Ralph Abraham: India, February 8 -- 23, 2014

A long story, February 13

I did not really want to go back to the coference today, but wanted to respect her, so I decided I would go for that one short session, then leave. Susmita called the hotel in early am to remind me, so I went out at 9 am to hail a taxi.

Yesterday the bell captain helped me get a taxi and it was a good experience. It cost 70 Rupees (about one dollar), and took about 25 minutes to reach Calcutta University, or CU. I held up my hand outside the hotel about 5 minutes, then a taxi stopped. I could not get the driver to understand where I wanted to go, but a hotel security guy helped me out, so off we went. In only 15 minutes we arrived at the CU front gate. I was 45 minutes early so I went for a walk, then chaired the session There were two talks, both quite good.

Then I left to take a taxi home. It was difficult to get a taxi in the big road outside the CU but finally one stopped. At first the driver could not understand my destination (or pretended more likely) then said ok, and asked for 500 Rupeees! I jumped out of the taxi and walked quickly back inside the campus, trying to calm down. I started walking back to the conference auditorium, wondering how I could back to my hotel.

As I turned around the corner of a building, I literally ran into Ashoke Thakur. We were both struck dumb. I was thinking he would help me get home, while he was just about to call me to discuss our project to get a Fulbright grant to bring me back to Kolkata next year.

Just as we stood there talking about this grant plan, the professor (his former student) who had agreed to manage the formal application process walked up, on the way to his office in the biophysics and molecular biology (BMB) deptartment, the same from which Ashoke had retired to become head of the West Bengal University of Technology (WBUT), which had hosted my earlier Fulbright grant in Kolkata in 2006.

The BMB department is right next door to the auditorium in which i had just chaired the session of the conference. Another top professor of the department was summoned, and the four of us had an impromptu meeting on the grant idea. Ashoke subtly put forward a grand scheme that they jumped on, to create a Kolkata center of complex systems in biology and economics.

Then Ashoke took me back to my hotel in a taxi ride I will never forget, through all the oldest little alleys in Kolkata, which he has haunted since childhood. Finally at the hotel around 1:30 pm I asked him in for a coffee. No sooner had we sat down in the coffee shop then Kousik came up to us, the professor from the IIMK who has invited me there next week. He is in Kolkata for a few days to conduct interviews of student applicants to the IIMK, along with his collegue, Kausik, who is an econophysics professor at the IIMK. They happen to be staying at my hotel.

So Kousik, Kausic, Ashoke, and I had another impromptu session on the Fulbright grant and center for complex systems as a joint venture of Kolkata and Kozhikode over coffee in my hotel

It seemed like magic, a divine plan involving six people and multiple serendips.