The Laboratory and its Double: The Making of the Scientist-Citizen at TIFR

If the utopian ideals of Bhatnagar with which we began our journey saw science as existing without national boundaries, Bhabha’s institute which attempted to mirror that utopian ideal focused on erasing all signs of the regional and the provincial. Though the social mores adopted at the Institute were more in tune with the customs of Cambridge or Princeton, these practices were not exact replicas but a local version of institutional practices from elsewhere.75 The Institute’s West Canteen for example, attempted and perfected over time, a variety of hybrid culinary experiments with locally available vegetables: examples of these are the Karela Hotpot [the bitter gourd hotpot] and sautéed Dudhi [The sautéed calabash]. But the West Canteen did impose the use of fork and knife on all users, a practice which continues till today.