Manu Joseph - Serious Men

‘There were two American professors in the lab when you were studying the contents of the sampler,’ he said, ‘Michael White and Simon Gore. We spoke to them on the phone this morning on a conference call. They expressed their shock, and refused to believe that Acharya could have instructed you to tamper with the sampler. How did you manage to contaminate the sampler when they were around?’

‘They were not around when I did it,’ she said. ‘I did it around four in the morning.’

‘You were in the lab that early for the purpose of contaminating the sampler?’ Nambodri asked in an educative way, like a lawyer preparing the client for trial.

‘Yes.’

‘Acharya asked you to do it around that time, before the professors arrived?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think it’s possible that the Americans too were involved in Acharya’s conspiracy?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What proof do you have that Acharya asked you to tamper with the sampler?’ Basu asked.

‘I don’t have any proof,’ she said. ‘But, obviously, I have no motivation to make this revelation. Except on moral grounds.’

‘Obviously,’ Nambodri said. ‘But why are you making it now? Why not before?’

‘I was aware of the implications. I needed time to decide.’

‘We understand that,’ he said kindly, and then looked surprised to see the man at the door.

Ayyan Mani was holding a note in his hand.

‘Dr Acharya asked me to give this to you,’ he told the jury, and held the folded letter in the air. He had started walking in when Basu said ceremoniously, ‘Come in.’ That made Ayyan stop for a moment before resuming his entry.

He handed the note to Basu who read the contents to the gathering: ‘It’s beneath my dignity to react to an allegation of this nature or to present myself before a committee of this composition. I will not be interrogated by bureaucrats and subordinates. In my defence, I present my whole past — Arvind Acharya.’

For a brief moment, Oparna thought Basu was an endearingly formidable man. Then she realized that she felt that way because he was reading out the words of a man who really was.

Basu tore up the letter and handed the shreds to Ayyan.

‘You may give this to him,’ he said, and threw a look at Oparna to see if she was impressed. ‘I interpret this as a direct challenge to the Defence Minister himself,’ Basu said. Ayyan left the room holding the shreds in a tight fist. He looked forward to giving the shreds to Acharya.

Basu studied Oparna with what must have been wisdom, and said, ‘What you did, even though you did it under duress, was wrong. It has brought disgrace to the Institute. But you have done the right thing by offering to take responsibility and resign.’

Oparna, once again, forced herself to think of the sudden demise of her grandmother.

He paused and nodded at the other members. ‘We have nothing more to say to you except that without your courage this matter would never have surfaced. Would you reconsider your offer to resign?’

‘No,’ she said. The briskness with which she replied surprised him and he forgot what he wanted to say.

Nambodri narrowed his eyes and looked sideways at her. ‘Maybe we can find a post for you in one of the other institutes run by the Ministry of Defence?’

‘I am not in a position to think about my future right now,’ she said, standing up. The men rose to bid her farewell. She collected her handbag from the floor and walked out without a word.

Ayyan Mani was certain that after this day Oparna would never be seen in the Institute again. In the tumult of the coming days as the scandal unfolded on television screens, she would be missing. And she would be missing long after people stopped trying to find her. She would become a distant memory to be invoked with mirth — ‘Remember Oparna?’

She would wander through life beseeching men to love her, frighten them with the intensity of her affection, marry one whose smell she could tolerate, and then resume the search for love. And she would suffer the loneliness of affairs. And on some mornings, in front of men who thanked their luck for such an easy fling, she would endure the shame of putting on her clothes, somehow more demeaning than undressing for them. She would wander this way every day of her life until she found shelter in the peace of age.

Ayyan saw this in his mind and waited to feel the glee. But it did not come. There was only an unfamiliar ache in his heart. For a beautiful woman whose hurt nobody fully understood, whose anguish the vultures now used in their larger game.

The trial lasted only a day. After the departure of Oparna, postdoctoral students who were part of the Balloon Mission walked in nervously and walked out without taking the case forward. The jury set aside the sampler scandal and decided to hear the complaints of thirteen scientists who said that they were mentally tortured by Acharya. This was Nambodri’s masterstroke.

The evidence against Acharya was always going to be thin. And the revenge of a woman, Nambodri knew, could not be fully depended on. But he had full faith in the revenge of men and their natural brutality that would land death-blows on a venerated and arrogant person when he was down. The war of the mediocre, in the world according to Nambodri, was a battle that raged in every office. And it was a battle that they always won in the end. It was the right of simple people to survive in their little nooks and do their little things. But the geniuses did not let them. They came with their grand plans and high standards and the proud inability to offer false compliments. Even in the Institute of fantastic pursuits, where there was an imagined regard for absolute brilliance because that lent a glow to all, this rebellion had always been brewing. It was subdued, but it was there. Worse, the old man had won Oparna, the infatuation of all. So it was not only the foes of Acharya who despised him but also, secretly, his many fans. That, Nambodri knew, was the nature of men.

String theorists arrived and told the jury how they were humiliated by Acharya for their mathematical structure of the universe, for heading nowhere with the Theory of Everything and for the crime of believing in the Big Bang. Radio astronomers complained that Acharya had unfairly denied them the science of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and that they were not allowed to attend Seti seminars because he wanted to siphon every rupee into the Balloon Mission. Others who did not have specific complaints said that it was ridiculous that the administrative head of the Institute was so pompous and eccentric. Outside the room, on the corridors, in the library, in the canteen, and on the pathways that ran through the undulating lawns, there were passionate debates on whether Acharya was indeed a fraud. The community had to choose between the entertainment of believing that he was guilty and the dull nobility of having faith in his character. It was the sort of day when a man needed goodwill more than genius. By evening, the word spread with the decisive force of common truth that Acharya had owned up to the jury, that he had confessed. The origin of the news, everybody attributed to the other.

At the closed gates of the Institute, the guards stood amused. The crowd of reporters was swelling. Television crews were landing and the line of OB vans on the narrow lane outside stretched for a hundred metres. A few hours ago Arvind Acharya had walked out through the gates, cutting through the reporters like a silent ship. They had chased him and asked their questions, but he told them nothing. Now they waited in the hope that something big was about to be announced. The invisible machines of Jana Nambodri’s public relations genius sent a steady supply of mineral water to the gates, and bits of information through scientists who would be quoted later as reliable sources and people-in-the-know.