Alan Turing, the man who has been called the “Father of the Computer”, had a strong India connection. His father was an ICS officer in the erstwhile Madras presidency, and before him, various Turings had served in India, going back to the 1700s. But Alan’s India connection was from both sides of the family. His mother, Sarah Stoney, grew up in India; her father having been chief engineer of the Madras Railway. While researching this Turing connection, I stumbled upon the factoid that his grandfather had lived in Coonoor in a house called “The Gables”. An idly wondered if that old house was stil around — promising myself that, if it was, I must go and make a pilgrimage.That idle question would lead me into a curious detective story, which ended in the most fantastic of coincidences. I started by asking a friend in Coonoor if The Gables was still there, or if it had been demolished. (After all, it would have been over a hundred years old by now.) She e-mailed back saying yes The Gables was, indeed, still around. It was one of the historic homes in Coonoor, and had recently been bought by “some businessman from Bangalore”, she said.The next clue fell into place, by chance, when a friend told me that an interior designer friend of hers was looking for British Raj period furniture for an old house she was furnishing for Nandan Nilekani in Coonoor. And the name of the house? The Gables!It all made sense. How wonderful — and how appropriate — I thought to myself: Nilekani, as an IT guru himself, had obviously learned that Alan Turing ’s old family home was up for sale, and he had bought it, for sentimental reasons. And so the story ended, as far as I was concerned.But over the next several months, I began to suspect that something was not adding up. Because when I mentioned this Gables-Turing-Nilekani connection to mutual friends of the Nilekanis, they seemed mystified. Funny, they said, we’ve visited The Gables, but Nandan never told us about any Turing connection. This was very strange. Could it possibly be that Nilekani was somehow unaware of his house’s Turing connection? Surely not!Finally, on the off-chance, I e-mailed Nilekani, introducing myself, and telling him that in the course of my research, I had discovered that The Gables, which he now owned, had earlier been the home of Alan Turing’s grandfather — and that I assumed he knew this fact.Immediately, I got an e-mail back from Nilekani, saying: THIS IS AMAZING! I DID NOT KNOW THIS. CAN YOU TELL ME MORE? n you imagine the cosmic odds of something like this happening: Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, buys a house in a little South Indian hill station, purely for its serenity and beauty. And then suddenly, out of the blue, he learns that his new house once belonged to the family of the Father of the Computer himself. It’s one of those one-in-agazillion coincidences.We exchanged e-mails, about the house and its Turing connection. Nilekani — being the total pragmatist that he is — wanted documentary evidence to establish the connection. I was able to locate two old documents for him, dated 1916, both listing “Edward Waller Stoney, Chief Engineer, Madras Railway”, and stating his address as “The Gables, Coonoor”. Finally, I received an ecstatic mail from Nilekani saying, “THANKS. YOU’VE REALLY MADE MY DAY!” and inviting me to come and visit The Gables. Detective case closed.As the Mastercard ads might say: Buying a charming old house: Rs x lakhs. Discovering that it was earlier owned by Alan Turing’s family: Priceless. Utterly, totally priceless!