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Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
A tale of Homi Bhabha, MF Husain and a trove of art at a science institute
MUMBAI: In the foyer of 'A' Block at the campus of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is an M F Husain that took top honours at an unusual competition. The area is not accessible to visitors in the government-funded, high-security campus, but the mural's expanse and sharp lines are visible even from a distance, through the tall glass facade. The mural came to adorn this 9ft x 45ft wall in 1962 because Homi Bhabha, who founded the institute in 1945, invited the finest Indian artists to compete for a chance to grace a wall at TIFR's then-new Navy Nagar premises with their work. Unbeknownst to them, Bhabha had reached out to Pablo Picasso too, hoping the legendary Spanish artist would oblige. 'As a result of our conflict with the Chinese, it is quite impossible for us to pay anything in foreign exchange, leave aside the type of price that would be appropriate for Picasso,' he wrote to his friend, Irish scientist JD Bernal. 'However, I did suggest we could pay him a first-class return air fare to India and a month's stay at our expense, together with arrangements for visiting and seeing some of the country's famous archaeological monuments,' went the letter. The attempt to entice Picasso did not work out, but Husain's massive mural, Bharat Bhagya Vidhata, lent the campus a special touch, blending the pride of a modern Indian identity with his artistic genius. This was one of the tales narrated by Mortimer Chatterjee, co-founder and director of the gallery Chatterjee and Lal, at a talk that inaugurated TIFR's first Art & Archives Colloquium, organised in collaboration with Art Mumbai. Chatterjee, who has been associated with TIFR's acclaimed art collection for 15 years, spoke of how the collection was acquired between the '50s and '70s, and what it says about Indian art of that time. While Husain's mural was the first painting created for the new campus, Bhabha had been building the institute's art collection for the better part of the previous decade. Bhabha, one of India's premier nuclear physicists, had not traded art for science; he paid keen attention to the campus's architecture and gardens too. He was, after all, an artist himself. 'While Bhabha was the steering force of the collection, he had a whole band of art insiders around him keeping a close eye on the exhibitions and new work being produced. Chief among them was Phiroza Wadia, called 'Pipsy', whom Bhabha painted a few times. Also among them was mathematics professor KS Chandrasekharan, art critic Rudolf von Leyden and Kekoo Gandhy of the Chemold Prescott gallery,' Chatterjee recounted. 'Gandhy would invite Bhabha over the day before his exhibitions opened, for him to have the first pick, while his staff held up frames for Bhabha to visualise. He would get lost in a trance, forgetting that there was someone holding them up,' said Chatterjee, to a rapt audience, on Monday evening. 'Often the paintings would stay hung at TIFR for a while, before purchase, for Bhabha to evaluate them in the setting, just as he did with paintings for his home,' he added. During the eight years it took to build the Navy Nagar campus, the 102 acquired paintings were displayed on the walls of the old Bombay Yacht Club. Then owned by Bhabha's aunt, it served as TIFR's home before the move to Navy Nagar. Few of the paintings had anything to do with science, really. The collection was entirely contemporary. For this, Chatterjee compared Bhabha to 'the spirit of Medici', the Italian patron that fostered Renaissance art, including that of Leonardo da Vinci. The then-budding group of artists known as the Progressive Artists' Group, led by Husain, SH Raza and FN Souza, among others, inevitably took the spotlight in TIFR's art collection, but a wide range of Indian artists is actually represented across it. Bhabha's love of art needed funds to support it. He secured permission, Chatterjee said, to spend 1% of TIFR's budget on art. Bringing things full-circle, Husain helped broker deals between artists and TIFR too. After Bhabha's death in 1966, aged just 56, his successor at TIFR, MGK Menon, continued his mission, building the institute's art collection up to its current strength of 250-plus masterpieces.
Hindustan Times
23-05-2025
- Science
- Hindustan Times
A horticulturist bids adieu to the magnificent trees of TIFR
MUMBAI: For over three decades, Rajendra Gumaste has tended to the acres of greenery in a pocket at the southern tip of Mumbai set up by scientist extraordinaire Homi Bhabha. Now, as he prepares to move on to other pastures, he leaves to it the distilled essence of his years of work there, sprinkled with archival finds and curiosities, in the form of a coffee table book titled 'Trees of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research'. 'When Dr Bhabha got this piece of land in Colaba in the 1950s to house TIFR, it was mostly barren reclaimed land,' said Gumaste, speaking before the book's launch at the seaside campus on Thursday. 'Even though this was to be a den of scientific inquiry, he gave as much importance to nature in over 20 acres, almost half of the campus.' When Mumbai was in its teething stages, sacrificing trees to make way for people, Bhabha was making space for the former. 'Around half the trees here are transplanted from other parts of Mumbai, including Banyan trees, baobabs and peepal trees,' said Gumaste. 'He also imported rare species like the Melaleuca leucadendra and Tabebuia rosea.' Today the campus has over 2,000 trees in 110 varieties. The unmistakable star of this transplanting effort lies in the campus: a gigantic Banyan tree, one of the approximately 20 on campus, whose canopy spreads out over 6,000 square feet. 'This is not the oldest Banyan tree in Mumbai, but it is the only one that has been given this much space to spread its wings to its heart's desire,' said Shyam Palkar, assistant professor of botany at MES' DG Ruparel College. Gumaste met Palkar, who is part of a group called 'Friends of Trees', back in 2024 on a tree walk he was conducting at TIFR. They became great friends, and Palkar came on board as the book's editor and added botany and taxonomy details to it. Another feat of transplantation is one of the four baobab trees on campus. 'This baobab was transplanted from Nepeansea Road in 1972, when it was approximately 50 years old,' said Gumaste. 'The archive notes that Bhabha's brother, J J Bhabha, saw the tree being cut and asked the then director if it was possible to transplant it. Despite being an expensive endeavour, they still went ahead with it, with funding by Telco. There is a photo of the night it was being transplanted, with JRD Tata and J J Bhabha, looking up to its branches, a banner about its transplantation hanging between two trees in the background.' For Gumaste, who began his role as the head of gardens and parks at TIFR—he retired in 2024 but continues as a consultant—the challenges of tending to the trees have increased over the years due to the change in weather, temperature and rainfall patterns. 'Every monsoon, there are a few tree falls, especially those trees that are not native to Bombay like the gulmohar and spathodea, and the newer ones planted to fill the gaps,' he said. 'It is even trickier over here, as this is reclaimed land, and soil does not always allow the roots to bind firmly. During Cyclone Tatukae in 2021, we lost 48 trees.' Following in the footsteps of Bhabha, Gumaste and his 40-50 gardeners hoisted 32 of the trees right back up. Gumaste has also continued adding trees, preferring to choose the native varieties for a better survival rate. A few acres ahead, the greenery changes shape and leads to well-manicured French-style lawns with a hedge of Putranjiva trees around it and flowers decorating the borders. In the centre is a flower arrangement. Gumaste explains, 'While the flowers in it change according to the seasons, its shape—an amoeba—stays the same, as that is what Bhabha wanted.' Step another three acres ahead, and the greenery once again changes form into one mimicking a forest of wispy Casuarina equisetifolia trees, again at Bhabha's behest. 'This is a tree great for the seashore, as it bonds well in the sandy soil, breaks the wind, and prevents soil erosion,' said Gumaste. 'We keep reconstructing small gazebos here, as professors like to take lectures here, but the younger trees often fall during the monsoon and break them.' Gumaste credits his band of gardeners with keeping Bhabha's dream alive. For the book, he thanks the contributions of Palkar, designer Neil Daptardar and two TIFR photographers Vijay Shinde and Jatin Acharya, as well as Friends of Trees and the TIFR Alumni Association. 'We desperately need to bring back that sense of reverence and exaltation of trees,' he said. ('Trees of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research' is available with the TIFR Alumni Association for ₹1,500)
Telegraph
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Encounters: Huma Bhabha x Giacometti: A strange meeting in the Barbican's awkward new gallery
Someone at the Barbican has smelled an opportunity. The old brasserie on level two of the Brutalist complex in the City of London is now an art gallery, inaugurated by this 'encounter' between Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) and the Pakistani-American artist Huma Bhabha (b 1962), whose monumental bronze sculptures apparently of two battered ancient deities dominated the roof garden of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018. Subtitled Nothing is Behind Us, the show is the first in a year-long series of three encounters between contemporary artists and the Swiss sculptor, in collaboration with the Fondation Giacometti. With an awkward, L-shaped floor plan, and distracting views across the estate to St Giles' Cripplegate, this linear space comes with challenges. The curators respond by imagining the gallery as a 'street' filled with figures – some standing, others sitting, a few striding or seemingly mooching – like citizens going about their business. Since Giacometti was inspired by the strangeness, as he perceived it, of Parisians moving through the metropolis, this is effective, establishing a dynamic between the sculptures and passers-by outside. At the same time, the prospect of people cheerfully eating and drinking jars with the sombre mood of everything on display. That Giacometti was the poster boy for post-war Existentialism is well known; his sculptures look considerably spookier in a dramatically lit free display in Tate Modern's subterranean Tanks (until Nov 30), where the atmosphere – appropriately, given that he was inspired, in part, by Egyptian and Etruscan funerary art – is of the underworld or an ancient tomb. As for Bhabha, her self-consciously lumpen humanoids often appear to be charred and gouged, as if they've survived a catastrophe. In the first part of the show, her works consist of seemingly chopped-up body parts (blobby feet, tentacular arms, a disembodied ear, a decapitated head), crudely modelled in terracotta and presented on concrete plinths, like casts of victims at Pompeii. What do we learn from this pairing? There are correspondences, such as agitated surfaces, sometimes attacked with a knife, and an overarching impression of a world in crisis. Artful juxtapositions make these plain. But Giacometti was obsessed with attenuating form: some of his sculptures are so spindly you worry they're about to snap, while, for all his purposefulness, Walking Man I (1960) appears unable to extract two massive triangular feet from a sludge-like plinth. Bhabha prefers a sense of blocky solidity, and, unlike Giacometti, is inspired by science-fiction. She also relishes assemblage, in the manner of a different member of the School of Paris, Pablo Picasso: Mask of Dimitrios (2019), a powerful, prominent piece, like an enthroned but bedraggled god, uses a metal chair as an armature, and incorporates two bone-shaped rubber dog toys and a couple of pendulous plastic bags like withered breasts or deflated lungs. For Distant Star (2025), the only work made for this show, Bhabha channelled her inner Giacometti to produce an elongated column like an oversized sceptre in cast iron, sprouting an unsettling, eyeless head; it appears at the end, beside Giacometti's Standing Woman (1957). Yet, curiously, this 'encounter' crystallises differences between these two powerful artists, as much as similarities.
News18
21-04-2025
- Business
- News18
China Unveils World's First Thorium Nuclear Reactor; Where Does India Stand?
China launched its thorium power project in 2011 with a $444 million investment. India, rich in thorium reserves, has explored this concept for decades China has achieved a significant milestone by constructing the world's first thorium-based nuclear reactor. This feat comes against the backdrop of the ongoing trade war with the US. The revolutionary reactor, known as the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor, has been installed in the Gobi Desert in Wuyi city, Gansu province. The project, initiated in October 2023, aims to generate two megawatts of electricity. While this is a monumental breakthrough in nuclear science, experts caution that large-scale electricity generation from thorium reactors will take time. China embarked on this thorium electricity generation project in 2011, investing a substantial $444 million. Thorium reactors are advantageous as they produce less radioactive waste compared to uranium and are relatively safer. Additionally, thorium is difficult to use for nuclear weapons, which is a significant security benefit. China is now focusing on constructing a larger 10 MW thorium reactor, scheduled for installation by 2030. India has long been acquainted with the thorium reactor concept, boasting the world's largest thorium reserves. Thorium itself is not a nuclear fuel but can be converted into uranium-233, which is used in reactors. Despite the complex and costly conversion process, India made considerable strides in nuclear power starting in the 1950s under Dr. Homi Jahangir Bhabha, a renowned nuclear scientist. Bhabha's vision was to leverage India's extensive thorium reserves in light of its limited uranium resources. Research by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and other institutions yielded successful results. China's Lead And Global Progress The US experimented with a 7.4 MW thorium reactor in the 1960s. Germany also experimented with thorium reactors in the 1970s and 1980s, with similar endeavours by Canada, Norway, Japan, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Amongst these nations, India and China have emerged as leaders in thorium-based nuclear energy research, with India maintaining a prominent position in this field. First Published: April 21, 2025, 11:01 IST
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
In Spokane business forum, South African diplomats say social media may have tanked effort to form democracy
Mar. 25—While unspoken were the names of either political party, the deepening American political polarization became the focus of a Spokane business organization's annual meeting on Tuesday. Greater Spokane Inc. welcomed two lawyers who spent years on opposite sides of the bruising, and sometimes violent, effort to end apartheid in South Africa some 30 years ago. That system of institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination by the white minority over the country's Black majority finally ended in 1994 when South Africa agreed on a new constitution. Roelf Meyer is a former member of Parliament who served as the chief negotiator for the conservative National Party government during the negotiations to end apartheid and establish a democracy. His counter was Mohammed Bhabha, an attorney and former senator from South Africa, who served on the negotiating team for the African National Congress political party. The pair has traveled all over the country for speaking engagements to explain their country's successes, failures and continued struggles to overcome a 300-year-old system designed to benefit whites. While both speak of respect and collaboration, both cautioned that they may have failed 30 years ago if they had to contend with the current impact of social media. Bhabha said the country was first colonialized by the Netherlands and later Great Britain with a focus of using the Indigenous populations to extract minerals from South Africa. "We were subject to a system of oppression that went on for over 300 years. It was very brutal," he said. "Whatever our struggle was, it had to be value driven. It was no use in engaging in ... fighting a system and replacing it with a system where the behavior was the same. If it wasn't value driven, then it was retribution and the bloodletting would not stop." The sight of Meyer or of a police officer "was something that really generated a lot of anger in us. We hated these people. And it is from that basis that we had to create an atmosphere where we had to vote as a country again," Bhabha said. "The same policeman that was the object of my oppression I had to learn to love. It cannot be done from a top -down approach and it cannot be done only by politicians." Meyer, the son of a sheep farmer, said he grew up in a conservative household that benefited from the political structure. Opening himself up to change started with simple conversations. "You have to engage," he said. "You have to be curious about the person on the other side." The key was respect, Meyer said. "You don't have to agree with that person on the other side. The worst thing that can happen to any individual, Black or white, is to be ignored and to have the feeling of being bullied," he said. "Then there is no chance." Those negotiations, which sometimes stalled through fits of violence from both sides, finally resulted in a constitution that created a democracy. But both speakers cautioned that the struggle didn't just end with a new political structure. Meyer said the 30% of Afrikaners who opposed ending apartheid continue to support the old structure decades later. "It's not something that you can leave behind and say, 'OK, victory is there,' " he said. "It's a task of ongoing consultation, public participation, like you are doing here, and a matter of bringing along as many minds as possible in that process." The local business leaders inevitably asked about their perceptions of the U.S. and its current state of contentious politics. "First of all, America is great," Meyer said. "We observe it. We experience it. Why is it good? Because it sets an example for the rest of the world in terms of democratic practices and being a society that is largely at peace with itself. I hope that will remain the case." One attendee submitted a question about the role of social media during contentious political times. Bhabha didn't mince words. "I'm not certain whether we could have had the success that we had if there was social media. It is very destructive," he said. "I just find we are on the retreat because of the fake stuff that comes and their influence." He noted that social media could be used for good, but that has not occurred. "That is precisely why personal engagement at this level becomes that much more important because the perception and reality is much different when you are engaged with each other," Bhabha said. Meyer said the negotiations that eventually led to a functioning democracy started with two years of talks without any specific focus or agenda. Both sides just spoke to each other. "There is obviously some divides in your community — huge divides that could lead to polarization," he said. "From the outside there is concern with that. But the only way to address it and to overcome it, I would say, is through dialogue and finding common ground to go forward."
