Meeting my namesake

Why the cops visited the scholar in Bengaluru a few months later, beats me...

In 2005, while briefly based in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi as correspondent for the Agence France-Presse news agency, I did something I hadn't yet: googled my own name, to see which online publications were picking up my reports.

I discovered the existence of a fellow Bengalurean, Professor N Jayaram, eminent sociologist and authority on social science research. He has taught at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Bombay and at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru and other institutions.

Amazingly, he's done what I would have given an arm and a leg to have: taught at the University of the West Indies. Calypso lands! That gave us legendary musicians such as Bob Marley and athletes such as Usain Bolt, and some of the most talented people on the planet, not to mention many great cricketers.

I am myself a sociologist manqué: In 1978, I had applied and gotten admission to the MA Sociology programme at the Delhi School of Economics, whose faculty contained many reputed sociologists and anthropologists. However, on a whim, I decided not to pursue that course.

A few years ago, when the National Institute of Advanced Studies hosted a conference in Bengaluru in memory of Professor M N Srinivas, featuring many leading academics including Professor Jayaram, I introduced myself to him, during a coffee break. He chuckled and said decades ago, in 1975, the police had mistaken him for me.

I had in 1975 spent many months in Bihar taking part in the ongoing JP movement, led by Jayaprakash Narayan, one of the most principled leaders of his generation but who — alas — blotted his record by giving the Hindu chauvinist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) the mainstream lift that had until then long eluded it.

I'd gotten arrested for stopping a train as part of JP’s Bihar Bandh call opposing the then prime minister Indira Gandhi's autocratic rule and spent nine days in Daltonganj Jail, in Palamau district, then in Bihar, now in Jharkhand state. At the police station in Garhwa Road junction, I had given all the addresses they wanted — those of my parents and my ancestral home in Bengaluru and so forth.

Why the then scholar, now distinguished Professor Jayaram, rather than my humbler self's address got a visitation by the cops in Bengaluru a few months later, beats me. Then again, on social media in recent years, I've been contacted by a few sociologists who have mistaken me for him.

Coincidentally, Professor Jayaram told me that in 2005 he too had googled and came across my name.

When recently I emailed to draw his attention to a recent article of mine on China, he replied:

"I saw your piece in Deccan Herald and told my wife that this is the man who, without even knowing that I existed, had put me into trouble in 1975. We had a hearty laugh."

And he added: “Sounds like an interesting subject for a good short story.”