He had a seminar class at the campus, and he would drive from the observatory/ home to teach to that class early in the morning in Chicago winter. That class had only two students – from China – they both went to win Nobel Prizes themselves.

And this I believe is the difference between Indians and Chinese (culled from my own long, direct and sometimes painful experiences with them in a variety of situations and settings). Chinese professors (or bosses) or lab directors hire Chinese only. Sometimes a whitey or two is thrown in. Now Indian professors take on students of many nationalities–including the Chinese. Of course, as with all generalizations, there will be exceptions. But with my statistically valid sample size, I am comfortable making this statement. The Chinese I have noticed, only encourage, mentor and give freely to their own.

Check out for instance this department at UCLA: http://directory.stat.ucla.edu/

Ker-Chau Li (100% Chinese lab) Yingnian Wu (ditto–co-adivises one Caucasian) Hongquan Xu (China only) Song-chun Zhu (gets Chinese students every year– also has a few Caucasians because he is high profile–told an Indian student (non-muslim) he didn’t want muslims in his lab) Qing Zhou (the new hire– now with so many Chinese professors, the new hires are bound to be Chinese)

There is only that much xenophobia I will put up with. These days I have a 100% boycott on the Chinese. And since it is not so easy to manage that in Califorina, I have moved to France.

nice name…is that reffering to that song by Radiohead?

Obvs. will now pick it up and read just because it’s been nominated, but have to see I’m wroting for Llyod Jones’s Mister Pip! People go out and read it! There hasn’t been a NZ winner sice 1988′s The Bone People, aka the most unreadable book ever.

The Fundamentalist guy will have many an Outlook article written about his ‘diasporic’ writings and probably a Mira Nair movie made from the book…he’ll live without the Booker.

1. It is short.
2. The narrator’s voice (though anachronistic) and style of narration is fairly decent.

If the story were not complete fiction, with some fair bit of editing, this could have been shrunk into a Time magazine article.

IMHO, this is a very ordinary book with precious little up for serious discussion, and certainly is a ridiculous title to be considered for a Booker. Now they can always give it away to whoever they like, but it will be a slap to other notable Booker-ees such as Rushdie, Naipaul and other brown writers.

In later life, Chandra did take on African graduate students – including a student from Nigeria he specifically recalls in the Wali book, who was subsequently quite active in relativity research. This was quite pioneering in its own way. So I’m pretty sure his own experience sensitized him considerably, and he did his bit, or more than a little bit, against racial prejudice, which his own stunning excellence did a lot by itself to help dissipate.

If you had read anything about Chandra, he was known for his decency, tough-mindedness, and love for Shakespeare and English literature. He would spend enormous time with his students.

He had a seminar class at the campus, and he would drive from the observatory/ home to teach to that class early in the morning in Chicago winter. That class had only two students – from China – they both went to win Nobel Prizes themselves.

He had an Indian student from whom he found out Himachal Pradesh University (Simla) did not have the most of the journals. He donated all his journal collection to the HP University.

He would work on a topic for 5-10 years, and create a magnus opus on that topic – be it black holes, hydrodynamics – 6 books on different topics, and they are considered classics in their topics.

He spent quite a few time at IISc (Bangalore) founded by his own uncle, CV Raman.

When he first arrived at the University of Chicago, the Dean of the Physics Department very openly stated he had no intention of working with a black scientist. He thought the very idea preposterous.

How very Indian!

Not a statement about Chandrashekar, but you’ve never heard anybody Indian complain about having to work with a black person?