This e-mail is from Prof. Rama Govindarajan who's a faculty member at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore. She's an IIT-D alumna, Bhatnagar Prize winner (2007), ex-neighbour, and friend.
Many thanks to Rama for agreeing to share with us her e-mail to the folks at Pan-IIT:
Dear Madam/ Sir,
IIT is a beloved institution for me, so I need to point out the following.
I was unhappy to see the program for spouses in the PAN-IIT get-together, to try and make them "complete women". My spouse does not want to become a complete or incomplete woman. He will therefore of course not accompany me. I feel that spouses who are female would expect a more intellectually stimulating program as well.
Secondly I expect a scientific outlook from the IITs. Astrology etc. would seem not to belong in a meeting of this nature.
Thanks a lot.
With best regards
Rama Govindarajan
BTech Chemical Engineering, 1984.
Nice rebuttal! Go Rama!
ReplyDeleteGood point, and surely Astrology is to be avoided!
ReplyDeleteWell PanIIT 2006, had Lara Dutt(a) or some such airhead invited for the spouses. Atleast they need to get hold of someone line Rahul Bose, Shabana Azmi or Nandita Das. Juliette Binoche would be nice...
This time around the speaker list (galaxy, eh!?!) seems particularly insipid, why so? Only Vijay Amritraj seems to be interesting. Last time we had Shashi Tharoor and Abdul Kalam. Are we devaluing ourselves?