In remembrance of Prof R Balasubramaniam (Bala) : A Decennial Tribute to a beloved friend.

In remembrance of Prof R Balasubramaniam (Bala) : A Decennial Tribute to a beloved friend.

A decade ago, on Wednesday, the 9th of December 2009, in the wee hours (2.20 AM) of that fateful early morning, the uncertainty of life played out its role from the hands of the sutradhar of human destiny, resulting in the almighty taking into her fold - the heavenly abode - one of the finest of scientists, academician and an extraordinary archeo-metallurgist - Professor R Balasubramaniam. Around 9 AM in the morning of that fateful day - 9th December, 2009 - I received a forwarded email from Prof Sharada Srinivasan, which she had received from Prof Bikramjit Basu, then Associate Professor and P K Kelkar Research Fellow at the Metallurgical department at IIT Kanpur, confirming the inevitable passing away of our beloved Bala, who had been ailing for quite some time suffering from jaw cancer. He was constantly suffering from breathlessness for more than a week and the end came due to hypoxia. Prof Bala was cremated at the Bhairon Ghat in Varanasi, and his ashes were confined to the holy Ganga on Friday the 11th of December. 

With his untimely demise, at an young age of 47 years and 8 months, Prof Balasubramaniam (known simply as Bala) has left behind a legacy of outstanding achievements, which will ever be remembered not just by his well-wishers,   friends, relatives, students and colleagues spread across India and abroad, but also by the entire nation, whose metallurgical Heritage he researched and documented for posterity. At the time of his untimely death, Prof R Bala was serving as an illustrious faculty (Professor) at IIT Kanpur. Prof Bala’s contributions in the field of archeo-metallurgy are now legendary, which  are evidenced from his innumerable research papers, books and publications, monumental findings and new insights into the Delhi Iron Pillar and so also his extraordinary Saga of Indian Cannons.  I have extensively referred to these and several of his other papers published in the Indian Journal of History of Science (an INSA publication), while curating exhibitions on Our Science and Technology Heritage, which are now on display at the Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai, National Science Centre, Delhi and Regional Science Centre Dharwad, a glimpse of which are included in the images accompanying this tributary eulogy for Prof Bala on the tenth anniversary of his journey to the heavenly abode. His comprehensive research findings on the mystery of the ‘Rustless Wonder’ - The Delhi Iron Pillar -, which had eluded the scientific community researching the study of early metallurgy in India, will eternally remain etched in the annals of history of Indian science.  Prof Bala continued to be active researching and promulgating the metallurgical heritage of India, until his last. 

I was one of those professionals from the field of museums, who was constantly in touch with Prof Bala for his advice and support. His overwhelming support in the curation and development of Our Science and Technology Heritage galleries at Mumbai and Delhi and Dharwad, are there for everyone to see. Prof Bala was the darling of the art, history, archeology and museum professionals. He was always there to provide scientific studies and understanding on the metallurgical art and antiquity objects, which are in proud possession of most museums across India. Most unfortunately museum professionals and scientists in India are not known for cooperating and almost always work in their respective silos and there is very limited interaction between the two of them. Prof Bala was however an exception. He worked very freely with the art, archeology and museum professionals and students and derived as much pleasure working with them as he derived working with his tribes - the scientists and academicians. He collaborated with several of the art, archeology and museum professionals and helped them study their metallurgical antiquity objects in the best possible scientific manner. Prof Bala made major contributions in the research and study of some of the monumental metallurgical edifices in India. His laboratory in IIT Kanpur, almost always had a couple of antiquity objects from different museums for study. 

Prof. Balasubramaniam, born in Salem, Tamil Nadu, on 15th April, 1961, (the very year I was born, just 35 days later) completed his matriculation from the Holy Cross Matriculation School. He was selected by the prestigious Banaras Hindu University (Institute of Technology) for pursuing his engineering bachelors degree in Metallurgy. Bala was a brilliant student and completed his metallurgical engineering degree in 1984 winning the Gold medal. In recognition of his all round performance as an undergraduate student, Bala was awarded the Gandhy Gold medal from Department of Metallurgical Engineering, BHU as well as Vishwa Bharathi Award from the Indian Institute of Metals. It was in this very Institute that the doyen of Indian metallurgy, Prof Anantharaman - who was called Guru ji by Prof Bala - taught metallurgy and therefore it is no wonder that the legendary works of Anantharaman, in fields of ancient metallurgy of India, rubbed onto Bala in the early phase of his professional career, which he carried forward all through his career and took it to newer heights. Post his graduation at the BHU, Bala went to the United Staes for his higher studies at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, New York, from where he received his doctorate in Materials Engineering in 1990. For a brief period he worked at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before deciding to head back to his mother land. 

On his return to India he was appointed as the Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, which he joined in July 1990. There was no looking back from this institute for Prof Bala. He continued to serve at IIT Kanpur until his last breath. He became an associate professor in 1997 and subsequently professor in December 2001. Just three months before his untimely demise, Prof Bala was appointed to the newly established B B Lal Chair in September 2009. Professor Bala was conferred with many awards and fellowships primary among them include;  election as a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Kolkata in 2002, the Young Scientist award from the Indian National Science Academy in 1993, the Material Research Society of India medal and Metallurgist of the year award from the Indian Institute of Metals, in 1999, the Shershtha prize in history from the Marathi Sahitya Parishad in 2008, which was awarded to him in recognition of his outstanding contributions in the study of metallurgical past. He also received the Distinguished Educator award from the Indian Institute of Metals in 2009, the year he bid good bye to this world. Prof Balasubramaniam also  served on the editorial board of a number of national and international academic journals and periodicals. He also was on the editorial board of the Indian Journal of History of Science since 2004.

My first acquaintance with Prof Bala came in the beginning of this millennium. I was assigned a task of curating a new exhibition “Our Technology Heritage” at NSC Mumbai. During the course of my initial study on the subject, I read several of the publications of Prof Balasubramaniam and decided to seek his advice and guidance in the development of this exhibition. I had several email and telephone discussions with him on the subject. Courtesy his guidance, I was also able to reach and contact several other subject experts in this field, who not only guided and supported me for the exhibitions but most of whom have continued to be my friends even today primary among them include Prof Ranganathan, Sharada Srinivasan, Vibha Tripathi, Paul Craddock, Michel Danino, R S Bisht, Mark Kenoyer,  V S Shinde, Alok Kanungo and others. 

Some time in the year 2004, Prof Bala came to our centre in Mumbai for discussion on the exhibition and we used this opportunity to arrange his lecture for school students. This is one moment that has remained etched in the memory of most of us at this centre. On the day of lecture, I observed that Prof Bala’s trouser pockets were bulging with some thing inside. I overlooked it and walked him straight to the auditorium, which was jam packed with almost 300 students in attendance, which far exceeded our capacity. After the customary introduction Prof Bala started his lecture on the Delhi Iron Pillar. His inimitable ebullience with which he started his lecture drew rapt attention of the students that is some thing that most of my colleagues continue to remember even today. To keep his lecture lively and interactive, he was constantly interacting with students and whoever responded to his questions, irrespective of their answers being right or wrong, received special gifts, chocolates which he had stacked in his pockets. Chocolates came flying from his pocket left right and centre all through the lecture with students enjoying every moment of his outstanding lecture. By the time he hesitatingly ended his lecture which stretched to 90 minutes,  far beyond the scheduled 45 minutes initially planned, he must have thrown not less than 60 cadbury eclairs chocolates to an extraordinary bemusement of the students.

There was a thunderous applause from students, which made Prof Bala quite emotional. He said, he was not sure if he could keep his school student audience  engaged in a metallurgical subject, which he thought may not interest them. But then he was proved wrong and he was overwhelmingly happy to see standing ovation that he got from his young audience. Prof Bala also delivered lectures at the Regional Science Centre, Lucknow and National Science Centre, Delhi entertaining and educating his young audience in his inimitable style with chocolate missiles thrown at regular intervals to an extraordinary amusement for students. Prof Bala was also one of the speakers during “Our S&T Heritage Lecture Series”, which I had organised at the National Science Centre, Delhi immediately after our exhibition was opened in early 2009. The other speakers in this Heritage lecture series included Prof Mark Kenoyer (USA) Dr Bisht, Dr Paul Craddock (UK), Prof Dinesh Singh, Prof Irfan Habib. It was Bala who helped me in convincing Mark Kenoyer and Paul Craddock to be part of this lecture series, travelling to India on some other engagements and not charging us for their travel. The Heritage lecture series were highly appreciated and it is events and programs like the Heritage Lecture series that helped the National Science Centre, Delhi  to scale new heights, which it continues to do even today under the leadership my friend and colleague Director Ram Sarma and his dedicated team. 

One India One People (OIOP) is a unique, informative, well-researched, monthly magazine, published from Mumbai. The magazine documents and highlights the cultural legacy of India and the USP of the magazine are its two popular sections Know India Better and Great Indians. Know India Better takes readers on a discovery of India. It covers Indian places of interests, people, cultures, etc., in-depth to showcase the hidden treasures of our country. I had published an article  in this magazine and in one of my interactions with the editor, I had briefed him about the monumental works done by Prof Bala on the Delhi Iron Pillar and had asked them to write to Bala to contribute an article on the DIP for their Know India Better section. They were so overwhelmingly happy to write to Prof Bala. I also spoke to Bala and requested him to spare his time to write for the magazine knowing well it’s vast reach. Bala asked for back issues of the magazine before deciding to consider their request and seeing the quality of the magazine and its reach he agreed to write for them. In his research style Prof Bala sent an article to them and the editors wrote back requesting him to please make it readable to the general audience and not research scholars. Bala was then tied up with an international conference that he was to organise and did not have time to relook into his article. But then the editors of the OIOP were insistent that I some how convince Bala to redraft the article. Since he was very busy with the conference and his other research he could not spare time for this. I therefore suggested to him that I will redraft his article to suit the general readers and send it to him for his final approval. He agreed and I redrafted the article to suit the general readers and sent the draft to Bala. He was overwhelmingly happy to see his, kind of a research, article redrafted to appeal to general audience, which he immediately approved and sent it to the editor of OIOP. 

But then the story does not end here. In his most gracious and inimitable style, Bala included my name as the coauthor and sent his article to the OIOP editor. All I had done was a mere redrafting of his article and for this most menial job, Bala the extraordinary was so very gracious and extraordinarily kind to include my name as a coauthor. This is one article, which I continue to treasure the most. There was more surprise for me. The OIOP has a policy to pay fairly decent honorarium for the authors who contribute to the Know India Better series and accordingly sent a Cheque for Rs. 6000 to Prof Bala, with an intimation to me. There was more kindness from Bala which followed. He wrote out a cheque for Rs 3000 and sent it to me. Despite my insistence that I have only redrafted his article to suit to the general readers he insisted that my contribution to the article is equal and that I deserve 50% of the honorarium. I could not argue further but then I did not deposit the cheque which he wrote for me and this signed uncashed cheque of Bala is my treasure. Bala’s kind gesture of using my name as a coauthor shows his extraordinary selfless spirit of fraternity and brotherhood so hard to find by in modern society. 

The article was published in May 2006 issue of OIOP, but then Prof Bala was very livid with the editors. They had changed the title of the article and made it ‘Rustless Wonder’, the title which is associated with Prof Anantharaman. Bala wrote; ‘I am terribly unhappy with the title “RUSTLESS WONDER” because this is the title of the book by my respected guruji Professor T.R. Anantharaman, who has also written a book on the Iron Pillar with a similar title. Therefore, kindly

let me have it in writing that I did not suggest this title and that this

was provided by your team without my prior consent’. Such was his impeccable honesty. He could have easily overlooked this episode but then he ensured that the editors wrote a personal apology letter to him and also issued a disclaimer that the title of the article is theirs. 

Prof Bala was working on his monumental book ‘The Saga of Indian Cannons’ and he was very particular of the high resolution images which we anted to use for his book. One day I received a mail from Bala reminding me of my north Karnataka roots and asked me if I can be of help to him in getting photographs (very high resolution) of the Cannons from Gulbarga, Bijapur and Bidar. It indeed was my pleasure to be of some assistance to him since it was mostly he who had helped me and there was nothing that I had done for him. Fortunately I had good friends in all these three places who could help me photograph these Cannons. But then the perfectionist that Bala is, he sent me the directions on how to photograph these Cannons, which I could manage courtesy my friends from these three cities. For this smallest of the assistance that I rendered to Prof Bala, he has credited me in the preface to the The Saga of Indian Cannons book, which further exemplifies his selfless spirit of fraternity and brotherhood.

It is very well known that Professor Balasubramaniam was a prolific researcher and that he has to his credit more than 250 research papers in refereed journals of repute and 10 books including the two famous ones, “The Saga of Indian Cannons" and 'Story of Delhi Iron Pillar". His research on the corrosion resistance of Delhi’s iron pillar has attracted worldwide attention. His academics apart, Bala was also an excellent drummer, western classical guitarist and an enthusiastic sportsman and die hard cricket fan. During the course of our long friendship, academics apart, we have had several discussions on his passion for cricket, which he not only avidly followed but also played a lot of it as a wicket keeper, middle order batsman and also an opening bowler. While mantling an additional responsibility of Director of NGMA, Mumbai, I was tasked to develop a Cricket exhibition (India - South Africa) for the Festival of India in South Africa in the year 2014. I was helped by two experts in this exhibition, which went on to be highly appreciated. The result was that I was branded a cricket man and the Ministry tasked me with two more cricket exhibitions one for Australia and other for England, which I independently curated and presented in the respective countries in 2016 and 2017. While curating these exhibitions, I was constantly reminded of Bala’s passion for this game and I am sure he would have loved to read my exhibition catalogue, which are available for free download on our website. Speaking of cricket, the greatest of umpires who govern our lives - the almighty - gave his decision and declared our beloved Bala out, without any one appealing for it, what a harsh decision it has been. But then the heavenly abode was feeling incomplete without his early presence and so be it.

Millions of men and women come and go but only few people leave their impression behind and among those few Bala is one who has left his indelible mark and an impression as a par excellence metallurgist who has made profound contributions to archaeometallurgy in India. While we mourn the tenth year of the passing away of our dear Bala, I am certain that there has been a great rejoicing in the heavenly abode, which is now home to him for the past ten years.

Rest in Peace my dear Bala