| I first came in contact with Paulos Mar Gregorios
when I read an article by him on Buddhism in the Times of India and wrote
to him, enclosing an article on "Reconstruction of Values: the Role of Science"
(later published in Indu Banga and Jaidev, eds, IIAS, Shimla). At that
time I was at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, on lien from
C-DAC, and the article was based on an almost spontaneous talk at one of
the Institute conferences. I didn't receive any response. Years later, he showed up at a talk I was to give at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. (Though I remember the occasion vividly, I forget the exact title of my talk--probably Eleven Pictures of Time--but it was on the same theme of time in science and religion, or time and values). He said that he had very much wanted to respond to me, but was prevented from doing so, because he had suffered a stroke. Subsequently, we met on a number of occasions--usually at the church near Batra Hospital--practically meeting every week (sometimes more often) for long discussions, lasting several hours on a variety of topics. At that time I had prepared the first draft of a book (The Eleven Pictures of Time: The Physics, Philosophy, and Politics of Time Beliefs [in Science and Religion], Sage 2003), which I discussed with him at length, and he very kindly offered to write an introduction to it, which he, unfortunately, did not live to write. His sudden death was a great blow (I was present there that day), and I wrote a small obituary in the Times of India, followed by a couple of articles dedicated to him in the magazine Mainstream. |