Serious Men (34 page)

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.

‘Who writes the Thought For The Day?’ Nambodri asked.

‘What thought, Sir?’ Ayyan said.

‘The daily quote on the blackboard. Who writes it?’

‘Oh, that. I write it sometimes, Sir.’

‘Not every day?’

‘Most of the days, Sir.’

‘Did it you write it today?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Today’s quote was, “A greater crime than the Holocaust was untouchability. Nazis have paid the price, but the Brahmins are still reaping the rewards for torturing others.” Is that correct, Ayyan?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘The blackboard says Albert Einstein said this.’

‘Yes, Sir, that’s what was written on the chit.’

‘What chit?’

‘I get the Thought For The Day every morning from Administration, Sir.’

‘Who in Admin sends it to you?’

‘I don’t know, Sir. A peon leaves it on my table.’

‘What is the name of the peon who leaves it on your table?’

‘I don’t know his name, Sir.’

Nambodri folded his hands and crossed his legs. ‘A week ago,’ he said with a smile, ‘the Thought For The Day read, “If souls are indeed reborn as the Brahmins say, then what accounts for population growth? Rebirth is the most foolish mathematical concept ever.” Apparently Isaac Newton said that.’

‘That’s what the chit said, Sir.’

‘Ayyan, how long have you been writing the Thought For The Day?’

‘A few years, Sir.’

‘And who asked you to write it?’

‘Administration, Sir.’

‘Who exactly?’

‘I don’t remember, Sir.’

‘Stop this bullshit,’ Professor Jal said rising angrily. Others asked him to calm down. Jal sat down breathing hard, glasses trembling on his nose-bridge.

‘You know Professor Jal, of course,’ Nambodri said kindly to Ayyan. ‘And you know what BBC
Mastermind
is?’

‘Yes, Sir, I used to watch
Mastermind.
My wife would fight with me. Because, you know, she wanted to watch …’

‘Jal once won
Mastermind.
His area of specialization was Einstein. He knows every word that man ever wrote, every word that man ever said. Einstein never said anything about Brahmins. And Newton, my friend, probably did not know what a Brahmin was.’

‘That’s shocking, Sir.’

‘Is it, Ayyan?’

‘Yes, Sir. Someone has been giving me fake quotes.’

‘You don’t like Brahmins very much?’

‘Sir, I’m going to find out who has been giving me the fake quotes.’

‘Shut up,’ Nambodri screamed, which shocked the others.
They had never seen him angry. Ayyan loved the sight. He gave a benevolent smile to Nambodri.

‘Stop, stop, stop fooling around,’ Nambodri said. ‘Stop this, this rubbish. You’re talking to men with IQs that you cannot even imagine.’

‘My IQ is 148, Sir. What is yours?’

A silence filled the room. Nambodri looked intently at the floor. A foolish pigeon banged into the window glass and banged one more time before changing direction. A phone rang somewhere far away.

‘I got into Mensa when I was eighteen,’ Ayyan said.

‘Was there a 15 per cent reservation for Dalits?’ Nambodri asked. The astronomers burst out laughing. Nambodri walked a few steps and stood a foot away from Ayyan. ‘I don’t want you ever to touch that blackboard again, do you understand?’ he said.

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘And I hear you have been asking the peons to get coffee for your master.’

‘And fruit and meals too, Sir.’

‘I see, I see. You’re good at that kind of thing, aren’t you? We all should stick to our strengths, Ayyan. What do you say? We will figure out the universe. And you will bring coffee. Let’s stick to that for the good of everyone. What are you waiting for? Go and get us some coffee, Ayyan. Right now.’

Ayyan went to his desk and took out the silver dictaphone from the top drawer of the table. He turned on the speaker mode of one of the landlines.

‘IQ of 148,’ the voice of Nambodri was saying. ‘If Dalits can have that sort of an IQ, would they be begging for reservations?’

‘Did you see the way he was talking?’ Jal said. ‘I can’t believe this. That’s what happens when you put someone who is meant to clean toilets in a white-collar job.’

‘He was in Mensa,’ Nambodri said, and there was a crackle of laughter. ‘Just because his son is some kind of a freak, he thinks even he is.’

‘Something fishy about his son,’ someone said. ‘I have never come across a Dalit genius. It’s odd, you know.’

The astronomers continued in this vein. They spoke of the racial character of intelligence and the unmistakable cerebral limitations of the Dalits, Africans, Eastern Europeans and women.

‘If there are clear morphological characteristics that are defined by the genes, obviously even intellectual traits are decided that way,’ Nambodri said. ‘Look at women. They will get nowhere in science. Everybody knows that. Their brains are too small. But our world has become so fucking politically correct, you can’t say these things any more.’

They spoke about the debilitating influence of reservation in education and the dangerous political resurgence of the Dalits. There was a pause in the conversation and Ayyan was about to turn off the speaker mode. He thought the men were about to walk out. Then Nambodri made a comment about Ambedkar which stunned even Ayyan. What Nambodri had said about the liberator of Dalits was so damning that the silver dictaphone in Ayyan’s hand was a weapon that could consign to flames not just the Institute but also the whole country.

Ayyan went down the corridor trying to calm the tumult within. Midway down the corridor, he veered left towards the small pantry. A peon was washing the cutlery in the sink. Two others were making coffee. Ayyan played the recorder and put it on the kitchen platform. The peons did not understand the voices at first, but soon their faces began to change. They stopped what they were doing and listened. As the voices spoke, Ayyan translated some difficult portions into Marathi.

‘Genes are things that parents pass on to their children,’ Ayyan told them. ‘You are black because your parents were black. They are saying that you are dumb because your parents were dumb. And the Brahmins are smart because their parents were smart. And they are saying about me that I am only fit to be a toilet-cleaner because I am a Dalit.’

When the recording ended, he put the dictaphone in his
pocket and said, ‘They want coffee. They said they want coffee right now.’