My day at Cambridge

Cambridge is almost a village, and the layout of its colleges is breathtaking, writes Pavan K Varma.

Last weekend I was invited by Sakhya, an association of Indian students in Cambridge, to come and speak about where India is headed in the new century. I accepted readily, not only because I was keen to meet with these young students but because I had not yet visited Cambridge.

I think Cambridge is more beautiful than Oxford, although I know I should be more careful in expressing such views lest I be banned from entering Oxford in future. Of course, Oxford is very pretty too, but the great charm of Cambridge is that it is smaller, almost a village, and the layout of its principal colleges along the river Cam is nothing short of breathtaking. A sense of history pervades the place, the oldest college dating back to the 13th century. This historicity can be glimpsed in the architecture, the long colonnaded corridors, the ivy laden walls and soaring pinnacles, the artistically laid out courts, and, of course, the solemn monumental-ness of King’s Chapel. I could not help thinking that perhaps if the vicissitudes of history had not reduced them to dust, Taxila or Nalanda could have been like this.

But colleges and university towns are about teachers and students and people, not only buildings and rivers and settings. Cambridge is about grabbing lunch at the Buttery and about cycling (I saw more people pedalling away in Cambridge than I had seen anywhere else) and punting and falling into the Cam; it is about attending ‘formal hall’ and sitting in wonderfully ancient libraries which have the original papers of Newton (but the famous apple tree is not the real one) and walking down the main street with its trendy stores but even more inviting eateries. For students it is about finishing papers and pursuing a rigorous course of work that can only be expected in an educational institution ranked among the best in the world.

My wife and I were actually quite taken up by the rituals of academia. We were invited to tea by Sir Martin Rees, the Master of Trinity College. Sir Rees is an astronomer and a wonderfully soft spoken and welcoming don. His ‘lodge’, as his residence is called, would put many minor palaces to shame. It is a part of the splendid central court of Trinity college, and we traversed a succession of formal drawing rooms full of large oil portraits of the great and the learned, before finally sitting down at a bay window—adorned by a small but well made bust of Mahatma Gandhi—overlooking the court. I learnt that the Master of Trinity is appointed by the monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister. A succession of Nobel Laureates have held the post. In fact, Sir Rees’ predecessor was our very own Amartya Sen.