One by one all the star students of Mohan wrote to me. To this day I don’t know how they got hold of my address, but the letters arrived here in Shimla, and they all made it within three or four years; the last one arrived in 1989, when the world was going through massive upheavals. That wall crumbled in Berlin. I say ‘last’, because I was not expecting a letter from you. A visit, yes. In fact, till the beginning of ’89 none of his students mattered; even you, who were so important, ceased to matter.
You talk obsessively now about that railway platform photo, but have you forgotten the photo we never took? I wish I’d had a camera that day. On the surface it was an ordinary day, but before it ended it revealed all that was carefully concealed. Mohan had invited you to yet another dinner. His ex-room-mate from Cornell, an Italian American, now a professor of literature, was in town. I cooked Bengali-style fish. Our guest is magnetically drawn to Mohan’s ‘dancing girl’ and ‘priest king’, the Harappa artefacts. His eyes pop out as he rolls in his hand the Indus seals. A script impossible to translate. It is best certain things never get translated, he says. He, our charming guest, holds court that night, delights us with short bios of authors we never heard of before. We have only one bottle, but the wine is good. Conversation moves to a book, I remember, by Moravia. Our guest recites a fragment that has been troubling him, and because of that passage he finds it difficult to read fiction. All fiction. Technically it is a simple situation. X invites Y, his best friend, to dinner, and while X (the host) disappears for five minutes to the basement to get wine, X’s wife leans towards Y and kisses him. What should Y do? No matter what choice he makes he is doomed. Should he tell X? Not tell X? Will X believe him? Even if X believes him how will the telling affect the friendship? And what if Y chooses not to tell? Then the Italian American pauses, and for a brief moment there is absolute silence around the table, and then everyone laughs.
You were the only one who didn’t laugh. I had observed you while the Italian American was narrating the story. The way your body shrank. Your face transformed, and its colour. As if you were not there. You concealed yourself. I had no idea – I still don’t know – if the others noticed.
When you recovered you told a horrible Sikh joke as if you wanted me to dislike you. You knew I hated those jokes. (Repelled by your ‘surd’ and ‘sardine’ I made you stop.) When you left you didn’t even bother shaking hands with me that night. You made yourself repulsive and vanished. And a few days later I heard about your jaundice. At first I doubted the sickness was real. But I didn’t want you to die. When I was a girl the rickshaw-wallah who took me to school died of ‘pilia’, his eyes had turned yellow before he stopped coming. For a month you vacated the IIT hostel and moved to your parents’ house. Mohan was the one who encouraged me to go and see you. I called you. Mohan was the one who gave me the phone number. The maid picked up. She gave me the address. I changed city buses twice and made it to Amrita Sher-Gil Marg. You know how difficult it is for women to travel on those buses. I took a day off only to find out that your parents’ house was not far from the International Centre. Because it was an elite neighbourhood there was no trace of slums. The houses were bigger and more majestic than ours. Outside your bungalow on that billionaires’ boulevard real cops were posted, loaded with carbines. Two or three black cars and a jeep chaotically parked just outside the gate. I presented myself to the guards, they didn’t frisk me, they were respectful. There was no one on the veranda. I walked in. The bookshelves and other objects in the house suggested this family was steeped in deep knowledge about the world. It appeared the place had several servants, but at that time none visible. Service people cannot afford such places, such a house comes to one as inheritance or through high levels of corruption. In the kitchen I found the old maid in a sari. Your parents were not home. She told me you were fast asleep. She had gone to your room. I heard the conversation. You didn’t want to see me. Absolutely not. You commanded the maid to get rid of me. I overheard just enough. On the way home it occurred to me that something was keeping you from introducing me to your parents. Certain things don’t need proof.
Later on the railway platform you pretended this episode didn’t take place. You relied on ambiguity. But you never introduced me to your father as your professor’s wife. I could have been anyone. Someone’s mother. Thirty or thirty-one boys on the platform. All your father saw that day was the wave of my hand, farewell to you all. All he saw was a lie.
Chapter 3.
Particles
I don’t know what she meant about the lie, but I moved out of Nelly’s place and got a room in a hotel. I could see pain and outrage accumulating inside me, but tried to stay calm. The most difficult thing was the mirror in the bathroom, completely unnecessary. I taped three or four sheets on that clumsily polished surface. It was a four-star hotel, on the highest mountain in the city, with angled views of young chir pines, walls of deodars and swatches of green, and comfortable. I spent two continuous days in my room, unwell, filled with a kind of nausea not experienced for twenty or twenty-five years. On the wall across from my bed there were huge black-and-white photos of colonial tiger hunts, and the constant gaze of white sahibs stirred strange, uncomfortable thoughts within me.
On TV the main news items (regardless of the spin) highlighted the occupation of Kashmir, its alienated youth. The last two decades had left 90,000 dead. Thousands had disappeared. Women had been raped, entire villages, by men in uniform. Abuse. Torture. Mass graves. Despite that, the armed forces and paramilitaries enjoyed absolute impunity. Equally disturbing was the ongoing tragedy of Kashmiri Pandits living in exile. Local news focused on the collapse of a bridge in the Commonwealth Games complex. Twenty-five years ago there was only one state-run channel; now in ‘new and shining India’ 136 channels were telling the ‘truth’ in a babel of voices.
For a long time I stared at the empty, redundant swimming pool outside the window, and for some unknown reason thought about Father’s swimming pool in Delhi. I don’t know when exactly I called the bookshop downstairs to ask if they had stories set in Shimla. The bellboy got me every single forgettable book by Kipling. Nevertheless I flipped through those collectors’ editions. Kipling still had power over me. Buying the books, sa’ab? Get me three bottles of wine instead, I said. Sula. Worst in the world. Nelly didn’t call me either, I was the one who did, but something kept her from returning my calls. I felt I had perhaps offended her by not saying much. I had not uttered a single meaningful word.
My father, too, hunted tigers. When he visited Jabalpur to attend a police conference he developed a passion for the wild. He got lucky and shot the big cat ‘Surma’. The tiger was processed by the taxidermist in Calcutta. Once a year men in our house in Delhi would spread the skin (and the attached head) on the lawns. Burning bright, flames of winter sun would dry the kill. Inside, displayed on the wall, the head gleamed at night. When I was a child the tiger would create extreme emotional upheavals within me. I was proud of my father, and also hated him. ‘Dislike’ was not a strong enough emotion. In all he hunted thirteen tigers, I don’t know where the other twelve are. In post-independence India more than nine thousand were eliminated by foreign and indigenous hunters. Ironically, it was Indira Gandhi who imposed a so-called ban in the early seventies. One by one I consumed the bottles of horrible Sula red and then switched to beer. I heard intermittently the occasional whistle of a train. Long, long, short, long. Thick clouds galloped towards my window. Yes, long ago, an extremely strong and beautiful woman had stirred a powerful attraction within me that is hard to articulate. The whole thing started as pure lust, I remember still the dizzy feeling, the cloud of confusion, the delirium. The jacaranda earrings I made for her. How foolish and bold of me to make earrings out of seed pods which essentially look like vaginas. Nelly wore them only once, in his absence, and that is not a lie. I thought then that she was the love of my life (whatever it meant) and that is not a lie. But the truth is that I was really afraid. Afraid that day on
the railway platform. I didn’t act, I could not, not because of the reason Nelly implied. Yes, indeed, long ago, in my wildest thoughts I did wish my professor dead once or twice (just as I wished my father dead when I was very young). But the wish was not real. Nelly didn’t understand me completely. She, too, knew the truth partially, and that is not a lie. Fear had penetrated my bones, and paralysed me, that is why I did not try to save him on the platform. Not because I wished him dead. I know now any action on my part would not have helped. I regret it though; if only I had tried (regardless of the consequences) I would have been hurt less, and by now I would have figured out a way to heal the wound.
You are living a lie. Nelly was mad at me.
Bubbles in a glass of beer grow twice as big by the time they rise to the very top. Students almost always get this wrong: Why is the diameter of the bubble at the bottom of the glass half the diameter of the one at the top? A simple calculation shows that pressure-induced size reduction is no more than 10 per cent even in a very tall glass of beer. So, what is the real reason?
While rising, each bubble acts as a typical nucleation site. Moving up, it gathers dissolved carbon dioxide, which causes expansion. Size change also changes its speed. But that is a separate question, a separate set of equations.
My cellphone was ringing.
The IIT Chair’s name and number stared at me. I let it ring. I was done with helium. I had no idea how to introduce Professor Osheroff. Helium-3 was not even my area. And I was also done with my area as well – rheology.
Rhea is the second largest moon of Saturn.
Wispy and full of icy cliffs.
The only moon with rings around it.
The Rings of Rhea.
Beautiful and melancholic like Saturn.
Rhea is also a bird.
Unable to fly.
A distant cousin of the ostrich.
Both the moon and the bird were named after the ‘daughter of sky and Earth’ and the ‘mother of gods’. Rhea is a myth. Rhea is the wife of Time. And Time, back then, was a myth. ‘Time’ or ‘Cronus’ or ‘Saturn’ ate his own children. Rhea hid a newborn in a cave and gave Cronus a stone wrapped in a rag. Cronus ate that stone. In ancient Greek rhea means ‘flow’ or ‘discharge’. Panta rei, says Heraclitus: ‘everything flows’.
What appealed to me about rheology, at least during those early years, was its focus on deformation and flow of materials. Anomalous ones. Materials which betray Newton’s laws. ‘Thickness’ or ‘viscosity’ fail to characterise them fully the way they do with air and water and even honey. Blood, clay, toothpaste, biological molecules, liquid crystals, foam, paint, menstrual blood and lava are non-Newtonian. Anomalous equations guide them through various incarnations.
A spider crawled to the bottom of my beer glass and slowly moved up. I surveyed the curious movement of its small wriggly legs on glass. Detecting trouble or ‘instability’ it returned quickly to the base. ‘Nature is altogether out of it.’ I couldn’t but help think of the one student who had tried to ‘save’ Professor Singh. At least he made an attempt while I stood on the platform numb and paralysed. What did he get in return? An iron bar that missed his head, and hit his shoulder instead. He fell on the platform and wriggled. Then he got punched in his mouth. Blood gushed out of him. He was not even a friend of the professor’s, not a favourite student, not an exceptionally bright student. No one thought he was ‘brave’. We all used to call him an expert masturbator. But when the need arose this mediocrity acted ‘brave’. He deserved a gallantry medal for trying. But he too ran away after blood gushed out. He kept running and never looked back. He is now a professor at Clarkson (Potsdam, New York). I traced him through the alumni association, and drove to his place and stayed with him. Tactfully over a drink I brought up Professor Singh. I saw him turn numb. Terrified. Now after so many years it was his turn to grow numb. He urged me not to open up that can of worms. I remember nothing, he insisted. His voice broke down. Nothing. I told him clearly about my project, also the fact that I was going to mention him for the sake of posterity. He raised his voice, which kept breaking. Is this why you have come? His wife shoved him into the study. Then she asked me to pack all my things and leave as soon as possible. On the way back I had thought and thought a lot about India and my father.
When I was eight or nine my father took me along to the remote areas on the so-called ‘police inspections’. Together we travelled to the high bur-fi-lay mountains. He drove the 4x4 jeep himself. Our luggage included his hunting gun. I sat in the front, since Mother was not with us. The driver sat at the back.
Father drove to Kalka, Solan and Shimla, and continued on the road to Kullu-Manali because he wanted me to see (or rather hunt in) the highest mountains. The road was a marvel of high-altitude engineering. He drove all the way to Rohtang Pass, 3,978 metres high. Rohtang, he explained, means a ‘pile of bones’. He was right. The pass resembled a Yeti’s icy knuckle.
We stood looking down. Cold wind struck our cheeks. I thought my cap was going to fall off, and all I saw was rock and road and no trees. Shivering, I returned to the parked jeep. Father encouraged me to take pictures. My hands shook when I used the metallic camera. Then we drove through a thin veil of clouds to the origin of Beas, the river water white and foamy, roaring and kicking and galloping towards the plains. We drank tea directly from the Thermos, and walked a mile to the base of the glacier, where we found a mountaineer’s shoe, and a minute later a perfectly preserved body no longer attached to it. The mountaineer’s face was well preserved too. Father and I hurried back to the jeep where the driver was waiting, a lump of snow in my hand. The lump melted drop by drop through my fingers, giving me immense pain and pleasure, both at once.
Father got directions from the nomads to the police check post, where he alerted the saluting, trembling havildar on duty about the body and then we were on our way again. During the descent, we encountered more nomads and flocks of sheep. The animals slowed us down, and when the jeep finally picked up speed I had to put on a thick sweater and zip up my jacket.
Those days Rohtang Pass (or Rohtang La, in Tibetan) was not connected to Leh. Father had promised to show me the semi-arid Leh. So he called a few important friends from the local police station, and from the valley on the other side of Rohtang a helicopter picked us up and spiralled to Ladakh. There we saw snow and a desert, and Father did some hunting, but what took our breath away was the chiru antelope migrating. In Leh we also bought three or four shahtoosh ring-shawls for relatives.
The same helicopter, a couple of days later, dropped us at the base of Mount Affarwat, 4,143 metres high. Father told me that he thought it would be a good idea to climb that beautiful mountain. He gave me a little test. You must learn to take only the most essential things along, he said. What would you keep and what would you discard? I told him it was not a good idea to carry his gun during the climb. Father patted my back, thrice. He left the gun with the driver and we hiked up extremely light.
From the summit of Affarwat we could see that 8,126-metre wonder of the world. The mountain looked semi-naked, and I was not surprised when the local police officer told us its name. Nanga Parbat, or the Naked Mountain.
In my hotel room I thought over and over about our journey to the ‘highest’ mountains. I know Father has not forgotten the journey either. He rarely forgets. Our house in Delhi is filled with paintings of Nanga Parbat. He commissions his favourite artists to do a ‘Nanga Parbat’ for him. He loves the magic of mountains and starts glowing when someone mentions Kipling, Kim, or K1, K2, K3 . . . I still remember that beautiful story he told me, the tiny myth about the origin of mountains . . . The police helicopter was flying over Affarwat when he told me about the mythic orogenesis.
Once upon a time elephants were able to fly. Completely white and delightful, the flying creatures also destroyed a lot of objects, houses, and trees. One day a fatigued elephant perched on a big tree. The tree fell. On several children. So, with a single thunderbolt, the
gods cut off its wings . . . Collective punishment . . . What we see as mountains now are really those elephants without wings, and the ever-thickening clouds hovering about the upper slopes are really the detached wings. Together, the clouds and the mountains mourn their loss, and what comes down is rain.
The next few days it rained in Shimla and in the overheated hotel room I drifted in and out of a kind of dizziness and nausea I rarely experience. The white elephants remained invisible most of the time. Several times in my room or in the hotel lobby I heard sounds of bells wafting in from a faraway school or a temple.
When the rain stopped, I stepped out for an aimless walk, and spent some time browsing through dusty volumes at the rare bookshop on the Mall Road. The owner had a tiny TV and was watching a documentary on the Siachen glacier. Utopian proposals to build a ‘peace park’ at Siachen were being discussed. I bought a bottle of mineral water from the chemist’s shop, where, quite unexpectedly, I ran into a vaguely familiar nocturnal figure, the night porter wearing the same threadbare baseball cap. Suraj. He was sleep-starved, and informed me that he was heading to his village later that evening. Every year he was allowed a month off.
Helium Page 13