Former Head, Research, Planning, and Business Development, Council of Scientific & Industrial Research in comments to CSIR Family Group (CFG) on May 9, 2022
I am really very saddened … I was not as sad when my father had expired. I was truly, truly, truly so saddened. I will tell you a story. You know about Dr. Prasada Rao as a Director, as a human being, as a special person but you don’t know about Prasada Rao as a matchmaker.
Some of my friends may remember, K Lakshminarayanan who was a former CSIR person but then he joined Asia Pacific Center for Technology Transfer. He had just retired … the year was 2005 or 2006 and Dr. Prasada Rao was then staying at Defence Colony. One afternoon he walked in at my place around 12 Noon and said let’s go out. I told him that I had to meet Lakshminarayanan as I had to give a report to him. He’s on the way in Green Park and let us go and give him the report and then we can sit for lunch at some south Indian restaurant.
He agreed and so we went to Lakshminarayan’s house in Green Park. He and his wife were there. I started discussing Lakshminaryanan the report and Prasada Rao was chatting with his wife. He learned that they had two daughters and one was happily married in a real typical south Indian family in Dubai and the other one was in Sweden. She had been an intern at NEERI and after that had gotten a fellowship and was in Sweden but was not willing to come back to India.
Dr. Prasada Rao was representing GTC at that time and there was a south Indian boy there based in Texas. So Dr. Prasada Rao proposed the boy’s name and arranged a meeting.
He does not know Lakshminarayanan, has never met him before in his life. Any place, any problem in any sphere of life, it was astounding.
He was the life spirit of CFG, always commenting on something, a shloka, a joke. We will really miss him.
– H. R. Bhojwani