It was with great sadness and shock that I received the news of Rajasekaran's passing away. My sincere condolences to Mrs Rajasekaran, Uma and Poongodhai.
I met him for the first time at the Einstein Centenary Meeting in 1979 instit at PRL, Ahmedabad, where both of us were speakers. He gave a masterly account of what is now called the Standard Model. He also elaborated on what he called a 'heretical' view, the idea of quarks being integrally charged. This idea was due to Han and Nambu, to which Rajasekaran and his coworkers made deep contributions. I have devoted considerable space to this in my forthcoming book 'Strings to Strings'.
After that meeting I did not meet him for many years till I joined the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1986 where he was the Joint
Director. Along with George Sudarshan, Rajasekaran played a big role in bringing many brilliant and energetic researchers to the place.
But soon, the place was caught up in what may easily be described as the most traumatic crisis to cripple any academic institution.
That's when I interacted with him, and also his family, most strongly. I had to bear the major brunt of those events which severely affected both my academic as well as personal life. The kindness showed by his family towards my daughter, Shantala, who was only three at the time, still stands out vividly in my memory.
The last extended association with him was when I too joined Seshadri's Chennai Mathematical Institute in 2011.
His passing away is a great loss to Indian Physics.