By Manju Gupta
The mention of J.C. Bose is enough to convey that the reference is to that physicist and plant physiologist who was born on November 30, 1858, in Mymensingh, now in Bangladesh. His father was an early product of English education, who loved organising melas, would invite jatra parties to perform in them and wherever he went, he tried to revive the traditional village life. But his habit of landing into debts by making wrong investments made him a paralytic cripple in middle age. It was his son Jagadis who vindicated his father'shonour in due course of time.
While others went to English-medium schools, Jagadis started his education in a vernacular school when he was five years old in Faridpur town. His father believed that early education should be in the mother tongue before taking on English. Later, Jagadis reminisced that at school, his companions at his right and left were the sons of his father'sMuslim chaprasi (peon) and a fisherman respectively. From such classmates Jagadis learnt new things about plants and animals. His father too was a good educator as he tried to answer as best as he could all his son'squeries. From his father Jagadis imbibed a sense of love for the traditional culture and way of life of village people.
In school, Jagadis and his classmates would play truant: they would leave the class and go to play cricket on a relatively secluded ground. At the age of five he was given a pony to ride. On being challenged once, Jagadis participated in a horse race. With his two short legs holding on to the saddle-girth and body bruised, he rode forward with a cheerful determination. He won the race and was greeted with shouts of victory. He did not mention the wounds he sustained during the riding and went home, bleeding.
From the jatras, young Jagadis developed a liking for the epics?the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. He used to say that Rama and Lakshman were impressive characters but ?mostly too good, too perfect?, whereas he liked Karna whose lifelong failures and defeats reminded him of his father. He would say, ?All this gave me a lower and lower idea of all ordinary worldly success? and ?true success is born of defeat?.
As a young boy of eleven, Jagadis went to Calcutta, which was the centre of Bengali renaissance and was later to be the main stage for his achievements. He was admitted in St. Xavier'sSchool meant exclusively for European boys. On his very first day, he had to fight a champion boxer of the class who was a big, burly fellow. He got a bleeding nose and later referred to the incident thus: ?I then knew nothing about boxing. Nevertheless, I accepted the challenge and got the severest punishment. Still I persisted and ultimately won through determination: never to yield against odds, however great. This attitude helped me later in intellectual contests.?
Jagadis was put-up at a students? mess where he got enough time to keep pets and build miniature streams and bridges. He would return home on holidays laden with rabbits, pigeons and once, even a lamb.
Jagadis'sfather opened an industrial school for orphans of victims who had died of malaria in Burdwan. Jagadis too received his initiation in this art.
After matriculation at the age of sixteen with a scholarship, Jagadis entered St. Xavier'sCollege to learn physics. However, his love for animals and outdoors continued unabated. He went to the Terai forest to see tigers, elephants, etc., and learnt to shoot from a Rajput sepoy. Once a landowner friend invited him for a holiday in Assam which included big game shooting. After staying there, he returned to cover a 21-mile-long journey on horseback. As soon as he mounted it, the horse bolted. He controlled it somehow and reached the railway station.
In 1880, a terrible famine broke out in Bengal and Jagadis'sfather spent all his earnings in helping out the poor. Meanwhile Jagadis wanted to go to England to appear for the ICS examination but his father wanted him to utilise his scientific knowledge for the benefit of agriculture. But his mother sold off her jewels and sent him to London to study science. On the advice of his teacher, Jagadis left the study of medicine to study science at Christ'sCollege, Cambridge. In 1884, Jagadis completed Tripos in natural science and also a B.Sc. from London University before returning to India.
On a good word put in by Lord Ripon, the then Viceroy, Jagadis was given the post of officiating professor of physics in the Imperial Educa-tional Service at Presidency College in Calcutta. As the Europeans used to get three times the salary of Indians, Jaga-dis too had to face this discrimination. As a mark of protest he did not accept any salary for three years.
Jagadis showed a great talent for teaching and was made permanent with retrospective effect so that he received the three years? salary too. With this money and what he could save in future, he paid off his father'sdebts. He was 31 years old then. His father died the following year while his mother lived for two more years only.
In 1887, Jagadis married Abala Das who too distinguished herself in education. Both lived together for 50 years of a happily married life, and both travelled extensively all over India and abroad too. Jagadis wrote articles in Abyakta and took photography seriously. On his 37th birthday Jagadis began to conduct research and got the D. Sc. degree. He conducted research on electromagnetic waves and showed that short electric waves have the same properties as a beam of light, exhibiting reflection, refraction, total deflection, double refraction, polarisation and rotation of the plane of polarisation. He conducted experiments to show that a signal could be sent without wires and prepared the simple version of an aerial which was later used in wireless telegraphy.
From his early studies in pure physics Jagadis Chandra Bose was led towards biology in later life. In 19l0, he attended the International Congress of Physics in Paris where he read out his findings on ?Fundamental Unity amidst the Apparent Diversity of Nature?.
Bose by now had turned his attention to plants. He intensively studied the response of plants to stimulations. He made a detailed study of Mimosa pudica. Bose explained the mechanism of the plant leaves which open to the sun'srays and close at night or when the sky is overcast. He even demonstrated the phenomenon of fatigue, death spasms at high temperatures. In 1917, he founded the Bose Institute and the title of acharya was conferred upon him. By now old and aged, infirmity had slowed him down. Diabetes and blood pressure dogged his footsteps. In 1937, he died of heart failure, a mere seven days before the Bose Institute was planning to celebrate his 79th birthday.
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