Serious Men

hero who searches everywhere for the source of the sound until he finds the speaker in a full-length mirror. The voice, the haunting insistent whisper, became a distant ungifted song that grew and grew in volume and tenor until he recognized it as the voice of Lavanya. ‘You are not supposed to just stand in those shoes. You’re supposed to walk. You wake up before the housewives of Mylapore every morning and then you just stand.’
    Acharya went to his room and shut himself inside. He fed The Three Tenors into the music system and triumphantly thumbed the play button as retribution for everything he had to endure in the house. He sat on the edge of the bed and remembered how Shruti used to say that if he had more hair, and agreed to dye it black and comb it sideways, and opened his mouth more often in anguish, he would very closely resemble Pavarotti.
    The piercing wail of ‘Nessun dorma’ filled the room, and he yielded to its anthemic glory. He stared back at his own images on the wall. How young and fierce he once was. There was so much hope in him those days for theoretical physics. But now he was tired. He was tired of the battles and tired of rubbish like Tachyons, Higgs Bosons and Supersymmetry. He felt in his bones the weight of how complicated the quest for truth itself had become. How obscure, how mathematical, how pompously it tried to exclude ordinary people. Physics was on the verge of becoming a religion. A medieval religion. A handful of seers stood on the pedestal and lay people had to accept everything they heard. He still found joy in theoretical physics, and in the mysteries of Time and gravity. But there was nothing he loved more now than his search for the eternal spores that came riding on meteorites.
    In the decisive finality of ‘Nessun dorma’, so titanic, so perfect, he began to hear discordant beats which he slowly recognized as violent thumps on the door. He heard the desperate voice of Lavanya trying to rise above Pavarotti’s. He was about to increase the volume when he heard her say, ‘Shruti is on the phone.’ That made him open the door.
    He did not meet her eyes as he went past her to the hall.
    ‘I have been banging on the door,’ Lavanya said, and then got distracted by the dust on the door. They had moved from Princeton ten years ago, but she had never gotten used to how easily dust gathered in Bombay.
    Acharya held the receiver and grumbled that the line was dead.
    ‘Obviously,’ Lavanya said, ‘She is not going to wait for …’ She clenched her fist and yelled, ‘I am going to turn off that bloody music.’ The doorbell rang just then and she opened the door with a violent smirk.
    ‘Good morning,’ said the cheerful voice of Jana Nambodri. He was the best-dressed scientist she had ever known. Dark-brown corduroy trousers and a crisp white shirt today. She knew that he dyed his hair evenly silver, and she was not sure if sheshould hate him for it. She had a peculiar soft spot for men who were shorter than her. Also, he was the cultural force of the Professors’ Quarters.
    Nambodri was visiting after a long time. She hoped he had come in peace. She let him in muttering, ‘Don’t worry, Jana, I am going to turn that thing off.’
    ‘It’s “Nessun dorma”,’ Nambodri said, ‘You cannot turn it off like that. It’s disrespectful.’
    ‘In my house you can,’ she said, and went away.
    The two men stood in the living-room staring at each other. They heard Pavarotti perish abruptly, somewhat violently, and the sudden silence made the distance between them seem greater.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Nambodri said, ‘The Round Table was not the place for that. I am really sorry.’

O PARNA G OSHMAULIK WAS still not granted the peace of anonymity, but she was now an insider. Those cold gazes when she went down the corridors in the wooden beat of her low heels, the number of old scholars who wanted to show her the right path while staring at her breasts, and their wives, some of them, who arrived to have an accidental meeting with her and see for themselves the talk of the Professors’ Quarters – those days were over. Only minor assaults remained. Some wiry postdoctoral students still gaped at her with infatuated eyes, an ancient professor of Number Theory who inhabited the corridors these days waylaid her and showed her his nature poems. Jana Nambodri continued to observe her in a way that he thought was wise and knowing. He wanted to sustain a mild tension