Serious men, p.26
Serious Men, page 26
‘I’ve been hearing about him for so long,’ he said. ‘He is so bright that he has now been given the permission to take one of the toughest exams in the world. And he is just eleven. May we have many more like him. Let’s together show the world, the power that is locked inside all of us.’
The audience clapped and the minister sat down, wiping his face with his fingers. A guard advanced with a huge cardboard box.
‘It’s a computer,’ Waman declared to the crowd, which applauded again. Some women in the audience looked at each other, raised their eyebrows and curled their lips.
The minister presented the box to Ayyan with the boy standing in-between them as the nominal recipient. Photographers clicked through the din of ovation and Bikaji’s hysterical screams: ‘The leader of the masses.’
As the minister left the terrace, cutting straight through the unmoving crowd, desperate voices filled the air, asking for jobs, money and welfare. He nodded many times, looking all around but never meeting an eye. ‘Go home. Have faith in the government,’ he said.
Before he got into his car, he turned to Ayyan and said, ‘Come and meet me sometime in my office. We will figure out a way to sell this place.’
Ayyan went back home, accepting a thousand greetings on the way, and the heavy gazes of appreciation and envy which wore the same face here. Adi was alone at home. He was trying to yank the monitor out of its carton. He smiled brightly at his father and said, ‘Now I have a computer.’
‘Yes, you do, but don’t break it. Let’s read the book and fix it. Where is your mother?’
‘Some women came and took her away.’
Ayyan latched the door and sat on the floor beside his son. ‘Adi, now I want you to listen to me carefully.’
The boy was trying to pull the monitor by its plastic hood.
‘Adi, sit down and look at me,’ Ayyan said sternly.
Adi sat on the floor and looked at his father.
‘It was fun, wasn’t it?’ Ayyan said.
‘It was fun,’ Adi said.
‘Now, it’s over. I know I’ve said this before, but now it’s definitely over,’ Ayyan said.
‘OK,’ the boy said.
‘You’re not going to take the exam. You’re not smart enough for that. You and I know that.’
‘OK,’ Adi said.
‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘All this will not happen again, Adi. Now the game is over. You’ll be like other boys and it’ll be a lot of fun too.’
‘I am not like other boys. They call me deaf.’
‘If anyone calls you deaf, tell him, “But I can hear you, but I can hear you.” Keep saying it till he stops talking. OK?’
That made Adi smile. ‘I can hear you, I can hear you, I can hear you,’ he said.
‘If he still calls you deaf,’ Ayyan said, ‘tell him, “But I heard your mother fart, but I heard your mother fart”.’ That made Adi roll on the floor laughing. He went breathless for a second and only the fear of dying made him stop laughing.
There was a knock at the door. When Ayyan opened it he found Oja caught in a moment of self-important haste. She was standing at the doorway, about to enter but hurriedly imparting final instructions to four women who stood meekly in the corridor.
‘People can’t keep throwing garbage from their windows,’ Oja was saying. ‘We have to introduce fines to control this. Or, we should collect the garbage and throw it back into the house of the person who has flung it. If we don’t take care of our chawl, who will?’
Then she walked into her house and shut the door. Ayyan noticed that she was holding a wedge of lemon. She went straight to Adi and squeezed it on his head. He tried to run but she held him tight and said a quick prayer. And she ran her palms over his cheeks and cracked her knuckles on her ears.
‘Evil eyes, all around,’ she said.
THE LIGHTS DIMMED and a hush fell over the auditorium. Every seat was taken. There were people sitting on the edges of the aisles. The blood-red curtain went up in somnolent folds and revealed seven empty chairs on the stage. ‘There is a seat, grab it,’ someone in the aisle said, and the hall erupted in laughter. A banner on the black backdrop of the stage said ‘Indian Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence’. Ayyan was standing at the foot of a short flight of wooden steps that led to the stage. His hands were folded and he surveyed the audience. He had decided to disregard his assignment, which was to ensure that the special dignitaries in the front row – mostly scientists, bureaucrats, one failed actor and other friends of Nambodri – were given a steady supply of whatever they wanted.
A girl who was preoccupied with her own glamour arrived at the podium in a dark-blue sari that fluttered in the gale of the ceiling fan. She looked at the audience with one eye, the other was hidden behind her cascading hair.
‘A mysterious character of UFOs is that they are sighted only in the First World,’ she said, ‘and no alien conquest of Earth begins until the Mayor of New York holds an emergency press conference. When Mars attacks, it attacks America.’
She then asked very seriously, with a faint tilt of her head that partially exposed her other eye, ‘Is this because of an intergalactic understanding of the balance of power on our planet?’ She smiled modestly when she heard some chuckles. ‘Whatever the reasons are, “we are not alone” is a western anthem. But today, we present the first attempt of our country to formally understand what extraterrestrial life is all about.’ She invited seven men to the stage.
The first was a very old man whom Ayyan had to help up the stairs. He had a thick mop of furious silver hair, bushy bristles peeped through his nostrils and ears, and his hands were trembling as Ayyan held them. Then came a mountainous white man. There always had to be a white man in such a gathering. ‘The whites are the Brahmins of the Brahmins,’ Ayyan often told his wife. And every year, they grew taller. Jana Nambodri followed, in a Chinese-collar black shirt and black trousers, and with four of his satellites.
Ayyan stood in his dark corner and listened to these men as they heralded, as they always had for centuries, ‘A new dawn’. Nambodri spoke about how the array of radio telescopes called the Giant Ear was finally liberated. He announced, in the midst of a great applause, that the Ear would now scan the skies for signals from advanced civilizations.
The white man came to the podium, and joined his palms together. It was his first visit. ‘Namaste,’ he said. He welcomed India to ‘mankind’s search for company’. Later, other radio astronomers spoke about the importance of youth in Seti. After them came the old man. He was introduced by the announcer as a retired scientist from Bangalore. He arrived feebly at the podium and was startled by the squeal of the mike. When he recovered, he began to talk about the greatness of ancient Indians. The crowd applauded every compliment he gave their imagined ancestors. Ayyan laughed. Yes, yes, Indians were the oldest civilization on Earth, the greatest, the best. And only Indians had culture. Others were all dumb nomads and whores.
Ayyan detested this moronic pride more than anything else about the country. Those flared nostrils, those dreamy eyes that people made when they said that they were once a spectacular race. How heaps of gems were sold on the streets, like berries. How ancient Brahmins had calculated the distance between the Earth and the Moon long before the whites; how ayurveda had figured everything about the human body long before Hippocrates; how Kerala’s mathematicians had discovered something close to the heliocentric theory long before Copernicus. In this delusional heritage of the country, his own ancestors were never included. Except as gory black demons in the fables of valiant fair men.
The old man now began to speak about the mysteries of the cow, and the wisdom of Indians in granting the creature an enduring holiness. He attributed his longevity to the consumption of a glass of cow’s urine every morning. That brought about a polite silence. But Ayyan saw some aged people in the audience nod wisely.
‘Ghee, it has been proved, is good for the heart,’ the man said. ‘And in Jaipur, scientists have proved that a paste made out of cow dung, when spread on the walls and roofs, blocks nuclear radiation.’ He cited the work of an astrophysicist who had investigated the effects of cow slaughter. ‘The cries of the cows go down to the core of the Earth through Einsteinian pain waves and cause seismic activity, especially after Muslim festivals when there is a mass slaughter of cattle. That’s why, a few days after every Muslim festival, somewhere in the world there is always an earthquake.’
Finally, he came to the point: ‘How did the ancient Indians know so much? How did they know about the secrets of the cow, about the human anatomy, and the distances between heavenly bodies? I believe, very early in the life of the Indian civilization, in the vedic age, there was an alien contact.’ Mahabharata’s great war, with its flying machines and mystical missiles, he said, was fought using extraterrestrial technologies that were later mistaken as the hallucinations of poets. ‘Sometime in the great past of our country, there was a technology transfer from an advanced civilization. Our gods are, in reality, artistic representations of extraterrestrial visitors. I really don’t care what you think, but I know that Krishna was an alien.’
The audience erupted and gave him a long round of applause. The men on the stage rose, one after the other, yielding to the force of the moment, and clapped somewhat sheepishly. In the din, Ayyan felt a strange affection for Arvind Acharya. He missed him. This was the kind of rubbish Acharya had fought against all his life. The pursuit of truth seemed less ridiculous when he was at the head of the quest. And Ayyan felt the impoverishment of serving a lesser regime.
In the days that followed, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence assumed the character of a revolution whose time had come. Scientists from other institutes landed in the euphoria of finally being granted rights over the Giant Ear. There were seminars and lectures. Journalists, who did not have to wait in the anteroom any more, came to learn about the exotic future of Seti. School teachers, who had to wait, came to ask for excursion trips to the array of giant radio telescopes.
One morning, at the height of the carnival, Ayyan was surprised to see the silent wraith of Acharya enter the anteroom with a twinkle in his small eyes and a grin that appeared to condemn the visitors on the crowded couch. Ayyan got up in his customary half-stand.
‘So your son is taking the entrance test, I hear,’ Acharya said.
Ayyan nodded without meeting his eyes. ‘I am going in,’ Acharya said.
‘They are having a meeting,’ Ayyan told him, ‘but I think you should do as you please, Sir.’
The radio astronomers felt a familiar terror, before they remembered that the apparition at the door was merely a wandering memory of a monster they had slain. They were grouped on the white sofas, around the centrepiece which was cluttered with teacups and biscuits. Acharya did not understand the room. The furniture which he had always presumed was immovable had magically shifted, and the walls had framed posters. He threw a look of affection and misgiving at the poster of Carl Sagan, and Sagan returned his gaze.
Ayyan appeared at the doorway in a farcical scramble and said, ‘I am sorry, I could not stop him.’
‘Nobody can,’ Nambodri said, rising graciously and ushering Acharya to a vacant portion of the sofa.
Acharya sank down comfortably and looked carefully at the six faces around him. He said, taking a biscuit from the tray, ‘My friends say that the letters they send me come back to them these days.’
‘That’s because the Earth is round, Arvind,’ Nambodri said.
‘The Pope said that before you.’
‘Yes, I think he did. Arvind, it just struck me, you still have friends?’
Professor Jal let out a deep impulsive laugh which stopped abruptly when he heard his mobile ring. He muttered ‘yes’ and ‘no’ into the phone before he disconnected. He looked around the room somewhat puzzled, and said, ‘Every time I get a call here, there is a disturbance on the line. It’s as if there is always a live phone somewhere nearby.’ But the others were too distracted by the presence of Acharya to consider Jal’s problem.
‘So, Arvind,’ Nambodri said, ‘What can we do for you?’
‘Can we talk alone?’
‘That won’t be possible,’ Nambodri said. ‘We were in the middle of a budget meeting. Anyway, we make all decisions together. So if you have something professional to discuss you should tell us all.’
‘Six men, one mind?’
That annoyed Nambodri, but he smiled. ‘We are a bit busy, Arvind. If you would like to, we can meet later.’
‘Six men, one mind. That reminds me of something,’ Acharya said, taking another biscuit. ‘When America decided to finish off Afghanistan, remember the Taliban council that used to hold desperate press conferences in Kabul? Remember those guys? One chap did not have a nose. Another guy did not have an ear. Their chief was one-eyed. But taken together they had one complete human face.’
‘Arvind, do you want to come later?’
‘Let’s finish it now. I suppose it really does not make any difference if these guys are around,’ Acharya said. ‘What I want to say is, I feel a bit incomplete these days. There is a sort of hollow inside me.’
‘That’s because you are dead, Arvind. It’s called retirement.’
Acharya munched the biscuit thoughtfully and said, ‘You got want you wanted, Jana. I am OK with that. But we need to figure out my immediate future.’
‘Your future?’
‘You see, I want to continue working here.’
‘And do what?’
‘I want to plan more balloon missions. And there is something more. There is no deep way of saying it, I suppose. I am sure you know Benjamin Libet.’
‘Libet? Yes, yes. Libet.’
‘I want to continue his experiments here.’
Nambodri looked at his men. The spectacles on the nose-bridge of Jal began to tremble in his soft chuckle.
‘Arvind, you want to continue searching for falling aliens and you want to find out if every single human action is predestined. Is that correct?’ Nambodri asked.
‘Exactly,’ Acharya said, pouring himself coffee from a jug.
‘What do you want from me, Arvind?’
‘A lab, some funds, some office space. That’s it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you know, Arvind, that a man no less than Galileo Galilei once gave a lecture on the size, dimensions and even the location of hell? And more recently, a scientist called Duncan MacDougall revealed the weight of the human soul. He said it was about twenty grams.’
‘Why are you telling me all this, Jana?’
‘You’re getting there, Arvind,’ Nambodri said standing up. ‘You’re getting there, my friend. Nice of you to drop in.’
Acharya rose with his coffee cup and drank it with urgent enthusiastic sips. ‘I’ll come back later,’ he said and marched out.
Ayyan Mani was holding the phone receiver to his ear, listening. The new regime could not terminate his espionage, but it did force him to change his methods. Nambodri was a man who would notice if his phone were off the hook. So, every morning, before Nambodri came to work, Ayyan called his own mobile and hid it in the new Director’s desk, and listened from a landline. He half stood as Acharya walked past cheerfully.
On the sea rocks, Acharya stretched his legs. He followed the low flights of the seagulls as they were chased by predatory crows, the laborious journey of a distant cargo ship, the fall of a solitary leaf down the rocks. He sat this way for probably over two hours. Then he heard the voice of Ayyan Mani.
‘Would you like some coffee, Sir?’
Acharya nodded, without turning. A few minutes later, a peon walked down the winding pathway to the sea holding a cup of coffee, fruit and three unopened biscuit packets on a tray.
This soon became a common sight. Acharya would be sitting on the rocks, alone or in the company of animated students and scientists, or ambling in the lawns or lying beneath a tree with a book, and a peon would walk towards him with a tray.
On days when Ayyan found Acharya sitting by himself, he would go to him and talk. In the tone of banter between old friends who had gone through life together, Ayyan would ask how scientists knew that the universe must be so big and no more, or how they could say so confidently that a planet that was an unimaginable distance away had water, or how they could claim from a single bone of an ancient beast that it used to fly. ‘It’s like this,’ Acharya would always begin. On occasions, he defended science and insisted that it had no choice but to make very smart guesses from little information. On other occasions he would laugh with Ayyan at the absurdity of scientific claims.
‘Sir,’ Ayyan asked one late noon when Acharya was sitting beneath a tree and studying the progression of red ants. ‘How many dimensions do you think there are?’
‘Four,’ Acharya said, without taking his eyes off from the ants.
‘Up–down, left–right, front–back,’ Ayyan said. ‘Then?’
‘Think of time ticking away as these ants try to go somewhere in a universe that has length, breadth and height. That’s another dimension,’ he said.
Ayyan tried to imagine it, and reluctantly ceded the point. ‘OK, four. But why do they say there are ten dimensions?’
‘I don’t know, Ayyan. I used to know but I don’t any more.’
‘Some men have been working on that for twenty years, Sir.’
‘You’re right.’
‘And that’s their job? To prove that there are ten dimensions?’
‘Yes, that’s their job.’
A peon arrived with coffee and said to Ayyan, ‘You are here? Director is looking for you.’ He stuck his tongue out like a terrified little boy and glanced apologetically at Acharya for using ‘Director’ in reference to another man.
Acharya simply asked, ‘No biscuits today?’
Ayyan knew there was trouble when he saw the face of Nambodri, who was sitting with the grim inner circle on the white sofas.
