Serious Men

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 aperpetual 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.

I T 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