Manu Joseph - Serious Men

A peon walked in and dropped a solitary courier letter on Ayyan’s desk. ‘For the Big Man,’ the peon said. ‘Mani,’ he then said in a whisper, ‘I need a residence proof. I’m applying for a job in the Gulf. I’ve to make a passport now.’

Ayyan appeared thoughtful. ‘I’ve a friend who can help,’ he said. ‘Give me exactly two days.’

After the peon left, Ayyan studied the courier. It said in the bottom left-hand corner, ‘Ministry of Defence’. The Institute of Theory and Research came under the Ministry of Defence because it was originally created to conceive the Indian nuclear programme. The Institute eventually wrangled out of the programme, claiming that nuclear physics was an obsolete science and of too much practical use to enthrall the poetic hearts of theoretical physicists. But the Ministry of Defence continued to fund the Institute.

Ayyan toyed with the envelope. There was something about it. Though the Ministry sent most of its communications through email these days, it occasionally sent courier mail and speedposts. In the canteen, Ayyan had heard impassioned discussions of scientists on whether there was a hidden physical law that governed what the Ministry chose to email and what it chose to courier. They could not find a decisive pattern. But it was generally considered that bad news was almost always couriered.

Ayyan had a stock of blank envelopes marked Ministry of Defence in the bottom drawer. He usually opened Acharya’s official courier mail, read the letters, relocated them in fresh envelopes, recreated clerical scribbles and stapled back the receipts. He studied the latest arrival for another minute before opening it.

The letter was from Bhaskar Basu, a powerful Delhi bureaucrat in the Ministry of Defence who had once perilously tried to establish control over the Institute. He did not believe that scientists should be allowed to manage the Institute. Managing was the job of bureaucrats. But in that meeting when he had tried to wrest control, according to a legend, after Basu made an elaborate presentation about his future plans, there was a long uncomfortable silence which Acharya broke with a calm observation, ‘But you graduated in sociology.’ He had said nothing more, but the meeting had collapsed.

Dr Arvind Acharya [the letter began],

I hope this finds you in good health. Allow me to take your time to address a serious matter. I am deeply disturbed by your unofficial ban on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (Seti). I have studied the complaints from several highly regarded scientists of the Institute and come to the conclusion that they have been unfairly treated. I also believe that an Indian search for extraterrestrials will greatly add to the prestige of the country. The Ministry has come to the decision, after due consultation with the Minister himself, that the Institute may start a Seti programme which will have a departmental status and an independent budget. It will be headed by Dr Jana Nambodri. Also, Dr Nambodri is being given complete charge of the Giant Ear. As he is a pre-eminent radio astronomer, it has been decided, he will have total freedom in deciding what projects the array of giant metre-wave radio telescopes will be used for and the distribution of their usage time to external agencies. For administrative convenience, and to spare you the trouble of supervising this small matter, we have relieved Dr Nambodri of the responsibility of reporting to you as far as the operation of the Giant Ear is concerned. This move is part of the Ministry’s ongoing efforts to synergize the various research programmes that it funds. A formal letter will follow. I am in Mumbai tomorrow to meet you and the new Seti team in this regard. I hope to see you at eleven.

Ayyan folded the letter and put it in a fresh envelope. He checked the voluminous dictionary for the meaning of the word ‘synergize’. It was not the first time he had looked up the word, but despite many attempts he never fully comprehended its meaning. Once more he tried to understand, but gave up. He got the full import of the letter though. It was a major breach. The authority of Arvind Acharya was being challenged. The first arrow had arrived. The excitement of being in the best seat to watch the duel filled him. He decided that whatever happened in his life, he would take no time off in the coming days. The clash of the Brahmins, an entertainment that even his forefathers enjoyed in different ways in different times and had recounted in jubilant folk songs that they once used to sing beneath the stars, was now coming to the Institute.

Nambodri was not a man who went to battle unless he knew he was going to win. This was because he was a coward. Acharya, on the other hand, did not know how to fight small men who were, probably, the rightful inheritors of an office, any office. But he had that terrifying quality called stature, something that his colleagues, of their own accord, had granted him. From what Ayyan had heard of the battles of the Brahmins, it would be bloodless but brutal. They would fight like demons armed with nothing more than deceit and ideals — another form of deceit among men from good families.

Ayyan went into the inner chamber with the letter. He placed it carefully in a vacant island in the sea of papers on the table.

‘From the Ministry,’ he said.

Acharya did not look up. Twenty minutes later, he opened the letter. He read it just once and put it in the large bin that was nearly as tall as the table. He turned to the window and stared at the sea.

Ayyan entered with some files to check if Acharya had read the letter. The envelope was missing from the desk and Acharya’s face no longer wore its customary peaceful expression. His eyes were burning in the glow of the setting sun.

When Ayyan went back to the anteroom, the mobile phone on his desk was ringing. He could barely recognize the voice of Oja at the other end.

‘He burnt her,’ she said, crying, ‘he burnt her.’ She was calling from a phone booth outside BDD. Through the background noise of horns and the laughter of men, Ayyan could hear her desperate gasps for breath.

It seared him always, the sorrow of his Oja. She said that a boy from Thane had come home with the news that Gauri had been burnt by her husband. Gauri was a cousin she had grown up with. The violence of subsidized kerosene that Oja’s mother had once feared might be the fate of her daughter had consumed another woman. Ayyan knew that woman. He had been to her wedding. She was an unremarkable girl who laughed a lot. He remembered her face through the red hood of her cheap bridal sari. She had tried not to giggle throughout her wedding. She was then consigned to a life of severe beatings, and now this. Two hours ago, she had died of severe burns in a government hospital. Her body was still in the morgue. Oja did not want to go there. She said she did not want to know how a woman looked after she was burnt. It was something every girl she knew had nightmares about when they were growing up.

‘Some people say that after you are burnt the face looks white, not black — that is if there is any face left,’ she said into the phone, and fell silent. She had nothing more to say, but she did not want to put the phone down. He could hear her breathing.

The main door opened and two scientists walked in. They were in the middle of a loud discussion.

‘When these correction terms become large, there is no spacetime geometry that is guaranteed to describe the result,’ one man said. The other responded, ‘Yes I agree, the equations for determining the space — time geometry become impossible to solve except under very strict symmetry conditions. But my point is …’ He looked at Ayyan impatiently and pointed to Acharya’s door. ‘We have an appointment,’ he said, with a frown, probably annoyed because the impudent clerk was talking on his mobile.