Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

"In the 60s, India still retained many of the trappings of a medieval country. We used to wait for cows as safe escorts in order to cross the traffic-filled British boulevards of Mumbai and naked sadhus were still seen walking in the city with their begging bowls. Repairs to the exterior of our apartment building were made from bamboo scaffolding, rising twenty stories and held together only with string! A village of fishermen, their fires, animals and tents, subsisted in the very middle of the downtown area. Gold smuggling supported the “District of Song”, the neighboring slum. In the midst of all of this, Homi Bhabha, like Kublai Khan, had built his Xanadu: the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), an ultra-modern paradise for scientists. Clean, air conditioned, efficiently run, this was where all this wonderful math was being done."