On my last day in Bangalore, December 24, I visited the personal library of Pradeep Rawat, whose education was interrupted when he was jailed as an opponent of Indira Gandhi’s suspension of law during the 1975-1977 “Emergency.” He later served as a member of the Indian Parliament and is now retired to spend his time spreading knowledge of biology. A biological autodidact, Rawat has a tremendous love of evolution in particular and a strong desire to disseminate knowledge about the field throughout India. To that end he not only publishes books on evolution and biology (he’s translating WEIT into Marathi, the local language), but also gives many lectures to children in local secondary schools.
Pradeep has also created a 6,000-book library, mostly on evolution, which he’s turned into a non-profit facility giving free access to anybody who wants to go to the quiet facility and read. I met Pradeep about a year ago when he visited Chicago, where his daughter and son-in-law lived, and I gave him a big bag of books from the evolution library I’d inherited from Lynn Throckmorton and the ecologist A. E. Emerson. (He usually visits the U.S. with five suitcases, all of which he fills with evolution books purchased here.) Here’s his library in Pune with Pradeep (left) and I, along with his friend, also named Pradeep (Apte).
Here we are posing in front of a unique portrait of Darwin (see below); Pradeep has two copies of WEIT in the library.
As the artistic centerpiece of his library, Pradeep commissioned this portrait of Darwin—made entirely out of different colored wheatstraw! There is no pigment in this portrait, which took an artist six months to make. And he promised to have a smaller version made for me! I suspect there is no portrait of Darwin anything like this.
After the library visit, Pradeep’s large extended family, as well as my wonderful host L. S. Shashidhara of IISER Pune (known to all as “Shashi”) repaired to a famous Muslim restaurant for a feast of grilled meats. We ate on the lawn of the owner (a friend of Pradeep’s family), and they set up an outside grill to cook chicken, mutton, and lamb for us.
This is the restaurant, but the owner’s real love is catering. I asked him what was the largest party he ever catered, and he told me that, for a wedding, it was SIXTEEN THOUSAND PEOPLE. (Yes, Indian weddings can be that large!) For another gathering, he cooked for FORTY THOUSAND PEOPLE. His restaurant itself is rather small but locally famous.
I photographed the preparations for the Christmas feast the next day.
A man making the dough for tandoori roti.
Various organs bits which I couldn’t identify.
A man making carrot halvah (gajaar ka halva) in the back; a dish I once made and never will again, as it requires constantly stirring the carrot/sugar/spice mixture for hours. It is one of my favorite Indian desserts. If you ever see it, get it.
A group of women doing nothing but peeling garlic and separating the cloves from the chaff:
Kebabs waiting to be cooked. First there were appetizers (grilled meats and prawns) served for an hour with beer (I don’t drink much in India), and only then, when I was full, did the main courses come: tandoori chicken in gravy, and mutton in a special sauce, all served with grilled breads (no photos of the main courses):
A marinated leg of lamb about to be grilled for us:
The grill on the lawn:
The owner makes a special kulfi (Indian ice cream) for dessert, covered with sweet rose jam and noodles. Splendid!
And as my birthday was coming up, but I wouldn’t be in Pune, they even provided me with a special birthday cake. That was so sweet!:
Some of my friends on the lawn where we dined. Left to right: Pradeep Rawat, the restaurant owner (I forgot his name), me, and Sashi:
To those Pecksniffs who think I always eat this way, here’s the simple but delicious lunch I had at the Nehru Centre’s canteen (below) yesterday. It’s a South Indian vegetarian meal:
Two days ago I arrived in Bengaluru (Bangalore), where I gave one talk yesterday (a research talk) and will give another later today on “Ways of knowing.” The campus where I spoke, The Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, is lovely with beautiful landscaping, and my hosts very nice (and the students, like most I’ve met, are smart and ambitious). More photos from Bangalore soon, including some great and unusual noms.
Last night, on our way to another restaurant whose documentation is in the offing, we heard thousands of mynah birds settling for the evening in the trees on campus. They made a gorgeous racket, but nobody is sure why mynahs (like starlings in winter) form these mass roosts.
Tomorrow I’m up early to fly to Trivandrum, the last leg of my trip before I return to Delhi to give one talk and to visit friends and do sightseeing.
