Mayank Chhaya Daily

Reading Premchand on his 137th birth anniversary

Munshi Premchand--MC

On the great litterateur Munshi Premchand’s 137th birth anniversary today this morning I simultaneously read his two celebrated short stories ‘Idgah’ (1933) and ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ (1924). One felt entranced by the descriptions of the life in the early 20th century by an author in complete command of his supreme literary craft.

It was by some coincidence that I read two short stories that depict life at the two ends of the economic spectrum of the era. ‘Idgah’ deals with poverty at the edge of society with charming subtlety and dignity while ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ talks about two decadent feudal lords addicted to playing chess utterly oblivious to the world around them seems to be spinning out of control.

It is a tribute to the genius of Premchand that in just a few deft sentences he lures the reader into four or five-year-old Hamid’s penurious but still uplifting world. Hamid’s decision to buy a pair of tongs for his grandma who regularly burns her fingers while making rotis (bread) rather than sweets and toys to celebrate Eid like other children leaves one heartbreakingly touched. The author employs his much celebrated craft in ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi to bring alive the characters of  Mirza Sajjad Ali and Mirza Roshan Ali, the two unabashed hedonistic chess players in Lucknow.

It is extraordinary how in a dozen or sentences Premchand paints such captivating portraits of the two contrasting realities. In ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ he writes about the extent of how unconcerned everyone had become by saying that even beggars used their money to buy opium rather than bread. In ‘Idgah’ he captures in one sentence a telling detail of life then when he writes about how people rushed to a local oil merchant with their hardened leather shoes to soften them with oil.

By any measure Premchand (July 31, 1880—October 8, 1936) ranks as one of the world’s great writers so completely immersed into the sociocultural realities of his time. It just strikes me that he died at 56, having created a remarkable body of work. I am at the same age with absolutely nothing to show for myself other than being alive.

La muse endormie and Buddhist serenity

When I first saw a photograph of master Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s (1876-1957) ‘La muse endormie’ (The sleeping muse) my first impulse was to paint it. So I did. Two of them. Brancusi had produced six in bronze apart from the first one in marble. This one here is his sixth one.

This bronze work cast in 1913 was sold at Christie’s in May this year for $ 57,367,500.

The face of a sleeping woman has Buddhist serenity about it. That may have something to do with the fact that Brancusi was a modernist sculptor who consciously broke away from the more classical style that dominated before him. I read that he was moved by Paul Gauguin’s very anti-classical Polynesian faces. That might perhaps explain some Buddhist touch. (By Buddhist, I mean the Buddha’s most famous faces and not his philosophy.)  Gauguin himself had drawn some Buddhas.

Quite apart from Brancusi’s supreme artistry what I find noteworthy about bronze statues is the way the metal ages without really ageing. I have a couple of bronze pieces—a platter and a bowl—from my grandfather’s time which are more than a century old. The passage of time has made them glistening smooth in a way that a sculptor might not have been able to achieve.

There is absolutely no reason to write about ‘La muse endormie’ but then if art needed a reason, it would not exist.

Flying under economy aka Phew!

Airliner--MC

A panel of US appeals court judges has ordered U.S. aviation authorities to conduct a new review of what one of them described as "The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Airline Seat." The ruling came yesterday when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed that the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) must conduct a new review of the request for regulations setting a minimum airline seat size, according to Reuters.

The story jumped out at me because this is a subject I have written about for quite sometime.Airlines go to absurd lengths to commercially exploit every square inch on planes and the bulk of the exploitation falls on the economy class passengers and their seats,

Reuters reported: “Airline seats have steadily decreased in size over the last several decades. Economy-class seat pitch has decreased from an average of 35 inches (89 cm) in the 1970s to 31 inches (79 cm), and in some airplanes to 28 inches (71 cm).

Average seat width has narrowed from about 18 inches (46 cm)to 16.5 inches (42 cm) over the last decade.”

I claim some headstart on the subject since I wrote about it first on March 6, 2011 which bears repeating in light of the court order for a new review. While an advocacy group called the Flyer Rights, which filed the appeal, has approached the subject from a safety standpoint, I have looked at it from a human rights point of view. And with some jest as is my wont.

Here it is:

March 6, 2011

It is time for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (UNHCR) to declare economy class air travel as a serious human rights violation. Anyone who has suffered the indignity of spending any time in any economy class seat on any international flight would testify if the U.N. were to hold hearings on this issue.

These seats are unforgivably narrow. They seem to get narrower as the flight progresses. I often get the sense that the two arms on either side of the seat collapse into each other as part of a grand aviation industry conspiracy. The industry just does not like economy class passengers. Pretty soon it will offer only armrests without the seats in between in the economy class.

What makes economy class travel on long haul flights even more harrowing is the seat configuration of 3-4-3. If you end up in the middle—and purely statistically you would end up there several times—then there is absolutely no hope for you. You are better off dead than being caught in the middle seats on a 16-hour flight.

The UNHCR should summon all airline CEOs, put them on a 16-hour nonstop flight, seat them all in the economy class with 3-4-3 configuration and hold hearings for several days. They should be asked just one question for those 16 hours—“Are you comfortable?” I guarantee their answer will get progressively depressing every second of the duration of the flight. By the time the flight lands they would be ready to make all flights mandatory business class flights at the economy fare.

P.S.: I fly out of Ahmedabad tonight to return to Chicago by economy class. I happily admit to resenting the fact that I will never be able to afford business class travel in this lifetime. First class does not even exist in my niggardly universe.

P.P.S. (Added today): Business class travel continues to be out of reach. And first class is like some fabled place on the mountain top which exists only in whispers. I have a new name for my kind of travel—Flying under economy aka Phew!

Never underestimate the power of fonts

Never underestimate the power of fonts. *

That is one major message in the 5-0 verdict of Pakistan’s Supreme Court to unseat Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the Panama Papers-related corruption case.

Some of you may know about how a font did Sharif in. Let me explain nevertheless. Key documents, which the Sharif family cited in their defense against the allegations of having acquired apartments in London using unaccounted wealth, were typed in the Calibri font created by Microsoft. In a brilliant bit of font forensics it was established by the prosecutors that while the purportedly 2006 documents claiming that Sharif’s daughter Maryam was only a trustee of the companies that bought the London properties were typed in Calibri which was created in 2007.

How was it that the documents used a font that did not exist was the million rupee question. Unless Microsoft gave the Sharif family a BETA version of Calibri—and I am being absurdly sarcastic—how did the documents use that font? This bit of finding was said to have significantly unraveled the case for the Sharif family.

I am struck by how information technology has so completely globalized the world. The Panama Papers and their leak was a classic example of a confluence of technologies whose repercussions were felt worldwide because they uncovered unaccounted wealth possessed by political elites across the world. I seriously doubt if the Sharifs would have ever anticipated that their hidden wealth would be uncovered because of the Internet.

In the end, Calibri pushed the case in a corner where the five Supreme Court judges had little option but to unanimously rule against Sharif who has now stepped down. The court has disqualified him for ten years from holding public office. In a sense, unless something dramatic happens, the 10-year-long ban effectively ends Sharif’s political career. He is 67 and if the ban is carried out as imposed he would be 77 at its end. While there is nothing to say that a 77-year-old politician cannot return or, for that matter, Pakistan’s crazily unpredictable polity cannot create circumstances that may reinstate his career much earlier.

By some coincidence when Sharif faced his first political crisis and lost power in 1993 I was in Pakistan to play a friendly cricket match as a member of a foreign correspondents’ team from New Delhi that was invited by the then prime minister. Sharif was supposed to captain his team but had to opt out to put out the fires. There were also some murmurs that while his political fortunes were down in the dumps he could not possibly be playing cricket with a team from India, Pakistan’s enemy # 1. He did come to the cricket ground in Lahore at the end of our innings where we were introduced to him formally. He made a polite conversation about how our score was quite low. I don’t quite remember how many runs we scored although I do remember having taken three wickets. The match ended in a tie.

That was the last time I visited Pakistan. Sharif was 44 then and had a full career ahead of him despite his immediate crisis then. A great deal has happened since, including his ouster in a bloodless coup by his army chief Pervez Musharraf in October, 1999 and his subsequent exile to Saudi Arabia. He returned to Pakistan in 2007. He has a history having bounced back in a political system that takes no prisoners. So there is a theoretical possibility that he may yet beat this but the prospects look rather bleak at this point.

Sharif’s ruling party Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) will now have to find a replacement. Some political observers in Islamabad have said that Sharif may find a place-holder, a sort of a seat-warmer, as he goes about rehabilitating himself. However, I do not see how he manages to overcome 10-year-ban from public office other than managing to have a proxy prime minister whom he can control and trust. There are some expectations that his brother, Shehbaz Sharif, chief minister of Pakistan’s most politically influential Punjab state, could step in and keep it all in the family.  I am not sure whether the Supreme Court ruling to disqualify him is a prelude to his prosecution that might lead to imprisonment. Again, Pakistan’s history has examples of leaders who also returned from prison to rise to rule.

The Supreme Court verdict is yet another instance of how volatile and fractious Pakistan’s polity remains after 70 years of its birth as an independent country. There will be a lot schadenfreude to go around over the verdict. However, for Pakistan as a country forever struggling to be stable it is not a good sign at all that its leaders are done in so frequently.

• That line is in Calibri to illustrate my point while the rest of the blog is in Trebuchet MS.
• The image compares Calibri (top) with Arial (bottom)

I am about half extra-galactic

Entropy by Mayank Chhaya

Ian Sample, Science Editor of The Guardian, writes that computer simulations by scientists reveal that nearly half of the material in the Milky Way came from smaller galaxies in our neighborhood. We the people and everything else in our galaxy, therefore, is half extra-galactic. This is considered a wholly new finding based on detailed simulations of billions of years of galactic evolution.

My first response on reading this was embarrassingly mundane. If I am half extra-galactic, then half of all my financial liability should also be transferred to outside the Milky Way. Next time I get a call from a creditor my response will be, “Have you tried collecting from any of the neighboring galaxies?”

Various people have over the past century and more, including most famously Carl Sagan, have said that we are made of star-stuff. If Earth is made of star-stuff, then by its very implication we too are made of star-stuff. So that is not the new part here. What is said to be new, according to Sample’s story, is that nearly half of the atoms in our galaxy came from outside as a result of supernova explosions in smaller galaxies. These explosions spew out trillions of tons of material which travel to across galaxies.

Everyday implications of this knowledge are non-existent because it does not solve any earthly problems, including the display of volatile lunacy we witness around the world. However, in so much as it tells us how widespread our origin could well be I have always found it liberating ever since I heard Sagan say it in the 1970s. It is unfortunate that when it comes to dealing with life and its inevitable challenges we cannot possibly use the alibi of this half extra-galactic alibi. It does not help to argue in the face of every challenge to say “But half my atoms are not even from this galaxy.” I am still going to try and use that excuse.

I vividly remember when I first heard Sagan say this with his trademark enunciation: “Our Sun is a second- or third-generation star. All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.” There was an audible shriek of exultation that came out of me.

Some four decades hence that knowledge has remained as has the realization that it does not necessarily redeem anything that comes by way of the oppressive mundaneness of life. To me the latest revelations about star-stuff seem quite similar to what Sagan had said then. It is possible that a read giant star that he spoke of could be in our own Milky Way unlike the revelation that about half of what we are made of came from our neighboring galaxies. So it could be a red giant star from a nearby galaxy.

P.S.: Just as I was finishing this post I got a call—at 7.26 a.m.—from a creditor. I answered it and said with great politeness,“Have you tried collecting from any of the neighboring galaxies?” The caller was confused at first, then amused and finally asked me if I would like to set up a payment from three weeks from now. I said yes as long as half of that comes from a neighboring galaxy. She laughed.

AIMI

AIMI by MC

I have been paying only cursory attention to the dramatic rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and its possible existential threat the human race. Serious people such as Stephen Hawking have warned about AI’s rising threat to humanity and have been counseling great caution to those involved in perfecting it.

One broadly understands AI and within it machine intelligence—let’s call that MI—and how its exponential improvement may some day soon reach a stage where they not only begin to rival humans but eventually even dominate us. Doomsayers have been warning about “robot armies” enslaving humanity. If machines—say computers—can develop an ability to learn far beyond what they are programmed, there is no predicting what behavioral restraints they may begin to breach.

There is a presumption MI could be free of any moral compunctions or emotional hesitation that humans are still by and large governed by. A coldly rational machine, which has its own powerful MI, could easily make decisions in a given situation which are driven by the rationale of utter efficiency without taking into account its human cost. It may be bereft of what we humans call compassion. I am not sure if compassion can be designed and built into the AI-MI or AIMI dynamic.

The idea of purely logical beings unburdened by any philosophical trepidation or emotional doubt whatsoever has long been celebrated in pop culture. However, given the AI-MI advances in the past five years or so there is a very real danger of things going out of control unless humans who create them do not embed failsafe commands that only humans control and the AI-MI entity cannot override ever.

It was from this standpoint that I read a piece in The Guardian by Olivia Solon about “a new breed of video and audio manipulation tools”. These are tools, which taken to their logical extremes, can essentially make any audio-video of anyone say anything that this kind of intelligence chooses. I suggest you read the piece for its very real implications. One obvious implication is in the growing use of “fake news” to make deep sociopolitical or sociocultural impacts by manufacturing news with highly credible looking but essentially fake audio-visual evidence.

If these tools are taken over by an AI-MI conglomerate, imagine the havoc it can create across societies. It is called puppeteering which lets a tool called Face2Face alter facial expressions of anyone in video realistically. It is not altogether inconceivable that in the near future there may rise a malignant AI-MI conglomerate which has at its disposal several such tools to cause lethal chaos within the human race as part of its takeover plan.

I am not even remotely an alarmist, let alone a doomsayer, but that does not prevent from seeing potential implications of a vast variety of such tools coming together in an AI-MI conglomerate and reaching a stage where we humans can no longer keep with its speed. The key threat to watch out for AI-MI’s ability to learn in a fuzzy, intuitive way beyond its core program like the way the human brain works. For instance, I am harboring several thoughts simultaneously while writing this post including some impending calls from my creditors even as I am painting digitally simultaneously while also thinking about whether to shave today or not.

Looking at the rise of AI-MI I keep returning to my continuing fascination with our universe being a simulation of a more advanced civilizations whose inhabitants may have consciously decided to up the technological ante as part of a game that they are playing. AI-MI fits rather well as part of upping the ante.

Here is to Sushma Swaraj

India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, right, with Judith D’Souza, whose release she secured from captivity in Afghanistan in July, 2016 (Photo: @SushmaSwaraj)

It is not at all surprising for me that India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has become what a headline in The Wall Street Journal describes as the country’s “best-loved politician.” Having interacted with her regularly throughout the decade of the 1990s during my stint in New Delhi as South Asia chief correspondent of the IANS wire and India Abroad weekly newspaper, I know that the sobriquet fits rather well.

In a perhaps much milder sense it was said of Swaraj what was also said of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) grandee Atal Behari Vajpayee—that she was the right leader in the wrong party. Of course, there is a strong degree of naiveté in this characterization because both Vajpayee and Swaraj are in a party with which they have a strong ideological, emotional and cultural affinity. I mention it here because many people are unable to square their moderate and even quasi-liberal demeanor with the core hardline right-wing politics of the BJP as embodied in many of her colleagues and especially a rash of lunatic voices among its extended affiliates.

Swaraj, who is justifiably earning plaudits for her efficiently humanistic running of the foreign ministry, still quaintly called external affairs ministry, has powerfully used social media in general and Twitter in particular to resolves hundreds and hundreds of problems faced by Indians around the world every day. She is perhaps the most responsive cabinet member in the Narendra Modi government who does not stop at token acknowledgement but actually resolves problems. 

Reading Swaraj’s twitter feed daily is like reading a continuous litany of problems from around the world brought to her attention by ordinary citizens and solved in real time in a very hands-on and very specific way. Although foreign ministers are often seen as exalted people who move around in rarefied diplomatic circles averse to being muddied by grimy problems of the hoi polloi, Swaraj has emerged as the very antithesis of it. It is no surprise that she has 8.7 million followers on Twitter which apparently puts her among the top ten most followed politician in the world.

She brings a problem-solving practicality to her approach free of the grandiosity of her position as India’s top diplomat. Of course, skeptics might point out that Prime Minister Narendra Modi inordinately controls the grander functions of foreign policy and thereby reducing Swaraj’s primary role. It is unprecedented in India’s government history that a minister, and that too a foreign minister, is so accessible, so hands-on and so result-driven in a way that directly impacts individuals and families. Normal consular hardships of Indian and other citizens would figure at the base of the foreign ministry totem pole. But Swaraj, always known to be earnest in whatever she does, has elevated that aspect to a much higher level of visibility and effectiveness.

Unlike any of her predecessors Swaraj clearly sees the human aspect of the foreign ministry. Luckily for her, her tenure has coincided with the proliferation of social media, in particular Twitter which eliminates intermediaries, usually the staid and often unhelpful bureaucrats, and allows ordinary citizens to directly seek her attention.

During my years in Delhi it was my experience that Swaraj was always accessible and always free of spin even as she presented her party’s point of view on various issues. That she is extremely articulate combined with her candor was a prime reason why journalists like me regularly sought her out.

Here is to Uttam Kumar

Uttam Kumar in Satyajit Ray’s ‘Nayak’

Today marks the 37th death anniversary of Uttam Kumar, the biggest Bengali movie star (3 September 1928– 24 July 1980). I know him from having watched only two of his movies—Satyajit Ray’s ‘Nayak’ (1966) and Shakti Samanta’s ‘Amanush’ (1975). However, these two were more than enough to experience the man’s innate charisma and impressive acting chops. In West Bengal, whose cinema he ruled, he was an infallible superstar whose slight hint of a smile left his admirers gasping for air.

It was said, perhaps with some exaggeration, that Rajesh Khanna, regarded as India’s first true pan-national superstar, picked up Uttam Kumar’s smile. I had asked Khanna if that was true. He merely smiled his trademark crinkly eyed smile in response.

In ‘Amanush’, Kumar played a frequently inebriated hedonist with a deep sense of having been aggrieved by a judgmental small fishing village community. That was the first, and for a long time, the only movie of his I had seen in the mid 1970s. He left quite an impression as a bit of sozzled loser pining for Rekha’s (Sharmila Tagore) attentions. I remember trying to enact a few drunken scenes from the movie as a 16-year-old carrying my brother Trilochan’s Old Spice bottle. Mercifully, I did not ever attempt to drink Old Spice. Even I knew it was a cologne and not a beverage.

I saw Ray’s ‘Nayak’ in recent years only to confirm that Kumar had remarkable screen presence added with his rather impressive craft as an actor. Admittedly, two movies are too little to say this but in neither he came across as a labored performer. There was a certain ease to his presence that was unmistakable in both.

Apart from the two movies, my only other frequent engagement with Kumar has been a hit Hindi song “Tujhe dekha, tujhe chaha, tujhe puja mainey’ (Saw you, loved you, worshipped you) from ‘Chhoti Si Mulaqat’ (A Brief Encounter-1967). I find that in this song, like the songs in Amanush, Kumar avoided overstating his gestures and emotions.

Recently, while watching Ray’s ‘Nayak’ it struck me that that seemed to be his stock in trade even if you discount the fact that it was one of the world’s great masters who had directed him and who was not known for overwrought emotionalism. In the movie, as the name suggests, Kumar plays the character of a movie star or leading man who on a train journey begins to reassess his life and career with his fellow passengers as his reference. By some coincidence, even in this movie he was paired with Sharmila Tagore. To offer you some trivia, Tagore also made a very successful pair with Rajesh Khanna, who was seen by some as channeling a bit of Uttam Kumar.

I might consider watching ‘Nayak’ again to mark Kumar’s death anniversary.

Pardon me

The presidential power to pardon anyone in America baffles me. That power exists elsewhere in various versions. That baffles me equally too.

Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Before I dwell on it, a small quibble. The section’s language uses “he” to refer to the president. Is that used as an umbrella term for humans? Or, does it implicitly rule out the possibility of a woman ever becoming president? In either case, it is disturbing that “he” still remains in the language. As a side question, can someone argue, in the event of a woman becoming president, that since the section uses “he” she cannot exercise those powers? Some literalist nut case might argue that the Constitution has no provision for a woman president to pardon self or others. I am being anal but one has to be in such matters.

Coming back to the presidential power to pardon and whether it includes the incumbent president’s ability to power self (I am avoiding gender deliberately here), it is a tricky question. It is being raised by the incumbent president himself by asserting that he has “complete power to pardon”. Although he does not say it explicitly, it is understood that by “complete” he means he can pardon himself.

There are of course deeply differing legal views about whether the president can pardon self with many legal scholars saying he cannot. The general consensus, if one can call it that, seems to be that this is an unresolved legal question. I found out in a Newsweek link on the subject that the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice had said this on August 5, 1974, “Pursuant to Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, the “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment,” is vested in the President. This raises the question whether the President can pardon himself. Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, it would seem that the question should be answered in the negative.”

In the same document though this is also mentioned: “A different approach to the pardoning problem could be taken under Section 3 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. If the President declared that he was temporarily unable to perform the duties of his office, the Vice President would become Acting President and as such he could pardon the President. Thereafter the President could either resign or resume the duties of his office.”

Is it possible that the Russia collusion investigation could come to a stage where President Donald Trump may consider the possibility of pardoning himself? It is not for me to speculate. But if it does, could he resort to what the 1974 document says as “a different approach to the pardoning problem”? Again, it is not for me to speculate.

Beyond the clever legalese, I find it rather unsettling that there is at least a theoretical possibility that any president can pardon self. That is a staggering power to possess. The fact that President Trump feels compelled to even think aloud about that tells one that he has considered the likelihood that the Russia collusion investigation could tighten around him personally. That may be just a theoretical consideration but it is a consideration nevertheless. Other than saying Wow! I am not sure I can say much else.

In keeping with the spirit of Article II, Section 2 I have decided to add that my own personal Constitution where I give myself the option to pardon myself in the event that I may so need it. So, pardon me.

Ganja Pistoolwaley, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and Bimbisara

Over the last nearly ten years I have produced a great deal of verbiage on this blog every day. Much of it is eminently forgettable but some of it, not so much. I publish  five of those somewhat memorable ones together here. There is no immediate provocation to do so. As I frequently point out, it is not as if you pay me to read this blog.

****

Violence was intrinsic to ancient Indian kingdoms; in particular, parricide. I have been long fascinated by what happened to Bimbisara, the first great king of the ancient Indian empire of Magadha, who was murdered around 493 B.C. by his son Ajatashatru.

As the great historian Romila Thapar mentions in her ‘A History of India 1’, between 461 B.C., when Ajatashatru died, and 413 B.C. five kings of the great Magadha empire were said to have killed in successive parricides. That would make an average of one king killed by his son every nine years or so.

Despite my promises to embark on a fictionalized account of the lives of Bimbisara and his son Ajatashatru, I have been unable to get started other than some scraps I have written so far. One of the scraps was written exactly two years ago. That beckons me to return to Magadha. So as to goad me into that exercise I republish it here.

The details of the cruelty depicted here have been taken from various sources. In any case, this is a piece of fiction.

DECEMBER 15, 2013

Date: 493 BCE

Place: Rajagriha, the capital of the ancient Indian kingdom of Magadha

Location: Inside a dungeon like prison cell, kept heated for the discomfort of its single illustrious inmate, Bimbisara, the first important king of Magadha, now a starving captive of his own son Ajatashatru.

Khema, Bimbisara’s wife and Ajatashatru’s mother, enters the dungeon looking particularly anxious. Her body is glistening with the golden hue of honey. It is not sweat. It is honey.

Khema’s efforts to smuggle in food for her diminished husband have been discovered by Ajatashatru and his guards. The only way she could carry some sustenance for him without being discovered was by smearing her own body with honey.

Bimbisara is emaciated and haggard. His face is pallid and smile wan. Not bothering with the pleasantries, Bimbisara starts feverishly licking Khema’s body—the arms, the face, the legs, the midriff. Khema stands there as he devours every drop of honey for he has been starved by his son for weeks now as part of a viciously ritualistic parricide. This is his only and last meal before his life turns even more cruel.

The body now having been infused with some natural sugar, Bimbisara seems to have regained a semblance of his fabled luster. His name Bimbisara, after all, means “of a golden color.” He also strikes what he thinks is a stately pose.

Khema wipes Bimbisara’s face and says:

Khema: I feel utterly drained although you are the one starving. I think I have run out of options to bring in food.

Bimbisara: As the Buddha said suffering is part of the human condition. I am suffering because I have attachment. I am attached to life. I am attached to you. I am attached to Ajatashatru.

Khema wells up at the mention of their son

Khema: I often think of what the royal astrologer had said about Ajatashatru’s birth. He had called it portentous for you. He had said he would rise as his father’s nemesis. I do think of that frequently.

Bimbisara: The Buddha also said ‘Yatha bhutam’. That’s the way it is. I do not spend a lot of time thinking about my plight. What appears to be a crisis from outside has so many exits within. I walk and meditate and that keeps me alive.

Khema: Seeing you alive enrages Ajatashatru. Everyday you are alive is like death in pieces for him. I don’t know what we did, what you did, to deserve such cruelty. You gave up the kingdom for him. You gave up everything for him….

Bimbisara: I have you, Khema. I have you going to great lengths to keep me alive. I have you smuggle in food for me. I have you dripping with honey to keep me alive. Asking for anything more and anyone more noble is greedy.

Khema goes close to Bimbisara and whispers:

Khema: Ajatashatru has summoned barbers. I am told they will be sent here soon.

Bimbisara’s face lights up. He thinks his son has had a change of heart. The summoning of barbers means only one thing. He is being groomed for the life of a monk, something he had been seeking to do all along. He could not be more wrong.

The barbers have been instructed to slice open the soles of his feet, administer salt and vinegar in the wounds and then burn the wounds with coal.

As Khema leaves the dungeon with a sense of foreboding that this may well be the last time she would see him alive, Bimbisara begins his walking-meditation with a distinct hint of a smile at what is to come, unaware that what is to come is unspeakably heinous. Or may be he is fully aware.

*****

AUGUST 30, 2014

Here is an imaginary phone conversation between Werner Heisenberg (WH) and Erwin Schrödinger (ES) that I have imagined to have taken place in the early 1930s, let’s say 1933. The situation is that the two great physicists were supposed to meet for coffee at a café in Berlin but Heisenberg has been delayed. So he telephones Schrodinger at the café.

A waiter tells Schrodinger that there is a call for him.

ES: Where are you? When are you reaching? I have been waiting for half an hour.

WH: I couldn’t tell you precisely where I am and when I might reach?

ES: I asked where you are and not where particles are.

WH: I am, like we all are, made up of particles. So if we cannot simultaneously tell a particle’s position and momentum with any precision, how am I going to tell you where I am and when I might reach?

ES (Sounding a bit exasperated): Werner, I don’t want to get into the whole physics of particles and position and momentum with you on phone.

WH: Why? Is it because you think I may not understand it? I am the whole physics of particles and position and momentum after all.

ES: That’s funny. So what’s taking you so long?

WH: Oh some problem at home but I thought I should call you to get started on what we planned to discuss while I reach.

ES: And you don’t know when you might reach because…

WH: I know my position. I am at home. But I don’t know about my momentum because it depends.

ES: Depends on what?

WH: It depends on so many variables, including whether there is a parade by those horrible Brown Shirts. We both know there is no predicting their position and momentum. Now that is one tough uncertainty that I oppose based on my principles.

They both laugh.

ES: Tell me anyway how this whole principle of your works. What are you saying really? It makes no sense to me. Are you saying that the act of observation affects a particle such that we cannot determine its position? Are you saying that our act of observation physically affects that particle?

WH: Erwin, Erwin, dear friend, you cannot be that simplistic. You know the so-called observer effect works at the quantum level. I don’t have to tell you that.

ES: Yes, yes but the whole Uncertainty Principle makes no sense to me. It is too clever for its own good.

WH: Says the man who locks up an imaginary cat inside an imaginary box with an imaginary vial of radioactive poison and then says the cat can be both dead and alive? Yeah, what’s with the cat? If it does not exist, why should it be dead or alive?

ES: So are you coming or not?

WH: Yes.

ES: Yes to coming or yes to not?

WH: Think of me as your cat. I may come or not because I may exist or not or both exist and not exist.

They both laugh again.

****

JULY 17, 2013

A neighbor to Erwin Schrödinger : What do you feed your cat?

You have to be in the realm to get this “ultra-highbrow humor” because first you have to know who Schrodinger is and then the relevance of the feline reference and the whole thought experiment around an imaginary cat inside an imaginary box which is both dead and alive simultaneously in a mindfuck paradox.

So anyway, after I wrote that line, it occurred to me that there is potential here for a full play. The basic plot is that the Nobel Prize winning physicist Erwin Schrodinger is being tried for killing his cat. The ultra-highbrow humor part is that there was no cat and since there was no cat, it was not killed. The cat was imaginary and so was his death, if it did happen. It was one of science’s greatest thought experiments.

Caution: What I have written here is entirely, 100 percent fiction. There was no such court case and no such trial just as there was no such cat.

Any resemblance to the dead or the living or the living dead or the dead living or the in between is incidental and/or deliberate and/or deliberately incidental and/or incidentally deliberate.

Part I

Time: 1935

Time: 9.30 a.m.

Venue: Bundesgerichtshof, the Federal Court of Justice, Berlin

Judge Volkard Strauss presiding. The judge is intently reading his notes.

Case # 24246, The Third Reich versus Erwin Schrodinger

Case history:

Erwin Schrödinger (ES) has been charged with culpable felinicide even though the police have not been able to determine whether the cat was dead or alive. What threw them off was the accused’s oblique suggestion that the cat could be both dead and alive. In his police statement, Schrodinger said the following:

“A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat mixed or smeared out in equal parts. It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.”

Judge Strauss (JS) is questioning the first witness for the prosecution, Frau Frauke (FF), a next door neighbor of Schrodinger :

JS: Describe to me your encounter with Prof. Schrodinger on the morning of the police raid.

FF: We exchanged pleasantries but he seemed preoccupied. He always seemed preoccupied. I asked him about his cat.

JS: What about the cat?

FF: I was curious to know what he fed his cat because I never saw him feed it. I never saw the cat either.

JS: And what did he tell you?

FF: He said there was no cat to feed but if he had one he would choose hydrocyanic acid.

JS: (Taken aback): Hydrocyanic acid? Why?

FF: I couldn’t tell you that because he never told me why. He only said something about a radioactive substance and hammer smashing the flask inside a box.

JS: You seem familiar with scientific terms.

FF: I am a retired science teacher. I retired from teaching but not science.

JS (Smiling): Let me ask you a direct question. Do you think Prof. Schrodinger killed his cat?

FF: Well, I never saw the cat but that does not mean he did not kill it. It also does not mean that if he had one he killed it.

JS: Did you experience any foul smell emanating from his apartment?

FF:  I did and I confronted him about it.

JS:  What was his explanation?

FF:  He said it was the stench of a decaying genius.

JS:  And you believed him?

FF:  Not quite but there was a high probability that it was indeed the stench of a decaying genius.

JS: Then why did you alert the police?

FF: Who would not like to save a decaying genius?

By now Prof. Schrodinger, sitting along with his attorney, is laughing. The judge notices him and says:

JS: You find something amusing professor?

ES:  Only the notion that a decaying genius has a stench.

JS turns to FF and excuses her from the witness stand. He directs ES to come to the witness box.

JS: I do not wish to continue your testimony today much long because I want to recess the court early. But before I do that, let’s go through a few questions.

JS: So is the cat dead or alive?

ES: That depends.

JS: On what?

ES: On whether an atom decayed, the tube discharged, the hammer fell, the flask shattered and the hydrocyanic acid spilled. Only then could the cat die.

JS: So the cat did die.

ES: That depends.

JS: On what?

ES: On whether an atom decayed, the tube discharged, the hammer fell, the flask shattered and the hydrocyanic acid spilled. Only then could the cat die.

JS: (Exasperated): But you already said that once. Why are you saying it again?

ES: Because you asked me again. Asking the question again does not change my answer.

JS: You have said during your interrogation that the cat could be both dead and alive. How is that possible?

ES: That is not possible. I said probable.

JS: That’s a distinction without a difference.

ES: I would call them distinctly different.

JS: Let me ask in simple terms. Is the damn cat dead or alive?

ES: If all of the above conditions were met, then it is likely that it died. If not, it is likely it is alive. But we have no way of knowing unless we open the box. So for us, without opening the box the cat is both dead and alive at any given time.

JS: Where is the box and how big is it?

ES: There is no box.

JS: Be that as it may, what poison did you feed your cat?

ES: I did not feed my cat anything because it did not exist.

JS: Then why have you been charged with killing the cat?

ES: It is an imaginary cat inside an imaginary box equipped with an imaginary radioactive substance from which an imaginary atom may or may not decay and the tube may or may not discharge and the hammer may or may not fall and the acid may or may not be released. Hence, the cat, which does not exist, may or may not die. And unless we open the box that also does not exist we may or may not know whether the imaginary cat is dead or alive.

By now, the judge is ready to tear his hair out. He throws the gavel at Schrödinger who ducks. The gavel falls on the courtroom floor. The floor shatters like glass. A dark golden brown cat jumps out from underneath. He rubs his body against Schrodinger’s right shoe and jumps on to the judge’s dais. He thumps his paw and says:

“If you think I exist, I think you should see Dr. Freud who, by the way, is real.”

***

JANUARY 23, 2012

Ganja Pistoolwaley a.k.a. Pistool Ganja nervously pulled his underwear wedged deep inside his buttocks. Unexpected phone calls from his boss Raqeeb Tadipar had that effect on him.

Pistoolwaley stood up whenever Tadipar called. Unlike in the past, with video phones Tadipar would know instantly if his underlings were sufficiently deferential when he called. He didn’t like his men sitting around because he thought that made them slow on the draw.

It was only during extreme emergencies when Tadibhai (as Raqeeb was known) would call himself. The hit Tadibhai was calling Ganja about involved a high profile author.

“Han Tadibhai. Mein khada hai na. Mein to kabhi kidhar baithta hai?” Ganja said with insincere obsequiousness. (Yes, Tadibhai I am standing up. Do I ever sit down?)

“Saaley, yeh video phone hai. Mein dekh sakta hai. Abhi supari ka photu SMS kiyela hai,” Tadibhai said. (This is a video phone. I can see you. I have just SMSed a picture of the hit).

Ganja: “Han bhai mila na. Dekha. Boley to aadmi to chusey hue aam ki mafik lagta hai.” (Got it. The man looks like a shriveled up mango.)

Tadibhai: “To yeh kaun sa chikna hero hai. Sala kitaab likhta rehta hai.” (He is no slick movie star. The bastard writes books).

Ganja: “To likhne do na bhai. Apney ko kya karne ka hai? Apan log kidhar padh sakta hai?” (So let him write.What do we care? We are illiterate anyway.)

Tadipar: “Arey who sab mereku mat sikha. Aaj kal teri zabaan pistul se zyada chalti hai) (Don’t teach me all that. These days you talk more than your pistol.)

Sensing Tadibhai’s irritation, Ganja immediately corrected himself. “Tadibhai, mein to aise hi gammat kiya. Aap ne bola aur sala writer dola.” (Tadibhai, I am kidding. You say the word and the writer is gone).

Tadibhai: “Arey Pistool teri ma ki usko dolane ka nahi hai rey. Woh video pe aa ke kuch bhashan dene wala hai. Uska bhashan rokna hai.” (Hey Pistool, he is not to be bumped off. He is giving a video speech. That speech should not happen.)

Ganja: “Boley to zinda rakhne ka par acting nahi karne ka” (That means he may live but not act)

Tadibhai: “Ab ghusi baat tere bheje mein goli ka tarha. Yeh hona mangta hai.” (Now sense has entered your brain like a bullet. This needs to happen)

Tadibhai’s menacing face went off Ganja’s phone. Ganja placed a call, also a video call, to his trusted tech support Chandu Ghaslet.

Chandu stood up as he answered the call. “Han Pistoolbhai. Mujhe kyun yaad kiya?) (Yes Pistool, how come you remembered me?)

Ganja: “Yeh address likh. Idhar kal ek video bhashan hai. Who bandh kara.” (Take this address. There is a video speech scheduled there tomorrow. Stop it.)

Chandu Ghaslet, who hardly ever figured in any of the exciting hits that his gang carried out, was thrilled to have been called. Naturally, he felt he needed to make this his best job.

Ghaslet: “Video bhashan matlab bandwidth bada zyada hoga. Mein 30 mein se 15 frame drop kara dunga. Sala breakdance ke jaisa lagega woh writer.” (Video speech means high bandwidth. I can drop 15 of the 30 frames. He would be so jerky he would look like a breakdancer).

Ganja: “Ey Ghaslet, baat sun le. Band wand kuchch nahi. Udhar ja, do kan ke neeche baja aur cable kaat dal.” (Hey Ghaslet, listen to me. Forget bandwidth. Go there, thrash a couple of them and cut the cable).

Ganja disconnected.

So now we wait to see what happens.

Note: Excuse the inordinate use of the Mumbai street lingo. I had no choice because that’s how these tough guys talk.

 

****

November 9, 2014

My mother discovered that she was pregnant with me just two days before the liftoff.

She hid the news from the space administration which would have most certainly withdrawn her from the nearly nine-month-long, one way trip to Mars.

My mother and I landed on Mars on January 4, 2030. She was part of the first peopled mission to this planet. I was born two days later inside a special enclosure set up not too far from the site where the Curiosity rover first landed in August, 2012.

I have no memory of her since she died moments after giving me birth. Both her fellow astronauts have also died since, one in 2035 and the other in 2038. They shared many stories and memories of my mother before they died. That means I have been on my own, presumably entirely alone on Mars, for close to ten Earth years.

It was a recklessly ambitious and selfish decision which I approve now that I am 18 in Earth years, albeit just 10 in Martian years. Although on Mars I am just 10, my brain is that of an 18-year-old earthling as it would have been back on my mother’s planet. Of course, I consider myself a Martian. I cannot quite explain how but I have evolved to live on carbon dioxide. It is an acquired taste.

I lived the first eight years of my life confined inside the enclosure, the first five with both the astronauts and the other three with one of them. They never took me out because they feared for my life. Then one day in June 2038, which I remember rather vividly, the lone surviving astronaut, who knew he was dying, took me to the Curiosity rover.

The rover was still functional, over a quarter century after it arrived, but not of much scientific value since there was already a human settlement in the form of our enclosure.

I remember the astronaut and I stood in front of Curiosity with our backs facing it. He shot a short video and transmitted it back to the space administration. He later told me that Earth was agog with the news of the presence of a child, me, on Mars.

That my mother was pregnant when she traveled came to be known only then.

Three months later, the second astronaut died while on an exploration. The first one had died inside the enclosure and I think the second astronaut managed to perform some sort of a burial. I do occasionally see the second astronaut’s skeletal face inside his still largely intact spacesuit sticking out of the rover hatch.

There are times when I feel I should bury the second astronaut but then keeping him the way he died gives me the illusion of some presence on Mars other than me.

The space administration does communicate with me regularly. They cannot believe that I roam around the enclosure with no spacesuit and breathing aid. They also cannot believe that I neither eat food nor drink water. As far as I can tell, I have never eaten or drunk anything since I was born.

One of the space administration’s main concerns is to find out if there is life on Mars which is ironic because they are asking me, a Martian who breathes carbon dioxide but eats and drinks nothing. How much more bizarre life are they really looking for?

In one of my video calls with the mission control I had asked them that very question. One of the scientists replied, “Yeah but you were conceived on Earth. So strictly speaking you are not a Martian.”

I tried reasoning with him that I may have been conceived on Earth but spent my entire in vivo formative period on a flight to Mars buffeted by radiation, then landed on the Red Planet violently shaking inside my mother’s amniotic sac and was born two days later even as she died. That had no impact on the scientists looking for a truly indigenous Martian life.

Lately, I have started to ignore calls from Earth as well as disregard their urgent video messages. Once in a while, I do visit Curiosity and stand in front of its billion megapixel camera and give the space administration the finger or, at any rate, what would have been the finger had I developed like normal a human being.

Curiosity is my only friend because like me it came to Mars without its consent and was made to stay on without its consent. I would very much like to bring it back near the enclosure but I do not know how to navigate it. Even if I did, I do not have the driver’s license yet. Mars has no DMV as of now unless I set it up and give myself a license.

Mayank Chhaya’s note: Some day I plan to make this into a full-fledged novel. Consider this post its own copyright.