Pankaj Sharan is one of my college mates from the Allahabad University (UP, India) and IIT Kanpur (UP, India).  Pankaj and I were room mates during 1965-1967 at the venerable Muir Hostel in Allahabad.

Pankaj is the most talented and creative person I know.  He holds a Ph.D. in physics, he writes poems, he does charcoal drawings, he plays a musical instrument, and he also authors physics textbooks. It has been a privilege to know Pankaj.

Pankaj lives in India (Gurugram, near New Delhi) with his equally talented wife, Basabi.  Their only daughter is a Ph.D. from MIT and works in Silicon Valley.  This is Pankaj’s first contribution to our blog.

Welcome aboard Pankaj.

A Name (Translated into English from Hindi by Pankaj himself)

A bird tweeted it first
Then a breeze whistled it,
On and on.
Under the shadow of a rock
A tiny seedling
Repeated
With folded hands
In the morning prayer.

The Sun heard it
And cosmic rays
Carried it
For thousands of light-years
Spreading, expanding
To other galaxies.

The sound of your name
Scattered and merged
Became imperishable
Within You.