THE STERADIAN TRAIL: BOOK #0 OF THE INFINITY CYCLE (13 page)

24

A
way in Kanchipuram, Lakshman suddenly became the most wanted man on campus. Five people in particular felt his absence more keenly than the rest. They hovered about his lair and knocked on the door from time to time like persistent mosquitoes attempting periodic forays on a host, refusing to rest until they sank their suckers into the skin.

The first was Lakshman’s PhD student Biju John. Biju had passed the latest draft of his thesis to Lakshman a few weeks ago and it seemed to have vanished into a black hole. His repeated emails had gone unanswered, so he wanted to corner Lakshman in person and ask when he was going to read it.

The second was none other than Chamundeeswari. She had been fielding frantic phone calls from the Fifth Floor all morning. They wouldn’t tell her what the matter was but the good secretary that she was she could guess: One of Pomonia’s aides had contacted the director’s office with a set of convenient dates for the ceremony and the staff there was trying to relay them to Lakshman as soon as possible. It was a simple matter of passing information but given the high stakes involved, they would only deal with Lakshman directly and no one else.

Next on the list was the head of campus security, Major Madhavan. He was in a deep pickle following the discovery of a dead blackbuck in the woods a few days ago. The poor creature was on the endangered species list and authorities from the wildlife department had come calling on campus, subjecting Madhavan to gruelling interrogation over the cause of death.

Blackbucks had been making headline news in the country ever since Bollywood megastars with a royal sense of sport and adventure went on a hunting spree and gunned down a few of them in the jungles of the north. This case had been reported in the press, prompting the wildlife department to investigate whether some of those stars had been paying a visit to the campus, bringing their colonial passion with them. When Madhavan had no satisfactory answers, the authorities cornered him on a technicality: Was it not his responsibility as the head of campus security to provide protection to the birds and animals inside the campus?

When Madhavan went through his mandate, it mentioned that it was his responsibility to ensure the safety and security of people and property of the Institute. Now, did the definition of property also include in its purview the birds and animals living in the woods? Madhavan couldn’t say for sure. He’d had a restless night mulling over it and had cold-called the director the first thing in the morning. But as expected, the Supreme Being did not have the time or inclination to go into the nitty-gritty of the matter. He directed Madhavan to take it up with Lakshman, the old reliable in handling such affairs, and make sure it didn’t escalate into a criminal case embroiling the Institute. So Madhavan kept shuttling back and forth between his office and Lakshman’s with worry-lines wriggling on his forehead, butterflies flapping in his stomach.

The fourth was Mahendran. He badly needed Lakshman to sign the papers for the replacement of the dead power surge protector in the lab. Lakshman had arm-twisted him into opening the lab and keeping the machines running without it to help his students, but it couldn’t keep going like that. In case something happened, it was the lab administrator whose rear was in line first and he wanted to get the contraption replaced as quickly as possible.

And then there was Divya.

She had been hard at work on the paper for Joshua. Though he had asked her to go easy on it, it was too serious a project to heed his advice; Joshua might not have a lot riding on that one paper but he was not an undergrad gunning for a fellowship from a top school in two years’ time.

After lunch yesterday, once Venus left, Divya had quietly hopped on her Scooty and returned to the lab. The smell there was just about bearable but she’d stayed on till very late in the evening, when she had a draft of the entire algorithm done. She took a printout and went back home, only to resume her work after dinner, proof-reading and making notes for revisions. She woke up early, skipped breakfast and rushed to the department by eight o’ clock to execute all the changes she’d marked out on the hard copy. A couple of hours and the paper was chiselled into a shape she could confidently show to others. While one part of her wanted to shoot it off to Joshua, another part prompted her to run it by Lakshman before sending it on. The printout clutched in her hand, she kept running sorties to his office wondering where he had suddenly vanished.

She was marching down the corridor to check one last time before lunch when a voice called out from behind.

‘Divvy!’

25

T
he mutt had established a university in the outskirts of Kanchipuram which combined tradition and modernity, offering degree programmes in ceremonies and punditry as well as engineering and management. It had a modern library with an electronic catalogue and calling system but the ancient books and manuscripts were housed in a separate enclosure within the library and curated as before by Mali. Ramanathan had alerted him over the phone and he lay in wait for Joshua and Lakshman at the entrance of the building.

‘Hello Professor Joshua! Welcome! Welcome!’ Mali said effusively, extending his hand. ‘What research are you doing this time, sir?’

‘Hi Mali,’ Joshua said and shook his hand. ‘No research this time, I’m here just like that.’

He introduced Lakshman and Mali to each other and chatted with him for a couple of minutes.

‘Your student didn’t come with you this time?’ Mali asked once the ice-breaking was over.

‘No, but I thought he’d have come here by himself,’ said Joshua. ‘Any chance he paid a visit to the library, sometime in the last couple of months?’

‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said Mali. ‘The last time I saw him was when he came with you.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes sir,’ Mali said. ‘He didn’t come to my section with all the old books and palm leaf manuscripts, that much I can say for sure. There is no way anybody can go inside without my permission.’

‘Oh,’ Joshua said, his cup of disappointment brimming over. He’d been so sure the trip to Kanchipuram was going to throw up something. He didn’t expect it would fizzle out like this.

Having come all the way, Lakshman decided to take a look at the ancient books and manuscripts archived in the library. Mali gave him a guided tour and Joshua joined them half-heartedly. That done, they thanked Mali and took their leave.

As their car made its way out of the university campus, Lakshman said, ‘For all you know, Josh, this guy may not have had much of an axe to grind in India. He may have been onto something somewhere else, but not here. His trips down south may actually have been just for sightseeing.’

‘That’s a possibility I can no longer discount, I guess,’ Joshua said. ‘Even for a crook, he happened to be somewhat of an architecture buff. Used to rave about fractal geometry patterns in Indian temple architecture. He might very well have gone to check them out. But let’s go back to the city and see.’

~

Joshua had promised to drop Lakshman home before sundown and he did so with several hours to spare. It was only a little past one o’clock when the car screeched to a halt on Bonn Avenue.

Lakshman opened the door and then turned around. ‘Why don’t you have lunch with us at home?’ he asked Joshua. ‘Urmila has been pestering me to bring you home for lunch or dinner. Provided, of course, that you’re willing to put up with vegetarian food.’

‘Thanks, Lax, but I’ll take a rain check on that,’ he said. ‘I need to exchange some money, and,’ he lowered his voice here, ‘I’ve asked the other guy to do some more snooping around. I want to track him down and see if he has anything.’

‘Oh, okay,’ Lakshman said and got down from the car.

‘Thanks for going with me, Lax,’ Joshua said, ‘though it didn’t lead anywhere.’

‘Not at all,’ Lakshman said. ‘The library made it worthwhile for me personally. So thank
you
.’

‘Hey, wanted to ask you something,’ Joshua said. ‘Seven o’ two o’ nine, or numbers seventy, twenty and nine, anything make sense to you?’

Lakshman thought about it for a moment and said, ‘No, I don’t think so. Where did this come from?’

‘That cop Carla asked me last night. Apparently Jeffrey mentioned them on his 911 call before passing out,’ Joshua said. ‘Let me know if anything rings a bell.’

‘Sure.’

The driver gunned the engine and Lakshman waved goodbye to Joshua.
Seven o’ two o’ nine. So is that what this is all about?

26

T
here was no mistaking who was calling her. Divya quickly rolled up the printout in her hand and turned around.

Venus caught up with her in a few strides. He was whistling and twirling his bike keys.

‘What’re you doing here?’ Divya asked.

‘My question exactly.’

‘But I asked first.’

‘Came to check my letters and thought I’d look you up in the lab.’

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘Called your house in the morning to see if you wanted to go to the campus today, but your mom said you’d already left!’

‘Any good news yet? You were whistling happily?’

‘Good news? So early? No. Just got an acknowledgement that my application was received and my file is complete,’ Venus said. ‘Tell me, what are
you
doing here?’

‘Nothing much really.’

‘You come to the lab at eight o’ clock in the hols for nothing? Stop lying,’ Venus said. Then pointing at the roll of paper in her hand, asked, ‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then it’s got to be something,’ Venus said and made a lunge for it.

‘Hey, what’re you doing!’

But Venus had already yanked the printout from her hand.

‘Give it
back
!’ Divya yelled and tried to snatch it.

But Venus, who was half a foot taller than she was, held it high over her head. She tried jumping but he inched up on his toes and it was still beyond her reach. When she gave up, fretting and fuming, Venus unrolled the sheets and started reading aloud. ‘A Non-Robinsonian Push-Pop Radix Bucketing Algorithm for the Shortest Path Problem. Shortest Path Problem?’ he said. ‘You people study this thing?’

Divya glared at him, her face flushed.

‘Relax, Divvy,’ Venus said and handed back the printout.

Divya grabbed it. ‘Monkey! I hate you!’

‘You people study this thing?’

‘Yeah,’ Divya said, calming down. ‘Why, you know about it?’

‘Yeah, heard of shortest paths in traffic planning, but not this Non-Bucketing Robinson Radish whatever. How do you make sense of these things? It’s so difficult to understand papers written by other people.’

‘Papers written by
other people
, yes.’ Divya had to struggle to suppress the smile blossoming on her face.

‘Adi paavi!
Don’t tell me you wrote this thing yourself,’ Venus said.

Divya broke into a toothy smile.

‘So this is what you’re keeping from me? Writing a paper behind my back?’ Venus said. ‘How long has this been going on?’

‘Just started yesterday.’

‘Yesterday and you already have so much done? Are you kidding me?’

‘No, I swear. It happened all of a sudden, by accident,’ Divya said and related the details of her little encounter with Joshua.

Venus listened to her, a melting pot of emotions, a nebulous mixture of pride, joy, envy and inadequacy churning uneasily in his mind. But this was only the beginning. He had to brace himself for more such situations in the future.

‘The rate at which you’re going Divvy,’ he said, ‘you’re going to end up in the US before I do.’

‘This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you,’ Divya said. ‘Why do you have to keep comparing us all the time? You’re worse than my mom sometimes.’

Seeing her genuinely miffed, he changed his tone. ‘Okay, sorry, I won’t,’ he said. ‘But what’re you still doing here if the paper’s done?’

‘I wanted to ask Lara to glance through it before sending it.’

‘I don’t think he’ll be there. It’s lunchtime.’

‘Let me check one last time. If he’s not there, I’ll go home, eat and come back in the afternoon.’

‘I actually came here to see if you wanted to go for lunch with me.’

‘You’re not going home for lunch?’

‘No, I have some work to do for the project. I don’t want to go so far and come back.’

Venus had been working with a telecom company for his final year project on Geographic Information Systems. His work involved collecting vital data about major cities and towns in India and storing them efficiently in a GIS database.

‘Then why don’t you come home with me? We can have lunch and come back together.’

‘No way,’ Venus said. ‘I promised your mom I’ll get her three thousand
Sri Ramajayam
s by today. I only have about a thousand done. If she sees me, she’s going to lock me up in a room till I finish writing the rest.’

Divya laughed. ‘Who asked you to make a promise you can’t keep?’ she said. ‘Let’s eat out then. But let me just call her first and tell her not to wait for me.’

After knocking on Lakshman’s door one more time, they made their way out of the campus on Venus’s Honda, overtaking a sturdy Ambassador at the security gate. Divya had her dupatta drawn around her head and didn’t notice a pensive Joshua sitting in the Ambassador with the window wound down, or the two men trailing him on a motorbike a few yards away.

~

Joshua could have changed money right at the Oceanic but he preferred the American travel bureau he had learned to trust over the years.

Perhaps, if he hadn’t made that detour and instead returned immediately to the Oceanic, he might have been able to forestall – or at least postpone – what was going on there.

27

G
iven her proximity to Lakshman’s office, Chamundeeswari was the first person to swoop in on him when he returned. When she told him Fifth Floor had been trying to reach him desperately, he rushed there without wasting any time. The director wasn’t in, but he’d left a message for Lakshman in a sealed envelope, along with the list of dates from Pomonia’s office. The first thing Lakshman had to do was to make sure the annual culfest didn’t clash with Pomonia’s schedule. He dashed straight to the Dean of Student Affairs who had the final say on the festival and brought him on board.

When Lakshman came back huffing and puffing to his office, Mahendran, Major Madhavan and Biju John were lying in anxious wait for him, vying with each other for his attention: Who was he going to entertain first?

‘Power surge protector, is it?’ Lakshman addressed Mahendran first. He knew that would be quick.

‘Yes sir,’ Mahendran said and extended a bunch of papers.

‘Where do I sign?’ Lakshman signed on the dotted lines without ado and dismissed Mahendran.

Between Madhavan and Biju, it was the Major who emerged the winner. Lakshman asked Biju to meet him later and ushered Madhavan into his office. He gave him a patient hearing and told him not to worry because the birds and animals on campus were not a property of the Institute, strictly speaking. They were a property of the neighbouring Raj Bhavan. When the Institute was founded by the Central Government in the fifties, the State Government had carved off a forest area belonging to the Governor’s House and donated it for the campus. The terms of the donation only included the tract of land, not the birds and animals housed therein. They were still a property of the Governor’s House but were deemed sheltered at the Institute – which was why death or injury to any of the birds and animals on campus had to be promptly reported to the Governor’s office; which was also why Lakshman had got so worried when the little monkey lay unconscious in his lab. Therefore, Lakshman told Madhavan, while the Institute would do all it could to ensure the safe, secure, peaceful and natural habitation of all the fauna on campus, it would be grossly inappropriate and impertinent on its part to accord them the same or similar treatment as its property – fixed or chattel – and bring them explicitly within the ambit of responsibilities of the Head of Security.

His eyes misting over, Madhavan thanked Lakshman and went back to his office.

The sight of Biju earlier reminded Lakshman of the promise he’d made him weeks ago. He pulled up his thesis draft and began going through it. He’d barely finished reading the introductory chapter when the next visitor knocked on the door.

‘Can I come in, sir?’

Had it been anyone else, Lakshman would have dismissed them quickly. But Divya had done him proud before Joshua and he waved her in.

‘Good job the other day,’ he said, beaming. This was the first time he was seeing her in private after the seminar and decided a word of appreciation was in order.

For two people launching their careers on the same footing as PhDs from Georgia Tech, Lakshman and Joshua presented a study in contrast. Their friendship notwithstanding, Lakshman used to be Joshua’s nemesis during their Atlanta days. He was an all-star grad student who always managed to elbow out Joshua when it came to fellowships and awards. Though he got into Georgia Tech a year after Joshua, he managed to complete his dissertation a few months ahead of him. But all that brilliance was hoary past. Decades down the road, the scales had tipped beyond redemption.

But there was one cause for comfort for Lakshman: though he might have personally taken the low road vis-à-vis Joshua, he was training and unleashing a legion of young students like Divya to take on the likes of Joshua in their own backyard. Divya’s blitzkrieg at the seminar had only reinforced this and he wanted to give the girl her due.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Divya said.

‘Don’t let go of Joshua. He could come in handy later. Better follow up with him and get the paper out.’

‘Yes sir, that’s what I wanted to talk about,’ Divya said. ‘I’ve just finished typing up the thing.’

‘Send it to him ASAP. Strike when the iron is hot.’

‘Yes sir, but I wanted to show it to you first.’

‘Don’t worry. It’ll be okay. Just send it.’

‘But I’d feel more comfortable if you went through it once, sir.’

‘I’m already overdue on Biju’s thesis, Divya. I don’t want to delay it further. I don’t want my students jumping from the terrace because I’m taking too long to read their thesis.’

‘It’s only eight pages, sir.’

‘All right, leave it with me; I’ll try get back in a day or two,’ Lakshman said.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘If you see Biju in the lab, ask him to come and see me. I want to tell him not to worry, I am in the process of reading his thesis,’ Lakshman said and muttered under his breath, ‘for the twenty-second time.’

‘Yes sir.’

Divya pushed the chair back and stood up.

‘One more thing,’ Lakshman said.

‘Yes sir?’

‘Seven zero two zero nine. Anything special about the number?’

Divya thought about it for a moment. It was an odd number but was divisible by nine and by extension by three as well. So it was not a prime number or anything. ‘Sorry sir, can’t think of anything off the top of my head.’

‘Okay, let me know if anything strikes you later.’

‘Yes sir.’

She picked up her Eastpack and pulled the door open.

‘Another thing,’ Lakshman said.

‘Yes sir?’

‘If you have to keep the lab windows open when you work, make sure you close them when you go home.’

Divya flinched in shock and let go of the door. But Lakshman gave her a mischievous smile. There was nowhere to hide. The wily prof knew!

~

Lakshman was at the fag end of an intense counselling session with Biju when the phone rang and brought the proceedings to a close.

It was Joshua.

‘Hey Lax, is this a good time to talk?’ he asked with palpable concern. ‘Something serious has come up.’

‘One sec, Josh.’

Lakshman dismissed Biju John with some more words of assurance and got back to Joshua.

‘Yeah, what’s up Josh?’

‘My laptop’s disappeared.’