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.
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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.
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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.