By Chuppala Nagesh Bhushan The rebel in the lab coat What a cussed Indian biologist can teach institutions about beauty, dissent and the price of conformity WHEN India's Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) opened in Hyderabad, the country's press did not know quite what to make of it. Reporters accustomed to government buildings whose only reliable landmark was the smell of their toilets found themselves inside a building of glass, art and clean lines. They dubbed it "Zanadu" and sniffed that it looked suspiciously like a five-star hotel. Questions were duly asked in Parliament. Why should a state laboratory be draped in contemporary sculpture and architectural flourish? The man responsible, P.M. Bhargava, would have considered the outrage a compliment. A molecular biologist by training and an irritant to bureaucracy by vocation, Dr Bhargava spent a career arguing that the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of beauty were not separate projects but th...