Ashutosh pays great attention to his mother tongue. When Gautam was young, he thought his father didn’t know any English at all. And so, Gautam learnt eagerly to speak excellent Marathi. At his thread ceremony, both father and son chanted the Sanskrit shlokas with beauty and precision and Gautam’s rendition of the Dasabodha drew much praise from all the guests. The truth of the matter is that Ashutosh did not grow up in Maharashtra, but he has strong Maharashtrian roots. He is aware of the differences in state origin but has no knowledge of caste. When looking for his bride, he said, ‘It’s a different matter if she’s from Bengal or Punjab, for instance; but if she’s Maharashtrian she should be able to speak Marathi.’ He would insist that I write to him in Marathi. In 2008, when he came to Pune, we had a party in his honour. Everyone wanted to know about his research work. For nearly one-and-a-half hours, he spoke with enthusiasm and energy. He explained many complex scientific terms in simple language but in chaste Marathi. Many of our friends said, ‘Ashutosh, you told us so many interesting things but what we felt truly proud of was how well you spoke Marathi.’
He is not very religious-minded but enjoys celebrating festivals. The ritual bath on the dawn of Diwali and the bursting of firecrackers is a favourite. In the US, beautiful firecrackers are set off on the Fourth of July, America’s Independence Day.
Ashutosh feels that science and spirituality should not be mixed. ‘The god particle, has it been found yet?’ I said to him a month or so before it was announced. He replied, ‘Aai, don’t call it the god particle. In science it has only one name: the Higgs boson!’
His friendships from his bachelor days are still going strong. He and his friends get together at Christmas at each other’s houses; they help each other in difficult times. Tejvir and Jasvir Khurana, Dhiman Chakraborty, Arijit Banerjee, Sathyadev Ramchandran and Pasha Murat are good friends of his. When his cousin Abhijeet and his wife Sangeeta were expecting a child, Abhijeet’s mother, Sudha Aatya, was flying in from India. When he heard that Abhijeet was going to pick her up from the airport, Ashutosh told him that he should stay with his wife and volunteered to pick his aunt up from Chicago airport and bring her down to Ohio.
In the US, I met some of his senior colleagues and friends. Professor Alfred (Al) Goshaw, Dr Pavel (Pasha) Murat, Dr Arijeet Bannerjee, all of them said that Ashutosh has a soft heart and a willingness to laugh that’s visible in his smile. His friendliness with all kinds of people pleases me. He is never late with an email response. He often sits for hours with his laptop. His father often sends him personal emails. Often, he will receive a reply in five minutes. He treats the family with the same promptness that he would respond to a professional email. Even if he is at an international conference at which he will be talking to many important people in his field, he finds time to reply. He does his professional work with promptness and then is free to attend to the personal. There never seems to be a strain. Even if he has been travelling for a long time and has arrived late in the night, he still manages to seem fresh!
When he is travelling with his family, or even just chatting with them at home; when he is playing with Gautam or taking his lessons; when he is joking with Ashwini, he never shows the strain of work.
Most of his work is done on the computer, often late at night. While he is doing this, a film may be playing on the television nearby or Bear Grylls’ adventure shows may be on the Discovery Channel. He is never to be seen with a book in his hands, and yet he manages to keep up with the world’s happenings and with deep philosophical thought. I think he reads so fast that I mostly miss when he reads.
These days he spends a lot of time with Gautam, introducing him to the joys of learning; and in the night, he writes his internationally celebrated papers. He makes sure he spends a lot of time with Gautam; they run together, go to the gym, hit the swimming pool or play a couple of games of badminton. He and Gautam have gone skiing in Virginia, Wisconsin and Utah. Gautam thus is a good swimmer and a great skier.
When Gautam is with us at home or in a restaurant, we play an interesting game. You don’t need any material for this game. It’s called ‘Would you rather…?’ For example, one day, Gautam and I had watched the film The Sound of Music again. The von Trapp children and Maria were now friends; they seemed to look upon her as one of them and called her by her name. After that, their father, Captain von Trapp, and Maria get married. After that, the littlest one calls her Maria, and Maria says: ‘Uh-hum, not Maria, Mother!’
This must have bothered Gautam. In our game later, he said: ‘Would you rather have the little girl call Maria by name or as mother?’ All of us gave our opinions and explained our choices. Many other issues were also tabled, which ranged from international politics to the issues of daily life, from business to cultural affairs. This led to a wide-ranging discussion, spiked with lots of laughter.
This excerpt from Beyond the Higgs Boson: The W Boson and Dr Ashutosh Kotwal’s Quest for the Unknown by Manik Kotwal has been published with permission from HarperCollins India.