Serious Men

goddesses of being topless tribals. In the happy stupor of inebriation, Acharya stood on the table and declared to the pub that he was smarter than all the Belgians in the world and challenged them to a round of blindfold chess. Voorhoof, of course, accepted the challenge.
    They were blindfolded with the kerchiefs given by cautiously excited girls who were confused by the intellectual duel of two foreign men. Acharya and the Belgian spoke their moves, and a drunken friend offered to move the pieces on a chessboard that a waiter had produced. Acharya won in five minutes and let out a long operatic laughter with his blindfold still on. Voorhoof, who was also blindfolded, took an unopened beer bottle and flung it in the direction of the laughter. The bottle found its target but, fortunately for Acharya, it broke only after it hit theground. But it left a deep gash in his forehead, and for the first time in his life he tasted blood. The gash hurt so much in the coming days that he refused to believe a time would come when he would no longer feel the pain. Long after the wound healed, every time he felt sad, he would think of the scar and remind himself not only of the fleeting transience of pain but also of convictions, friends, love, daughters and everything else that men held so dear.
    The memory of Oparna too was no longer an open wound. To each other, he believed they had become endearing scars that in solitary moments would open the magical windows of remembrance. That was how he wanted her to remember their brief love. And this hope was reaffirmed when she walked into his room that Wednesday with such tranquillity and with the other deceptions of woman’s amnesia.
    ‘I called you to discuss the bad news from Boston,’ he said, rocking himself in the chair consciously to reassure her that it was not a tragic matter and that she should not be disappointed. ‘I believe you got a copy too?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sad, isn’t it.’
    Boston University had confirmed that it had finished studying the sampler and had found no sign of life in it.
    ‘There are still two samplers and Cardiff will be getting back soon,’ he said cheerfully.
    ‘Let’s hope there is something interesting in them,’ she said, looking at her fingernails.
    ‘Let’s hope,’ he said, and looked at her fondly. ‘I was thinking, Oparna, Astrobiology has to be made one of the main streams in the Institute. What do you say?’
    She said, in a somewhat lifeless way, that it was a good idea.
    He mistook her response for the boredom that so often fills researchers after the excitement of a big project. The hired hands in her lab had been asked to leave, most of the equipment was shrouded in protective covers, and she was left alone in the basement once again with ghostly peons, and the uncertain wait for another worthy assignment.
    ‘You will be part of the faculty then?’ he asked pleasantly.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said, and looked away.
    That introduced a silence which ended with Oparna asking if there was anything else he wanted to discuss. When she was at the door, she turned to look at him for a passing moment. Just for an instant, he thought, they were once again in that abstract doorway of love where they did not know if they were reuniting or growing apart.
    Their next meeting, three weeks later, was more grim. It was in the company of the Press Officer who wiped his forehead out of habit, even though he was not sweating. Cardiff too had said that the study of the two samplers was complete and no form of life had been detected. Acharya looked sombrely at Oparna, and then at the Press Officer, who straightened his back.
    ‘We have a moral obligation to go public with this news,’ Acharya said. ‘We have to state clearly that two external labs have detected nothing in the samplers.’
    After the Press Officer left hurriedly to type out the release, Acharya and Oparna maintained a deep thoughtful silence that both of them understood as a form of professional conversation and not as the discomfort of defeated lovers.
    Finally he said, ‘Considering the fact that Cardiff and Boston have not detected anything while we have, it is natural for people to question whether the sampler that was studied here was accidentally contaminated in the lab. I know such a thing could not have happened under your watch. But we must reassure people that our lab maintains the highest standards.’
    Oparna nodded, but he could see that her mind