Agniputr

by Vadhan

‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I think he was paying me a compliment Sci-fi, what do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think he was calling you names, idiot. I think he was telling you something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know what. We can brainstorm about it, but not right now.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘After you do me again.’

  ‘The wench is hot,’ Raghu observed. He rolled on top of her, parting her lips with his.

  CHAPTER 36

  ‘THE concept of the “Observer Effect” in Quantum physics states that observation changes a phenomenon being observed. Another theory is, reality doesn’t exist unless it is measured. Both theories feed off each other. If you look at it, unless observed, there is no existence, no proof that something ever existed. Deep down at the sub-atomic level there are no objects, just relationships between them. There is no locality and no time. If you had a pair of glasses that could show you everything in molecular state, all you’d see are atoms in this room, I don’t exist and nor do you.’

  ‘That’s pretty scary isn’t it?’ Raghu asked. They were lying in bed. Her head was on his shoulder, her hair falling on his face.

  ‘Actually, it’s liberating. Everything that we see is an act of conscious thought, that’s all. It was Pichi Rathaya who said this was what the ancient Hindus called maya, illusion.’

  Raghu asked, ‘If what we see isn’t the truth, then what is?’

  ‘Good question. What is the truth, what you see or what you think? To a scientist like me, the thinker is real. To the philosopher, the thinker is God. Therefore, Hindu teaching that God is the only reality and everything else is an illusion is a logical statement, not a religious one.’

  ‘Are you telling me that you logically believe in God?’

  Sheila shook her head, her hair tickling Raghuram.

  ‘A scientist does not believe in anything absolutely. I believe in a theory, I examine it, understand it and then go about disproving it. If I disprove it I am one step ahead, if I don’t disprove it I am one step ahead because then I would have learned enough to see the theory cannot be disproved. Either way, I gain knowledge.’

  ‘See? That’s why I call you Sci-fi. I don’t understand half the things you say, but they sound so good.’

  Sheila laughed.

  ‘Now, here’s the tricky part, the only reality we know is the one our brain manufactures because that’s our thought factory. It manufactures reality based on memories, so what we see is in fact what the brain tells us we see.’

  ‘Hmmm...I see a lot of new things my brain is not exposed to. How do I recognise them?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘For instance I would know a hill when I see one though I may never have seen a hill before that.’

  ‘That’s simple, someone would have described a hill to you. You may have read about it, seen a picture. You’ll be able to associate the sound of the word with the image. Otherwise, you would not know a hill from a sandhill.’

  She rolled over to her side of the bed, propped up the pillows and settled back with a quilt over her.

  ‘Once long ago, matter was joined,’ Sheila said. ‘The universe was the size of an atom. It exploded or grew apart, we really don’t know which, and started expanding. If you compressed the entire universe, it could be the size of an atom. The theory is, because it was once joined, it is forever connected. Just like twins for example. They are more connected to each other than, say, regular siblings because they were joined at birth. They know about each other’s feelings almost instinctively. Everything is linked to everything else...’

  ‘...and it can recall what everything else observes, is that it?’ Raghu concluded.

  ‘Sort of I guess. It’s just a theory.’

  ‘It adds up...my grandmother used to say we are atma swarupas, reflections of the consciousness connected to the param atma, the supreme consciousness.’ Raghu observed.

  ‘A few eminent quantum physicists say there is no death, life is a dream and we are imagining ourselves. We are atoms. It only looks real because we’ve convinced ourselves it is real.’

  Raghu smiled, ‘My grandmother...she’s my only reference material for this discussion...said that a man that prayed to a particular deity reached the abode of that deity. So Shiva worshippers reached Kailash, Vishnu worshippers to Vaikunth, etc., all of them are forms of Heaven. Conviction makes it real. A man of faith therefore has something to hang on to, to make his life seem meaningful.’

  Sheila sat up suddenly. She pointed a finger at Raghu, her mind feverishly at work. ‘Which means that the tantrik who invoked the Sutram believed in some kind of power. A desolate, dark, murderous power. He brought the power into our reality.’

  ‘Only,’ said Raghuram, ‘he could not control the power because by its nature, it is insane just as he was. His desire dominated him and so too the Sutram’s desire to destroy manipulated it. Eshwar called it a wrong measurement, an anomaly,’ Raghu recalled.

  ‘What the Hell is it supposed to do other than suck the life out of whoever it can grab hold of?’ Sheila asked.

  ‘It doesn’t send seasonal greetings. I never got one from the Sutram. We can safely assume that it would simply suck out the living Jesus out of everyone and everything on Earth if given a chance.’

  ‘Then...what is holding it back? Why is it stuck in that chasm?’

  ‘There, you have me. I’ve no clue. All I can theorise is my father did something that arrested it.’

  ‘When I met him, Rathaya did say that they had managed to contain the abomination to gain time. He also said we are losing time,’ Sheila recalled.

  ‘Then, my father did do something to stop that thing.’

  ‘Or maybe it was nature itself,’ Sheila said. ‘Nature takes the best course, not necessarily the easiest. I think it could be that nature arrested the Sutram.’

  ‘Can nature do that?’

  ‘Yes. Nature can and will act to preserve itself, to put in place natural checks and balances that can offset any imbalance.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Natural catastrophes, extinction level events. The Ice Age is one example. A whole species was wiped out, the dinosaurs. We don’t even know why. But it was definitely nature at work.’

  ‘Something’s gone wrong then. Nature is failing to contain the Sutram. We need to do something more. But Sheila, I wonder what?’

  ‘Your father’s letter gives us clues, he mentioned quarks.’

  ‘And you said that the quarks and anti-quarks are particles of the atom...’

  ‘The smallest divisible particles of the atom nuclei...’ Sheila interrupted.

  Raghu continued, ‘... and they cancelled themselves during the early life of the universe and the remaining quarks became the building blocks of life.’

  ‘That’s right. According to quantum scientists like Stephen Hawking and several others, the early universe was a cess pool of quarks and anti-quarks. For some reason, nobody knows why, there were more quarks than anti-quarks. In the clash between the quarks and anti-quarks, the quarks survived. That created the universe as we know it now. We theorised at that time that your father wanted somehow to simulate the same kind of clash, the resulting fusion was supposed to destroy the Sutram. It could imply that the Sutram is made of anti-matter and therefore, a clash between the particles and anti-particles would somehow set right the wrong measurement. But the important question is...how did he know what to do?’

  Raghu said, ‘Eshwar told him. Remember, it was in my father’s letter. My father created an anti-person. How do you create an anti-person? What the fuck is an anti-person?’

  ‘A being made of anti-quarks?’ Sheila mused.

  ‘From where, with what do you make this...this thing?’

  ‘I guess we can only ask your father that.’

  ‘And that’s not going to happen,’ Raghu observed flatly.

  ‘No, it’s not. So forget about it for now. Yo
ur father’s letter says that he has to fuse the person, which is himself, with the anti-person and somehow, that causes the Sutram to...to...die, maybe. But then that’s not possible.’

  ‘Why not?’ Raghu asked.

  ‘We can simulate quark and anti-quark clashes in any lab. We do it all the time.’ Sheila grew excited as a thought struck her. ‘You know what I think, something else happened in the early universe during the clash between quarks and anti-quarks. Something that tipped the balance in favour of the quarks.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I think that whatever the syllable signifies simply takes the fusion to a different level. It alters the quarks or the anti-quarks so they do something totally different. Maybe it created a reaction that the ancients called ‘Agniputr’. After all, Agniputr means ‘son of fire’ or ‘created by fire!’ It could be a reaction that corrects erroneous measurements in our reality. Or…’ Sheila shivered as another thought occurred to her. ‘A reaction that creates universes,’ she whispered.

  Raghu appeared confused, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Neither do I. All I have are questions. Was there a conscious effort to empower or multiply the quarks so they could survive or outnumber the anti-quarks in the early universe? If so, by whom? Was it necessary to infuse them with some other element to bring out a different reaction? What was the element?’

  They fell silent. While Sheila contemplated the secrets of the universe, Raghu was completely flummoxed. He could make neither head nor tail of anything. The answers seemed far away and, if at all, he was even more confused than before.

  Sheila was beginning to believe that her knowledge was actually weighing her down. She wanted desperately to think out of the box. Conventional wisdom was not doing her much good.

  She watched Raghu in silence for a while, forcing her mind to relax while listening to the sound of his fingers tapping on the bedframe. The white noise was soothing.

  It dawned on her gradually. One thought leading to another. One theory dovetailing into the next. It was as though someone had opened a door to something vast. Something amazing. The simplicity of it made it all the more profound. She smacked Raghu’s thigh vigorously. ‘My God Raghu...you’ve done it.’

  ‘What have I done?’ he asked her, rubbing his thigh tenderly.

  ‘Music.’

  ‘You want music now?’

  ‘No silly. Answer me this, what do you need if you have to make music?’

  Raghu shrugged, ‘An instrument, an orchestra, a musician? Why do you ask?’

  ‘Yes...yes, you have all of it, what else would you need?’

  ‘An auditorium, no...I can make music in my room if I have to...’

  ‘Exactly, so whether it is an auditorium or a room, what is critical to make music?’

  ‘Instruments, a tune, a band of musicians?’

  Sheila shook her head impatiently, ‘Can you conceive of and make music in a railway station? Or an airport? Or in the middle of a zebra crossing?’

  ‘My mind must be free, empty of distractions.’

  ‘Exactly, and what do you need to facilitate that?’

  ‘Isolation, quiet, no wait...silence,’ Raghu offered.

  ‘If there is no silence, sound is meaningless, right?’

  ‘Yeah, I would guess so.’

  ‘If there is no silence, there cannot be meaning to sound, am I right? There cannot be sound or music or speech; it would all be part of the cacophony from everywhere.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Raghu, not at all sure where the conversation was set to go.

  ‘Don’t you see? Originally, there was silence, so much so that maybe it weighed as much as any mass.’

  ‘Sci-fi, you’ve lost me,’ Raghu observed pensively. But Sheila was not in any mood to listen to him. She was on a roll.

  ‘The music cuts the silence to provide melody. Sound cuts silence. It cuts open dormant space, opens out a new musical reality, a universe.’

  ‘What has that got to do with quarks and anti-quarks?’

  ‘There is no air in space, consequently, there is no sound,’ Sheila declared. ‘However, there are sound waves! Electromagnetic vibrations.’

  Raghu stared blankly at Sheila for a moment before it hit him. ‘Brilliant!’ he yelled.

  ‘I am only theorising, but the Big Bang was a result of sound that cut the silence which preceded it, causing the universe to explode into fiery life due to the pressure. The universe is the Agniputr,’ Sheila said.

  ‘I bet you’re right.’

  ‘Maybe the weight of the silence by itself pressurised a rupture that created sound.’

  ‘That’s heavy silence for you.’

  Sheila continued, ‘The sound that cut into silence. The sound vibrations from the Big Bang may have empowered the quarks to react differently, probably become more powerful than the anti-quarks. If we introduce the very same vibrations during the fusion of quarks and anti-quarks, the reaction could be contrary to what we’ve seen so far under laboratory conditions.’

  ‘But the incantation is, one syllable that won speech,’ Raghu observed, ‘Its not sound we want, it’s a word we’re looking for. A specific syllable that won speech.’

  ‘The one syllable that won speech,’ Sheila mused. She bit her lip. Her brow was knit tight. ‘Of course, the vibrations should have been caused by the one syllable,’ she said at last.

  ‘Wait a minute. Just hold on. You said just now that the vibrations from the Big Bang could have caused the quarks to behave differently. Now you’re saying its vibrations from the syllable. Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?’

  ‘Do I know what I am talking about? There’s no chance I could know with any certainty. Do I have all the answers? Raghu, I don’t even know all the questions I should be asking.’

  ‘Ok,’ Raghu said. He knew Sheila was trying hard, definitely harder than him, because it was her domain expertise. He knew she was trying to pull out every little square inch of her knowledge to get to the answers. He loved her more for it. However silly it sounded, Raghu decided to riddle Sheila with questions. That was the only way she could think through the quagmire they were stuck in. So he shot his next question.

  ‘So, how could a specific vibration be created? There was no one there to do it.’

  Sheila nodded vigorously. ‘Speech is possible only when there is thought, right? What if the one syllable came out of the first thought?’

  They stared at each other for a while.

  Raghu became solemn all of a sudden. ‘Are you saying now that the universe was born from a thought? Isn’t that dangerously like a creationist idea? I have no issues with it, but won’t your scientific community disagree with you?’

  Sheila said, ‘Let’s worry about evolution versus creation later. I don’t need to convince a scientific committee about my theories right now.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Sheila was filled with wonder when she said, ‘A thought provoked a syllable which in turn gave birth to a universe by empowering quarks or weakening the anti-quarks. Wow! It’s fantastic to think about.’

  ‘So the question is, who was the thinker?’ Raghu mused, ever the lawyer.

  ‘Agni, I would presume, though I am not sure if it is fire literally or the God of Fire.’

  ‘No clue,’ said Raghu. ‘Though the verse does say that Agni with one syllable won speech. Were the Ancients personifying a process?’

  Sheila was lost in a world where science seemed to fuse with fantasy. ‘What was the first word?’ she asked herself dreamily.

  ‘The late Ramaya Shastri did say ‘baboon’. Maybe that was the first syllable, the universe went baboon and the first monkey was born!’ Raghu said sombrely.

  Sheila looked at Raghu severely for a moment, then she burst out laughing.

  In return Raghu’s hand snaked under the sheets.

  Sheila gasped.

  Later, in each other’s arms, Raghu said, ‘Assuming we find the real syllable
, what do we do with it? How do we use it? How do we know that it won’t destroy everything?’

  ‘Shut up and hold me, we’ll think about world destruction tomorrow,’ Sheila rebuked her lover sleepily.

  CHAPTER 37

  RAGHU woke to a roaring in his ears, it was either his ears or their living quarters had somehow moved next to the sea during the night. Considering that Hyderabad was in the Deccan plateau that would be one Hell of a feat, he thought. His bed was empty. Sheila was not even in the room. He dressed hurriedly and threw the door open to see a startled Poti at the door, with a fresh dressing on his wounded forearm.

  ‘I was just about to knock on the door,’ Poti explained.

  ‘What is it? Where’s Sheila?’

  ‘You better get here,’ she said from the sitting room.

  Raghu made to go past Poti but he blocked the exit.

  ‘What?’

  Poti took his hand and shook it vigorously.

  ‘What was that for?’

  ‘I am happy...’ he said excitedly, pointing to his dressing, ‘she’s a good choice Babu.’

  Raghu smiled sheepishly.

  ‘Don’t let her go, marry her as soon as you can. She will make a good Rani Garu.’

  ‘As soon as all this is over.’

  They walked into the sitting room. Sheila was already bathed and dressed in a white shirt and faded blue jeans, she looked Heavenly. She was by the window, peering into the street below. He sighed happily and stood behind her. He followed her gaze to the street below.

  It was clogged with people, young and old, on tractors, in cars and trucks parked all over the place. Every head in the throng was turned towards their little apartment. Traffic had come to a grinding halt. Angry horns were blaring. People were yelling at the top of their voices. A few policemen were found waving their hands unhappily.

  ‘What’s happening Raghu, who are all these people?’ Sheila asked him.

  ‘Old friends. They’re here to get us out. Aditya was able to do it after all. I was worried they wouldn’t pay heed to him.’

  ‘You have a lot of friends,’ Sheila observed with a crooked smile.

  ‘Oh, they are only representative of their strength. Some of them are at Javaaram, some in Eluru and some are sure to be in the High Court today unless I am wrong.’