THE STERADIAN TRAIL: BOOK #0 OF THE INFINITY CYCLE

by M. N. KRISH

  ‘Of course not, sir,’ Sakthivel said. ‘This museum is the idea of P.K. Srinivasan, sir.’

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Retired maths teacher, sir. Old-fashioned gentleman who teaches all kinds of maths shortcuts to children. He’s a big fan of Ramanujan, sir. He created this museum for him, collecting his things from various people for thirty years. He has even come on TV, sir.’

  ‘I think I’ve heard of him,’ Lakshman said. ‘But I didn’t know he’s established a nice museum like this.’

  ‘Not many people know, sir. Only school children come usually. Recently there was an article in the Hindu about this place and so some more people have started coming. Just recently there was another foreigner here, sir. He came many times, also.’

  Lakshman’s ears pricked up instantly. ‘A foreigner?’ he said.

  ‘Yes sir, a young professor. He came here three or four times, sir, sometimes with his student. Said he liked this place very much.’

  ‘You remember his name?’

  ‘I think William something, sir.’

  ‘Jeffrey Williams?’

  ‘Yes sir, same person. Do you know him, sir?’

  Lakshman wasn’t sure how to respond and let Joshua handle it.

  ‘He was an old student of mine,’ said Joshua. ‘What was he doing here?’

  ‘Just looking at the things on display, sir. Also made Xerox copies of some of the books.’

  ‘Really?’ Joshua said.

  ‘Yes sir,’ he said. ‘He made copies of all books here. He didn’t even spare Janaki Ammal’s Sri Ramajayam notebook, sir. It has no mathematics but he still made a copy, sir.’

  Joshua gave Sakthivel a befuddled look.

  But Lakshman’s antennae seemed to detect a signal. ‘Do you mind showing us that notebook?’ he said.

  ‘One minute, sir. Let me get it.’ Sakthivel spun around and made for the section with all the sundry items.

  ‘What notebook did he say?’ Joshua asked Lakshman.

  ‘Sri Ramajayam notebook,’ said Lakshman. ‘Sri Ramajayam is a chant or mantra hailing Rama. There’re many such chants depending on the God. People write them in notebooks like writing imposition lines in school, usually for 108 times, the magic number here, but it could go up to 1,008 or 10,008 or even 100,008 times.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To bring divine blessings and good luck,’ Lakshman said. ‘My grandmother used to do it all the time. It doesn’t surprise me that Mrs Ammal did it as well – they were a religious family. But what I do find strange is Jeffrey making a copy of that book.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Joshua.

  Sakthivel fetched the notebook from the stand and handed it to Joshua – Americans always got priority over Indians.

  It was an ordinary exercise book with nothing special about it: a standard issue, hardbound, unruled, maroon-red calico on the spine, pages turned sepia with time, a silverfish fossilized on the cardboard cover which carried the label of M.R.M. Books & Stationers, Trichinopoly.

  Joshua flicked it open and thumbed through a couple of pages. All they had was column after column of mantras. In Tamil. ‘Why don’t you take a look?’ he said and passed it over to Lakshman.

  Lakshman put on his reading glasses and leafed through the first few pages. He couldn’t spot any Sri Ramajayams though. What he saw instead were columns of other chants like Hari Narayana, Hari Gopala and Hari Vasudeva – Mrs Ammal’s favourite names for Vishnu. Puzzled why this notebook had managed to grab Jeffrey’s attention, Lakshman riffled through a few more pages.

  Before long he saw a trend began to emerge . . .

  ~

  All was quiet in the alley outside the museum. Nallathambi was sprawled out in the car seat and dozing off with the Daily Dove newspaper tenting over his tummy, quivering in sync with his breathing. But the phone booth at the end of the street was witnessing a flurry of frantic calls. So far the instructions to the two men had been to only tail Joshua from a distance. But that was beginning to change now.

  46

  In between the chants written in blue, Lakshman started to spot some terms written in green ink; some of them were underscored and many had a number scribbled next to them. A slightly closer inspection told Lakshman that it was actually the other way round. It was the chants that were written to fill up the gaps between the terms written in ink and not vice versa. The writings in green ink were not names of Vishnu or mantras singing His glory, but names of places: cities and towns in the country. Lakshman could read the old names of Thanjavur, Madras and Trivandrum and was about to check what else was in the notebook when Sakthivel pounced on him like a predator and yanked it from his hands.

  Lakshman looked at him, stunned by his rudeness.

  Sakthivel shuffled through the notebook and swore in Tamil – not stooping so low as Nallathambi but still somewhat unsuitable for polite company.

  ‘Who the hell did this?’ he said and looked around. But the school kids were all gone by now.

  ‘What happened?’ Lakshman asked.

  ‘The notebook, sir, notebook,’ Sakthivel said, his face twitching with rage. ‘Somebody’s damaged it; torn off pages.’

  ‘WHAT!’ Lakshman and Joshua gasped in a bilingual chorus, the former in Tamil and the latter in English.

  ‘Yes sir, I’m seeing it only now. Somebody’s torn off the last section, sir. See here,’ Sakthivel said. He opened the notebook and thrust it in Lakshman’s face.

  It was a regular exercise book with the sheets bound together in four sections, the last of which was missing now. Lakshman could see the gap in the spine with some binding threads hanging out.

  ‘I know every single item here like my own children, sir,’ Sakthivel said. ‘The book was looking a little lighter in your hands. When you were turning the pages, it really hit me.’

  Lakshman and Joshua stood looking dazed at each other.

  Sakthivel took time to lament a little in Tamil. ‘This is almost hundred years old, sir,’ he said. ‘Janaki Ammal was taking care of it like her own dear life. The family generously donated it to the museum after she passed away. This is the original, sir. There’re no other copies.’

  ‘No other copies?’ Lakshman said.

  ‘Yes sir, no other copies. Only one original. It has nothing important, no mathematics, no equations or anything, unlike other Ramanujan notebooks, so no one bothered with making a backup copy. We just kept the original in display,’ Sakthivel said. ‘Though it has no monetary value it has sentimental value, sir. This place is like a temple for many people.’

  ‘Do you know who could’ve have done this?’ asked Lakshman.

  ‘How do I know, sir? Many people come and go. Some kid may have done it as a joke. Even when the other foreigner made a copy and returned it, all pages were intact, sir,’ Sakthivel said.

  ‘Could we see it for a minute?’ Lakshman said, trying to remain impassive.

  Sakthivel handed the notebook back to Lakshman.

  Lakshman stepped closer to Joshua and thumbed through the pages again as Sakthivel looked on. Joshua was totally clueless but that was not the case with Lakshman.

  The cities and towns interspersed among the chants in green ink, Ramanujan’s favourite green ink . . . There was something about them that demanded a long hard look.

  ‘Can I take it with me and make a copy? I’ll return it in ten minutes,’ Lakshman said to Sakthivel.

  ‘What is this, sir? How I can let you take this out, after what has happened?’

  Lakshman thought for a moment and said, ‘Why don’t you get it done yourself, if you don’t trust me? We’ll just wait here.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll send the office boy.’

  Lakshman pulled out a hundred rupee note from his wallet. ‘Please make sure that every single page is copied.’

  Sakthivel too
k the money and the notebook and went out.

  Lakshman used the hiatus to update Joshua about the contents of the notebook and what he’d learned from Sakthivel.

  ‘Want to guess who did that to the notebook?’ he asked Joshua.

  ‘Do you have any doubts?’

  ‘But why did this guy say that it was intact when Jeffrey returned it? He sounded so sure.’

  ‘Here’s what I think,’ Joshua said. ‘When he sees the notebook for the first time, he doesn’t understand the importance of what’s in there. He just makes a copy and returns it, all pages intact. He goes back, analyzes its contents and finds something of value. Now he doesn’t want anyone to know what he’s found; he comes back and rips the pages. Look at this place, there’s no security whatsoever. No camera, no nothing. You and I could shove something into our pockets right now and walk away. No one’s going to know.’

  ‘True,’ Lakshman said. ‘He could’ve taken the whole notebook if he wanted. Why didn’t he do it?’

  ‘Because that would be more risky. Someone here’s bound to notice if it goes missing. Why take chances? All you want is to make sure no one else can fully understand what’s in the notebook. You can do that by just stripping off a good chunk of the material.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Lakshman said. ‘I still feel like we’re groping in the dark.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re still in the dark for sure, but we may have landed a flintstone here. We have to see if we can light a flame with it,’ Joshua said. ‘Let’s go back, take a closer look at the notebook and see what it throws up.’

  ‘Okay, but I’m not too hopeful because not a single page had anything remotely resembling a mathematical equation or a formula or a calculation. Absolutely nothing,’ Lakshman said. ‘I’m afraid he’s taken all those pages.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Joshua said. ‘I don’t think the missing pages had any mathematical equations or formulas either.’

  Joshua said this with so much conviction that it took Lakshman by surprise. ‘What makes you say that?’ he asked. ‘You sound so sure.’

  ‘If any of those pages really had any math like you say, someone’s bound to have noticed it and taken it to the right people. That’s exactly how Ramanujan’s other notebooks were discovered and brought to the attention of the mathematical community. I can’t believe something that obviously looks like Ramanujan’s mathematical formulas would have escaped people’s attention for so long. I mean, I don’t think it’s anything as simple or obvious as Jeffrey swiping off a bunch of formulas from the notebook. It’s got to be something much more involved than that.’

  ‘But what is it that he could’ve found?’ Lakshman said.

  Joshua sighed in exasperation. ‘That’s what I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Anyway, why don’t we take a look at the other stuff here till he comes back with a copy? There could be something helpful.’

  ‘Right,’ Lakshman said.

  ‘Let’s divide and conquer. You look at the stuff in Tamil, I’ll focus on the English ones.’

  ~

  Outside, Nallathambi was now snoring away. Yards away from the phone booth at the end of the street, the two men leaned on their motorbike and heaved a sigh of relief. The modus operandi had been all worked out to eliminate Joshua as well as his old buddy Lakshman as collateral, if that was what it took to get the job done. Lakshman was not part of the initial plan, but he had wandered into the crosshairs by himself, hopping with the hares and hunting with the hounds.

  47

  They thanked Sakthivel and left the museum, the copy of the notebook safely stowed in Joshua’s briefcase. Lakshman had compared it with the original and made sure not a single page had been missed out.

  Nallathambi had risen from his siesta by now, thoroughly rejuvenated. He was sitting on the steps of a shop nearby and energizing himself further with masala paan – no doubt laced with some holy herbal contraband – and honing his language skills with a careful reading of the morning’s Daily Dove. The State Assembly was in session and the front page report on the proceedings helped him refresh and augment his otherwise prolific Tamil vocabulary. He spat out paan juice into a ditch as soon as he saw Joshua walking out of the building. Quickly wiping the ruby red drops dribbling from a corner of his mouth with a handkerchief, he reached the Ambassador in four hops and opened the doors respectfully with a big welcoming smile on his face.

  But Nallathambi’s deference-and-decorum phase did not last very long. As soon as they hit the traffic, he made a bipolar switch and started to put his newly enriched vocabulary on display again.

  Joshua and Lakshman were both itching to take a look at the notebook, their only real find at the museum. They spread the sheets out and tried, but the relentless stopping, starting, jerking and rocking combined with Nallathambi’s yelling and swearing made it impossible to focus for even half a minute. They tucked the sheets back into the briefcase.

  Joshua didn’t want to discuss anything with Nallathambi present though he was sure the son-of-soil wouldn’t understand much. He decided to turn his attention to Nallathambi’s soulful outpourings on fellow road-users and started badgering Lakshman for literal translations. When Lakshman hesitated in the interest of politeness, he goaded him further: ‘Don’t be shy. Treat it purely as an intellectual exercise, nothing else. This is the sort of thing that builds people’s personality and character. You’ll thank me for it one day.’

  Lakshman couldn’t refuse anymore and jumped into the fray. Confined as he was to the ivory tower, he wasn’t quite up-to-date on the street patois. He did his best and gave up after a while.

  Once on Mount Road, Joshua got busy getting rid of the cache of loose change in his wallet and briefcase, dropping them into the hands or bowls of beggars who rapped on his window each time the car stopped. Nallathambi frankly let them know what he thought of them and their relatives but the lure of a foreigner in the car was too good to resist.

  ‘It is people like you who’ve turned begging into the most organized industry in this country,’ Lakshman said to Joshua.

  ‘Some of the women come with months-old babies. How can I turn them away?’ asked Joshua.

  ‘But the babies are all rented for twenty or thirty rupees a day,’ Lakshman said. ‘If you come here regularly, you’ll see it’s a different kid every day.’

  ‘Really?’ said Joshua.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lakshman. ‘In the good old days, beggars used to come to the house at nights and beg for food. You gave them food and they went away happy. These days nobody asks for food, they only want money.’

  ‘I thought this was the best use I could put these coins to,’ Joshua said.

  Nallathambi began to wind down his poetry in motion once they reached the Teynampet junction. They took the left at the lights and finally got off the logjam. They picked up speed from there and headed in the direction of the Kotturpuram Bridge. The traffic continued to dwindle on this road and by the time they reached the bridge, they could hardly see any vehicles. Except for a few motorbikes and bicycles, the bridge was virtually devoid of motor traffic in either direction. Only a dirt-grey water tanker mottled with rust patches was behind them. Nallathambi, an embodiment of placidity once again, cruised along at a clip of forty kilometres per hour, the speed barrier of that Ambassador.

  ‘What river is this?’ Joshua asked when they reached the bridge.

  ‘Adyar river,’ said Lakshman. ‘But it’s more of a sewer than a river these days.’

  ‘But people live so close to it,’ said Joshua, pointing at the multi-storey housing colony of the slum clearance board with giant, colourful advertisements of Tantex underwear on the facade.

  ‘At least these guys have proper houses made of brick and concrete,’ Lakshman said. ‘If you go a little further up you’ll see huts and slums right on the waterfront. There are many NGOs running package tours.’

&nb
sp; ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. If you go to a ghetto in the US you don’t even know if you’ll come out alive. Here we’ve turned our slums into a tourist attraction like Taj Mahal,’ Lakshman said. ‘Let me know if you’re interested in checking it out.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Joshua said. ‘But I don’t understand this obsession with vests and underwear in this country. I see ads all over the place.’

  Lakshman laughed. ‘Vests are called banian here and underwear, jatti–’ he started to say, but he was interrupted unceremoniously by the explosive boom of something huge and heavy ramming into the car with all its might.

  48

  The windshield shattered and shards of glass rained into the car. Joshua and Lakshman were thrown forward from their seats and narrowly escaped being hit or cut by them. Lakshman bumped a shoulder against the front seat. Joshua with his height, butted the dome of his head on the roof, but the cushion dampened the impact a little. Nallathambi jerked forward and smashed his nose on the horn right at the centre of the wheel and sent it blaring: hell’s siren.

  Nallathambi floored the brakes instinctively, but the car remained in motion. At an oblique angle. Joshua and Lakshman screamed in shock and turned around, clutching at whatever they could for support. Nallathambi gripped the wheel tighter and joined them. They could see the water tanker that had been following them at a distance a few minutes ago. It was now nudging the car to the side, towards the railing of the bridge.

  Nallathambi let out a yelp and then swore – this time Joshua did not ask for a translation. The car gave a wild jerk and detached itself from the tanker. It heaved a little forward, almost bouncing, and swerved about in an arc, the centrifugal force sending Joshua crashing onto Lakshman despite his best efforts. It was all over in the space of a few seconds. Before Lakshman and Joshua knew what was happening, they’d whizzed past the tanker and were now cruising in the opposite direction. Nallathambi hit the brakes at lightning speed – which was the only thing that could be done at that speed in that Ambassador – and cut the engine. He opened the door, jumped out of the car and went sprinting back towards the tanker leaving Joshua and Lakshman flummoxed in their seats, their hearts thumping loudly.