Spaced Out On Kebabs

"It's a socialite kind of thing, keep me out of it." It wasn't the lunch that worried Discovery Channel India managing director so much as an earlier Lunch with BS with a high-profile satellite channel head where we had reported his glad eye during the meeting. No, this is a solemn affair, I assured him. Kiran Karnik is too much of a gentleman to quarrel on such matters so he asked to be called on Monday. On that day, his assistant said he could meet me on Wednesday at the India International Centre (IIC).

IIC was too dull, I said, but Karnik insisted: "I'm not much of a foodie and I don't much care for the five star restaurants." IIC could turn out to be boring and noisy, I prevaricated some more. "But it's comfortable," he asserted.

 

Surprisingly, on Wednesday morning he called. "How about that Indian food restaurant at the Hyatt?" he asked. I jumped for it. We set our date for 1.15 pm at Dilli Ka Angan. The restaurant turned out to be quite empty. "It usually is during lunch," Karnik informed, "but at dinner it's house-full." It turned out that Karnik frequently entertained outstation guests at the restaurant.

The April heat had left us parched so we asked for two fresh lime sodas as soon as we had settled down at our table. Karnik immediately changed his mind: "Make it fresh lime and water for me," he requested the waiter. "Aerated beverages cause hiccups," he explained to me. "Fortunately, beer isn't that aerated."

The attendant brought the menu and the discussion veered towards food. Karnik, it turned out, is non-vegetarian with a vengeance, hating most vegetables including tomatoes, bhindi and baingan. He opted for his favourite kebab platter -- "the one without the prawns," he told the waiter. I settled for a vegetarian thali.

As we waited for our orders to arrive, I questioned Karnik on his move from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), where he'd helped develop India's satellite communication system INSAT, to Discovery Channel, where he's now known for pushing the education and infotainment channel into 15 million households. Was it a multinational job that had lured the educationist and thinker? "I had scorned every opportunity to join an MNC earlier," Karnik said as we waited for our lunch. "It was more the inability to do what I was invited to in my last assignment at the University Grants Commission." Playing on his passion for education, in 1989 UGC tempted him with the idea of starting education TV programmes. He quit ISRO, accepted the offer and came to Delhi as the first director of the Consortium for Educational Communication responsible for launching TV programmes for college students in the country.

"It was such a wonderful experiment. Studios were set up in at least 15

different universities across the country. It resulted in many outstanding

programmes being made by students and professors," he recalled. Predictably, however, the government soon lost interest in it and funding dried up. Karnik accepted the Discovery offer in 1995 because "it held the challenge of popularising programmes with serious content".

The food arrived. His was a small helping of yellow daal, and an assortment of fish, chicken and lamb kebabs. Mine was an embarrassingly huge thali with a variety of curries and vegetables. Both of us chose naans to accompany the meal.

Nibbling at his naan, Karnik got around to talking about his schooling at Doveton Corrie in Madras. "Today nobody's heard of it, but it used to be an institution of repute," he said. For college, he was packed off to Nagpur where his elder brother was training to be a pilot at a local flying club. His brother joined the Indian Air Force (IAF), while Karnik completed his honours in physics. "To be honest, I tried for IAF too," he said, but thankfully for India's space programme, he was grossly underweight (and remains so). He toyed with other alternatives but eventually landed at the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad in 1966.

That proved to be a turning point because it provided him the opportunity of working with one of the greatest Indian visionaries of modern India _ Dr Vikram Sarabhai, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Several MNCs, including Coca Cola, wanted to pick him up through campus recruitments, but a single meeting with Vikram Sarabhai helped him make up his mind. "I was so impressed by his vision and his plans, I could not say no to Dr Sarabhai," he remembered. He joined the Atomic Energy Commission in Bombay in 1968.

After a few years, Sarabhai packed him off to Ahmedabad to start a space

programme that later developed into the full-fledged ISRO. Compared to Bombay, Ahmedabad was dull and young Karnik would rush to Bombay over weekends. However, at the end of 20 years in the city, he grew roots there and admits that nine years after shifting to Delhi, he still has to adjust to the life and people here. "The ISRO staff had the highest level of

commitment and integrity towards their work. It was an amazing place to be in," he remembered with pride.

At ISRO, his contributions are well known. In 1975, Karnik carried out successful direct satellite broadcasting for rural education. The experiment was called SITE (satellite instructional TV experiment) and it used a US satellite to reach television signals in remote rural areas in the country. The project was awarded the first UNESCO prize for rural communication. Besides, Karnik worked on a parallel programme that culminated in India's multi-purpose INSAT system.

We had been chatting for nearly an hour when I realised that Karnik was done with his food. He had obviously enjoyed the kebabs while the daal remained almost untouched. I was too embarrassed to continue to eat alone, so the waiter was asked to clear the table. "The kebabs here are good," he commented on the lunch, "but even Radisson serves some wonderful kebabs at the Kebab Factory," urging me to try them some time. I couldn't help thinking that he seemed almost as passionate about kebabs as he had about ISRO, or physics.

The waiter reappeared for orders for dessert. Karnik wasn't interested, so I felt obliged to refuse too. We both agreed on coffee.

It was time for less serious chit-chat. What does he do in his spare time? "It is so little that I hardly get to read these days. I used to complete at least two books a week." He does manage to read some stuff on physics though. Socialising eats up a lot of his time. "It's something I cannot escape," he said, "almost like an occupational hazard." Suddenly I was uneasy that he thought of the lunch as an imposition too. Fortunately, our coffee was over. I paid the Rs 1,339 bill_ a small amount compared to the time Karnik spent lunching with BS.