreed, boarded the boat, went through some introductions and settled down to enjoy the ride — with the added bonus that, throughout the ride, the “girl from Amritsar” sat knee-to-knee with the “boy from Ramdas”!

At the end of the ride, I thanked Raj for her kindness towards me and my friend Sham, and suggested to her that, whenever she happened to be in Delhi, she should feel free to come over to the University of Delhi where I would love to show her around. She said, she would — and she did. This led to some correspondence between us (and some meetings in between) until, in February 1957, we got engaged and, in February 1958, we got married.

Epilogue

I spent a period of ten years, 1954-64, at the University of Delhi — earning my Ph.D. in 1957, joining the Department of Physics as a lecturer in 1958, becoming a Reader in 1961, writing a book on “The Theory of Relativity” in 1963 (which was re-published by the Pergamon Press in 1974 and re-printed by the Dover Publications in 2003). In 1964, I left the University of Delhi to go to Canada where I was invited to be a ‘Visiting Professor’ at the McMaster University, Hamilton, and later at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.

In June 1966, when I was in Edmonton, I received a letter from the Panjab University — which by then had moved to Chandigarh — offering me the position of a ‘Professor of Theoretical Physics’. I accepted the offer gladly but, due to some prior commitments, I could not join that post until December 1967.

When I got back to Chandigarh, I was astonished to see that the Physics Department (over the period 1954-67) had expanded so much that it had gone from having one Professor to three, from one or two Readers to seven or eight (including my old classmates from Hoshiarpur, Ram Krishan Bansal and Inder Sain Mitra), and from four or five Lecturers to seven or eight!

While at Chandigarh, I continued to work on the manuscript of my book on ‘Statistical Mechanics’, which I had started writing in Edmonton at the behest of Professor D. ter Haar of Oxford. It was now very helpful to me to have graduate students like Surjit Singh, Ravindar Bansal and Vishwa Mittar, who were not only devoted to learning the subject of Statistical Physics in depth, but were also happy to go through my manuscript word for word. This resulted in a number of suggestions on their part that helped me un-kink the exposition of my text.

In September 1969, for various reasons, I decided to go back to Canada. In preparation of that, I saw to it that my graduate students were placed under the care of competent theorists who would provide them with the expert supervision they deserved. In consequence, S.S. went to Pittsburgh to work with David Jasnow, R.B. to Delhi to work with Lakshman Singh Kothari and V.M. to Roorkee to work with Sat Pal Puri.

When I left Panjab University in 1969, I left with the firm hope that, over the years, my alma mater will continue to progress by leaps and bounds.