Venki Ramakrishnan

Venki Ramakrishnan0:01

BBC Sounds

Presenter0:02

Music.

Venki Ramakrishnan0:02

Yeah.

Presenter0:02

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is molecular biologist Venki Ramakrishnan. The pioneering work he has done in his field has earned him a Nobel Prize for Chemistry, a Knighthood, and India's Padma Vibhashan, the second highest civilian honour the country can bestow. He's also president of the Royal Society. It wasn't the most straightforward path to scientific success, however. Back in the 1970s, he was a young, dissatisfied physicist who, by his own admission, did almost everything except buckle down and do his work. It was after he made the switch to biology that he found his calling. An article in Scientific American captured his imagination, beginning what would become a career-long quest and towards the end, an out-and-out race, to map the atomic structure of the mother of all molecules, the machine that turns the blueprint of life into life itself, the ribosome. Of his discovery, he says, The excitement of building a structure cannot be exaggerated. Until that point, the molecule is a black box. You know it exists and what it does, not a lot more. Now suddenly, you see the molecule in its full glory. It must be how explorers felt when they came across a completely new landscape. Venki Ramakrishnan, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you.

Presenter1:58

So in my introduction I described the ribosome as you often do as a machine. Now for those of us whose molecular biology knowledge isn't what it should be, can you tell us a little bit more about what they do? Everyone knows or thinks they know what DNA is. It's that long molecule that contains our genes. But really what a gene is, is a stretch of DNA that contains information on how to make a particular protein. And all life forms, including us, are made up of thousands of proteins. The reason you're able to see or hear me is because of proteins in your eyes or in your ears. Everything depends on proteins. And the way proteins are made is by this enormous object called the ribosome, which reads the instructions in our genes and uses those instructions to stitch together a protein.

Presenter2:53

You were awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in two thousand nine for your part in mapping the ribosome's atomic structure, and you shared the prize with Thomas A. Steitz and Arda Yonat. The prize is the holy grail for all research scientists, of course. How did you find out that you'd actually won it?

Presenter3:10

I came into work that day. I was actually late because I'd had a puncture on my bicycle.

Presenter3:16

And I was somewhat irate, and I got this phone call, and this woman said, This is a very important phone call from the Swedish Academy of Sciences and I immediately suspected an elaborate prank, because I have some friends who would play exactly that sort of prank.

Presenter3:33

And so when the fellow came on and said he was the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy and he wanted to congratulate me, I didn't quite believe him.

Presenter3:42

And then in response to my comments, I heard laughter at the other end, and I realized I was on a speaker phone at the other end. And so gradually it sank in.

Presenter3:53

And your wife Vera has supported your career throughout its many twists and turns. How did she react when you won the prize? Well, I couldn't get hold of her. She actually learned it from a friend of mine.

Venki Ramakrishnan3:59

Yeah.

Presenter4:03

And when we finally spoke, she said

Presenter4:06

I thought you had to be really smart to win one of those.

Presenter4:10

I understand she's a regular Desert Island Discs listener and doesn't know that you're coming on the program today. That's right. So it's a it's a bit of a surprise for her. Oh, fantastic. I love that. Well, let's hear some music then. Tell me about the first piece today.

Presenter4:25

Well, the first piece refers to a particular period in my life when we were trying to solve the structure of the ribosome, and this involved freezing hundreds of crystals in the cold room. And the really amazingly dedicated person who did this was my graduate student, Bill Clemens. Well, in order to relieve the tedium of freezing crystal after crystal in a freezing cold room, he would set up a small stereo system and put on Johnny Cash.

Presenter4:57

And this particular song

Presenter5:00

It's also something that scientists need to remember. Underneath that thin veneer of rationality, we're all highly emotional beings. And a song talks about one of the most important things humans do, which is fall in love.

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And how overpowering that is, and how we have no control over it.

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So it's Ring of Fire.

Speaker 35:27

Love is a burning thing.

Speaker 35:33

And it makes a fiery ring.

Speaker 35:39

Bound by wild desire

Speaker 35:46

I fell into a ring of fire.

Speaker 35:50

I fell in

Presenter5:52

Johnny Cash and a Ring of Fire. Venki Ramakrishnan, by the end of your bid to map the ribosome, there were four groups of scientists engaged in a long race to be the first to do it. What sort of pressure were you under at that time? In my case it was there was even more pressure because I'd moved to this institution.

Presenter6:11

By telling them, you know, I'm going to come here and solve the ribosome. And if I didn't do it, you know, I'd have no credibility at all. Competition is very good for science because it made all of us work really hard, pull out all the stops, and just think very hard and obsess about the problem. So everything went much faster when multiple groups started competing. But it's really terrible for the scientists. It's huge stress and pressure. How did you cope with it? Started to learn Spanish as a kind of refuge. Yes, weren't you studying A-levels at the same time as you eventually won the Nobel Prize? Oh, yes. Student newspaper at the Sixth Form College, where I was taking my A-levels, interviewed me for their newspaper. And I think the headline said something like: Sixth-Form College student wins Nobel Prize.

Venki Ramakrishnan6:45

Guess what?

Venki Ramakrishnan6:49

Yeah.

Presenter7:04

Time for some more music, I think. What's your second disc going to be? So the second disc is a piece of Carnatic music. This is the music, classical music of South India. And the first three years of my life were spent in Chidambaram, which is a temple town famous for its dance and music. And when I was born, my father was actually away in Wisconsin. My mother went to work during the day, and I was taken care of by my grandmother and by my aunt Gomathi. And they would sing these songs. And when my father returned, he too was a big fan of Carnatic music. The song is sung by an amazingly talented Carnatic music singer, one of the new generation of singers named Sikhil Gurucharan, whom I've gotten to know personally.

Presenter7:57

And it's by a composer, I believe from the 1400s, named Purandara Dasa.

Speaker 38:05

To the Red Man.

Presenter8:14

Better

Venki Ramakrishnan8:15

Mm

Presenter8:34

Yeah.

Presenter8:41

Saka la graha balani

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Selech balanced.

Presenter8:56

Sikulagraho by Purundura Dasa and that is performed by Sikhil Gurachuring.

Presenter9:03

Thank you, Ramakrishna. Let's go back to your early years. You were born, as you said, in Chidambaram, the ancient temple town in South India, and didn't meet your dad until you were six months old, apparently, had you? Yes, that's right. He was doing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Venki Ramakrishnan9:15

How come?

Presenter9:21

He married my mother and soon afterwards left for this postdoctoral fellowship. And my mother stayed behind and she was pregnant and had me while my father was away. So I think I was about six months when I first met him.

Presenter9:38

And both your parents then left when you were about one and a half to go to Canada on a research fellowship. My father got a second research fellowship, and this time he took my mother along, but he thought perhaps a small child might be too problematic. So I was brought up by my grandmother and by my aunt.

Presenter9:57

How long were they gone? I believe they were gone for over a year, perhaps a year and a half or so.

Presenter10:02

And then later your mother spent some more time abroad to study for a PhD in psychology, something that your father encouraged wholeheartedly. How usual was that? I would say it's very unusual even today. Even a 21st century liberal man in the West would be hard pressed to be asked to take care of a three-year-old while his wife went halfway around the world to get a PhD. So I would say that was very enlightened of him. You know, my mother finished her PhD in 18 months, which must be something of a record. And I think she felt tremendous pressure to come back because she had a young child and a husband at home. She was obviously keen to get back to you.

Venki Ramakrishnan10:10

Yes.

Presenter10:43

Yes. So when you were three, you and your parents then moved to Baroda, which is now known as Vadodara in Gujarat. What do you remember about that? One of the earliest memories I have in Baroda is of standing in the playground and not understanding a word that any of the other children were doing. And my parents, as a result, sent me to the only English school in town, which was a Catholic school, and it was co-educational until I was in third grade.

Presenter11:14

But when the Jesuits in town started a boys' school a few miles away, the nuns who ran my school decided that my school would only be a for girls from that period on. So I'm one of the few males who who went to a Catholic girls' school.

Presenter11:32

Tell me about your third disc today. North India has a a somewhat different system of music called Hindustani music. But if you look at Hindustani music, it's actually a blend of lots of influences. It's influenced by old Indian music, but it's also influenced by Persian, Arabic, Afghani. And this particular piece, Chaptilaq Sabjeen, was composed around 1300 by Amir Khusro, a really brilliant poet and composer who is himself a hodgepodge. And finally, the singer is a famous Pakistani singer who's very well known not only in Pakistan but very revered in India, named Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Presenter12:16

It brings back a a a lot of different memories of friendship and growing up.

Presenter12:27

Ah

Presenter12:28

Happy Ana Nana Nanu Man

Speaker 312:34

Happy Yah

Presenter12:36

Uh

Speaker 312:37

Inanayanama jo palkrada puto hair me.

Speaker 312:46

Yeah.

Speaker 212:47

Uh

Speaker 312:51

Uh

Venki Ramakrishnan12:52

I love love.

Venki Ramakrishnan12:56

Ina namu men.

Venki Ramakrishnan12:59

Your body could die but don't handle it.

Venki Ramakrishnan13:05

Nama de Punga Rupo Natohe

Speaker 313:12

Ah

Venki Ramakrishnan13:13

Yeah.

Speaker 313:13

Bhajar Dharu Kirkara Ja Surma Dijar Naja.

Venki Ramakrishnan13:18

I

Speaker 313:18

Uh

Venki Ramakrishnan13:18

Jimmy Nan on the man.

Presenter13:21

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Chapter Lak Sabcheen. Venkiramakrishnan, what kind of student were you at school as a young boy?

Presenter13:30

became a bit of a rebel. I I would read all sorts of things that interested me, but I didn't pay much attention to my school work. I lost interest in my studies and slipped from the uh top of my class to the bottom third.

Presenter13:43

I think my parents were so worried and eventually I have a feeling they sort of gave up on me for a while. There was a very good science and mathematics teacher in our school who reignited my interest in studies. So finally I got back on track. But in between there were times when I would cut classes and, you know, play hooky. I wasn't exactly a model student. And even in university, if I found classes boring, they would take attendance in our classes, even in university. And so we would sit next to a window, my friend and I, and as soon as attendance was taken and the lecturer turned his back to us to write something on the blackboard, we would just jump out of the window and run off and, you know, go and have a cup of coffee or something.

Presenter14:31

This is not the behaviour we expect of a future Nobel Prize winning science.

Venki Ramakrishnan14:34

Now indeed.

Presenter14:40

Time for some more music. What's your fourth disc going to be? At the age of nineteen, I decided to go to the US to get a PhD in physics.

Presenter14:51

And I was ex very excited to go to America. You know, to me that was the land of opportunity. It was also the land of people who were rational, all sorts of heroes. And of course I was brought up on a diet of Hollywood films. So for all sorts of reasons it was incredibly exciting.

Presenter15:08

Around that time, Simon Garfunkel came out with the song America, and

Presenter15:13

The first Thanksgiving break, a friend of mine took me to his home in New York from Ohio, which is where I was doing my graduate work.

Presenter15:23

And for the first time I encountered the New Jersey Turnpike, which is this huge freeway with about at the time it had eight lanes, but I think it has even more now. And it reminded me of this verse of counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. And I was really excited to even just see the turnpike because I knew the song and it was the first time I was seeing it.

Presenter15:48

Kathy Ann Mustafa, no one knew she was sleeping.

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I'm empty and aching and I don't know

Speaker 316:00

Why counting the cars on the new jersey turn back they've all come to look for me

Presenter16:22

Simon Agarfrankel and America. Thank you, Ramakrishnan. You moved to the States to start your postgraduate studies in 1971 and having skipped a couple of grades in school, you were still a teenager when that happened. How much of a culture shock was it arriving in the America of 1971 as a teenage boy? Well, it was a huge culture shock because India is a fairly staid and conservative country in terms of our personal attire and lives. In fact, many students still lived with their parents as undergraduates. And suddenly I was thrust into the early 70s, which is really a continuation of the 60s in America. What you might describe as sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Just seeing people and the way they dressed, you know, with their tattered jeans and long hair.

Presenter17:15

Women in quite scantily clad attire was a rather big culture shock. How did you fit into that? I'm trying to imagine you. Well, I was very nerdy. I wore thick plastic framed glasses. I remember I had these suede shoes that were about two sizes too large.

Venki Ramakrishnan17:24

Well

Presenter17:35

We bought these cheap clothes from Kmart, which were on sale. So the only thing that mattered was price.

Presenter17:43

There were still anti war rallies going on against the Vietnam War.

Presenter17:47

And I was at this rally, and of course everybody was dressed pretty much like sixties and early seventies rebels would be. But there were these two people who were dressed like me in cheap polyester trousers and shirts with crew cuts. I also had a crew cut.

Presenter18:04

And so I went up to them and started trying to chat them up, and they looked at me very suspiciously and were very curt.

Presenter18:10

And then I was told later that they were actually FBI agents who were meant to keep an eye on the anti-war protesters.

Presenter18:18

It was at that point time to get some flares. And yes, well, actually I I think my attire changed uh once I met Vera, but uh until then I was still fairly nerdy.

Venki Ramakrishnan18:21

Yeah.

Presenter18:32

By the time you completed your PhD in physics, you'd already made the decision to switch fields to biology. What was it about the subject that fascinated you? Almost every issue of Scientific American had some new breakthrough in biology. And I knew a lot of famous biologists had started off in physics, like Max Delbrook and Max Perutz, who founded the LMB, or Francis Crick is one of the most famous of those. And so I knew that that was a transition that was possible.

Presenter19:04

But I didn't know any biology, so I decided that I should perhaps go to graduate school all over again. I mean, that's an interesting choice to decide to kind of take a few steps back and to really, you know, lay those solid foundations. Was anybody around you going, hey, you know, you're already getting your PhD here, what are you doing? I think people might have thought it was strange. In fact, many universities wouldn't accept me because I already had a PhD. But fortunately, the University of California at San Diego.

Presenter19:35

Was much more supportive. And they offered me a place. And so I spent two years in San Diego really learning biology from scratch. I took a lot of undergraduate courses. So there I was with a PhD taking undergraduate courses. But I think the foundation it gave me made me a much better scientist. You met and married your wife Vera while you were a postgraduate student and had a young family. How compatible was that with student life? I decided to get married almost on the spur of the moment.

Presenter20:05

And uh I realized here I was married with uh a young stepdaughter and I better uh get my act together.

Presenter20:16

This jumps to a time when I was a post doctoral fellow at Yale.

Presenter20:19

and my stepdaughter Tanya had just started taking violin lessons, and in fact for a brief period I too was taking violin lessons.

Presenter20:29

And later I heard Nathan Milstein perform at Woolsey Hall, which is the big concert hall at Yale, a piece from the D minor Partita by Bach, the Chacon.

Presenter20:42

And he was in his eighties at the time, I believe, and still played with amazing strength and virtuosity.

Presenter20:50

And so this is uh Milstein's recording of that piece.

Venki Ramakrishnan21:33

Uh

Venki Ramakrishnan21:35

Uh

Presenter21:51

Shakong from the partita number two in D minor by Bach performed by Nathan Milstein.

Presenter21:57

February of two thousand saw your first major breakthrough, and I believe you were in a freezing cold lab in Chicago that you had the use of for just forty eight hours. It sounds very dramatic. What was it?

Presenter22:09

We were given forty eight hours to collect our data, and we knew the other groups were making progress. And we knew that if those forty eight hours failed, then we would find ourselves far behind and might not be able to catch up.

Presenter22:25

And so we had to make sure everything had to work like clockwork, and we actually did a huge amount of groundwork before we even went to Chicago.

Presenter22:35

And then at the end of forty eight hours we had to do a calculation to see if the experiment had worked.

Presenter22:42

And when we did the calculation, it looked as if nothing had worked. And then I realized that we had made a little sort of almost like a typo, an error in the script that we had submitted to the program. And when we corrected the error, it spat out the results. And we could see all these dozens of peaks, you know, incredibly high signal to noise. And I knew without even actually calculating a map that we had cracked the problem.

Presenter23:10

And suddenly the tension was released and I started dancing around the office, you know, where the computer was, round and round, saying, you know, we're going to be famous.

Presenter23:21

Time for some more music. Tell me about your sixth disc today, if you would.

Presenter23:25

My wife Vera and I were great anglophiles and we loved to watch English TV programmes and films and read English literature. This is from the film A Room with a View based on E.M. Forster's novel and at the beginning of this is this aria by Puccini.

Presenter23:45

Vera is a big opera buff, and especially likes Puccini.

Speaker 324:01

Uh

Speaker 324:02

Uh

Presenter24:02

Uh

Speaker 324:06

Holy Lord Saul.

Speaker 324:14

Akolmano Si Si Chima.

Venki Ramakrishnan24:25

Yeah.

Presenter24:51

O mio babino karo by Puccini, sung by Dame Kiriti Kanawa, accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir John Pritchard and as featured in the Merchant Ivory adaptation of A Room with a View. Thank you Ramakrishnan. You've been President of the Royal Society since December 2015 and 2020 is going to be your last year. What's been your focus during your tenure and what else do you want to achieve? Well, I came in with a variety of objectives. For example, to build international relations, to make science more at the heart of culture. I regard science as every bit a great triumph of humanity as arts and music. It's a huge triumph of human achievement. And I wanted science to be more central to the thinking of the public. I was also very concerned about the way we educate people in science and actually education in general and the idea that our curriculum, especially in Britain, is far too narrow. And we really need to have a broad curriculum to allow new generations to cope with a rapidly changing world. What do you think isn't featured that should be? I mean, broad including what? The reality is.

Presenter26:12

Technology and the world is changing very rapidly, and the best way to cope with these changes is if we have a very broad foundation.

Presenter26:20

I believe that all science students should learn history, should learn languages, and I believe that humanities students should also learn a certain amount of science all the way through school. But of course, the thing that I spend an inordinate amount of time on is not one of my choosing, which is Brexit and how to maintain our ties with Europe. The whole business of European science and collaboration with Europe has been good for everyone in Europe, including Britain, over the last 40 years. It's really led to a flourishing of European science. And I would hate that to be disrupted. You are going to be in office during the March Brexit deadline, and you've written about your concerns over the potentially negative impact a no-deal Brexit could have on British science. Are those concerns evidence-based?

Presenter27:16

Yes, in the sense we know what the EU does for British science. We know that it fosters these large-scale collaborations, it harmonizes a lot of regulations which makes doing experiments across countries very easy, it dramatically expands the influence of British scientists because they often lead projects on a Europe-wide scale. So there are many, many advantages. And we have networks, we have access to a large pool of talent from throughout Europe. So these are all things that have helped British science flourish.

Presenter27:55

Let's have some music. What's going to be next for your seventh disc? My son was a very talented cellist as a boy.

Presenter28:03

In the end he decided to become a physics major at Harvard.

Presenter28:08

As he went to university, his playing and especially his ensemble playing really improved tremendously.

Presenter28:16

So I was a little worried, but not entirely surprised, when he was

Presenter28:21

Around the end of his second year of university, it's a four-year course, he sent me an email saying, You know, I'm going to finish my degree in physics, but I want you to know I'm not going to be like the rest of you Ramakrishnans and become a scientist. I'm going to be a cellist. And I wrote to him and I said, Look, you know, if you're a scientist, you can still play the cello in lots of groups and so on. But you know, if you become a musician, you're going to cut off all the other options. And also, it's not an easy life.

Presenter28:51

And I think he said, well, you know, I want to give it a shot. I said, well, okay, well, good luck.

Presenter28:57

And I remember he played the Grossa fugue with his quartet that he had assembled as part of the chorus. And this is an absolutely s fantastically stellar piece of music.

Speaker 329:24

Uh

Presenter30:11

Gross Afuga from Beethoven's String Quartet in B-flat major, opus 133, performed by the Tokash Quartet. And for your son, Raman, Venki Ramakrishnan, those physics degrees really just not taking with the Ramakrishna family. Yes, you could think of us as all of us as failed physicists, if you like.

Venki Ramakrishnan30:26

Yeah.

Presenter30:32

A recent investigation by The Guardian newspaper has revealed a culture of bullying in some scientific and academic environments. How widespread do you think that problem is? I don't know because a lot of these incidents are anecdotal. The problem, I think, is an enormous power differential. And the power differential comes from the fact that

Presenter30:53

That often the supervisor controls the funding of the student or the postdoc research fellow, and they're often paid from the supervisor's grant. So, that's one source of power. The other source of power is more subtle, which is that if the apprentice, whether it's a student or postdoc, wants to get on with their career, they always need a recommendation from the supervisor. And even the lukewarm recommendation is often enough to sink the prospects of the research fellow. And so, this creates a very large power differential. But the Royal Society is trying to lead the way. We have an active program on the research culture: what is wrong with it, what's right with it, and what needs to be changed. And bullying, of course, will be part of that work. It's time for your eighth disc today. What's it going to be?

Presenter31:46

When Vera and I left the US

Presenter31:50

I missed the fact that after having spent years watching my son develop as a cellist, we were leaving just at the time when he was blossoming into a professional musician.

Presenter32:04

And I think that's one of the things we miss the most about leaving the US and and coming to live in England.

Presenter32:13

and with two friends of his he formed a piano trio called the Horshovsky Trio.

Presenter32:20

This is a recording to sort of remind me of my son's life today.

Presenter33:28

The third movement from Vojak's piano trio in F minor, played by the Horszovsky trio.

Presenter33:35

Which included your son, Raman. Thank you, Ramakrishnan. I'm about to cast you away to lonely isolation on your own desert island. How do you think you'd get on? I think it'll be hard. You know, humans are social animals. I'm fairly capable of entertaining myself for limited periods of time.

Presenter33:54

But being able to occupy yourself and not going crazy could be quite difficult, could be a challenge. Suvenki, you will find the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare waiting for you on the island. I would prefer the Mahabharata, which is the huge epic of which one chapter alone is the Bhagavad Gita, which is one of Hinduism's more important works. And it shows humans with all their foibles and their moral dilemmas and complexity, and nothing is black and white. You can definitely have that instead of the Bible. You can also choose another book to take with you. What will it be?

Presenter34:34

Well, I mentioned that both I and my son are failed physicists, so I thought I'd give myself a second chance. And so my book would be the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Presenter34:47

This is an interesting book because, you know, Richard Feynman was a very famous physicist who decided to lecture to first-year undergraduates at Caltech.

Presenter34:56

But his lectures were so sophisticated

Presenter34:59

That lots of people started attending them, including other professors and postdocs and so on. So that should help me take my mind off my isolation. Wonderful, it's all yours. You can also take a luxury with you, something that will make your time on the island a bit more pleasurable. What would you like?

Presenter35:18

I thought I would take my wife's grand piano. She might be willing to sort of let go of it out of a sense of pity, and that might help me keep up my piano playing.

Presenter35:31

And one final question. If you could only keep one of your fabulous discs, which would it be? What I would want is something that reminds me of my family. Since all of them are string players, I I'll choose the grosser fugue we listen to. That we can do, no problem. Thank you, Ramakrishnan. Thank you so much for sharing your Desert Island discs with us. Thank you for having me.

Presenter36:06

Hi, I really hope you enjoyed that interview with Venki Ramakrishnan. The Desert Island has welcomed many Nobel Prize winners over the years. They include physicist Sir Andre Geim, who spoke to Kirsty Young about his work on graphene, and Sir Paul Nurse talking to Sue Lawley about his research on genetics. In 2007, Kirsty Young spoke to Africa's forest goddess, Wangari Madai. She launched the Greenbelt movement, which has educated and encouraged African women to plant millions of trees. And in 2004, she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace.

Presenter36:46

You're an eminent woman of letters now, indeed, a a professor. By my reckoning you have around around about a dozen honorary degrees too. But as a girl from your background growing up in the nineteen forties, how normal was it to actually even go to school?

Venki Ramakrishnan37:00

It was not normal for many girls to go to school at that time. It was assumed that uh girls did not really have a career. But my two brothers were going to school already. My older brother asked my mother whether I should not be going to school like them.

Venki Ramakrishnan37:17

She w he wanted to know, is there any reason why I don't go to school? My mother's decision to send me to school after my brother asked her that question was um a life-changing experience. You were sent away to boarding school at one point.

Presenter37:31

To a school run by nuns, and you converted to Catholicism, you were given a different name, you were instructed to speak English. All of these things sound like

Venki Ramakrishnan37:33

So

Venki Ramakrishnan37:37

Muins.

Presenter37:41

An incredible artificial imposition to put on a little girl. Was that how it felt at the time, or did you feel you were bettering yourself by that uh change?

Venki Ramakrishnan37:49

Well, that is the the the the amazing thing is that that was the pattern of the colonial period. But for your parents and for yourself, we really believed that we were bettering ourselves, and we did not appreciate that some of the aspects that we were losing were detrimental to our own well being.

Presenter38:09

I mean, you were clearly a very bright child. Did you rejoice in all this learning?

Venki Ramakrishnan38:14

Did you like being taught? I loved learning, and I think that is part of the reason why I was able to go on. I enjoyed learning, and for me, school was a joy.

Presenter38:23

And how now do you view that quid pro quo of giving up the essence of your identity in return for an education? Has there been a journey of

Presenter38:34

Reclaiming the essence of who you are.

Venki Ramakrishnan38:37

Yes, indeed, there has been in a journey. And one of the journeys that I personally took was to redefine my name. And because I had changed my name so many times, the women who attended my mother called me Wangari. And that's my name. And so all the other names that I was given to become first a Protestant Christian and then I was given another name to become a Catholic, I eventually decided that you know what, I am who I was when I first came into this world. Everything else is an adjective, I tell people, my name is Wangari. And Wangari was one of the original names of the primordial parent of my community. So I love it.

Presenter39:23

All those programmes are available to download. Next time, my guest will be the businesswoman and CEO of Anne Summers, Jacqueline Gould. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 239:39

Hello, I'm Elvin Bragg, and just before you go, I wanted to let you know about another podcast from the BBC that I think you might like. It's called In Our Time. And each week, three expert academics join me to discuss ideas from culture, science, history, philosophy, religion. At the end of each podcast, there's more discussion we couldn't fit into the live programme. To subscribe to In Our Time, go to your usual podcast provider, search for In Our Time, click subscribe, and you can enjoy the programme and that extra content every week.