KIRAN PRABHAKAR LATURKAR

Someone had said that one can have real  friends only  till his teen age is over. This must be true Definitely it is true for Kiran Laturkar.

After teen age one will have only  colleagues,neighbours and business related acquaintances . 


Every person who came to pay his tribute to Kiran  other day ,at Bajaj Nagar ground, knew Kiran for more than 50 or 60 years ! Kiran was just 69 when he breathed last.


In spite of rising so high in academic and professional career  and working in many counties across the globe  Kiran remained grounded. Though he settled in Pune all his friends in Pune were his old friends of Nagpur either from his school or from his college days.


Kiran Prabhakar Laturkar is no more.


Alas !  He  has left us at a relatively young age for his heavenly abode. This is unbelievable but true as Kiran's  bubbling interest in life was evident thru. his lively posts on WA  before he finally succumbed to cruel cancer. The saddest news  was a big shock to most of his friends  as Kiran disclosed about his cancer to very few friends and was active on mobile almost till end.


Kiran had a large friend circle and 

all our friendships   blossomed from our school days .Till we dispersed in 1975,

We regularly used to meet  at  Sanjay Kher's home (which was the  Lords cricket ground for us) at Meher Bhavan, Dharampeth, Nagpur. I think those were the wonderful days and  one Just cannot forget those sweet memories. Kiran always stood out in our company as a scholar and a multi-faceted personality. He was superb in academic  career  but still he used to be close to all his  friends who were mediocre or average in their intellect.He rightly used to identify  plus points  of all his friends and respect them genuinely. Apart from academics he had  interest in many things like Cricket, Tennis,Carrom,Hindi films, music songs and had all the records of the achievements of all his heroes on his lips. 


Kiran did his post graduation in statistics and had many records and data of vague things including BEST buses of Mumbai, how much is an average time for letter to reach from source to destination or record of every moovie he watched in any cinema theater with its tickets !!

He was a real statistician  .


 When Kiran was around We used to have verbal fights on the subjects like who is better batsman.Sunny Gavaskar or Viswanath .....who is better actor Dilip Kumar or Raj Kapoor who is better  singer Lata or Aasha and so on.

 

 For Kiran Cricket was most important. This was a hereditary trait !  Kiran's father who was excellent mathematics teacher in JTC was also a keen follower of cricket. I remember Kiran used to write down day's highlights and complete score board of the day on Slate for his father before leaving home when we used to meet in the evening at Laksmi Bhuvan . When Gavaskar scored his 35 th century I and  many friends of Kiran congratulated Kiran not Gavaskar !

  

 Even after "Google" came ,we had more faith in whatever Kiran said ! For us , He was "Aananji Dosa " in the knowledge of cricket records and in Hindi  film songs he was no less than Annu Kapur the great .


After 1975 when we dispersed, Kiran used to write letters as those were the days when we did not have land line phones .(forget mobiles ) After 3 or 4 rounds of exchanging letters there was a vacuum in our relationship for almost 2 years.

Then suddenly in 1978  I found Kiran in TIFR Mumbai. I was in IIT Powai and we used to go to TIFR, as to all post graduate students of IIT Powai , TIFR gave  free 10 minutes  computer time either on DEC 10 or CDC  3600 mainframe computers. 

Kiran after completing his M Tech.in IIT Kanpur had joined TIFR and was working in the guidance of Dr Jayant Naralikar. He refused to disclose the project name as he was  bound by oath of secrecy.

Then we  were lost again. We were in touch again after  12 years when the Internet Technology flourished .We got connected through email and later remained connected through mobiles and  WA .



All the friends of Kiran were shocked  way back in 1970 when our HSSC result was announced and to everyone's surprise and agony Kiran's name was not in the merit list.

He missed the rank by a sole mark but that was the last time he missed his name in the merit list in whichever exam he appeared there after.

Kiran did his graduation and post graduation from the Institute of science Nagpur and then went to IIT Kanpur for completing his M .Tech in computer science . IIT Kanpur  was considered the best IIT in 1975 among all the IITs and unlike these days, computer subject was not familiar to many people. Professor Rajaraman was in IIT Kanpur and was guide of Kiran.


Unlike today the degree of difficulty of developing any software program was very high  as Personal computers were not existing in those days and only Main frame computers were available in some selected Institutes .

 

The interaction with the main frame computer used to be by feeding the huge deck of computer cards after punching them on the separate card punching machines , which present generation of programmers have not even seen.



The biggest achievement of Kiran was he was the first person to develop the software which enabled people to write in Devnagari script on computer. This he did way back in 1977 and his guide was professor Dr. Rajaraman who was entrusted by GOI to start the new computer research centre. Dr Rajaraman was pleased with Kiran's M Tech  thesis . The first-ever  sentence in Devnagari  which was printed by computer on the screen was 


गावस्कर श्रेष्ठ बल्लेबाज है l


(This was because of Kiran's love for  the game of cricket and more importantly love for Sunil Gavaskar )


Please note in 1977 the development of such  software was nearly a miracle considering tedious and laborious procedures involved in the development.


No wonders India soon became  well known in the field of software .


That was possible because of great  visionary professors like  Dr Rajaraman and hard working intelligent students like Kiran .


All those who type  in Devnagari script are using improved version of original software developed by Kiran the great !

The loss of Kiran will take some more time for me to beleive the loss.We ,all his friends , pray for the departed noble soul to achieve Sadgati at the feet of Lord.

 Om Shanti, 🙏🙏 

  ----- Rajendra Phansalkar


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