Who was Suresh Chandvankar?
Who was Suresh Chandvankar?
I met Suresh when I joined TIFR in 1980. He was a few years senior to me. He had finished his MSc after joining TIFR. Like me, he was working in Solid State Electronics group.
These were the times of semiconductors. Suresh was working on GaAs semiconductors and was using Liquid phase epitaxy to grow GaAS/AlGaAs semiconductors. For technically un-initiated, it is enough to remember that this is a difficult technique to implement. Suresh went on to get his PhD in this subject subsequently.
I was working on electron microscopes and Suresh used these systems for evaluation of his materials. That is how I started interacting with him.
He was also active on other fronts. He worked in TIFR employees association to upgrade standards of non-scientific staff in TIFR and had a few run-inns with TIFR managements.
For a long time that is what Suresh was as far as I was concerned at that time. Subsequently, I came to know about his passion about music, and especially his endeavour to protect old music recorded on gramophone records. Gramophone records as a commodity, is dying a slow death in preesnt high technology regime, just like the old film cameras. Suresh strived to digitise this old gold throughout his life. You can find the details of his contributions in the ariticles that have appeared in news papers in the last couple of days, after his passing away on 3rd january.
After retiring from TIFR, he stayed in Chunabhatti, where my mother was living. He got acquainted with her and helped her convert some of her audio cassettes, another hi tech victim, into cds.
In today's fst moving world, we have very little time for others. We come in contact with so many people, some ordinary like us and some extra-ordinary. Many times we only come to know about a person's life's work only after his or her passing away. For me such list is endless. Historian Babasaheb Purandare, Educationist D.V Deshpande, Ram Khandekar, PA to ex-PM Narsinh Rao, Deshpande kaka, a journalist and father of my school friend who covered the ascent of Hillery and Tensigh to Mount Everest, Bal Thakur, a painter who did pioneering work in creating front covers for numerous marathi books, have all briefly touched my life. Now I wish I could have had more interactions with them. Now sadly, name of Suresh is added to the list.
To be fair, many of the articles written by Suresh have appeared from time to time in marathi news papers. But generally, our nedia comes to life only after the death of such people. Suresh would have been more happy to read about what others thought of his work while he was alive, and then there would have been no need for me to write an article entitled "Who was Suresh Chandvankar?". That is life.
Comments
Thank you for this enriching article. We are fortunate to have interacted with him while he was around. Shanti...om Shanti 🙏
By : Magnes J
True
By : John
Nice article As you have rightly said that though we come across many extraordinary people,we don't value their greatness...unknowingly of course! We had my father's uncle living in our building in Matunga who was a famous massagist known worldwide.When he died,we knew his greatness by reading newspaper.
By : Pratibha Tarabadkar