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On a spiritual quest

Mani Bhaumik's "Code Name God" takes you on a fascinating journey

A RAGS-TO-RICHES STORY Mani Bhaumik

Does dawn show the day, and childhood the man? Mani Bhaumik has reasons to disagree. The man who is hailed as "the co-inventor of laser technology that made LASIK eye surgery possible" and is counted among the richest and the most famous and was once known for throwing the most lavish parties, was born on a mud-floor in an impoverished Bengali family and did not wear a pair of slippers till he was 16.

His book "Code Name God: The Spiritual Odyssey of a Man of Science" (published by Penguin and launched recently at Landmark) is about incredible turnarounds. It tracks Bhaumik's rise from mud to marble floor, his maturity from a lifestyle highlighted by an active seeking of pleasure to one that is given to the quest of truth. Bhaumik found out that his vocation put him in the best possible position to gain an understanding of the one source that is behind the tangible.

Bhaumik brings most aspects of his life into the open. "I gave James Bond a run for his money, and I lived out my own international version of Beach Boys' "California Girls'."

As he went around on a heady party circuit, he "must have invited every pretty girl within a ten-mile radius". Bhaumik's "gated hilltop home (at Bel Air, California) furnished the dramatic backdrop for spectacular parties of a hundred or more at a time, typically seated in intimate, conversational groups beside my Olympic-sized swimming pool."

Some of the best minds (Ashley Montagu, Laura (Mrs. Aldous) Huxley, Eddie Albert and Norman Cousins) offered their insights on a variety of topics at these meetings. For a while, he dated the Hollywood actress Eva Gabor, who introduced him to Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis, Johnny Carson and Neil Diamond, thereby adding to the glitter of his parties.

Although fame and riches gave him audience with the cream of the crop — he has met Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton on a one-to-one basis — and brought almost anything on a platter, Mani Bhaumik was not a happy man. When he got a handle on the problem, the futility of "going from one excitement to another" dawned on him. The queasy feeling inside disappeared when a series of events led to a spiritual and intellectual understanding of the `One Source' from which everything derives and which resides in everything. In a rare display of erudition that takes in scriptures, scientific theories and lives of exemplary personalities, he offers his discovery - science validates what the Vedas and the world religions say — "each one of us completes creation and that correspondingly, God is incomplete without us." He enlists the help of neutrons, quarks, gravity and a host of other scientific certainties to drive home this point. Even while dwelling on abstract ideas, his prose is free of jargons and not the least bit turgid.

When you have read the book down to the last page, you realise that Bhaumik has brewed a cocktail - the book has history (it dwells on Freedom Movement with focus on Mahatma Gandhi's role), philosophy, science, religion, anthropology and, above all, an endearing story of a man who took on great odds and won, and won an even greater victory when he reined in his passions.

PRINCE FREDERICK

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