by Ruskin Bond
Virendra looked up towards the waiter, followed his moves of placing a fork and knife, the dish of beans on toast, a glass of water, and the coffee cups on the table. Khanna and Harjinder pulled the cups towards themselves. The waiter asked Virendra, 'Would there be something else?'
Virendra was looking happily at the dish, an attractive mix of beans and orange-brown gravy with sprinklings of minced chilli overflowing the toast. 'Not right now. Perhaps coffee after the meal. But don't bring it until I ask you,' Virendra said. The waiter left.
'I don't know about how you feel,' Virendra said picking up the knife and fork and applying them to his food, 'but I have noticed that we live in the domains of body and mind; our thoughts and actions are often direct consequences of the environment.'
'What do you mean?' Khanna asked.
'Well, you see when I was coming to the city in the hot sun and hunting for the machine shop in narrow lanes, or standing in the steamy interior of the workshop, my thoughts were primarily on how to get out of there – you could not engage me in any discussion. And the same self, with the mild coolness this place offers would not mind infinite blabbering; it considers the same place more livable. I have also noticed that the same room with simply the walls done neatly with a pleasant colour changes the tenor of thoughts.'
'You mean that you can fool the mind with superficial or local changes in the environment?' Khanna asked.
'I feel that the default mode in the mind is to take the immediate surroundings for the whole to derive its conclusions – probably it extrapolates from that small data and then makes up its mind. But if you keep the mind on deliberate alert—which needs effort—then its excursions are of a different nature. And of course if you take even a mild intoxicant, then you have had it. Hey, the cook was in good form today, this is great!' Virendra concluded indicating his dish, and added, 'sometime you should try it.'
'You and your inclinations!' Khanna said smilingly. 'Yes we shall try it some day.'
'Sometime I have wondered what these people gain by leading the country's scientific programme this way. I should think it is not a smart thing to do, if one is intelligent, because it works against a long-lasting recognition,' Khanna revived the old discussion.
'The short-time gains are obvious. This provides them with an overwhelming amount of funds; even if a small fraction of that is utilised then it leads to a fair amount of published material good or bad, which leads to some sort of short-time recognition, awards, etc., and the pleasure of being wooed by many for assorted favours. The short-time gains require less effort, and therefore one is easily attracted to them. And these gains constitute the local environment, so ordinarily it is difficult to see beyond. Even when one sees beyond, the effort involved in the next step is so much that it is not for the ordinary. And the people in decision-making now are largely mediocre, so the next step is not within their capability.'
'Actually, there is something more,' Harjinder said. 'There is no accountability. After twenty years of zero result, there is no one to publicly ask them a question. There is no one to kick them out.'
'The problem is quite complex, and it has both national and international components,' Virendra said. 'The national component is primarily an abysmally incompetent and corrupt leadership, which, partly propelled by self-interest and partly by incompetent comprehension of the dynamics of growth of science in a developing country, has made a mess of everything. The international component is of quite a different nature. In developed countries of the west there is a serious dearth of technical manpower at high level as the youth there are not attracted any more to scientific research because it does not pay monetarily. The vacuum generated attracts the best brains available in less developed countries—this country no exception—because there is opportunity for work as well as money, an amount of money which may not be attractive to the native youth there, but is extremely so for talent in the third-world countries.'
'Unless this brain drain is reversed, we shall be facing a continuous erosion of our intellectual manpower,' Harjinder said.
'Right. But you cannot do this by brute force. First, it is unfair to refuse the fundamental right of improving one's lot. Second, even if you do that, you cannot expect them to produce their best in an atmosphere of compulsion. The outflow is a consequence of the higher potential elsewhere; if you make this place attractive, the flow will be naturally reversed,' Virendra said.
'But continuous outflow makes it increasingly difficult for this country to ever catch up with the developed countries.'
'I think that at the moment you can do very little about this. If the outflow is stopped by a decree, it might affect the receiving countries somewhat, but our own gain would not be that much. At the present moment we do not have the right scientific and engineering institutions, environment, and programmes to utilise the talent, not to speak of the monetary aspects. So, if you stop them, they will get diverted to nontechnical, financially well-paying jobs, such as what happens to our second-tier students who are mostly turning into business executives in big companies. There is neither challenge—rather a challenging opportunity to satisfy one's intellectual ability—nor social respect, nor money in today's technical jobs. For those highly intelligent, highly trained engineering graduates, even the rather drab administrative service jobs are more attractive.'
'Our universities are producing far more science and engineering graduates than there is need for,' Khanna said.
'That's an old story,' Harjinder responded. 'There is often a political reason, a response to some political pressure or a ploy, why the government decides to open an additional academic institution. But once opened and functional, there is no going back. The value of ordinary science graduates is pitiable. Even among those who do Master's in science, many end up in diverse non-science jobs—the number of them doing jobs in banks is not small, and this includes many of our students.'
'Actually, the phenomenon involving the flow of students is interesting even if one does not like it. In our times, the best students went to science when they entered the universities, and remained faithful to their subjects; they were not concerned with material benefits that might accrue. All they aspired for was to reach the frontiers in their fields,' Virendra said.
'Dear friend,' Khanna said with a smile, 'yours was an age of motivation, as Mukherjee says. Times have changed.'
'Definitely. At present, when they are in their high school, the prime objective is to somehow get into an engineering college, because that would lead to the best-paying jobs. So science loses out right there; most of the students who go for science study are usually not the best, and moreover those who are there are there because they could not get into engineering. The second stage of loss of talent takes place when the students of engineering after their Bachelor's go abroad for their Master's or the students of science for their doctorates. So, after those losses, those who are coming here for the Master's in engineering and doctorates in science are usually not the best students the country could have.'
'In fact,' Harjinder said, 'the doctoral programme in our and most engineering departments of our university is about to fold up. Either we do not get students, or get some who do not have either the necessary motivation or the necessary competence; usually both.'
'The situation is the same abroad,' Khanna said. 'The difference is that they can make up the deficiency by importing talent from countries such as ours, but we have no such mechanism. But they have a price to pay. It cannot be an entirely pleasant feeling when a large part of the scientific personnel are foreigners.'
'That is the core of the difficulty. It is a time-dependent process. Right now, there is a global scarcity of highly skilled personnel in non-corporate fundamental research. The best of whatever is available is absorbed by highly paying corporate laboratories; there is little left for academic research in the universities. So it is a dilemma for university researchers abroad: if one goes for available native scientific workers after the corporate laboratories h
ave had their bite one is compromising on quality; if not, one is constrained to bring in foreign workers. Our problem is totally visible on the surface, their problem is below the surface – but it is there. Although it is neither good politics nor unembarrassing to admit it.'
'The other thing that has recently happened is that our students have developed a general aversion to experimental work,' Harjinder said.
'Computers have taken over, right?' Khanna asked.
'It is incredible how this virus has affected the entire academic research in our university. Everybody has a sideline of a computer-based project, and for many it is becoming the main line,' Harjinder said.
'But that is the only thing that works in your university! You can blame neither the supervisor nor the student,' Khanna said.
'But it has gone beyond the limits. Earlier our senior-year undergraduate projects used to be seventy-five percent on experimental work, and only about twenty-five percent on theory. Now the proportion has exactly reversed. Even in our circuits group, we are studying ten times more the circuit behaviour theoretically than making new circuits.'
'In physics, we still follow the dictum that all undergraduate projects must be on experimental work,' Khanna said, 'but the price we pay is too high. Most of the projects do not get completed, and you have to accept whatever is submitted as "satisfactory".'
'That is where the role of academic leadership comes,' Virendra said. 'In a way there cannot be much to say against the availability of desktop computers, whether they come from the cheap markets of Singapore, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. And we are not involved whether in the name of manufacturing computers here by partly importing essential items, the companies are getting the complete set of components from outside and selling them as their own. But it is for the university administration to oversee that the entire academic research does not get converted into pressing keys, and producing graphs generated by software either developed, or purchased, or pirated.'
'Why are you bothered?' Khanna asked.
'Well, I am bothered because this seems to be an involuntary participation in the process of the withering away of the basic scientific traits. A million simulations are not equal to a single well-executed experiment in worth. And the ability to compute how millions of gallons of gasoline could be obtained is insignificant in comparison to an ability to actually produce a single drop of refined petroleum.'
'What are you going to do about it?' Khanna asked.
'If you are asking me about how to rectify the situation, I have no good answer. But I will stick to experiments.'
The waiter came again to the table and asked Virendra, 'Saab, shall I bring coffee?'
'Yes,' Virendra said, 'but quickly. And, tell the cook that he did a good job today.'
'Jee saab.' The waiter went away.
'Let me ask you another question,' Khanna started again addressing Virendra. 'Don't you think you would be more productive and your talent and effort see fruition, if you disengaged from pursuing an impossible objective and engaged in something that has realistic chances of reaching the goal?'
'I have thought about that many times in course of the last twenty years,' Virendra said. 'But the conclusions I have reached have been the same every time. My considerations ran something like this: I trained myself in an area where there was no know-how in the country. The reason I did that was that I did not feel attracted to the research that was going on in the country at that time; in fact, it was quaint. Although both by quality and extent my training was probably inferior to either of yours and of many we know, this was the new thing I had. It was acquired with substantial effort and with the hope that I would be able to apply it when I returned from my training. I have tried it and have failed. But it is useless to go back to the old work just because it is simple and it works. In that case there was no reason for me to try anything else in the first place.'
'But that is suicide.'
'No. Suicide is when one wants to kill oneself. I don't want to kill myself. I want to succeed under, what a mathematician would call, pathologically close to an impossible situation.' Virendra had a sorrowful smile when he finished.
'The rate at which experimentalists in physical and engineering sciences are vanishing, Virendra, I don't know how long you will last. I feel for you because you have worked so hard without any avail.'
'Perhaps one of my students will succeed. Who knows!' Virendra exclaimed. 'And if you believe in predestination then there is nothing to worry about, it is simply a process of unfolding of the scroll and nothing else.'
'Do you?'
'I am not quite sure about that. I have no definite evidence either for or against. So, in the absence of that I have mere speculations.'
'Really, after the experimental research programme did not work out within the first few years,' Harjinder said, 'Virendra, you should have left it. Perhaps you should have gone abroad. Just look at the long list of people who did exactly that. Srinivasan, Seshagiri Rao, and Majumdar from our Department, Kailash Singh, Gowarikar, Vashisht, Prasad from Mechanical Engineering, Seshadri from Aero, Venkataraman, Chowdhury, and Mishra from Chemical Engineering, Saxena from your Department, and so many others. Only from the sciences, the number has been less.'
'It would not have succeeded in my case,' Virendra said. 'I was not trained abroad like most of you. And I am not sure I would have given that a high priority and would have liked to settle abroad. Actually, you could be asked the same question.'
'It is not that I have not given any thought to that. Of course, you know the early history, why I returned home in the first place. But recently I have tried, without much success. My guess is that I am not saleable any more. First, the work we have done in the last few years does not probably seem important in the light of recent advances abroad, and second, probably no less important, the age. I seem to have gone past that age when I could be a good slave.' Harjinder paused, and then looking at Khanna's face, said, 'Don't express disagreement; yes, that is the way a potential recruiter would look at you!'
Nobody said anything to Harjinder's statement. There was silence at the table; it seemed that Khanna would have liked to say something, but he withdrew. The quiet was broken by the waiter's arrival with the coffee for Virendra. He laid down the cup and the saucer in front of Virendra, picked up those of Khanna and Harjinder and went away. Virendra lifted the cup towards his lips, took a little sip—from his gesture it seemed that he found it a little too hot—laid down the cup and said, 'This is one habit we have picked up from the west.'
'One of many,' Khanna said. 'This one is a good one.'
'Coffee after lunch and dinner is a relatively recent import. When we were young,' Virendra said, 'there was real coffee at home, and outside, in south Indian restaurants. But we were only allowed tea. The first taste of coffee as a parallel drink to tea came during the college days in Calcutta – from the College Street Coffee House. Run by the Coffee Board, it was in the first floor hall of a building near the university; it was just like an extension of the university lecture halls – full of students from the morning till night. There would be student groups of various kinds. Someone of the group who came first would sort of take charge of a table, and then throughout the day friends would come, sit, gossip, discuss both serious and light subjects, and then go; and there was an endless traffic before, between, and after the classes. Only once in a while would they order coffee, but the waiters did not seem to mind. The waiters used to wear white liveries and white turbans with a green band; they found their way between the tables barefoot in that noisy hall and one never found them in bad humour. It was a charming time, probably it was the age - everything used to appear charming. During our time for some reason the Board decided to close down the Coffee House, but the waiters decided to continue it; I believe they formed some sort of a co-operative and have been running it that way since then. Some afternoons when I am just doing meaningless things running around here, I feel like going back there.'
; 'The Delhi University Coffee House was also an institution,' Khanna said, 'but there faculty used to visit; we as students did not have such a monopoly. The city coffee house resembled more the atmosphere that you describe.'
'How little of the future does one know!' Virendra said. 'To be confined in a trap like this for ever!'
'But there are so many people in this country with similar training and background like yours and mine who do not have even this!' Harjinder said.
'Yes,' Virendra said, 'but if they had, then frustration of one kind would have merely been replaced by frustration of another kind. Would that have been good or bad?'
Harjinder smiled. 'That's a clever question,' he said. After a pause, he continued, 'Actually when one is young there is rarely a sense of perspective. One starts doing something with great energy, but with little perception of the limitations around. Understanding of the latter comes much later, but then it is all over; then there is neither energy nor time left.'
'It is like the concept of system and surroundings,' Virendra said. 'When one is young, one is aware only of one's inner fire - that is the system; one's projections, actions are all based on that. It takes time, much time, to perceive the role of the medium, the surroundings, without which the system cannot perform. You need a guru to tell you that. He saves you much time, and sometimes a whole life. I think the withering away of the guru system, which we once had in the country, has been a great loss.'
'Are you implying that there is free will? Can you get a guru for receiving wisdom if it is not predetermined?' Khanna asked.
'All that I was saying was an observation on phenomena. Whether all phenomena are predetermined was not my subject of comment,' Virendra said.
Having said that, Virendra paused, he looked up at Khanna and said, 'You know Vishwa, in the recent past I have often thought that though you and I adopted drastically different paths and attitudes towards research, we are standing exactly at the same point, of no accomplishment. I have wondered about who was right, you or I, assuming that there is no predestination. I am still unable to give you credit for having this foresight – about how things would turn out after twenty years, that you did not take the risk of burning out, and I took it and the effort turned into cinder; who was right?'