Serious Men

loved this game.
    ‘Supernova,’ his father said.
    ‘Supernova,’ Adi said. ‘Easy.’
    ‘How do stars die, Miss?’ Ayyan said in English.
    ‘How do stars die, Miss?’
    ‘How do stars die, Miss, apart from becoming supernovas?’
    ‘How do stars die, Miss, apart from becoming supernovas?’
    ‘How do stars die, Miss, apart from becoming supernovas?’
    ‘How do stars die, Miss, apart from supernovas?’
    ‘Apart from becoming supernovas?’
    ‘How do stars die, Miss, apart from becoming supernovas?’
    ‘Bright boy.’
    Adi extricated himself from his father and went to take the ball that was stuck in the mouth of the drain. He looked around innocently before he crouched and pulled the ball out. He played with it for some time. Then he said to his father, ‘I like prime numbers.’
    Ayyan ignored him.
    ‘I like prime numbers because they cannot be predicted,’ Adi said, in a casual, conversational sort of way. ‘You don’t have to talk to me like that, Adi.’
    ‘Like how?’
    ‘Like how you are talking right now about prime numbers.’
    ‘I like prime numbers because they cannot be predicted.’
    ‘It’s OK, Adi, you don’t have to talk like that with me. We play the game only sometimes. Not all the time. You understand?’

O PARNA G OSHMAULIK POUND it funny. That the curtain was blood-red, that it went up in somnolent folds, and that there was a silence of anticipation all around. All this drama at an event where the guest lecturer had promised to speak on the ‘Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics’. Even the lights were dimming now. The Talks had begun. It was an annual event in honour of departing research scholars, the Institute’s version of a convocation ceremony but without the black gowns or the precondition that the scholars should now get out into the real world.
    The auditorium was full. There were silhouettes on the aisles. Scores of people were outside the doors, denied entry, denied the Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. And they were disconsolate. She could hear their angry demands to be allowed to at least sit in the aisles. But then even the aisles were filled. This was a strange parallel world.
    There was a deafening applause now. On the stage appeared an amicable white man, and Arvind Acharya. The two men sat on cane chairs in the centre of an illuminated circle. The sheer expanse of the stage was fit for ballet but the Institute allowed only lectures. A pretty girl, somewhat preoccupied with her long straight hair, arrived at the podium. ‘Look at my hair, look at my hair,’ Oparna thought she was going to say, but instead the girl said, ‘Science is an evolution of the human mind. It is the true history of mankind.’ After a few lines like this she said that the men on the stage needed no introduction and then she introduced them. The girl was not from the Institute and Oparnawondered where the men had found her. She remembered Jana Nambodri asking her if she could introduce the guests and hand out the bouquets too. ‘We need some beauty out there’, he had said. She had refused because she had felt like refusing him. Also, even though she understood the banality of men and the aesthetic improvements a woman would bring to an occasion like this, she was privately against women being used as ceremonial dolls. And, for reasons that were not clear to her then, she wanted to look at Acharya from a comfortable seat in the shelter of darkness.
    His initial geniality had vanished. His red cheeks were now molten, his infant bald head shone under the lights and he was surveying the audience in dismay. Keeble rose from his cane chair and went to the podium. He drank two glasses of water. He was a tall slender man, elderly and pleasant. ‘It is a pleasure to speak to a gathering like this,’ he said, and then looking at Acharya, he added, ‘A bit intimidating too.’
    A gentle hush of laughter went through the auditorium. Some laughed aloud late to show that they understood the joke. Keeble began his lecture. Oparna endured the Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics by observing what Acharya did throughout the speech. He would open his mouth in a trance or glare at the roof, or signal to someone for a glass of water, or a faint smirk would come to his face at something Keeble had said.
    At one point, he was looking angrily at Keeble, and she felt nervous. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything stupid. Keeble was talking about Time and was coming to the perilous