PART SIX. One Last Shot

NOT EVERYBODY IN the crowd knew what they were waiting for, but they stood in a festive murmur outside one of the many exits of the BDD chawl. Some people asked what was going to happen. Many did not bother to ask. Excited boys ran through the assembly, and little girls played a conspiratorial game among themselves, all hopping on one leg. At the head of the crowd was Ayyan Mani, and a man bearing a massive rose garland that could break the neck of the beneficiary.

On the pavement by the side of the road was planted a banner two storeys high. Even in the blow-up the celebrity appeared stunted. He stood in a safari suit, his palms joined in greeting. His face was a light pink because poster artists did not have the freedom to paint his face black. His little mop of hair was spread thinly over an almost flat scalp. And his thick moustache had sharp edges. Just above his head was an English introduction in large font — DYNAMIC PERSONALITY. A thinner line that followed said he was the honourable Minister S. Waman. It seemed appropriate that it was at Waman’s black shoes the author took credit, in Marathi and in diplomatically chosen small font — ‘Hoarding Presented By P. Bikaji’. Bikaji was the man who was holding the massive garland. His white kurta had become transparent in his own sweat and he was almost trembling under the weight of the garland.

‘When he comes,’ he told Ayyan, ‘I will give him the garland first and then you speak.’

‘Why do you want to waste your time?’ Ayyan said. ‘He is not even going to look at you.

Someone screamed, ‘He is here.’ The crowd surged into the road. A pilot jeep screeched to a halt and behind it stopped a light-blue Mercedes, which was quickly surrounded by people. From the jeep, four bodyguards with machine guns ran to the Mercedes. (They guarded the minister at all times from the danger of being considered unworthy of such security.) They had to jostle and push to open the door of the car.

Waman, in a starched white kurta, emerged with joined palms.

Bikaji shouted, ‘The Leader of the Masses,’ which was repeated by the crowd.

Then they heard Bikaji scream, ‘Motherfucker,’ because an intrusive friend was now sharing the burden of the garland.

‘I am just helping,’ the friend said, offended.

Bikaji pushed him away angrily and advanced to the leader to garland him before others tried to benefit from his roses. Waman held the garland over his shoulder until a bodyguard extricated him.

‘I made that banner for you,’ Bikaji said, pointing to the illegal hoarding on the pavement.

‘Nice, good,’ Waman said, and asked, ‘Where is the boy’s father?’

Men began to yell, ‘Ayyan, Ayyan.’

Ayyan emerged from the crowd, held the hand of the minister with both his hands, and then touched his chest.

‘Let’s go,’ the minister said.


Ayyan and Waman walked down the broken, cobbled ways of the chawls with at least three hundred people following them. Photographers ran in front to take their pictures, and in-between the shots they jogged backwards. The minister looked around at the rows of grey identical buildings.

‘I know that you too lived in a chawl once,’ Ayyan said.

‘Yes, in Grant Road. A long time ago,’ Waman said, with a smile that was proud of its old sorrows.

‘We have been trying to sell,’ Ayyan said. ‘Builders are interested.’

‘Of course they will be. This land is worth its weight in gold.’

‘I want to sell too,’ Ayyan said, ‘but a lot of people are resisting. There are eighty thousand people who live here. It’s hard to get everybody to agree. Builders want all or nothing.’

‘Obviously,’ Waman said, shaking his head, ‘People are afraid, aren’t they? They have lived here all their lives. They are comfortable with the things here.’

‘Yes. They want the same neighbours, the same lives.’

‘How much are the builders offering, Mani?’

‘Twelve lakhs for a 150-square-foot flat,’ Ayyan said.

‘Drive it up to fifteen,’ Waman said confidently. He looked at the vast real estate and appeared to make some calculations in his head.

The entourage went to the terrace of Block Number Forty-One, where a hundred others were already gathered. A table shrouded in a white cloth was at one end of the terrace. Waman made his way through the assembled crowd, smiling and bowing, and naming one hoisted baby who was already named.

When he sat at the table, Bikaji and his men formed a human cordon around the minister. The cordon parted to admit Ayyan, with his son and wife. Oja joined her palms and gushed.

The minister asked, ‘And this is the great Adi?’

The boy was more absorbed in the machine guns of the guards.

‘Can I hold?’ he asked a guard who shook his head.

‘Lock it and give it to the boy,’ Waman ordered. ‘It’s very light,’ he said with affection to Adi.

The guard did as he was told, and Adi felt the magic of holding an AK-47.

The family sat down next to the minister. The audience was on the floor or on the chairs they had dragged from their homes.

The minister gave a speech in which he narrated how when he was as old as Adi he was tied to a tree by Brahmin priests because he had committed the crime of entering a temple. ‘They left me like that the whole night,’ he said. ‘Next morning, I ran away from my village and came to Bombay with nothing, not even ten rupees in my pocket. Not even a pocket actually.’

Ayyan had heard this story before, and many more that the minister would not recount. How he had once sold vegetables on a wooden cart near the Crawford Market and slowly become a thug, despite his small stout frame. He pelted stones and broke shop windows to protest against matters he did not understand and to mourn the deaths of leaders he did not know. He grew to become a coordinator of freelance goons and, in time, joined politics. His art lay in raising armies of angry Dalit youth at short notice who could turn very violent at times. The Untouchables, in modern times, had won the useless right of being touched by the high caste, but they remained the poorest in the city. Every time they felt slighted, as for instance when miscreants once garlanded the statue of their liberator Ambedkar with slippers, men like Waman used to lead a battalion of angry youth and loot whole lanes.

‘They go in rage and return with Adidas,’ Ayyan had told Oja on a day when from the kitchen window they had seen looters going home happily with huge cartons.

‘Who is Adidas?’ Oja had asked.


The entry of such a man into the innocuous game of erecting a boy genius made Ayyan feel afraid. He stared at the profile of this fierce orator whose panegyric of Adi now erupted in spangled silver spit that glowed momentarily against the twilight sky, like minuscule fireflies.

‘Such a boy, is a rare boy,’ the minister was saying, ‘Adi is a rare boy.’

The way the minister said ‘Adi’ sounded morbid to Ayyan. A man capable of murder now knew the name of his son and there was something disturbing about it. But Ayyan calmed his fear by the other stories he had heard about the minister which made him seem more endearing. When Michael Jackson had visited the city a few years ago, Waman had been part of the group of politicians who met him. The minister had later told the press, ‘He is a very polite man. There is not a trace of arrogance in him. You don’t get the feeling at all that you are talking to a white man.’

Waman finished his speech by hailing Adi as the future liberator of the Dalits.

‘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.

‘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.’

One of the peons filled a jug. He stared at the other peon and at Ayyan in the fellowship of the moment. He opened the lid of the jug and spat into it.


Later in the evening, as Acharya was dozing somewhere near the lawn, Ayyan knelt beside him and said, ‘Sir, do you want some office space?’

Acharya opened his eyes and looked confused.

‘Do you want an office, Sir?’ Ayyan asked again.

Acharya followed him. They went down to the basement. The stark white walls and the hum of subterranean machines brought back to Acharya the memories of nocturnal love. Somehow it was always night here. It felt like night. He saw in his mind the face of Oparna, and the way she used to look at him. He remembered the way she used to sit, her melancholic smoking, and her insolence that seemed then to be the right of every naked woman. He felt a nervous anticipation in his stomach as if she would appear at the end of the walk, waiting for him on the cold floor in the fragrance of lemon.

The board that said ‘Astrobiology’ was still there, but the lab door was locked. Ayyan took out a key from his pocket.

‘How do you have the key?’ Acharya asked in a whisper because he was still in the fragile delusion that Oparna was inside and that this dark man was an accomplice of love.

‘Keys are easy to find, Sir,’ Ayyan said. He opened the door and switched on the lights.

‘You’re going to get into trouble for this,’ Acharya said.

‘Yes,’ Ayyan said.

‘Why are you doing this, Ayyan? Jana is a very mean man. He is the practical sort.’

‘So am I,’ Ayyan said.

Acharya looked around the lab for the memories of a girl. But there was no life here. The air had no smell. The equipment on the main desk was shrouded in its covering. The chairs were in a perpetual wait. The phone was still there, on the same wooden stool. Everything was as he remembered. Like the abandoned rooms of the dead.

Ayyan turned on the computer and inspected the air-conditioning vents. ‘There is internet,’ he said. He held the phone receiver to his ear. ‘This is still working. I’ll give you a number you can call if you need anything.’ And he left.

Acharya sank to the floor holding a knee. He leaned his back on the wall and stretched his legs. In the desolation of the lab, he saw the face of Oparna and heard her say this and that. And he remembered a love so light, like the sack of that eloping girl from another time whom he had seen as a boy from the footbridge over the railway tracks. He wondered how the life of that girl had turned out. Maybe she lived happily with her man and recounted her elopement to her grandchildren with delirious exaggerations. He would confirm all her lies, if she so wished.


IT WAS TRUE that Administration had the mystery of God in the Institute, but very few realized that on the second floor there was, in fact, a board that said ‘Administration’. The mystical department was a maze of wooden partitions where laypeople looked soberly at their computer screens, silently sustaining the pursuit of truth in the higher floors. At one end of the room, the maze became more intricate and the cubicles became smaller and numerous. This was the Accounts Department which Ayyan Mani always remembered for the striking ugliness of its women, and the old bonds of friendship he shared with its mostly Malayalee men.

He saw Unny at the end of a narrow way that ran between the cubicles. He was kicking the base of an enormous printer.

‘The great man comes to the abode of the poor,’ Unny said, throwing a glance at Ayyan. He kicked the printer one more time. ‘One day, someone will make a printer that works,’ he said. ‘A lot of paper is jammed inside.’

Ayyan kicked the printer a few times.

‘Forget it,’ Unny said. ‘How is the boy genius?’

‘He is all right. Now he wants to know if underwear is important in life,’ Ayyan said.

‘That’s strange, even my son asked me that. Come, let’s go to my desk.’

‘I’m in a hurry,’ Ayyan said. ‘Your Malayalee chief wants something urgently.’

‘Who? Nambodri? What does he want?’

‘He said he wants some copies from the payment files of Aryabhata Tutorials. Do you know what that means?’

Unny nodded and went to an open steel shelf that was stuffed with files. As he was searching, he asked, ‘Adi is studying hard for the test?’

Ayyan did not show his impatience, but he wanted to finish the job quickly, and as discreetly as possible.

Unny screamed to someone across the room, ‘Where is the Aryabhata file?’ That made Ayyan nervous. He looked around the room for any suspicious faces. ‘It’s in the petty cash shelf,’ a woman’s voice said.

Unny went to the adjacent shelf, muttering how disorganized the place was.

‘Tell me, Ayyan,’ he said, standing on a stool and tapping the spines of files with his index finger. ‘How did Adi become so bright? Do you feed him something we don’t know about?’

‘He was born a bit strange,’ Ayyan said.

‘There it is,’ Unny yelped, and pulled out a thin file. He went through it with a confused expression and handed it to his friend. ‘I’ve always wondered what exactly is this Aryabhata Tutorials,’ Unny said.

‘Only God knows what it is,’ Ayyan said, trying to look as if he had no interest in the file, but his hands were trembling.

‘It is a separate company owned by the Institute,’ Unny said. ‘Why would the Institute own a tutorial? And where is this place? What does this tutorial do? I don’t understand. I’ve not seen a single board in the city that says Aryabhata Tutorials. I don’t know a single student who goes there. It’s very strange, you know.’

Ayyan leafed through the file. His heart was pounding, but he tried to look relaxed, even bored. He photocopied three bills and gave the file back.

Unny went through the file again and shook his head. ‘These last twenty years, Aryabhata Tutorials has made payments only to printers. Nothing else. It only makes payments and it pays only printers. It does not earn.’

‘God knows what these guys do,’ Ayyan said. ‘I never understood them anyway. I will see you in the canteen soon?’

Ayyan went to his desk and collected the late courier mail and the faxes, opened the inner door and walked in. As usual, the astronomers were sitting on the sofas by the window. Some of them stared unpleasantly at him. Eyes followed him as he went to Nambodri’s vacant table in the far corner. Normally, they did not register his presence but that had changed after their last encounter. He pretended to sort the courier mail and the faxes on Nambodri’s desk. His left hand slowly reached for the small gap between the table top and drawer compartment where he usually left his mobile phone. He put the phone in his pocket and walked out.

He went down the corridor of the third floor and as he walked he took out the copies of the three bills he had made in the Accounts Department. He dialled the number on the first bill. A woman’s voice came on the line. Ayyan said, ‘I am calling from Aryabhata Tutorials. I want to know when we can expect the consignment?’

The woman’s voice asked, ‘You said you are from Aryabhata Tutorials?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hold on,’ she said.

A man’s voice came on the line. ‘Who is speaking?’

‘Murthy,’ Ayyan said.

‘Which job are you talking about?’

‘There was only one.’

‘But the sample papers were sent a month ago,’ the man’s voice said with concern.

Ayyan disconnected the line and called the second number, and then the third. The other two printers too said that the consignments had been dispatched a month ago. Ayyan had feared this. He was too late.


The question-paper of the Institute’s Joint Entrance Test was a jewel and it was guarded not through the frailties of a written code, nor the dangerous inconsistencies of loyalty, but by the force of tradition. Its annual creation was a highly secretive process known to very few. Ayyan was not supposed to be among those few. He had learnt its rudiments over the years, listening carefully to the walls and piecing together bits of information.

Every year, five professors and the Director met discreetly over three weeks to create the questions of the entrance exam. They never used the computer. They always wrote down the questions by hand in a single notebook. They made three question-papers and gave them to three different printers. Every year, one of the professors in the JET panel went personally to the printers, posing as a representative of Aryabhata Tutorials. So, even the printers did not know what they were printing. They probably thought that they were printing the study material of one of the thousands of tutorials in the city. Sometime before the entrance exam, the Director would choose one of the three printed versions of the question-paper.

Ayyan had just learnt from the printers that the question-papers had been delivered. They were somewhere in the Institute, he was certain. The entrance exam was eight weeks away and he believed he had enough time to find out where the papers were stored. Three versions of a question-paper meant for ten thousand candidates, he calculated, would require at least three big cartons. Such a delivery could not have gone unnoticed. He began to wander around the various floors and identify rooms that were mysteriously locked. He found three. They were not sealed. Just locked. And keys were never a problem. But a search in those rooms yielded nothing. He enquired of the guards if they had seen anything, and asked his army of peons if they had ever been sent to a press to collect a consignment, or if they had seen the improbable sight of huge cartons being brought in personally by a professor. But they could not help him.

For two weeks, Ayyan spent the nights searching almost every room in the Institute for the question-papers. The Accounts Department, he learnt, had a safety vault but it was not big enough for even a single carton. It confused him that a massive consignment of three huge cartons could be so invisible. As the days went by, he realized that only one man could help him.


IN THE RELENTLESS night of the basement, Arvind Acharya became infatuated with his own shadow. He wandered through the space feeling the entertainment of being a one-dimensional ghost. He arranged the table lamps on the main desk in different ways to see himself on the walls and on the floor in disproportionate sizes. Most of the time he could not take his eyes off his shadow because he was enchanted by the thought that these illusionary images had the same memories and the same theories as he did. And the same wife. The shadows even asked him deeply why they should not be granted the status of real creatures since reality anyway was merely the perception of the eye. So he granted them that. He multiplied himself through his shadows and sat among them in the peace of knowing that there were at least some men who were exactly like him, who understood him and who even loved him.

He was preoccupied by the joy of a liberation he could not name but he was also tormented by a pubescent love. It was a love that was far more terrifying than what he had felt for Oparna. Because it was dedicated to his wife who had abandoned him five days ago.

Lavanya had told him that she could survive him so far because he had always tried his best not to appear mad, even though he was. But now, she could not bear his unreasonable joy at nothing at all, and the way he spoke to objects as though they had asked a question. She said his perpetual happiness made her feel that she was not required. He had asked her if the truth was that she was just embarrassed by him. She had held his hand and said, ‘Why would a woman be embarrassed by you? You are too beautiful, Arvind. It’s just that I can’t handle what you’ve become. It hurts me even though I know you are very happy.’ Then she gave clear instructions to the maids, packed her things in a suitcase, and left for Chennai to be with her interminable family.

So Acharya began to spend all his time in the basement. And he metamorphosed from a sudden cult on the pathways into a subterranean legend. It was not just the scholars of the Institute who began to seek him out but also scientists and students from other such places. They sat on the floor, or on the tables and chairs, and they talked about the philosophical future of physics, the ceaseless descent of eternal aliens, Stephen Hawking’s claim that the question why there was life in the universe would soon be answered, and about a lot of other things.

One evening in this basement world that was filled with over forty scientists and students, a strange figure walked in nervously.

‘I’m from the security department,’ the man told Acharya, casting glances at the others. ‘This is to inform you that a decision has been taken regarding your illegal stay in the Institute. You’ve been asked to vacate the premises immediately and stop using the basement as your office.’

‘But I like it here,’ Acharya said.

‘These are the orders from the management, Sir.’

A man in the audience who was a senior scientist from the Institute asked the informer to be reasonable.

The informer said helplessly, ‘I do not own the Institute, Sir. I am only informing him about a decision taken at the highest level.’

The congregation became silent and gloomy, and it slowly dissolved. Some reassured Acharya that they would think of a way to help him; others shook hands with him sombrely. When the last of the visitors, a scrawny boy with a shoulder bag strung on his back, was about to leave, Acharya commanded: ‘Boy, get me some clothes and a lot of chocolates. And a lot of bananas.’

*

For twelve days after that evening, Acharya did not stir from the basement. He feared that if he left the lab even for a walk on the lawns, someone would lock the door and he would be thrown out of the Institute. Visitors now began to arrive in greater numbers than before, bearing food and clothes. And soap. It became a spontaneous basement rebellion. Nambodri was flooded with polite calls to reconsider his decision. But he did not relent. In his calculation, the ill-feeling against him would be forgotten once Acharya vanished not only from the Institute but also, after his dismissal was formalized, from the Professors’ Quarters.

Acharya, for his part, did not budge. Security guards, ordered to throw him out, arrived and stood by his side, not having the courage to touch him. He would offer them bananas or ask them to get him some more. Then something changed. Late at night and early in the morning, the guards became accomplices, because that was the wish of Ayyan Mani. And Acharya went for quick walks on the campus.

One night, when he returned from his walk, he saw a figure sitting on a chair near the main desk. His first reaction was that one of his own shadows had been liberated from the walls. But he soon realized it was Ayyan. ‘Did I scare you, Sir?’ he asked.

‘No, Ayyan. You did not scare me. I hear you are the one who is taking care of me. Is that true?’

‘That’s my duty, Sir.’

‘What are you doing here so late?’

‘I came to talk to you.’

‘Come here, let’s sit on the floor and chat,’ Acharya said.

They leaned on the wall and stretched their legs. They could see each other in the dim light of a solitary bulb. Acharya never switched on all the lights because he did not want to abolish his shadow.

‘I hear your wife has left you, Sir,’ Ayyan said.

‘Yes. She went away. Everybody told her that I’d gone mad. She didn’t want others to know, you see.’

‘She will come back,’ Ayyan said. ‘Wives of an age are like evicted hawkers. They return in time.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I am very sure, Sir,’ Ayyan said. ‘You must go and get her. But you must now start pretending to be normal, as you used to before. A man cannot be exactly the way he wants to be and also dream of keeping his wife. You must control yourself a bit, Sir. And start thinking about your future.’

‘But I don’t have a future, it seems.’

‘You do, Sir. I have come with it,’ Ayyan said, and he asked casually, ‘Will you tell me where the JET question-papers are stored?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because I know the rest. I know about Aryabhata Tutorials and the names of the three printers.’

‘That’s impossible. You know the printers?’

‘Magna, Lana and Scape.’

Acharya peeled a banana thoughtfully. ‘You want to steal the JET?’

‘Yes, Sir’ Ayyan said.

‘Because your son is no genius?’

‘He is, but the JET is too tough for him.’

‘So let him fail,’ Acharya said, eating the banana with swift bites.

‘That is not a good idea, Sir.’

‘But obviously, Ayyan, I can’t help you.’

Ayyan took out the dictaphone and played the conversation between Acharya and Oparna when she had come to tell him why she had contaminated the sampler.

‘Why, Oparna?’ the sad voice of Acharya asked.

‘What did you expect, Arvind?’ the voice of Oparna replied. ‘You sleep with me till your wife comes back from her vacation and then ask me to get out of your life.’

The conversation moved on with long excruciating pauses which Acharya recognized as the painful language of final separation. He then heard the voice of Oparna clearly explaining how, very early one morning, in a fit of love and vengeance, she had contaminated the sampler.

Acharya did not realize that he had been holding a half-eaten banana near his mouth for over five minutes. When Ayyan put the dictaphone back into his trouser-pocket, Acharya asked softly, ‘How did you get this?’

‘I used to listen,’ he said.

Acharya started laughing. ‘I always knew you were some kind of a bastard,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you show this to the inquiry committee?’

‘We did not have a deal then.’

‘And we do, now?’

‘Let’s talk about your future, Sir,’ Ayyan said. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if you got your old job back? Don’t you want to send balloons up and carry out all the other experiments? I know how we can do that.’

‘How?’

‘You leave that to me. I know what I must do. But you have to help me. I want the question-paper. Are you going to help me?’

Acharya ate the rest of the banana without uttering a word. Then he said, ‘There are three versions of the question-paper.’

‘I know. Where are they?’

‘And this time, the questions are really nasty,’ Acharya said, chuckling.

‘Where are the question-papers?’

‘We had just sent the questions to the printers when all the shit began to happen. All the three question-papers, they are classics. Jana may have already decided which of the three will finally go to the test centres.’

‘Where are the question-papers?’

‘You can’t get them, Ayyan.’

‘I can. Just tell me where they are.’

‘They are not here,’ Acharya said, with a triumphant chuckle. ‘They are never stored at the Institute. They are in a sealed and secured room in BARC. You can’t get there.’

The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre was a fortress that was beyond the methods of a clerk. And Ayyan knew that.

‘What do we do now?’ he asked.

‘Why do you need to see a question-paper,’ Acharya said, pointing a finger at his head, ‘when it’s all here?’

‘You remember all the questions?’

‘Most of them.’

Ayyan sprang to his feet and rummaged through the drawers of the main desk. He grabbed a bunch of blank sheets of paper and a pen, and put them in front of Acharya. ‘Write then,’ he said.

‘Tell me, Ayyan. Is your son a genius?’

‘He is, Sir.’

‘Really?’ Acharya said, looking amused. ‘Did he ever win that science contest? Can he really recite the first thousand primes? Is he really what people think he is?’

‘That’s not important to your future,’ Ayyan said. And that made Acharya laugh.

Acharya sat by the main desk and wrote down over two hundred questions from the three versions of the question-paper, occasionally exclaiming at the sheer brilliance of some of the questions. When he finished, he gave the sheets to Ayyan.

‘Write down the answers too, Sir,’ he said.

Acharya laughed. ‘I’ll do that,’ he said, ‘But there is something very important you must know. Forty correct answers out of hundred questions is a very, very good score. So your boy must attempt not more than forty. Anything more than that would be suspicious.’


ON THE DAY of the exam, Oja oiled her son and scrubbed him with a fistful of coconut husk. He wore the new clothes that she had bought a week ago. ‘Full pants’, as she called them, and a long-sleeved shirt. She gave the hall ticket to Ayyan, and in the same manner gave the boy’s hand to him. At the door, she hugged and kissed her son, and began to cry. Adi looked at his father with an exasperated expression. But when she bid a final goodbye and shut the door, the boy felt a pang of gloom. He could hear her crying inside and he did not like it when she cried like that, alone and for no good reason.

‘Can she come with us?’ he asked his father.

‘She has a lot of work,’ Ayyan said.

As they set off down the dim corridor, people standing in their doorways looked. Some smiled; some conveyed their best wishes. When he was halfway down the corridor Ayyan realized that a small group of men, women and children was following them. And this swarm grew as they went down the steps and into the broken stone ways of the chawls. By the time they reached the road, there were at least a hundred neighbours shadowing them in silence. From the windows of buses and cars, people stared curiously, trying to understand the sight.

Someone stopped a passing taxi.

‘Shouldn’t we save money?’ Adi asked his father.

‘Not today,’ Ayyan said.

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