Har Gobind Khorana (1922-2011)

He was a molecular biologist and an Indian- the scientist who was pointed out to us when I was doing M.Sc. He had of course won the Nobel Prize also.  The work that he did was truly pioneering.  He devised the methodology to string individual nucleotides to create an oligonucleotide. This was important because scientists were trying to figure out the genetic code. The DNA is made of four kinds of nucleotides: A, G, T, and C. Their arrangement is critical.  Three nucleotides together define one amino acid. Strings of amino acid make a protein.  The other way to think about this is that the nucleotide are alphabets.  So if you had a soup of alphabets: T, H, A, E, F, O, X, and N, this could be rearranged to say:

THE FOX ATE THE HEN

Similarly, A, G, T, and C can be arranged to make cellular sense. So for example, if ATG occurs, then it means methionine. But if is written as AGT then it means serine. This is what Khorana figured out through a series of elegant experiments. And for this he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968.

When I moved to the University of Virginia, I did my first rotation with Mark Braiman, who incidentally had done post-doctoral work with Har Gobind Khorana. By then Khorana had moved on to understanding the role of rhodopsin amongst other things. They were using vibrational spectroscopy to map the conformational changes.  It was very interesting but it was simply too much mathematics and physics for me and so even though Mark wanted me to be in his lab, I decided not to join it. I knew my limitations.

The 300 Ramayanas

Today I attended a workshop conducted by the students of the Centre for Historical Studies. It was part of their course work and they were exploring the performing arts within the context temple in South India.  One of the performance was by the International Centre for Kathakali and the artists performed Keechaka Vadham. The performance simply mind blowing.  I am not going to review the performance but talk about something quite different.

On the face of it the death of Keechaka is a simple story in Mahabharata. Keechaka, the brother of Sudeshana, the Queen of Viratnagar, lusts for Draupadi. Draupadi seeks Bhima's help and Bhima promptly kills Keechaka. I know the story and I have read it many times. Yet during the performance I was completely engrossed in the story, waiting with bated breath to see what was going to happen next. The kudos is to the artists for ensuring that the audience is completely absorbed with the story. But more than that, it is the license granted by the story to interpret it as they wish, to portray the characters in their own way. Which essentially meant that the characters now inhabit a space within Kerala. So the behaviour, the way the characters behave now takes the Malayali hue.

And that then leads to me to current controversy of A.K. Ramanujan's essay. After all if we want, Ramayana can be reduced down to few sentences:

'Rama, the prince of Ayodhaya, is exiled for 14 years. In exile, his wife is kidnapped. He rescues his wife, returns back home, and is crowned the king.'

Within this simple framework, people now can begin to give shape to their favourite characters. They can build up on Rama. They can give storyline to his exile. They can muse and debate upon what they did in the forest, how they lived, what kind of house they built...the list is endless.  The simple story has captured the imagination of so many people across so many nations.  There are so many versions.  And if I want I can have a version of my own.  The bottom line is that each one of us ends up owning the story. This is the freedom that Ramayana and Mahabharata have granted us.

It is in this context I feel sad that Delhi University Academic Council decided to ban the essay on 300 Ramayanas. Such decisions unfortunately end up diminishing our academic programs.