Serious Men

incurable chauvinism and told reporters, ‘A physicist is ultimately judged through citations.
She
has to constantly publish.’ They were highminded; they secretly believed that their purpose was greater; they were certain that only scientists had the right today to be philosophers. But they counted cash like everyone else. With a wet index finger and a sudden meditative seriousness.
    Even though Ayyan was late for work that morning, it was inevitable that he would stand in front of the blackboard in the porch of the main block. It was a morning ritual that always cooled the fever in his chest. THOUGHT FOR THE DAY, the blackboard said in indelible white ink. Under it was an ephemeral thought, written in chalk:
    God does not play dice — Albert Einstein
    Ayyan took a duster from the top of the blackboard and erased Einstein’s famously abridged message. Then he pretended to look into a paper, just in case somebody was watching. And he wrote:
    It’s a myth that Sanskrit is the best language for writing computer code. Patriotic Indians have spread this lie for many years — Bill Gates
    Bill Gates never said that. Some days, Ayyan invented quotes that insulted Indian culture, that exclusive history of the Brahmins. Nobody remembered when exactly Ayyan was assigned the task of writing the Thought For The Day or by whom. But he did it, without fail, every day. Most days he wrote genuine quotes. Some days he had fun.
    He took the lift and travelled in the carefully maintained silence of three sweet-smelling elderly scientists who were lost in very deep, expensive thoughts. He got off at the third floor and walked down an almost interminable corridor that was jokingly described here as ‘finite’. The corridor was flanked by numbered doors. Behind every door a great mind sat, and in between solvingthe mysteries of the universe, some of them were hoping that one man died. Things were getting a bit tense. A war was brewing. Everybody knew it here as The Giant Ear Problem.
    At the far end of the corridor was a door that said ‘Director’. It opened to a commodious anteroom, almost as large as Ayyan’s home. He yawned as he sat in a nook behind a monitor, three telephones and a paranormal fax machine that came to life with the furtive whisper of a secret. Facing him across the width of the room was a seasoned black leather sofa, now vacant but with the irreparable depressions of long waits. Between his table and the sofa ran a short corridor that led to the door that announced its infernal occupant – Arvind Acharya.
    Ayyan looked at the door without fear and dialled a number. ‘I am sorry I am late, Sir,’ he said, ‘Any instructions for me?’ The line went dead, as expected. Ayyan put the receiver down and calmly studied his fingers. The receivers of all three phones on his table were on their cradles. That was rare. Usually, one of the receivers was left off the hook. That was because he almost always arrived before Acharya, called one of the Director’s landlines from here and left the receivers of both the phones slightly askew. That way Ayyan could just pick up his phone and hear the conversations in Acharya’s room, and keep abreast of all the developments in the Institute and, as a consequence, in the universe.
    A peon walked in and filled the anteroom with the faint odour of jaggery. Some peons had that smell. He dropped a thick wad of papers on the table.
    ‘For the Big Man,’ he said softly, throwing a nervous glance at the inner door.
    Ayyan flipped through the pages of the material and chuckled. It was yet another epic analysis of cosmic observations by a visiting researcher. This one tried to prove that a distant object was indeed a White Dwarf.
    ‘What is this, Mani?’ the peon asked with sudden curiosity, ‘Do you ever understand these things that land on your table?’
    ‘I do, my friend, I do,’ Ayyan said, and tried to think of a wayto explain. ‘The chap who has written this is trying to say that an object far far away in space is a type of star.’
    ‘That’s it?’ the peon said, almost angrily.
    ‘Yes, that’s it. And this type of a star has a name,’ Ayyan said. ‘White Dwarf.’ That made the peon giggle.
    ‘One year later,’ Ayyan whispered, ‘another man will say, “No no, it is not a White Dwarf, it is a Brown Dwarf.” A year later, someone else will say, “No no, it is not a Brown Dwarf, it is not a star at all, it is a planet.” Then they will argue over