THE STERADIAN TRAIL: BOOK #0 OF THE INFINITY CYCLE

by M. N. KRISH

  When Lakshman mentioned this incident to Joshua, he said, ‘Looks like our friend’s paid a little visit to your office as well.’

  ‘He must have, to take exactly what was needed,’ Lakshman said. ‘Should not have been too difficult. Come around dinnertime, bring along someone to pick the lock and watch the door while you go in and do what you want.’

  ‘Do you have any other copies?’ Joshua asked.

  ‘No, I kept whatever I had in this,’ Lakshman pointed at the empty box file.

  ‘Never mind, I’ll ask Nancy to email us the transcript. I have several copies sitting around. I’ll have her cc you as well, just in case.’

  ‘Why don’t you also ask her to send us the tape if possible?’

  ‘You really mean that?’ Joshua said. ‘Seems like overkill to me.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Lakshman. A monkey screeched outside and Lakshman picked up on that. ‘See, even the monkey agrees with me. Think about it, why did he take the trouble of asking for the Tamil tape when the English translation of the whole thing was readily available on paper?’

  ‘My point exactly,’ Joshua said. ‘He couldn’t have made head or tail of it.’

  ‘He couldn’t have. But remember who he had with him,’ Lakshman said. ‘Simon Thathachari. Narasimhan Simon Thathachari.’

  ‘Jeez!’ Joshua said. ‘Okay, I’ll ask her to Fedex us the tape as well.’

  ‘Maybe she could convert it into an audio-file and upload it to your homepage or something. We can download and play it here. It’ll be faster than Fedex.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Joshua said. ‘Converting the tape to MP3 may take her time but it’ll still be faster than Fedex. By the time we’re back we should at least have the transcript waiting for us on email. That’ll be something to go on. Let me call her right away.’

  One glance at his dual-dial Rolex and Joshua dropped the idea. ‘It’s middle of the night in Boston now. I’ll just drop her an email.’

  Joshua returned to the lab, dashed off an email to Nancy and went in search of the bookshops on Mount Road, promptly trailed by the men on the motorbike. He was already well out of the campus when he realized that in all the chaos he had forgotten the second item on his original agenda: searching for the Sulba Sutra paper in his mailbox. But it was too late to turn back now.

  37

  Much of Joshua’s evening was taken up by the next round of police inquiry into the disappearance of his laptop. Joyshankar Banerjee lined up the hotel staff in batches and asked Joshua if he suspected any of them. Nobody was spared. Cleaners, concierges, guards, desk workers and drivers – Durai Raj included – were paraded past Joshua. The cleaner whisked away yesterday had been released and was on leave to rest and recuperate.

  The investigation wasn’t going anywhere and Joshua could see that. He was upset about the laptop but felt bad for the hotel staff. He knew almost all of them were innocent. There could be a black sheep or two but there was no way he could figure who it was. He just shook his head and let them all go.

  With Joshua’s permission, Banerjee had his men turn the suite inside out for any clues they might have missed earlier. When it seemed to go nowhere, he began probing Joshua about his laptop, asking him about its contents. What kind of data was stored in it? What kind of documents? Anything particularly important? Who might be interested in them? . . . The questions made Joshua squirm; it was not for nothing that he had taken the precaution of partitioning the laptop’s hard disk to create a strong room for sensitive files including the Sulba Sutra paper, encrypting and firewalling it with three layers of passwords. He answered Banerjee’s questions as generically and vaguely as he could, but he couldn’t dodge a seasoned cop for long. When Banerjee started to probe deeper, he had no choice but to bluntly refuse to get more specific. It was close to dinnertime when Joshua finally managed to get Banerjee and his men off his back.

  He returned to the suite after dinner and updated Becky on the latest developments, telling her about his travel plans and asking her not to worry if she couldn’t reach him in the hotel for a day. Lakshman was going to pick him up on the way to the bus terminus and he got busy packing his travel kit. He was more or less done stuffing his duffel bag and packing his camera on top when the phone rang.

  Thinking it was Lakshman reminding him to wait in front of the hotel, he picked up the phone and said hello.

  ‘Hello, Doc,’ said a familiar female voice at the other end. ‘How come you’re back so early in your room?’

  ‘Do they pay you to keep tabs on me from there?’ Joshua said. ‘Even if they did, how do you do it?’

  ‘I try to reach you around this time every day, but you’re never in, so I end up waking you in middle of the night,’ Carla said. ‘I got lucky today.’

  ‘You really did,’ Joshua said. ‘A couple more minutes and I wouldn’t have been here to take your call. What’s up? I’m sure you’re calling me for a reason.’

  ‘I managed to call all your students downtown,’ Carla said. ‘That is not to say all of them were willing to talk to me. Four of them did without any reservation as soon as I mentioned your name.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘That their fraud numbers haven’t gone way out of whack recently or in the last couple of years. Their pain in the neck apparently is the internet. Online fraud’s been going up and up, but it’s just the nature of the business and nothing unexpected.’

  ‘What about the three other guys? Who are they and what did or didn’t they say?’

  ‘Maggie Tang, Peter Ashdown and Ron Edgerton, they refused to get into any discussion with me. Even mentioning your name didn’t work.’

  ‘No wonder they work in Risk Management,’ said Joshua. ‘Don’t trust anybody.’

  ‘They said if you wanted to pick their brain, you’d call yourself,’ Carla said.

  Joshua couldn’t help laughing a little.

  ‘So do you mind?’ Carla said.

  ‘Me?’ said Joshua. ‘Just because I’m in India right now doesn’t mean you can outsource all your grunt work to me.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you could. It’s not just Mr Williams, it’s two dead people we’re dealing with: Mr Williams and his grad student Simon. Simon was found in a pool. Dead.’

  Joshua was hardly shocked or surprised. ‘So you’re finally opening your cards to me now?’

  ‘You know about Simon?’ Carla asked, surprised.

  ‘The news is all over the TDU website.’

  ‘Any chance you knew Simon?’ Carla asked sharply.

  ‘No, never heard of him,’ Joshua said.

  ‘So do you mind?’ Carla asked, her tone quickly moving down the register.

  ‘I don’t have a problem talking to my students, but I’m not sure if it’s going to help,’ Joshua said. ‘I suspect there’s something else going on.’

  ‘You mean to say there’s no salami slicing and stuff going on? It’s all baloney?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything, steak or salami or baloney. I really can’t tell anything right now. It could be something very different. It may not have much to do with money.’

  ‘Come on,’ Carla said. ‘What else can drive people to kill if not money?’

  ‘Revenge, for one. Fame, for another.’

  ‘Are you holding something back from me? You sound so sure.’

  ‘Let me just say for now that I’m going down a different road here. I’ll let you know if I stumble onto anything.’

  ‘Come on, Doc, don’t hold back on me. Give me some clue.’

  ‘If you insist,’ Joshua said. ‘Say a little-known patent clerk in Switzerland shows a crook E equals mc2 and how, what would the crook do?’

  Carla paused. ‘You’re talking in riddles, Doc. Could you be a bit more specific? Give me a little more?’

  ‘Seven o’ two o’ nine,’ J
oshua said. ‘It’s not really seventy and twenty and nine.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Carla said. ‘I listened to the recording myself. He seemed to be mentioning three numbers, seventy . . . twenty . . . nine. That’s what popped up in the voice recognition software as well.’

  ‘It’s seven-teen not seventy and twenty-nine, not twenty and nine. You may not have heard it right because he was out of his breath. It’s not three separate numbers, it’s two at best, but in reality it’s just one.’

  Carla paused again to process that. ‘Even so, what does it mean?’ she said. ‘Is that a password or combination or what?’

  ‘It’s not a password or combination, it’s a code,’ Joshua said and explained it.

  ‘Jeez, Doc. Looks like we have to open up another front in India,’ Carla said.

  I’m in the middle of a theatre here, and here you are, thinking about opening a front only now, thought Joshua. ‘Well, I’m already on it,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yup. But I don’t have anything right now. Give me a couple of days and I’ll call you back with something.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting, Doc,’ Carla said. ‘You should let me in on everything then.’

  ‘You bet,’ Joshua said. ‘But on one condition,’ he added, quick on the footwork.

  ‘You mean you want to remain anonymous and all that?’

  ‘That goes without saying. It’s not even a condition, it’s an assumption,’ said Joshua. ‘I’m talking about something else.’

  ‘I don’t think I follow, Doc.’

  ‘That’s precisely what I’m talking about,’ Joshua said. ‘You should stop calling me Doc.’

  ‘I’ll try to, Doc,’ Carla said, stifling a chuckle. ‘Can I call you Prof instead?’

  ‘No!’ Joshua bellowed. ‘J-O-S-H Josh. Just call me Josh.’

  38

  ‘So, from one holy town to another! You’re taking me on a pilgrimage, Josh. I don’t remember being so religious for a very long time,’ Lakshman said as soon as they got off the bus in the morning.

  A shroud of fog hung in the air and the ground was moist with dew. They stood on the platform stretching their arms and legs. It had been a bumpy, backbreaking ride through the night. Though the bus was air-conditioned, they could only get seats in the back row and so kept getting tossed around as if on a springboard.

  ‘No, don’t call it religious,’ Joshua said, craning his neck. ‘Religion’s out. Passé. Spirituality’s the in thing these days. But landing here like this reminds me of the trip I made for your wedding.’

  ‘That place isn’t too far. It’s all part of the same river delta,’ Lakshman said. ‘Let’s see if we can find a nice hotel with a spiritually uplifting bathroom somewhere. I know there’s God and divinity everywhere, even in dirt and dung, but there’s a danger in taking it a little too literally . . . Only the omnipresent God knows when these temple towns are going to learn to temper their holiness with a little hygiene – I’m sure somebody’s said that before.’

  Joshua looked around warily to see if anyone was listening. The bus terminus was packed with people, travellers swaddled in various colourful combinations of sweaters, mufflers, shawls, monkey caps and earmuffs to protect them from the nippy weather where the mercury had plunged to twenty-two degrees Celsius. No one seemed to be paying any particular attention to Joshua or Lakshman standing on the platform clutching their bags. There were a couple of men sipping tea leaning on an Ambassador near a kiosk shop, but they were well out of earshot, so Joshua felt safe enough to speak his mind. Though he played it politically correct usually, he was not one to back off a little challenge. ‘Paul Brunton. About Benares,’ he said. ‘But Benares! You may be the hub of Hindu culture, yet please learn something from the infidel whites and temper your holiness with a little hygiene.’

  Lakshman laughed. ‘Not bad. Not bad at all,’ he said. ‘But what made you hesitate so much? You could shout it from the rooftops and no one would understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘Better safe than sorry,’ Joshua shrugged. ‘This town looks quite all right to me though. I hope we find a decent hotel. I need a hot shower. My joints are all creaking.’

  ‘The travel agent recommended a couple of places nearby. Let’s check them out,’ Lakshman said. ‘I need a hot bath as well. I’m freezing.’

  Joshua chuckled. Barely out of the AC bus, he was already beginning to sweat.

  ‘Hey, weather and climate are relative phenomena,’ Lakshman said and stepped off the platform.

  Joshua slung on his duffel bag and followed him dutifully like a tennis champ making his way to Centre Court.

  Kumbakonam, here we come! he thought.

  ~

  Hot bath, hotter breakfast, steaming coffee. They walked out of the hotel sufficiently energized, Joshua looking the perfect tourist with a florid Aloha shirt to go with his khakis, a broad-brimmed hat on his head and a camera strapped to his waist.

  Lakshman summoned an Ambassador waiting across the street. The driver looked startled for a second then shook his head: Not in service.

  ‘Why don’t we go wait there?’ Lakshman pointed at the street-corner. ‘There should be auto-rickshaws coming by.’

  They padded down the street, Joshua rubbernecking, drinking in the ambience which was quaintly different from Madras.

  Lakshman ducked into a kiosk shop on the way and got the day’s Hindu, Trichy edition.

  ‘Here, Josh,’ he said to Joshua. ‘You’re the one who’s curious about local newspapers in every country.’

  ‘Thanks, but let’s save it for later,’ Joshua said and took a deep breath. ‘I want to be fully present in the moment. Be here now. No distractions.’ He closed his eyes, brought together the tips of his thumbs and forefingers in a yoga mudra and began chanting: ‘Om . . . Kumbakonam . . . Kumbakonam . . . Kumbakonam . . .’

  Lakshman laughed.

  Joshua opened his eyes and asked, ‘Yeah, what does Kumbakonam mean? Where does the town get the name from?’

  ‘It’s named after the Shiva temple here,’ Lakshman said. ‘The deity’s called Kumbeswarar.’

  ‘What does it mean? Is it in any way connected to the Kumbh Mela?’

  Lakshman wasn’t too surprised. Someone who could quote Paul Brunton ought to know about the Kumbh Mela. ‘In fact, it is,’ he said. ‘We have a similar festival held once every twelve years in the tank here. It goes by a different name: Maha Magam. But it doesn’t get international attention like the Kumbha Mela because the turnout is fairly small, just a million or so.’

  ‘That’s your definition of small?’ Joshua said.

  ‘By our standards it is,’ said Lakshman.

  ‘What does Kumbh mean?’ Joshua asked.

  ‘Kumbh in Kumbha Mela means pot or pitcher; it’s basically a symbol of fertility and prosperity. But Kumbu also means cone in Tamil, and Konam means angle; so Kumbakonam loosely means conical angle. That’s the shape of the Shiva lingam in the temple here. It’s doesn’t have the usual smooth rounded finish, it has a sharp taper, more like a cone. I’ve seen it myself when I went to worship as a teenager. Prayed to God to send me to America.’

  The stab of nostalgia brought a laugh out of Lakshman.

  But Joshua was lost in something else. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘If we want to translate the name Kumbakonam into English, we’d have to call it Steradian or something.’

  Joshua’s sudden leap in logic stumped Lakshman. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You said Kumbakonam means conical angle right?’

  ‘Yeah, something like that.’

  ‘How do you measure the angle of a three-dimensional solid like a cone? You can’t use degrees or radians, you’d have to use steradians, the unit for measuring solid angle.’

  ‘I never thought of it that way,’ said Lakshman. ‘Steradian is the most
fitting name for this town in more ways than one. Especially given where we’re heading.’

  ‘Hey, that’s right,’ said Joshua.

  An auto-rickshaw rolled in before long and Lakshman flagged it down. At six-foot-two outside his shoes, it wasn’t the best mode of transport for Joshua, but he squeezed himself in uncomplainingly.

  ‘Where to, sir?’ the driver asked Lakshman.

  ‘Sri Sarangapani Temple Street,’ Lakshman said.

  ‘To the temple, sir?’

  ‘No, just the street. Sannidi Theru. Eastern side,’ Lakshman said.

  ‘Oh, to mathematician Ramanujan’s house?’ the driver asked.

  Lakshman was startled for a second before nodding, ‘Yeah, the same place.’

  39

  A barefoot little girl playing hopscotch on a dewy, dusty fringe of the street, startled by the sight of approaching strangers, ran screaming inside the house: ‘Thathaaaaaaaa, some foreigner’s coming to our house . . .’

  Lakshman mounted the steps and made a hesitant halt at the threshold, Joshua trailing slightly behind. The old-fashioned house did not have a doorbell. There was just an oil-lamp niche where the doorbell should have been.

  Lakshman stood framed in the doorway and called out, ‘Hello.’

  A bare-chested gentleman in his seventies came out of the house, hastily grabbing an anga vasthram hanging on a door and draping it over his upper body. He was a little on the portly side with a veshti billowing down his waist in countless pleats and folds just like some of the brahmins at Kanchipuram. A sacred thread ran across his chest and he sported several trident-like namams all over his upper body, the most prominent one painted on his forehead. Lakshman could tell that, like Ramanujan, he too belonged to the class of orthodox Vaishnavites who lived in the areas adjoining the Sri Sarangapani temple.

  The old man was coming from his morning prayers. His religious trappings, coupled with the smell of camphor and incense wafting in the air made that amply clear. So Lakshman started with an apology. ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said.