Sanctuary | People
I was fortunate enough to know him
in my time of despair. Despite warnings
from my father and other well wishers,
I chose to study Zoology honours for
graduation. Before the fi rst year had
gone by, I realised that the course was
more about dead, deformed animals in
formalin than living ones. I was bored,
thanks to the primitive syllabus and
anoetic tradition of teaching. I stopped
going to college and was lost. It was the
end of 1970s.
This is when I met Professor
R. L. Brahmachary (better known as
RLB among his students), who gave
me access to the greater academic
universe of biology to which he
belonged. I was fortunate enough to
fi nd him along with his brother Gopal,
living in a rented fl at in a house owned
by the family of Suvrendu Sengupta, a
zoology batchmate, where members of
the Dum Dum Science Club met every
weekend. Their activities included small
surveys and projects of social relevance
involving school and college kids. RLB
was their friend, philosopher and guide.
Recognising my passion for the subject
and my need for an anchor, Suvrendu
and his mother, a remarkable lady,
invited me to stay with them.
RLB believed that even high school
students can and should taste the thrill
of scientifi c research. So novices like
us were allowed to enter his lab in the
embryology unit of the Indian Statistical
Institute to see the single-celled
zygote of a water snail turning into a
ball of morula and then to a blastula
under a microscope... or to learn how
chromatography separates constituent
molecules from a solution. He opened
up for us his enviable collection of
books on wildlife and natural history.
Here, I heard and read for the fi rst
time, Tinbergen, Lorenz, Jane Goodall,
Dian Fossey, Joy and George AdamsonBY SILANJAN BHATTACHARYYA
Prof. Ratan Lal Brahmachary
(1932-2018)
A brilliant man, pioneering scientist, and a beloved
teacher, Prof. Ratan Lal Brahmachary was all that and
much more. Dr. Silanjan Bhattacharyya writes about
this great mind, who took him under his aegis and put
him on the path of Nature and excellence.
SHUBHOBROTO GHOSH