THE RUSSIAN’S MIND

Prof. V. L. S. Bhimasankaram

As one in charge of the Department of Geophysics in the Osmania University, I had to do with lot of Russians, some thirty years ago. The whole thing started like this.

In 1967, when the department itself was a few months old, we had started for the first time a Post-graduate course and taken five students. As geophysics is a field subject, we needed good field instruments and reasonably equipped laboratories. We found that the few pieces of available disconnected equipment earlier ordered by non-specialists in Geophysics and obtained from UN Assistance were not at all useful for the purpose. With limited funds available for purchase of new equipment, we faced an insurmountable task of conducting practical training for the students. As a new department, we had to compete with the already well established departments in other Universities, and provide best training possible which alone would ensure employment to our students.

It was then that the rumour which was in the air for quite some time, appeared to be true. The Soviet and Indian Governments have agreed to establish four centres of higher education indifferent sciences in different parts of India, with the former’s Rupee credit and technical assistance, and our Department was chosen for establishing a Centre in Geophysics. I suspect this has nothing to do with the strength of our department or the expertise of the staff, but a political decision.

The massive assistance from the USSR, of nearly a crore of rupees for the next five years, was supposed to be in three directions. A varied number of field and laboratory equipment was to be supplied by the Russians to our Center. Soviet geophysicists were to be sent to help us develop the laboratories, to plan field training and research programs. Finally, our teachers, including the future recruits were to get training in chosen branches in the geophysical institutes in the USSR.

On the face of it, this appeared to be very welcome proposition. At first, it would solve our problem of not having good laboratory; and field equipment. Since virtually no geophysical equipment was manufactured in our country at that time (the position remains more or less the same even now), the only possibility of running a good geophysics department was to import them from abroad.

Nobody here had ever before heard of Soviet equipment and always we all looked towards the free countries for importing our equipment. That used to be the situation not only here, but also in Andhra University and some other institutions in the country where geophysics was being taught. But, practically this was not possible for any of us. Firstly, all the state universities were poor to afford huge funds for buying Western equipment or to use them.

No doubt from time to time the University Grants Commission used to sanction funds for purchase of equipment. But thanks to Government of India’s policies for conservation of foreign exchange, no University could import any equipment worth its name. Any application for import of equipment had to pass through a series of red taped bureaucrats, who not being able to judge matters on their technical merits, rejected all such requests.

One who was persistent and successful in pushing the papers from the State Chief Secretary to the Central Secretariat, found it took nearly three to four years before permission to import was granted, and later to claim customs exemption available for teaching institutions. By this time, either the equipment became obsolete or the foreign manufacturer discontinued its production.

I must however say that the position for the Central Government institutions, like CSIR laboratories was different. This added another difficulty for the Universities. The Central laboratories were flourishing well with equipment and funds and our students suffered for want of on-hand training and our research scholars for quality research. That was why most of the university teachers turned to theoretical research where no instruments would be necessary.

The position was much more serious for the Osmania University because a large CSIR laboratory with almost unlimited funds was sitting next door. As a small seedling under the wide shadow of a huge tree, we had to struggle for survival.

Some of us who were mostly interested in field and laboratory research tried to rig up some equipment indigenously, for which the expertise we had was moderate, and even then, the necessary parts and meters available locally were third rate. Thus, we wasted most of our working time in re-inventing the wheel, that ended up square-shaped.

It was against this background, that we were not averse in getting Russian equipment though we suspected they would definitely be crude, bulky and inferior to those manufactured in the West.

The second aspect of the Soviet aid was in the form of Soviet specialists to assist us in

the day to day activities connected with training of students and development of geophysical culture. Here too, we were apprehensive, for we were often told by our western colleagues that the level of Geophysics in the USSR was not up the mark. Not only that, but from the human relations angle, we were made to believe, that the Russians look grim, act reserved, and are tight lipped. With all their activities shrouded in secrecy with their sworn ambition for protecting their knowledge, it was doubtful whether they would really give us all they knew.

We were warned not to enquire about the political atmosphere in their country (which was a very sensitive issue for the visitors), nor to dwell upon the freedom we enjoy in our country in discussing any matter openly, whether it was religion or politics, or to criticise the Prime Minister or the President with no fear of repercussion. In fact, it was well known we do this too often without batting an eyelid. But we Indians have a way of getting along well with anybody - well, with almost anybody (may be with the exception of our own countrymen), particularly if they are white skinned.

I was also worried about the training aspect of our teachers in the Soviet Union. Unless one could speak and read Russian well, the contact with Russian science would be useless. That means our visiting teachers had to spend several months learning Russian, said to be a difficult language, with its gutteral sounds and complicated grammar. Also, any slight indiscretion on the part of the visiting young trainee may attract the attention of the KGB, and we may not hear about him again.

But was there a choice? I, therefore, mentally attuned myself to get the best of the bad bargain. It was also a challenge to the new department and its young staff.

Anyway, one day we got a firm communication that a one-man delegation was to visit our department for a fortnight to workout the details of this program. The delegation and I had to sit together and prepare a Project Proposal for the approval of the Governments of India and the USSR.

The day the delegation was expected to arrive in Hyderabad, I went to the airport to receive it. Three Russians arrived, and one of them introduced himself as the official from the Russian Embassy in New Delhi. He introduced to me the leader of the delegation as Prof Plusnin, Head of the Geophysical Chair of the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute. The official also told me that Plusnin was the recipient of the Order of Merit of Lenin or some such thing. Prof. Plusnin was a well-built man with an impressive face and inquisitive eyes. He was around 50 plus years of age, with plentiful whitish hair, and I instantly liked him.

The third person was an young girl, of medium height, with well done blond hair, lean, but at the same time well provided in the necessary parts of her anatomy. She looked most charming by any standards, certainly from Russian standards. We drove them to the University Guest-house, and since they expressed a desire to rest, I left them for the day, well settled in their rooms. Of course, I could very easily see that the Embassy Official wanted me out so that he could have a detailed discussion of the strategy to be adopted by the delegation and to brief Prof. Plusnin on the official exigency of seeing the project go through, possibly over a bottle of Vodka which for certain would have been brought from Russia by the delegation.

The next morning, I went to the guest house at 8 A.M. as agreed, but was surprised to learn that the Embassy official left for Delhi, apparently having fulfilled his duty of successfully briefing the delegation. I then went to the room of Prof. Plusnin and was warmly received by him.

I must admit that, that morning he was more vociferous on seeing me, in quite a contrast to his reserve, in the presence of the Embassy man at the airport and later at the guest house, the previous evening. I used the word ‘vociferous’ purposefully, for he did make lot of sounds which meant nothing to me, as he spoke in Russian. But soon he realised his mistake and brought his lady companion who I understood was the interpreter.

No doubt, the atmosphere brightened with the entry of this sprightly girl, but lo! again I understood next to nothing of what she spoke by way of translation, though I could make out that it was some sort of Hindustani. The Russians apparently, thinking that all Indian spoke Hindi, specially brought a Russian-to-Hindi interpreter.

I was later on told that they had moved earth and heaven (or some equivalent of heaven, for the Russian political philosophy did not believe in heaven) to find a Hindi interpreter just to impress us by this ‘friendly gesture’. But truth came out much later. Not that they did not know that we in South were not well-versed in the National language, but the father of this girl, being a Party leader of some stature succeeded in pushing her into the delegation and thus get her a free trip to India.

Whatever it was, the girl was at first annoyed that I could not follow Hindi, (for, she found herself useless in our work, as she was not good at English) but soon overcame the disappointment, and spent rest of the fortnight visiting and sight-seeing, for which there were plenty of interesting places in Hyderabad for a Russian girl.

I, on my part, was really worried that my visit to the guest house that morning ended in a fiasco, and was apprehensive of the outcome of our joint efforts in the next few days to plan the future of a major project, in which both parties had high stakes.

But, surprisingly, it was Plusnin who revived my lost hope when he spoke a few halting words in English by way of an apology for his inability to speak good English. We soon started our discussions in right earnest for some time in the guest room and later in the Department of Geophysics. Though he was a poor speaker of English, his comprehension of the language was surprisingly good. Belonging to the same fraternity of geophysics, each of us understood several technical words in other’s language, and thus the first day of our discussions was not unsatisfactory.

From the next day onwards, I used to collect him in the mornings in my car and bring him to the department (for the contract between Soviet and Indian Governments provided for a free transport to the visitors by the host institution, i.e., Osmania University which, however, did not bother about it, and the department had no vehicle at that time). I used to drive him back to the guest-house for lunch and then back to the department, then to the guest-house in the evenings. By the third day, I felt it would be simpler and more productive to sit in his room and go to the department only when needed, for it was only in discussions and writing the project report we were engaged in. By the same token, I felt it would give us more time, if we could work in the evenings also, and thus I ended up in inviting him for dinner almost everyday at my house, much to the chagrin of my poor lady who not knowing what type of food the Russians ate and that too in a vegetarian home like ours, ran helter skelter in and out of the kitchen, like a kitten with a burnt foot.

But it was a great relief for me that the visitor enjoyed the food my wife gave him the first day, and said he liked it very much, though I had some lingering doubt whether he said so to please her. Every day my wife made new experiments in food, not simply to exhibit her masterly culinary talents, but mostly with a genuine desire to make the guest happy and satisfied. Such experiments on foods like Punjabi ‘Chole’, Hyderabad ‘Biryani’. Bombay ‘Dhoklas’, Gujarati ‘Kachoris’, Bengali ‘Rasagullas’, Delhi ‘Alu Tikkas’ etc., which she prepared on the basis of cookery book knowledge, were very common to her even when there were no visitors and I was the only target for her innovations, though frankly, I must admit, she was a good cook and my only difficulty was I relished pure Andhra hot food and nothing else.

The visitor on the other hand appeared to like all types of food made by my wife. Not only he used to shower praise on her for her extra-ordinary talents in cooking, but he went a step further, by asking her for the recipes and noting them in his note book, for the benefit of his wife as he told my wife by way of an explanation. Having been encouraged by his accolades, my wife slowly made the food more and more spicy, in contrast to the bland food she gave him in the beginning, till the poor man was eating just the same food we Indians in different parts of the country normally partake on our homes. Thus, his visits to my house were satisfying not only to him, but to my wife and particularly, to me because on a full stomach, Plusnin’s plans for our future scientific programmes appeared to be more fulfilling.

Only when the interpreter girl joined us in the dinners was the atmosphere more surcharged. Plusnin was business-like, my better-half a tight-lipped and dutiful serving house-wife and I had to be careful not to show that I was paying too much attention to the lovely girl. But those occasions the girl joined us for dinner were rare, for she, having better ways of spending her evenings with her youthful country-men from the Russian Department of the Osmania University sightseeing or some thing else, I knew not which, was an infrequent visitor to my house and to our business meetings.

On the other front, I was happily surprised that the professor was understanding my English better and better day by, day. He explained me this unusual progress was because of his learning English for some months, while in Moscow, specially for his visit to India, and the practice of speaking with me. Anyway, he said he understood almost all I spoke, But I doubted this, for his speaking was poor. He used to drop the articles and prepositions often, used wrong verbs and mispronounced Russian versions of English nouns. Some sentences he appeared to comprehend very well, but suddenly put a blank face when I spoke relatively simple sentences. Anyway, I was careful not to use complicated sentences, spoke slowly and repeated the sentences several times to ensure that he understood them.

On my part, I developed a faculty of understanding of what he was trying to tell me. Thus, as planned, in a fortnight, we completed the report not only to our satisfaction but to the satisfaction of the University Grants Commission which was the direct link for us for providing funds to execute the project.

It was part of history that the Center of Exploration Geophysics established under the project was a success to the satisfaction of the concerned in both the collaborating countries. The Center became the largest of all geophysics teaching departments in the Country and made a mark internationally, that our Government extended the project for five more years and provided additional funds munificently, unlike to the other three institutions planned under this collaborative agreement, by the Government in the rest of the Country in other branches of science.

That was the business part of the story. On a personal front, I enjoyed operating the project and seeing the young department grow by leaps and bounds. This was no doubt mostly due to the young and intelligent staff members whom we had carefully recruited, but not the least because of the visiting Soviet scientists. During these ten years, nearly fifteen Russian Scientists visited our Center for varying periods, some of them more than once. Prof. Plusnin was with us for atleast half-a-dozen times.

We found the visitors to be very friendly, witty, and willing to help our growth with all their ability. They genuinely liked our country, its culture and its people. There were many occasions when I used to enquire, particularly of Prof. Plusnin, deeply into their system of governance, the role of the party, the human relations and liberties, etc. They used to answer all such enquiries with reasonable fairness, agreed with certain faults in their system, but tried to explain them on the basis of their chequered history, the cruelty of the earlier monarchy, poor food resources and finally on the basis of the political philosophy of their party.

I had also to go the USSR several times, though for short periods of a month or so, and I was never allowed to eat at the hotel except for breakfast, but in the homes of one or the other Russian colleagues mostly out of friendly respect for me, but definitely because they knew that I would not be able to eat their hotel food.

During my first visit to Moscow, remembering the charming young interpreter who visited us, I insisted on having an interpreter for myself, hoping either she or another girl of similar stature would be in charge of conducting me through the complicated mechanics of getting to feel the pulse and throb of their culture, if not science. They agreed, after some hesitation and discussions with their higher-ups in the party, and in a couple of days, I was woken up in the hotel room one morning by a grim-looking bearded giant of a man who spoke English that sounded like shaking of a tin container half-filled with stones. I had, later on, great difficulty in requesting my hosts to withdraw him, stating that I now found that we could manage the discussions and visits, better without an interpreter’s distortions.

As years progressed, Plusnin became a best personal friend to me and my family members that we were so unhappy, when the project ended in 1978, to realise that he would not be visiting us in years to come and there was no possibility of our going to his country just to spend some happy moments with him, since getting a visa to visit the USSR for such purposes was next to impossible.

It was after a couple of years that some Russian who was not connected with us came to me specially to convey, at the behest of Mrs. Plusnin, the sad news of the sudden demise of Plusnin some months earlier. I was shocked at first and for several days could not push away the unhappy incident out of my mind. I later became philosophical just to overcome the bad feeling. What was the meaning of my grieving over some one who was not my relative, not even my country-man. What was there that was common between us. We belonged to different religions, spoke different languages, ate different foods, wore different clothes, came from different cultures, and lived in countries with different political philosophies. Why should I grieve over some body who came from thousands of miles away whom it was difficult to meet even if he were alive?

But that was friendship, a bond between two human beings that could only be felt, not explained, not rational - a mutual feeling of each for the other, a wish to share the happy occasions with each other and a state of mind that cannot be put into words. But life goes on, each lives his or her own life however close one was to the other. This is where time erases the memories of the mind. But the mind cannot be completely won over, it cannot be suppressed fully. Memories can at best be blunted, but cannot be thrown out into oblivion. In some lone moments, the mind plays tricks with us. However much we want to forget, it takes us back, without our knowing it, to those days one spent with the other. One can only circumvent these tricks of the mind by acceeding to its wishes, by confining one-self in recalling and recollecting the happy moments one spent in each other’s company, and by not dwelling on the unhappy memories, and thus cheat the mind.

While on the topic of the tricks of mind, I wish to end this narrative with an incident that happened with Plusnin, some years ago, during one of his trips to India.

I had to go to Delhi the next day on official work in the Ministry of Education, when I received a phone call from Plusnin that he had arrived in Delhi from Moscow the previous evening and was starting for Hyderabad that evening. I thought for a few moments and felt that it would be useful for our project if he joined me in the discussions with the Ministry, the next day. Hence I suggested to him to postpone his departure by a day since I was going over to Delhi the next morning. I was not sure whether he understood me. I repeated the statement and requested him to wait for me in Delhi and to meet me in the guest house of the Indian National Science Academy where I normally stayed when in Delhi. He appeared to have agreed. But I was not sure, and again I repeated my proposition. He said ‘yes, yes’. It was then I asked him doubting if he correctly understood me, whether it was inconvenient for him to do so, and said ‘Prof. Plusnin! Do you mind? His immediate reply was, “I have no mind!”.

Finally, I understood the Russian’s mind.

Back