Ramachandra Guha: My godfather was a scientist who wrote an ‘incomparable classic on Indian food’

My first editor, Rukun Advani, once describ­ed himself as “a composite hybrid of the Indian and the Anglo-European,” who sought to reconcile “within himself those varying cultural influences which chauvinistic nationalists could only see as contradictions”. This self-characterisation I might avow as my own. One mark of the Anglo-European in me is that unlike members of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, I had not just uncles and aunts, parents and grandparents, but also a godfather. It is this person I wish to write about here because the centenary of his birth falls this week and because being my godfather was the very least of his distinctions.

Born on October 6, 1923, KT Achaya was the son of an accomplished sericulturist who managed a silk farm run by the Government of India in Kollegal. The ‘K’ stood for Konganda, though he was always known by his middle name, Thammu. He was one of my father’s oldest friends – which is how I became his godson. They first met as students at Presidency College in Madras where both studied Chemistry. They carried on to the Indian Institute of Science for their MSc, spending their off-lab hours cycling through the Mysore countryside. My father stayed at...

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