Detangle with Prof Somak Raychaudhury

Wonder starts with a telescope, but it takes a lifetime to turn that wonder into breakthroughs; and a new way to teach. We sit down with an astrophysicist and academic leader whose path runs from Oxford and Cambridge to NASA’s Chandra project, from mountaintop observatories to the helm of major Indian institutions. His story captures a pivotal shift: India’s rise in fundamental science, and the belief that world-class research can flourish at home in India when curiosity meets policy, funding, and shared purpose.

Our conversation moves from galaxies to classrooms, asking how to prepare students for an unknowable future. Instead of locking into a narrow track early, we explore a model that builds breadth first; critical thinking, great books, psychology, environmental science, quantitative reasoning, so learners can later choose with insight and connect ideas across fields. A standout example is a course on 'Time' taught across biology, physics, and psychology, revealing how clocks, bodies, and minds shape our daily experience as much as the age of the universe shapes our cosmic story.

We also discuss how modern research actually works: collaboration over isolation, thousand-author papers, and the pandemic’s crash course in global problem-solving. AI enters as both accelerator and a hazard, brilliant at routine tasks yet unreliable without careful prompts, verification, and ethics. The real edge for students is not speed but critical thinking: framing questions, judging sources, and knowing when to go from summaries to source texts. On the personal side, we reflect on resilience, parenting, and the small rituals that form a mental first aid kit, music, images, and simple activities that steady the mind.

If this conversation sparks new questions about learning, leadership, or how science gets done, share it with someone who is rethinking education. Subscribe for more thoughtful episodes, and leave a review to help others find the show.

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Transcript

Origins And Early Inspirations

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Daytangle, where we entangle the complexities of life one conversation at a time. I'm your host, Dr. Kinjali Gori, a psychologist and a writer. Today on Daytang, I'm joined by Professor Samarkara Chandri, an astrophysicist who has spent decades studying galaxies and the large-scale structure of the universe, and who is a deeply respected academic leader. He has led major institutions like Ayuka and Pune and is currently the Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University. Beyond the science and the titles, his work sits at the intersection of curiosity, education, and how we train young minds to think across disciplines. I'm so honoured by your presence on my show Salah. Thank you so much for joining me on D Tangle today.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Thank you for having me. I'm very honoured.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

So, Sula, let's dive in. There are so many questions that I have for you. There are so many things that I want to learn from you. I'm sure this conversation is going to take unexpected twists and turns, but let's begin.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Um, it's very difficult for me to introduce you properly because of all the things that you have done. Would you be able to take a couple of minutes and just tell us all about your education and work in a nutshell?

From Student To Global Astronomer

Leading Institutions And Big Science

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Um well, I um am an astronomer, astrophysicist. Um, and uh I came uh to this role in a in a in a quite a deliberate path. I was very interested in um the universe and the stars from a very early age. Um, promptly, probably prompted by um by Carl Sagan's Cosmos, um, which came out at a time when I was in school, and and also um uh Janet Narlikar's amazing um writing around the time in the 70s when I was in school and college. Um and and so um um I went to Prestoncy College in Kolkata, where I did physics, and uh as a result, I got in touch with quite a lot of uh prominent physicists and uh and astronomers in the country. I went to Oxford um to do a second undergraduate degree, where I formally started um learning about the tools of astrophysics, and uh um I'd already had a telescope uh and uh and but then I learned to properly look through professional telescopes, etc., uh, while I was in England. I I uh had the fortune of doing my PhD in Cambridge, um, which is one of the best astronomy places, at a time when um very prominent uh astronomers were working there, including Stephen Hawking. Um, then I uh uh you know had several positions across the world um working in various important projects. In the US, I worked on a NASA project to build a satellite called Chandra, named after the Indian astronomer Chandrashekar. Then uh um I taught at the University of Birmingham in England for uh for over a decade, uh, physics and astronomy. And slowly um realized that uh I wanted to build institutions, I um wanted to work on uh reshaping academic institutions. Um got very interested in liberal arts education, uh where you know you learn a lot of subjects together to figure out how problems, complex problems can be uh can be tackled in many ways. And so I came back to India in uh about um about 13 years ago um to rebuild my old institution, Presidency College, into uh university, 200-year-old institution. And uh I was there first deen. Um then I happened to become the um the director of India's top astronomy institution, which is in Pune, in Ayuka, as you said, uh, which uh got me involved into um quite a lot of global astronomy projects. And we can talk about them. And and uh then uh you know I came to Ashwoka University where uh we are setting up a uh a premier institution where uh again this concept of liberal arts and sciences uh is is the predominant theme so that students learn um horizontally a lot of different subjects and skills in order to become uh very uh complete uh human beings rather than be very specialized in one field from the very beginning. So that's my journey, and I'm not quite uh and so this is a very interesting mix of of research and uh in science, but also uh uh getting involved hands-on in educating young people, which I I I enjoy both both parts of it very much.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

How fascinating. I mean, when we talk about rocket science, it's actually an idiom, you know, it isn't rocket science, we say, but you've actually lived your life with it.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Yeah, I I often call myself a rocket scientist. Uh, you know, I I and I've seen rocket scientists who are not that clever. So the it and and and and of course, to be a very successful rocket scientist, you you have to be clever. So it is uh it is true, it is it is kind of a euphemism, but also uh it it what it hides underneath the word is that it is uh it is one of these things that I talked about. It it is a way of dealing with very complex problems where there isn't a single preparation that helps you do it. So a rocket scientist has to be many things at the same time. And and that is, I think, uh quite representative of what what the modern world is becoming. Uh I think uh in general, moving forward, uh young people will have to cope with a world that demands skills in many, many different areas. Absolutely. And that's what you need to build a rocket, but that's what you need to do a lot of things now.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Like we say now, the future is not just unknown, it's unknowable. The speed at which things are changing, we can't prepare for anything. We just need to be prepared to change and to adapt.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

As a researcher, I find that fascinating. I find it actually quite good because uh uh if uh we find that knowledge ends at a certain point and everything is known, which uh in the history of mankind uh people have thought from time to time that there is not much more to learn. We've learned everything, then we're out of business. And uh and I don't think we should we would get there ever. The whole point of acquiring knowledge and understanding our surroundings is to discover more questions than answers. And then you start investigating those questions, and that's what fascinates me about my uh line of work is that there is no uh place where you can sit back and think that you know you've achieved everything. Because it always leads you onto new new new pastures.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

True. So you've led so many uh institutions, you have played so many roles, you have steeped yourself in research, you have you are a teacher, you're an institutional head. So uh most of the roles that you took on, I'm sure you knew what to expect, but I'm sure there were lots of surprises along the way.

Gravitational Waves And LIGO-India

SPEAKER_01 7:34

So tell me what surprised you about which of these roles and how well, I mean, there are surprises, of course, as you say, in every um um every every field. Um as a student, um because I went into subjects that are not normally taken by people around me. Um when I was growing up, like everybody else in India, people were uh preparing for the IIT exams, and uh and there were certain fields that people got pushed into, like the professional fields. And I'm very happy that my parents did not push me into doing certain fields that were the most acceptable ones. Went into um um an area that I felt passionate about, but nobody around me was doing uh astronomy or or anything like that. And so um we I really got into pretty surprising um areas in there. Um for example, as a young astronomer, even when I was a student, I found myself traveling to uh very exotic places on earth where the world's largest telescopes are. Um telescopes need to be in places which are away from human beings, um, and uh typically on tops of mountains in arid areas where there is very little rain. So you end up in places like uh Hawaii or Chile or in the Australian desert or at the southern point of South Africa, the Cape, or on top of the Himalayan Mountains. And and so um, and I was traveling to all of these places as a young person. So that surprised me. The fact that um one could actually enjoy um all aspects of um being a researcher. Um, the the travel to exotic places, but also to know the people who um actually work with these instruments all over the world. Um you you get introduced to different cultures. I didn't expect as a scientist to um to do this because our my laboratories were in uh very interesting, uh culturally interesting places. Um then uh um as a as an educator, um I had seen my father as as an educator, as a professor in a college, and how he related to his students. Um I found that um my uh work with uh students in large uh campuses, both uh abroad in England, where I taught and in India, to be uh rewarding in many different ways. Uh as a uh as a scientist, uh one engages in the laboratory with students. Um again, being an astronomer, um, there is this uh very romantic aspect of looking at the sky together and uh and uh um and bringing a very, very foreign subject, a very um unusual subject to the students was very rewarding. But the most rewarding thing, I think, and unexpected thing happened when I became the director of Ayuka in Pune. Because soon after I became the director of Ayuka, but two weeks after I started my job, uh the first gravitational wave was discovered, um, which was uh something that was predicted by Einstein a hundred years ago, and Einstein had said nobody ever would ever be able to see one.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Wow.

Astrosat And India’s Science Rise

SPEAKER_01 11:09

And it was discovered, and that changed my life in many ways because uh we then very quickly realized that we could build a gravitational wave detector observatory in India. Um, in and so we uh together with the so-called LIGO observatories in the US, started thinking of one, and I went right up to the Prime Minister and uh and the cabinet to see whether the government could fund um something like this in India, because this was such an amazing opportunity. And we um worked with the government um and finally it is happening now after uh many years. Um we are setting up uh one of the top um scientific observatories uh in the middle of India in Maharashtra with full government support, and it has taken you know almost 10 years to get here. So um that that kind of took us by surprise. Uh the other thing that took us by surprise was around the time, the same time, India launched um through Eastro the first space telescope called Astrosat. Again, I got very, very involved with it, and uh and I've now worked very closely with Eastro on many projects which are to do with science. Before this, Eastro was uh much involved in uh various other things to do with weather, climate, communication, remote sensing. But now Eastro has become a major player in world science, as you know, the missions to the moon and Mars and various other observatories in space. And uh that was a big surprise in my professional life to be get to get involved in such uh such amazing uh world-leading work. I grew up thinking that um if you wanted to be a scientist, you had to go abroad. And all the uh the big uh opportunities in uh foremost science is is is abroad, but that's not true anymore. You can you can be in India, be a student and a scientist, and do pathbreaking, world-leading work. And and that's what I've been involved in in the last 10 years, and that's that's been uh the biggest surprise of my life, I think.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

How lovely. I have no words to even express how awesome, literally awesome this sounds, because this is what actually makes us feel like you know, there's so much to do, there's so much being done. All we need to do is live with intent and know what's happening around us. I mean, like you said, you took the road less traveled and it took you straight to space.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

I mean, how beautiful is that yes, and and I didn't know it was taking me there. That's the thing.

Students, Ambition, And Misinformation

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Amazing. Uh so you've been a mentor, like you said, to many students. Your father was a professor, he taught his students. I'm sure you have understood the mindset that has changed over the years, and not simply academically, but how do you think students are now relating to ambition, pressure, uncertainty? Do you see a shift?

A Course On Time Across Disciplines

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Um, of course, if things are shifting quite a lot. Uh, I um what has changed, I think, from the time when I was a student, and what students do now is um both the the journey and what students expect out of uh out of education. So it's what to look forward to, what lies beyond. Um I think people have a much clearer picture of um of what one expects out of education. And um I think, and also the the the the tools and the the information that's available has changed. I mean, when I was a student, I did the subject that I was doing for the love of it, but I spent most of my time finding the information that was needed. Um, search for the right textbooks. Correct. The um um because the the net was not there at that time. And I mean, you could even not uh uh I'm I'm old enough that uh during the time when I was a student, you couldn't just walk into a library and uh photocopy pages. You had to copy them down by hand. And so the way we uh acquired knowledge was very different from what the students do now. Now, knowledge uh in the form of information is available to all students. Um from the internet, from um the availability of general um information is there. But it creates it creates its own problem because there's too much information. And what the student now needs to learn is how to discern from um from good information and bad information. You need to figure out what what you need to learn and what not. Correct. Um and and as a result, as I said, the the uh whole point of life now moving forward is to make sure you have the right skills to cope with whatever your profession will be. So the way students learn now is very different from students used to learn uh, say, 50 years ago or 100 years ago. I mean, when my grandfather uh became a lawyer, um, his education essentially ended um when by the time he was 25, he'd become a barrister, and then he used that education for the rest of his life. Um, and he did not have to go back to university or to any uh any school. Um whereas now uh we cannot afford to stop learning uh because uh in our lifetime uh lots uh have changed. I mean, we uh the way we uh encounter information, we uh learn the news, and we use devices uh has changed so much in our lifetime, in our generation, with the uh computer and the internet and now mobile phones and devices. Um, and these will continue to change. I mean, we are seeing how in the last couple of years um the advent of AI has changed our lives. So I think we will have to uh have a way of education which uh is going to um uh be changing, and uh we'll have to continue uh to learn how to cope with it. Uh, and that's one of the reasons why I'm so interested in interdisciplinary and multiple um field education. Here at Ashoka University, for example, students come in and they do not uh start on a subject uh as their major or honors till the middle of their second year. Um everybody has to do um uh a bunch of courses which we call foundational courses, they have to learn critical thinking, they have to uh do subjects like uh literature and the world, they have to they have a course called Great Books, they have a course called The Principles of Science, they have a course called Quantitative Reasoning, they have to course called Mind and Behavior, which is basic psychology, they have to learn basic uh um environmental sciences, everybody has to do it. And then they decide on which subject to specialize in. And that means that they learn the uh the value of uh the breadth of education before they choose what they want to do, rather than they be pushed into a very narrow field. This I hope will encourage them to later on look out of their chosen field and see where they can make connections, which is very, very important in the ever-changing world. I think this is fundamentally different from how students used to um used to acquire knowledge uh before. Uh it is also important because the uh the information available is so varied that the focus now is to know for a student where to go for the right kind of uh information. Uh there's a lot of misinformation, there's a lot of fake news, there's a lot of uh AI-generated um things that are that are not even anywhere near real. Um and and I think when I was growing up, I did not have this problem. Uh we had standard textbooks from which uh we knew that there were encyclopedias, there were newspapers that came in the morning that were well trusted. And uh our uh choice was not as much as students have now. And it's been pretty bewildering to be a young person now to figure out how um how to navigate all this.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

I think um I think what I love best in this is what happened earlier, even when I was a child and I was studying, is that we consumed information. And now, like you said, we encounter information. Which means we have to decide whether we take it, leave it, fight it, question it. We can't simply consume it. It just explains everything. And I found it extremely, extremely intriguing, sir, when um we were talking about how the process how the concept of time was being explained at the university last time we spoke, and how time was explained from various perspectives. I would love for you to delve into that space with me.

Collaboration, COVID, And Modern Research

SPEAKER_01 20:43

So that's that's one very interesting idea um that we came up with. Um I mean, I teach a course uh in the foundations. As I said, we have students who have to take foundational courses before they specialize. In the foundations, I teach a course called Time, where we look at uh how um things change and how our concept of time is rooted in both scientific and cultural principles, um, which is very interesting because if you look at how um biologists see time, they see uh it as the basic uh underlying uh factor of change, of how species evolve over very long periods of time, but then there are short-term changes that are happening during the day. There are insects that live um only a day, but there are organisms that live hundreds of years. And and so they and and in in the genetic makeup of their um uh uh of their existence, they know how to cope with time. As an astronomer, um I've learned how um what to what to make of time in terms of how to measure time, how old the universe is. How old the earth is, these things were not known till uh in the last century. Um, even a hundred years ago, we did not know how old the earth is. And now uh things are are are making sense. And then if you bring this together, so in our course, we bring our way of measuring time, our way of perceiving time, and our way of uh defining time in scientific terms. And then the perception of time uh is uh another thing where psychology comes in, because we the way we perceive time is very psychological. Um, when we are bored, it feels like uh you know time is not passing at all. When we are very interested, time passes very fast, and and and that itself is leaded, it leads to our trying to understand the brain and how the brain perceives time. And the body perceives time in its own way because we have a body clock. We know when to sleep, uh when to eat and when to digest, etc. Um, as you can see already, what if one picks a theme like this, then um concepts from many, many different subjects come together and make you understand reality. Uh, in the previous system of education, where you picked up one subject, you would only have one aspect of this. And uh so I look at this as the famous story about the blind people and the elephant, where one tries to touch one part of the elephant and trying to understand what the elephant is like. And if you touch the ears, you you think the elephant is like a fan. If you touch the tail, you think the elephant is like a rope. But you really need for many people to um give you information, collect information together, skills from many different ways to understand what the shape of the elephant is. And uh and and time is is one such concept. There are many such concepts that one needs to learn to figure out how um how we perceive reality. Um I found it fascinating in class because what we do in class is also ask the students to uh then go and research on other aspects of time that we haven't covered in class. And they come up with very interesting ways. Um, the very and and we learn from them.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Really?

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Um so I've learned a lot from my students in in the last few years in terms of uh their experience as well.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Amazing. And this also reminds me of something an artist had told me on the podcast. He said, if you have your nose sticking to the painting, you will only see one color. The minute you step back, you'll be able to appreciate the whole painting. So, yes, art and science are not that far away. Uh so tell me on a personal note. You have spent years in research, you've also spent years teaching. There's such completely different activities. I mean, research can be lonely, it can be done alone. There are a lot of times when you have to spend time with your work by yourself, internally oriented, but with students, it's always with others. You're gaining energy, you're losing energy, you're learning, you're teaching. How different is it for you as a person to handle so many different kinds of work?

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Well, research um and and uh and and uh science can be lonely uh because uh there is one aspect of it that is introspective. That is uh um you need to think about things, and so one thinks in times of um you know isolation. But more and more learning and research in almost all subjects is now turning out to be collaborative.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Right.

AI’s Promise, Limits, And Ethics

SPEAKER_01 25:40

And and I I like that, I welcome that because it is very, very social, it's a big social activity. I'll give an example of you the world saw how we coped with COVID five years ago. And uh when we had the pandemic, which was quite a uh sudden event and an unusual event, it was heartening to see how the world came together in coping with it. And so we found that people collaborated, even though we had so many restrictions on physical uh uh interaction, um, the world came together uh in trying to find a solution to a lot of the problems that the pandemic threw to us, right? Absolutely. From uh from detecting the virus to uh vaccinating against the virus to cure, to then the long-term problems of mental health, um, of how of the extreme distress uh in hospitals. And I found that uh our my colleagues, who were essentially astrophysicists and space scientists, were working on designing ventilators, they were designing apps to figure out how the disease is spreading. We went and worked with uh um the city's uh system to figure out how to um uh restrict the spread of the disease. So this showed that um, you know, how science, in order to cope with the crises we have around us, has to come together. There is, you know, it is no longer uh the picture of uh somebody sitting in a corner of a lab mixing liquids or um you know chewing a pencil. Um uh we work in fields where there are papers that come out that have more than a thousand authors and just shows that yeah, absolutely. And in fact, the last I've seen a paper recently uh where there were 2,500 authors. So people come together from across the world to to actually work on things together. And uh I like that. And so this is, I think, uh has become uh a norm in many big fields that people know that uh individual brilliance has to be combined with um interaction with others. And this is necessary because, as I said before, most problems are now very interdisciplinary, and so it requires a bunch of skills which one person cannot have. So one Newton or one Einstein sitting somewhere trying to solve a problem is very unusual now. So, in order to deal with something, I would need a bunch of engineers, a bunch of physicists, a bunch of chemists, a bunch of biologists, and maybe a bunch of psychologists and anthropologists come together. And and and so that is happening already. So that I think is interesting. However, the the role of pure thinking has not changed. And uh one needs to have a mixture of uh introspection as well as collaboration, right? But I think both are very, very important. Both are very important.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

So which also brings me to my next thought. AI has changed the way research is done, AI has changed the way uh results are achieved. Sometimes crunching really, really large bodies of data took a lot of time, which now has completely evaporated. Now we do in seconds what earlier took years. How do you think students can upskill themselves to remain relevant in a world where research has taken on such a different shape?

SPEAKER_01 29:14

So um I think the advent of AI changes things in ways where um we are going into uncharted territory and we have to be careful. Um, it is true that um uh AI as a tool is very useful in both uh teaching, learning, and and research, but it also throws up quite a lot of um uh ethical issues, copyright issues, and interesting issues in the way we do uh research uh and teaching. So uh I think um as uh teachers uh what we are concentrating on now is to make sure uh the students uh learn how to use AI responsibly and understand the implications of what they are doing. Because AI does now and uh uh and will continue for the foreseeable future to throw up um responses or answers uh which will be uh will have to be verified, which will have to be um uh to which have to be understood. There uh now AI is quite good at doing routine things like write code and uh um and uh you know summarizing small things, but um to actually use AI as a tool of research means that uh one needs to um often uh use it for uh very routine things. Um AI to do to take AI into uncharted territory and to do new things to create knowledge is still a very um risky business. Uh and also one needs to uh understand how to use the AI tools properly because it requires a lot of input to guide um the software into the right directions. Uh and and so uh we are back to where I where I was talking about uh learning how to um think in terms of formulating a problem uh which requires a lot of critical thinking, and also figuring out um how uh to progress into trying to solve a certain problem or to address a certain issue. Normally students don't learn this in university or in school. People um uh work in very formulae formulaic methods, and that doesn't work for AI because if uh the AI tools are not told what the problem is in a very explicit way and guided through the methodology, then um the AI tools turn up to be uh not very useful. So we are already doing this. We are um encouraging students to use AI tools rather than prevent them from doing it. But uh but making sure people understand how to, for example, assess the output of AI tools, uh, whether to believe them or not, and also how to best use them for learning purposes. Um students use AI for retrieving information, for summarizing uh books uh or papers. Uh however, uh you cannot really move away from the the actual personal involvement in trying to find what you want in a particular source or in a particular book. Um Perfect. Yeah, so AI is being used for uh for companionship and also for counseling. Uh and one needs to exercise caution in using these tools as well, because uh AI often reinforces uh what uh is being asked or being told rather than engage in a um in a dialogue uh where uh constructively a thought is processed. And as a result, uh it can lead one to um uh uh various uh uh harmful effects. Uh and so this is something that uh I think we are learning how to use these tools. Uh and uh uh for both uh for both teachers, researchers, and also students and parents, this is now very new territory, and uh and one needs to be very careful uh and make sure we use AI in a responsible and ethical manner.

Rapid Fire: Books, Films, Pet Peeves

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Perfect. So let me take you into a more personal zone now. I'm going to take you through a rapid fire round where you're not allowed to think twice. Every answer comes really quick.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Your favorite book?

SPEAKER_01 34:20

Oh, that's that's that's a hard one because uh you know there are there are lots and lots of books that one reads uh and for for different reasons. Um I think of you think of a book being um used for uh comfort, uh I would say I when I'm relaxing, I would go into P. G. Woodhouse's uh stories and novels and and read them for comfort. Uh, if one thinks about uh learning about uh the universe, I'm very much uh uh a nonfiction reader, um, and I and I read a lot about uh uh science and evolution. So Stephen J. Gould's books, for example, on evolution are are my most favorite books.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

Super. Your favorite movie character?

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Uh difficult to say. Um a favorite movie character. Um my favorite movies um are very complex uh psychological movies, but I also like uh movies that are uh very popular. My favorite director has for a long time been Akira Kurosawa. And I would say maybe my favorite movie character would be um Toshiro Mufune's character in uh in the Seventh Samurai.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

What is your biggest pet peeve?

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Grammar. I uh uh you know let's look at say uh people how people write. Um, of course, being a teacher, um a lot of uh uh common grammatical mistakes uh really irk me. For example, the use of the apostrophe in pluralizing words or uh you know the difference between it's and it is that I think would irks me most, the um the use of the apostrophe in um in writing.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Super. So one thing that you believed in but no longer do.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

That's an interesting question. I I um there are many things that I as a young person I thought um were uh very clear-cut and one-sided. And uh and there are many, many things that um were were you know without um both sides of the story. So I think um and that has changed over the years. I've started to see that uh many concepts have both sides to it, even um you know, concepts like uh um education, where um, you know, you just the acquisition of education doesn't make you uh uh a complete person. Um and and so I've seen the effects of um uh of education where uh acquisition of education doesn't make you uh an educated person, with where I thought as a young person that that there was no no uh bad side to it. Democracy I thought was something that um was unequivocally uh something that improves uh a country. I can now see that it can work both ways. And and so there are there are concepts that uh that that you start seeing the complexities of. Um and that that I find very surprising in uh in how um how just experience shows you uh how things change.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Your most prized possession.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

My most prized possession, it's I mean, I think most of them are are very personal. Um I um I think my most prized possession is my father's notebooks of um of his thoughts about uh because he was a professor of literature and he wrote down a lot of things of his thoughts about both uh Bengal literature, which he he taught and and uh world literature, which he used in his teaching in classes, but was never for public uh public uh uh consumption. And I inherited it, and I I I think it's uh uh it's I've learned a lot from it. And it's a very personal but very prized position.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

How nice. Thank you for sharing that. Now, sir, tell me, this is my favorite question on the podcast. I've asked this question to every guest throughout these five seasons. I love the answers that I collect. We've all heard of a physical first aid box, something in which we keep our painkillers, antiseptics, etc., you know, for those minor cuts and bruises. But what if you were to personally keep a mental first aid box, something that would immediately make you smile on those low days?

Mental First Aid: Music And Memories

SPEAKER_01 38:59

I think um for me, um, it's music, my favorite music. I listen to a lot of uh classical music, Western classical music, and Indian classical music. I have my favorite pieces that I always go to when I when I have to relax or I am stressed. And uh so that first aid box will have to have um some of my favorite pieces of music. I have images that um um I find very soothing in terms of my some favorite photos from my life and people I like. So images, images are very important, and they're often images that capture certain moments which uh when I was happy, when I was uh um uh of people, many of whom are no longer uh around, uh, but uh moments of my life. And uh I think it is also important in the in that first aid box to have activities uh in in terms of uh you know games that one plays, maybe word games or um or or uh games to do with pictures, uh with uh uh I don't know, uh images, where uh one can actually involve in an activity to get the mind into uh an activity that is different from what has been um uh distressing them. So I would like uh you know some um games that one can play can play in in that first aid box. Some people, of course, like physical sports, which uh uh help them uh you know in their in their uh um uh mental uh rehabilitation. Um but I think I think that's it. I mean I think routine, some some some routine uh interaction with music, with with images, and with uh activities is very important. And that's that's what my first aid box will have.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

That sounds amazing. So before I summarize our conversation, before we come to a close, I always leave the floor open to my guests. Do you have any questions to ask me as a psychologist?

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Of course. I mean, of course, you know, one of the major problems uh we have as educational uh practitioners is to um is to try and figure out in this rapidly changing world, and and we did we deal with students who are at a certain age, we who are actually transitioning from being adolescents to being adults. Um what do you think is more important for um a student of this age um uh to survive? How do you how do you uh what what is your counsel for them?

Parenting, Resilience, And College Readiness

SPEAKER_00 41:51

I think it begins at home. We have lost something very important in homes. We can't expect um parenting to go wrong and then the child to thrive in an environment at this age. What I'm trying to say is there was a time when parents treated each other also with respect and kindness. What is happening now everywhere is people only want to raise happy children, raise children who are extremely accomplished, everything has to be right, gentle parenting, all of this which focuses so much on the child and takes the entire joy out of the life of the adults who are living in that house, is counterproductive as a child grows up. So you'll notice if a child has been brought up with let's say kid gloves or you know has been raised as a very fragile object, they will not be very resilient when they come to college. But if a child has been allowed to lose, allowed to face boredom, allowed to not get you know what they wanted as exactly that time, related gratification, all these things come in handy when they enter this phase of college. So I think it's fairly um safe to say that all this begins at home and not just in that time in college. A lot of us are trying to fix things which were broken much earlier. So my counsel is hopefully parents will take this more seriously, start taking yourself more seriously. Enjoy your life as adults and not just the child that you know you're trying to raise. A child is important, but it need not be everything in this you know scope of the universe, so to say. So don't orbit around the child, let the child find their own orbit, if that answers your question.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

That's very interesting. But thank you very much for saying that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

So this has been an amazing conversation. Like we started off saying we don't know which turns it's going to take. I have personally never met anyone who has lived life in such a different way. And I'm intrigued and I'm extremely, extremely fascinated with the work you do. And first and foremost, thank you for giving your life to something which is so important. Unless people give their lives into education, into research, we will never progress as a society or as a country. So, from my entire audience, a huge thank you. Also, thank you for sharing your insights because these are very important. Like you said, when you were younger, you came across some books. That got you interested in physics, and this is how you how far you've come. Maybe someday someone will hear this podcast and say, Oh, at the right age, I heard Professor Somat's podcast, and this is exactly what I wanted to be. So I hope we are able to inspire others through your story. Thank you so much for taking the time and doing this with me.

Closing Reflections And Hopes

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful talking to you, and I really hope this uh can be uh heard by many people. And if somebody gets inspired by my story, that would be wonderful. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

All right, sir. Thank you so much.