Live and Let Die

Sometime in 1980 or 1981 (certainly before I joined IIT-Madras in 1982), my dad, who passed away last week (at 88, in Bengaluru), introduced me to James Bond through:

Live and Let Die is a 1973 spy film, the eighth film in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, and the first to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It had box office receipts of over $161 million on a budget of $7 million.

Over the years, we watched several Bond movies together, agreeing that Sean Connery was the Best Bond (see The Artist of Bond), agreeing to disagree whether Roger Moore was Acceptable (he thought so) or Pierce Brosnan was Acceptable (I thought so), and agreeing that Daniel Craig was a Very Good Choice,  whenever he visited me in Pittsburgh as I had the full collection (on Laser Disk, on Blu-Ray…), and a home theater system with surround sound (with sub-woofer and 108 inch HD projection screen). I remember his absolute delight – and amused disbelief – when I surprised him, about 20 years ago, by picking him up at the Pittsburgh airport in my Aston Martin (DB7 Vantage Volante convertible), and driving home playing the Theme and several title songs! (See The Sound of 007.) He was not a Martini aficionado (nobody is perfect!), but we enjoyed savoring Red Wines together, as we discussed (and quite often jovially disagreed over) pretty much any topic, from science to philosophy to religion to politics.

As I wrote in Planes, Trains and Automobiles:

When I was admitted to IIT-Madras, we were living in Hyderabad, and my dad and I went for the obligatory “Orientation Day” in Madras (now Chennai). After a day of listening to really dull information about how my next four years were going to be as an undergraduate student, we decided to see if some “English” movie was playing in a nearby theater:

Von Ryan’s Express is a World War II adventure film. The screenplay concerns a group of Allied prisoners of war who conduct a daring escape by hijacking a freight train and fleeing through German-occupied Italy to Switzerland. Financially, it became one of Sinatra’s most successful films.

My dad was a remarkable man, having reached the pinnacle of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), beginning from a humble, rural upbringing (no electricity in the house etc) – valedictorian in high school, undergraduate and Master’s  (in Mathematics); Top-10 ranked in the IAS/IFS entrance exam (#1 in Math and English), choosing to join IAS Andhra Pradesh (AP) cadre; a career that included being District Collector of Kurnool, CEO/MD of AP Steel,  Secretary of Agriculture (AP), all the way to becoming Cabinet Secretary of Petroleum (India), and post-retirement from the IAS, serving on the Planning Commission, and then, continuing to shape India’s Energy Policy in various leadership roles and Advisory Board positions (including for US-based companies, and leading a delegation to meet up with President George Bush at the White House and such).

He was a disciplined person, performing yoga and meditation every morning, when he preferred not to be disturbed,  and I recall amusingly this episode when the phone rang one morning and I picked it up:

Hello?

May I speak to Rao?

Who is this?

Narasimha Rao.

Is it urgent?

No.

Can you call back in 20-30 minutes.

Yes.

At breakfast, some 15 minutes later, I informed my dad that he had a call from some Narasimha Rao, and as it was not urgent, I had asked him to call back later. My dad could not help laughing as he walked over to the land line to call back!

Pamulaparthi Venkata (PV) Narasimha Rao (28 June 1921 – 23 December 2004) was an Indian lawyer, nationalist, statesman, and politician from the Congress Party who served as the prime minister of India from 1991 to 1996. He is especially known for introducing various measures to open up India’s economy to rescue the country from going towards bankruptcy during the economic crisis of 1991 to make public sector and private sector competitive. Prior to his premiership, he served as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, and later also held high order portfolios of the union government. In 2024, he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award by the Government of India.

PV’s and my dad’s careers intertwined for decades, somewhat in line with (a show that my dad and I watched together for years and enjoyed tremendously):

Yes Minister is a British political satire sitcom. Comprising three seven-episode series, it was first transmitted on BBC2 from 1980 to 1984. A sequel, Yes, Prime Minister, ran for 16 episodes from 1986 to 1988. Set principally in the private office of a British cabinet minister in the fictional Department of Administrative Affairs in Whitehall, Yes Minister follows the ministerial career of Jim Hacker, played by Paul Eddington. His various struggles to formulate and enact policy or affect departmental changes are opposed by the British Civil Service, in particular his Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, played by Nigel Hawthorne.

I could go on, with many such stories, or about our evening walks and talks in Lodhi Gardens followed by Tea and Samosa and Cutlets and Fresh Lime Soda at India International Center, and such. Of course, when I was much younger, we made many family trips (Jaipur and Mussoorie and Agra, see The Taj Mahal, and Madurai and Kodaicanal and Tuticorin and Kanyakumari and Kovalam…).

I don’t even want to get into the VVIP guests (and the security pre-checks, bomb squad and guards armed with semi-automatic weapons that we cropped out of the photographs) at my Wedding Reception! Or, my job interview at EIL, when the interview panel leapt up from their chairs and did a Namaste as I walked in! As some of you already know, I have chosen, as an adult, to expand a different initial of our family name and use it as my last name, but even that has its limits, as I found out, when a Distinguished Guest to CMU walked up to me while I was having lunch, chatting away with my colleagues, at the Faculty Lounge in Posner Hall, about 10-15 years ago:

Sorry to disturb you. Are you Mr. T.N.R. Rao’s son?

Yes.

You are a spitting image of him, in how you talk and in the mannerisms. He was my boss, and I respect him very much. When I saw you at a distance, I was startled. You remind me of the younger him, and I had to come over to say hello.

And you are?

Montek Singh Ahluwalia: Prior to taking up his position at the IMF, Mr. Ahluwalia was a Member of the Planning Commission in New Delhi as well as a Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. He had previously served as Finance Secretary, Ministry of Finance; Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs; Commerce Secretary; Special Secretary to the Prime Minister; and Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance. He has received several honorary degrees, including an honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law from the University of Oxford.

Beyond his professional accomplishments, my dad was a good family man, a dutiful son, a devoted husband, a loving and caring father to me and my younger sister, and a doting grandpa to my two boys.  The tributes that are flowing in on WhatsApp and emails and through phone calls from his friends, colleagues, neighbors, and relatives are absolutely touching and delightful. 

He was a class act.

In Bengaluru now taking care of the funeral – yes, I decided that I will execute the 13-day Vedic ritual sequence (a topic that I will discuss in a later post), something that would have (hopefully pleasantly and certainly completely) surprised my dad – and other activities, it was a great pleasure to reconnect with four of my IIT-Madras classmates: Satya (“God”), Sridhar (“Hubby”), Kishore (“Bhayya”) and Ashok. Thank you all for taking the time to come out and see me – it was very touching and a pleasure to catch up. (My nickname in IIT-Madras was “Abba”.)

Satya‘s nickname was chosen due to his likeness to George Burns in the movie (that we all saw in the Open Air Theater, OAT):

Oh, God! is a 1977 American comedy film starring George Burns and John Denver. The film was directed by Carl Reiner from a screenplay by Larry Gelbart. It had box office receipts of over $51 million (on a budget of $2 million).

One of the interesting tidbits that we discussed was about one other of our classmates, who upon graduation became a police officer (an IPS officer of good repute, part of the CBI Economic Crimes branch), and is evidently the inspiration for the titular character in:

Kanthaswamy is a 2009 Indian Tamil-language vigilante action film directed by Susi Ganesan. The film was released on 21 August 2009 and received positive reviews and became a success at the box office.

Nice!

By the way, this reminds me to let you know of an exciting update about the documentary Virulent: The Vaccine War (see Mes Années):

It is coming to PBS this Spring!

Sitting in my dad’s Study cum Library as I finalize this post, I was scanning the bookshelves, remembering fondly the many books (recall The Importance of Being Bertie) that we have discussed over the years – P.G.Wodehouse, Bertrand Russell, Omar Khayyam, Spinoza, The Upanishads, to name a few – and so let me close with a quote from Amartya Sen‘s The Argumentative Indian:

I miss (arguing with) my dad.

PS. The 2025 NAE announcement came out a few days ago, and it was wonderful to see that a fellow CMU University Professor, Satyanarayana Mahadev, who is also an IIT-Madras alum, got elected. Indeed, there are three more IIT-Madras alums on the list: Bhaskar Ramamurthi (previous Director there, and the person who connected me to my quantum colleagues Anil Prabhakar (who I also met up in Bengaluru this week to wrap up the 2024 Tayur Challenge on Quantum Money)  and Prabha Mandayam), Suresh Garimella (now President of University of Arizona) and Somanath Sridhara Panicker (previous Chairman of Indian Space Research Organization). Also on the list this year is Alice Smith, EIC of Informs Journal on Computing, who accepted our Quantum-GAGA paper for the Special Issue, who responded to my congratulatory email thus:

Thank you very much!  I am very happy.  Hope to celebrate with you at this event.  Best, Alice