David Leavitt, an American novelist, publishes The Indian Clerk on September 4. In London, an adaptation of the Hardy-Ramanujan relationship goes on stage on September 5, presented by the theatre group Complicite. And, previewing the play, Indian-British writer Nikita Lalwani wrote about how the hold of the Ramanujan story on her imagination influenced her recent novel, Gifted, which has been longlisted for this year’s Man Booker prize.

“It is a spectacularly great story,” says Meghnad Desai, professor emeritus at the London School of Economics and member of the British House of Lords. “It is the story of two very shy, socially crippled men who were able to communicate in the one universal language the world has known, mathematics. In mathematics, the criteria of proof cannot be avoided. It transcends all cultures.”

Desai himself has researched a script for a film adaptation of Ramanujan’s life. It was put on hold when filmmaker Dev Benegal announced his own project on Ramanujan in collaboration with Stephen Fry. Word is that Benegal’s project too may be on hold, but Desai says he plans to resume work on his script once he finishes with a film on the life of Noor Inayat Khan, the “spy princess”.

In its popular telling, Ramanujan’s story is one of discovery at various levels: his solitary pursuit of mathematical proofs in his Port Trust office, having been denied a college degree because of failure to clear non-mathematical subjects; his letters to the greatest mathematicians of the day seeking comment on his work, letters that went unheeded till the reply from Hardy came.

Leavitt’s book, in fact, begins with the arrival of the letter at Hardy’s home. Hardy wonders whether it is a practical joke, but there is something absolutely compelling in the manner in which the proofs are presented. Hardy arranges for Ramanujan to come to Trinity College, takes care of him as best as his reserve allows him to. Ramanujan gets his degree, and affirmation of his exceptional work in election to the London Mathematical Society and fellowship of the Royal Society and Trinity College. Diagnosed soon after with tuberculosis, he is first moved to a sanatorium and then back to Kumbakonam. By the age of 33 he was dead.

Hardy, a bachelor, was no less a fascinating life. He partook of the full gamut of intellectual life at Cambridge, but was so private a person that he could not, as Desai recalls, address his closest friends by the first names. “He was so private,” says Desai, “that he could not bring himself to ask Ramanujan whether he had eaten properly.” So, there was “absolute cultural non-communication” and “complete communication in mathematics”, the latter leading to major contributions in theory of numbers.

Desai cautions against the mythologising that has distorted Ramanujan’s life story. He did not spring from abject poverty, nor was his intelligence unrecognised prior to his departure for England. Neither did he field expressions of racism in England, nor was he abandoned by Hardy or by his community in Madras in his personal circumstances. In fact, Hardy got him admitted to the best sanatorium.

Desai tells a story of one of Hardy’s visit to the sanatorium that well illustrates their special bond. Once he got to Ramanujan’s bedside, “all Hardy could say was, ‘the number of my taxi was an uninteresting number, 1729’.” Ramanujan demurred, it is, he pointed out, the sum of two perfect cubes.