Vladimir Arnold in his book Yesterday and Long Ago, Springer (2007) writes:
When I resided at Cambridge as a senior fellow of Trinity College, Indian colleagues told me some details of Ramanujan's life which are not well known.
Once an Indian physicist who arrived from the USA visited Ramanujan in Trinity. The room of his friend seemed too cold for him, but Ramanujan explained that he felt cold only at night - when there is sometimes frost in Cambridge! The visitor asked to be shown how Ramanujan slept, and found that he slept on blankets and never suspected that he should have covered himself with them (people in Madras never do this!). That is why he felt cold, and that is why he got ill (it seems that first it was pneumonia and then tuberculosis) and died at a very young age.
I think that Hardy's snobbery and his inhuman behavior did not let him visit his sick student, who lived in the same house, and did not let him give elementary practical advice. While telling me this story, my Indian colleagues tactfully avoided a discussion of British customs and connected the reason for Rarnanujan's death with an Indian custom, according to which his wife did not follow him, but stayed in Madras. She was supposed to take care of her mother-in-law, Ramanujan's mother; this duty was more important than to take care of her husband! Since that time Indian students in Cambridge have been telling each other how to make a bed and they do not feel cold anymore.
I have never heard this story before and was really surprised. How reliable are these facts and Arnold's explanations? Are there any other sources that corroborate these facts? Possibly that Indian physicist mentioned by Arnold did write something about this?
