They had reached Starbucks by then, found their seats, and ordered their regulars: lemon ale for her and caramel macchiato for him. They were very comfortable with each other. Mary had been doing very well in her career because of Pinto’s official recognition of her diligence. She prompted him again, ‘You should continue your work. It may take time… maybe a hundred years or more, but you will be universally acknowledged one day, when your inventions in nanotechnology will provide one medicine for all diseases; the chance to every human being on this crowded planet to fly independently, without any fear of collision using your advanced wave spectrum radar technology. And humans would be able to live to 200, using your nanoparticle-based antioxidants.’
But Pinto wasn’t convinced about the impact of the work he had done in the past. He was impatient to go ahead. ‘I’m more fascinated by looking for solutions to poverty, terrorism, scarcity of safe drinking water, and that kind of immediate thing. What if human civilization becomes the victim of its own inventions such as nuclear technology and does not survive the next 200 years to make use of my inventions?’
He continued, ‘I wonder what went wrong. Why did I move to pure sciences? I started by inventing things widely used by the public—such as the corn-shucker I told you about.’
Mary interrupted, ‘But what else could you have done as a child? You didn’t have the right level of education, intelligence, adequate financing, a lab, or skill, to work on pure science subjects at the time. You naturally progressed to “serious” work’—she held up air quotes around the word ‘serious’—‘when you had access to the right infrastructure, facility, knowledge and education’.
Pinto ordered another caramel macchiato, the drink he loved the most. Mary went for green tea this time. While waiting for his coffee, Pinto started talking to the barista, ‘See, so many people come here and talk about a variety of things. All this discussion is positive energy. You can use it for something else such as inventing something or building a new business... just giving you an idea.’
The barista smiled, ‘You are a scientist. You should suggest a solution.’
‘How do you know I’m a scientist?’ asked Pinto feeling a bit proud.
‘I just overheard your discussion.’ The barista sounded embarrassed.
‘That means you are already processing the discussion.’ Both laughed.
Pinto brought both the drinks to the table. Mary smiled sarcastically at him, ‘By the way, your little chat with that guy was very interesting.’
‘That’s what I was trying to create—an immediate connection. It’s missing from my life.’
‘So you feel that pure science is useless. Do you know, your current experience may fetch you a Nobel prize?’
‘No, I am not saying it’s useless. It’s relative. I’d have been more satisfied if I saw people actually using my inventions. Good that you started this discussion.’ He drummed the table with his fingers. ‘I sense a new light coming, blissful and pure. I am attaining enlightenment. Mary, join me in my new journey to practical research.’
‘I heard people used to get enlightenment under trees in India, but looks like Starbucks is the new place for that. Even if I disagree, I’ll join you. I just have some doubts, though.’
‘Feel free to play the role of a devil’s advocate,’ said Pinto in his open-minded way. ‘That’ll help me decide whether I’m taking the right decision or not. Maybe my Starbucks eureka moment is worth nothing.’
Mary smiled at his frankness. ‘Let’s think things through first,’ she advised him. ‘How would you start research in an absolutely new world? So far, you have a subject on which you are an authority. It is not an easy task to invent new things, but you have a set path now, with clear directions. There is a mission statement in place. Reference material is there in plenty. Projects are usually very well-funded. On top of it all, brilliant students get to help, and sometimes even lead, part of the research. On the other hand, it’s not that easy to start on practical research.’
Pinto was in deep thought for a while. ‘Yes,’ he said finally, ‘I agree. I don’t have an experience in this area. But, when I think back about my corn-shucker, I feel we should try to follow a solution-providing approach rather than resort to pure physics, chemistry and maths skills.’
Mary continued to play devil’s advocate. ‘And how will you select a problem to solve?’
Pinto started winding up. ‘Only time will tell us,’ he said tiredly. ‘Let’s call it a day.’ They decided to walk to his car and drive home, and return to the waiting experiment in the lab the next day.
Mary was not wrong. Pinto was confident he was intelligent enough to find a solution, but the main challenge was to find a problem.
On Wednesdays, he generally dropped Mary home on his way. While Pinto was putting on the music in the car, Mary exclaimed, ‘Oh, my God! The traffic is horrible and this road is always full of potholes.’
Pinto sniggered, ‘See, you complain about it every day. This could be one of the problems we can work on.’
She made a face. ‘The municipality needs to work on it, not us. Anyway, let’s grab some of those super sandwiches at Panera Bread on the way. I don’t feel like cooking tonight.’ Pinto looked for a space to park and found none. ‘Let’s park any old where,’ he said, giving up, ‘At the most I’ll get a ticket.’
They entered Panera’s and Pinto ordered an organic hot chicken sandwich. Mary liked cold subs. ‘Why can’t the whole world afford organic food?’ Mary asked.
Pinto smiled, ‘See, that could be another problem we can try to solve.’ Mary was not taking Pinto seriously.
They returned to the car. Luckily, he hadn’t gotten a ticket. ‘It’s unfair, actually,’ he observed. ‘If I broke the law, I should have been fined.’
Mary laughed. ‘So it’s a problem-hunting day today,’ she teased him. He dropped Mary off, and by the time he reached home, the sandwich had gone cold. He heated it up in the microwave but it had become mushy from the vapour locked inside its wrapping. He was suddenly upset by how the evening ended.
When Pinto got up in the morning, he felt lethargic. He decided to go to the gym. He found it crowded but managed to get to a treadmill. He wondered idly if gyms could be used to produce electricity.
He was in his lab earlier than usual, Mary joining him a few minutes later. They went for a quick breakfast before starting work. Mary brought the last evening’s topic back. ‘In the past you never worried about day-to-day problems, Mr Problem-Hunter,’ she said while eating. ‘You didn’t care what kind of food you were eating, whether you got enough sleep, how the traffic was and anything other than your lab. Today, Dr Srivastava begins to look at the same world with different eyes.’
Pinto smiled. ‘I’ll tell you an old story about a writer,’ he said. ‘A writer told his mother one day that she hadn’t put salt in the curry. His mother asked, “So, you’ve completed the book you were writing?” He was surprised, “How do you know?” She smiled, “I have not been putting salt in the curry for the last six months, but you never noticed. The day you completed your project, your perception of worldly things changed.” Now, he was suddenly bothered about the salt in his food. Similarly, Mary, I am done with pure research work and am back in the real world.’
They returned to work, where Mary brought him a letter after reading it herself. ‘There is a three-day conference on ‘Use of Technology for Improving Rural Life’ in New Delhi,’ she told him, ‘and you have been invited to be one of the key speakers. ‘I think it’s a good opportunity for you to travel to India... also, to meet Lavanya. Who knows? You might come back as a married couple.’
Pinto went to India. On the last day of the conference in Delhi, the organizers arranged countryside tours for guests. The idea was to familiarize foreigners with Indian village life. Pinto thought he would seek an opportunity to visit his parents and sister, as he always did when he came on work to India, but his schedule this time prevented that, so he consoled him
self with long telephone calls to them from whichever hotel he put up at for the night. But there was one person from his past he could meet along his tour—right there in Kanpur—Lavanya.
Kanpur is not far from Delhi, so he invited her to join the tour as well. By this time, Lavanya, just a year older than he, had been teaching for some years in the same institute, HBTI, where she had studied. She wanted to take life easy. Ambition was not a word in her dictionary. As long as she could get the basic luxuries in life, she was pretty satisfied.
By this time, she had given up all hope they’d have a relationship. Both of them were happy with their lives. Neither had been thinking about marriage, to one another, or with anyone else.
Sitting a little close to her on the seat in the bus which was taking them on tour, Pinto asked Lavanya, ‘How is it, teaching at HBTI?’ It was quite unusual for Pinto to come that close to her physically. Lavanya was in a different world. It was not a sexual touch. She let it happen happily and in fact came a bit closer, ‘Teaching works great for me. I am also excited to hear about your plans now that you’ll be changing the direction of your research.’
While Pinto was enjoying the warmth of Lavanya’s company, his scientific instinct caused him to probe into the situation in his own country. ‘Most of our villages have been electrified, right?’ he asked Lavanya. ‘So why don’t they have electricity?’
Lavanya replied, ‘Because we don’t have the right capacity. The production needs to be more widespread, probably through small and medium businesses, I think.’
Pinto assured Lavanya with conviction, ‘I’m going to try and do something about it.’
It was time for Pinto to go back to the US. This time, too, their meeting ended up with no real result. No promises, no commitment, no romance, no assurances other than working on the problem of providing electricity to all. Lavanya would have been happy with even half-made promises so long as they were given. There would have been some romance in the air, however short-lived. She wondered later what kind of bond they actually shared, to have kept meeting each other over the years.
Back in the US, Pinto talked to Mary about his visit in India. ‘Let’s start looking into the electricity problem there,’ he began. Mary, as usual, was not very excited. ‘Dr Srivastava, what can you do about it?’ she asked realistically. ‘It’s a highly regulated industry. Coal, oil, hydroelectricity, nuclear, solar, wind and geothermal power are either controlled by governments or by big corporate houses around the world.’
Pinto was still thinking. ‘Actually,’ he corrected her, ‘we need to think of something altogether new. Do you know anything about jaggery? A kind of raw sugar very popular in India and in Mexico?’
Mary was curious. ‘No. But how is raw sugar related to electricity?’
‘Villagers use very old technology to extract the juice from sugarcane,’ he told her. ‘The sugarcane is pressed between rollers powered by a pair of bullocks. The juice is cleaned, boiled, and reduced to make gur. For fuel, they use the leftover cane fibre, called ‘bagasse’, after extracting all the juice from it. The beauty of the production process is there is no extra material used. Besides the bullocks and manpower, the process is self-sufficient. Brazil uses a similar process to produce ethyl alcohol from sugarcane.’
Now, Mary was really alert. ‘Interesting,’ she said, ‘let’s think of something really innovative we can do with that idea’.
‘Didn’t I tell you about my childhood experiment to generate electricity from urine?’ he prompted her memory.
Mary quickly responded, ‘Yes,’ she said, nodding vigorously. ‘I do remember! Shall we explore that further?’
‘Yes,’ he said with certainty. ‘The problem there was that the electricity generated was miniscule, so you needed to create a set-up which had thousands of cells in series.’
‘I think,’ said Mary excitedly, ‘I can experiment with different types of urine as well… from people with different food habits and so on.’
‘Mary,’ said Pinto wisely, ‘Mr Edison invented the light bulb but not the Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL). We should focus on generating electricity. Let others focus on efficiency. If the basic technology is successful, the market will create its own resources to make it better. You can try different types of electrodes, though, to see which generates more electricity per cell.’
By this time Mary was also designing the set-up in her mind. ‘I’ll create a honeycomb-like structure to add thousands of cells in a series. Let me run to the fabrication shop.’
Pinto matched her enthusiasm. ‘Think about how much urine we can get in a populous country like India! If you can come up with a way to utilize it, you would have solved an issue which has haunted the world for ages. If the experiment works, urine would become a commodity and in India, people will stop relieving themselves on roadsides. Sounds funny, but it’s possible. Several complex problems have been solved with simple solutions.’
Mary was finally convinced. ‘I agree,’ she said solemnly. Then, wanting to lighten the charged atmosphere, she asked, ‘May I ask you one more thing, Dr Srivastava?’
Pinto was ready to take as many as questions as she might have, ‘Sure, go ahead.’
Mary asked with playful smile, ‘Why didn’t you get married to Lavanya this time?’
And without waiting for a response she rushed to the fabricator.
TWELVE
P
into made one more big decision in his life: he decided to relocate to India where he thought he could find more problems, and experiment more easily with his solutions. Mary was devastated. ‘Why?’ she asked, although she knew the reason.
Pinto was sad as well. ‘India is like a blank canvas,’ he explained, ‘upon which I can paint a picture the way I want to, rather than fixing an already painted piece of artwork. We were really a great team. And, don’t you want to see me married?’ Mary hugged him tight. ‘I’ll miss you. Keep in touch.’
Scientists, writers and poets need some serenity, a place beyond the hustle and bustle of big metropolises. Which place could be better than Pune, situated both close to Mumbai, yet away from it? Pinto arrived in Pune with all his worldly possessions. Though it took some time for him to get adjusted, he really enjoyed the city, especially the suburbs, which were planned pretty well, by Indian standards. He’d be starting his life as an independent researcher here.
In the back of his mind, he thought of settling down and having a family life as well. In India, there was a social pressure to do so. You could not mingle closely with families if you were a single male. But who could he marry? The obvious person was Lavanya. But, because he had ignored Lavanya’s feelings so far, he was not confident of her accepting his proposal.
So, one day, Pinto went to Kanpur and called Lavanya.
Lavanya was pleasantly surprised. ‘How come you’re here all of a sudden? Is it for some project? You didn’t even inform me.’ She put on an act of being angry with him in her whisper over the phone.
‘Sorry, honey, I couldn’t inform you, but yes, I’m on the biggest mission of my life. Why don’t you reserve the whole day tomorrow to spend with me? Come to my hotel and then we can decide where to have lunch.’
Lavanya was surprised and amused when Pinto addressed her with the word ‘honey’. Though she liked it herself, it sounded artificial coming from him. Lavanya’s expectations were very real. She never expected a scientist to be romantic. Pinto had been a puzzle for her: he didn’t express love but always showed affection; he was not romantic but was at her side when needed; he did not talk to her regularly but always went out of his way to meet her if he was in Kanpur or even in the vicinity.
He was the only person in her life on whom she could depend and whose shoulder she could cry on. At the same time it was really odd that Pinto was not possessive about her or never showed any concern if Lavanya talked about other boys just to make him feel jealous. He was a tough nut to crack.
But she took the day off anyway, and when s
he reached the hotel, Pinto was, unusually, downstairs waiting to receive her. The scene was very different this time. Pinto had put on a nice suit and it appeared to be an expensive one. He had combed his hair neatly—whatever was left of it—and worn branded shoes. He held a lovely bouquet of fresh red and yellow roses, and when he gave it to Lavanya and said ‘I missed you, dear,’ she felt honoured.
She started dreaming about her and Pinto being together for life. She had always felt frustrated as to why Pinto never tried to make their relationship a real romance. ‘Is he shy? Is he not serious?’ she had asked herself. Now, she was even more puzzled and asked him with a giggle, ‘Who is behind this makeover? Have you got a girlfriend?’
Pinto smiled, ‘Yes, I have several of them. You already know… test tubes, my notebooks, books, my mission… all of them are my girlfriends, but only one is unique.’
‘Who is that? Your new lab?’ asked Lavanya.
‘Well! It’s not that lab but a lab where I haven’t performed any experiment so far.’ Pinto was cryptic.
Lavanya didn’t have a clue to what he was talking about. She thought he might be setting up another lab in India after relocating. So she started a general conversation, ‘What’s Pune like?’ Pinto was nervous again. He had no idea how to take the discussion forward. He was thinking, ‘What will be her reaction? Will she be so mad that she’d break all ties with me, like a typical Indian girl who feels insulted by sudden familiarity? And yet, I think she loves me.’
Sitting in the restaurant of the hotel over a hot Indian lunch, taking a big bite of curry and roti, sweating all over because of the spicy food, he suddenly said, ‘Will you marry me?’ His mouth was so full that the words were not clear.
Lavanya sort of got what Pinto said but she was not confident if she heard it right. It sounded like he could have said, ‘Were you mad at me?’
‘What’? she exclaimed in a loud voice. That was her spontaneous reaction.
Now Pinto was afraid. He thought she didn’t like what he’d said. So, in a feeble voice, he stumbled over the words, ‘Well, I... I mean us... you know what I mean… well, we should think about our future. Can we together… would you like to marry me?’
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