IUCAA - Khagol # 129 - Oct 2022 - English

| KHAG L | No. 129 - OCTOBER 2022 | 06 Paddy: The inspiration When I first visited IUCAA and interacted with students it was clearly evident that most of them, interested in doing theory physics, were attracted to IUCAA because of Paddy. The reason behind this became clearly evident when I attended few of his lectures. Paddy's lectures were crisp and clear thanks to his deep understanding and clearmathematical presentations. My personal level interactions with Paddy started after I joined IUCAA as a PDFmainly through his student Sriramkumar. Once in a while he used to put an astronomy paper published in Nature or PRL with a note (with his green ink pen) saying review this paper this Friday. Then my next few days were spent in learning that subject and preparing the review of the paper. On one occasion he came to my office and told me to prepare a review on “X-ray properties of AGNs” in a set of two lectures to be presented in a conference to be held in “Orange County, Coorg” in one week's time. This was because he was organising a meeting on high energy astrophysics and the person who was supposed give this talk withdrew from this meeting. Since it was told by Paddy to prepare this talk, no way R. Srianand I could say NO even when I had no clue about the subject. I still remember working day and night to get this review talk done on time. The talk went well and based on subsequent discussions, I ended up writing some papers on this subject. I amnarrating this story because Paddy made people do things that are well outside their comfort zone. One of the things Paddy used to tell me in my earlier days is “You are writing papers but when are you going to do physics?”. While I was always convinced about what I am doing, Paddy's words set a high bench mark on what one can do. He stopped saying this only after we wrote a couple of papers and had a very successful joint INDO-FRENCH project. My interaction with Paddy initiated me into the modelling of intergalacticmedium. At a personal level, he used to visit my flat to have coffee. In particular he used to catch hold of some of us and have a gossip session late in the night (after submitting his latest paper!). Gossips from his TIFR days, his uncle's stories and Tamil cinema and story books. He also used to take us to restaurants very often. Two things I remember from these trips. (i) he was the first person to jump in to the auto when we could find the first one and (ii) only person in the history who has eaten “vegetable au gratin” and “uttapam” together. He was trying to convince us that this combination is really good. To prove his point (being a good theoretical physicist) he insisted on ordering this combination every time we went toPune coffee house inCamp! Paddy's family used to visit abroad for a couple of months every year during summer. At that time some of us used to sleep in their house with his parents. They used to be very proud of Paddy. In particular, his mother was extremely sharp and to the point in any conversation. No guess for from where Paddy got his sharp brain and tongue. Those were very interesting days. As time progressed our interactions were mainly on IUCAA issues (over long phone calls) and occasional gossip in any one of the corners of Akashganga housing colony. No one expected him to leave us so soon. I will definitely miss his provocations, Tamil banters and guidance. However, I have no doubts that he is (and will be) an inspiration for a lot of young people through his books, research papers and lectures.