24 LIFE AMD WORK OF SIR JAGADIS C. BOSE 



Jagadis keenly realised that his first duty was to take the 

 burden off his father, and by his own earnings to pay off 

 the debt. The most promising career for this was to win 

 a place in the Indian Civil Service. But Bose's father, 

 though himself successful and even distinguished in the 

 Government service, vetoed his son's proposals. He 

 strongly felt the position of an administrator as one too 

 much above and aloof from the fortunes and struggles of 

 the people ; and he did not wish his son to repeat this 

 authoritative experience, but to take a more ordinary part 

 among his fellow-men. He was willing to see him a scholar 

 or utilising his scientific aptitudes and training for the 

 advancement of Indian agriculture. 



Young Bose then turned his attention towards medicine, 

 apparently the only avenue and means of support for 

 the career of natural science. This he still hoped to study 

 in some English University, and so thought of London. 

 But the great cost of a stay in England had to be reckoned 

 with ; and at this time his father was on his two years' 

 medical leave on reduced pay, and uncertain whether his 

 health would admit of return to duty, and its larger 

 income. It was clearly inexpedient for Jagadis to undertake 

 the expensive educational stay in England in circumstances 

 so uncertain. 



A further complication, and for an affectionate son the 

 most serious of all, was his mother's dread of separation 

 her fear not only of the strange unknown Western world on 

 which her boy's heart was set, but also that terror of the 

 sea which is so common in India, though so strange to us 

 Western folk with seafaring in our blood. Is not this perhaps 

 a survival, with old folk-lore exaggeration, of the dangers 

 of the Indian coasts ? above all, perhaps, of the perils of the 

 days of Indian maritime enterprise towards the West, and 

 of voyaging to China with its typhoons, of colonisation of 

 Java and Cambodia, doubtless all with disasters, which, like 

 so much of Indian history generally, have lapsed from record 

 and even oral tradition, but survive in the national mind, 



