Some people leave behind achievements. Others leave behind a direction.
In the closing reflections of Genius Gem: Dr. G. M. Warke, author Anuradha Parab likens Dr. G. M. Warke to a deepstambh — a lighthouse that stands firm even when the sea around it is turbulent. It is an apt image for a life shaped not merely by success, but by an unwavering sense of purpose. Parab describes him as someone who, even after reaching great heights, remained firmly connected to the ground.
It is an image that makes you pause. What kind of journey earns a person such a place in someone else's telling?
That was the question that lingered around the recent Author Talk at Venture Center, where Parab opened up the story behind Genius Gem. For the first time, an Author Talk at Venture Center unfolded entirely in Marathi, giving the evening an intimacy that seemed particularly fitting for a story so closely tied to its subject's roots.
And perhaps that is where the book's title begins to make sense.
A Genius, But Not the Usual Kind
Genius Gem chronicles the life of Dr. Gangadhar Motiram Warke, founder of HiMedia Laboratories, tracing the journey of a scientist who saw a gap in India's scientific ecosystem and decided to do something about it.
In the 1970s, when India was heavily dependent on imports for microbiological culture media, Warke began producing them himself. What started as a small experiment eventually grew into a globally recognised biosciences organisation.
But Genius Gem is not simply the story of how a company was built.
It is the story of why one person chose to build it in the first place.
And Then, There Is the Storyteller
During the Author Talk, Anuradha Parab spoke about the making of Genius Gem — the research, the conversations and the process of piecing together a life that seems, at first glance, far removed from the trajectory of her own.
But perhaps Parab's own journey has never been a straight line. It began in the worlds of Marathi Literature and Sanskrit, with a deeper engagement with Ancient Indian Culture, before curving into journalism and taking her through theatre, cinema and the wider world of culture. Biography became another turn in that path, bringing her to personalities such as painter Vasudev Kamat and Dr. Prakash Amte. Each curve led to a different world, a different way of seeing a life.
And then, the path curved again — towards Dr. G. M. Warke.
A microbiologist. A scientist. An entrepreneur. A man whose world was built around laboratories, research, culture media and the question of what India could create for itself.
A microbiologist. A scientist. An entrepreneur. A man whose world was built around laboratories, research, culture media and the question of what India could create for itself.
It is an intriguing distance to travel: from Marathi literature and the performing arts to the life of a scientist who built an enterprise in microbiology. Yet perhaps that distance is what makes the encounter so interesting. Parab's familiarity was not with Warke's field, but with something more fundamental — the art of listening closely to a life and finding the story within it.
At the Author Talk, glimpses of that journey came through in the way she spoke about discovering Warke, understanding his world and gradually piecing together the many sides of the man behind the achievements.
That lens matters here.
Because Warke's journey is not short of milestones. What makes it worth documenting is the thinking that connected them.
The First Step Was Believing It Could Be Done
One of Warke's reflections captures that mindset particularly well :
“The first step, always, is giving credence to the belief that something is possible, only then, the probability of success would follow. ”
That belief was tested early.
When Warke was told that producing microbiological media in India was not possible, he chose to try anyway. His first batch, produced in his kitchen, did not meet the required quality standard. It could have been the end of the experiment. Instead, it became another problem to solve.
And that pattern would repeat throughout his journey.
From a Kitchen Experiment to a Global Enterprise
From that first, imperfect batch came something far bigger. The work of refining the medium, building manufacturing capabilities and proving that India could create what it had been importing gradually transformed a scientific experiment into an enterprise — HiMedia Laboratories.
Over the years, HiMedia grew into an organisation serving scientists, researchers and industries around the world, with a portfolio spanning thousands of bioscience products. But the scale of what followed can obscure the simplicity of the question that started it all: if something was needed, could it be built here?
That question is central to Warke's journey. His scientific knowledge helped him recognise the problem; his entrepreneurial instinct pushed him to solve it. An experiment became a capability, a capability became an institution, and that institution began creating possibilities for others.
The Journey Was Never Finished
Warke once remarked, “Our journey has just begun.”
After decades of achievement, the words reveal something essential about the way he saw his work. There was no great finish line waiting at the end of it all, no point at which the work could simply be declared complete. Each milestone seemed to open up another possibility, another problem to solve, another distance to travel.
Perhaps that is what makes Parab's choice of the deepstambh so evocative. Warke's journey was always about moving forward, yet the foundation beneath that movement remained remarkably steady — a commitment to science, to building in India, and to making the next possibility real. The lighthouse, then, is not simply a symbol of direction. It is a fitting image for someone who found his way forward without losing sight of what had anchored him in the first place.
What the Genius Gem Leaves Behind
A lighthouse does not travel. It remains rooted, holds its position and helps others find their way.
That is the image Parab leaves us with at the end of Genius Gem — Dr. Warke not simply as a scientist, entrepreneur or founder, but as someone whose journey can serve as a point of reference for those who follow.
The book brings together the people, turning points, struggles, choices and discoveries that shaped that journey. The Author Talk gave us a glimpse into the making of that story; the pages hold the rest.
And perhaps that is the best way to approach Genius Gem: not as a catalogue of accomplishments, but as an invitation to understand the person, the purpose and the persistence behind them.
Every book opens a door to another idea, another journey, another way of seeing the world. Continue exploring through the Venture Center Library on Koha, where you can browse the collection, manage your reading and place holds — and join our Library WhatsApp Community to stay close to what is new and worth discovering.