Serious Men by Manu Joseph

Author:Manu Joseph [Joseph, Manu]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Humour
ISBN: 9780393338591
Publisher: Charnwood
Published: 2010-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Acharya was miserable the whole week. All day, he would try to work, try to survive the unrelenting influence of Oparna, and go home to hunger and wakefulness. He realized that his home was entirely the colony of his wife. He was running short of shirts and trousers. Underwear that was usually laid out on the morning bed for him like a buffet, now became rare. He could not find anything. So Lavanya, in the middle of sombre funeral prayers, or while serving food to the mourners, would get calls on her mobile and she would whisper, ‘the nail-clipper is in the leopard-skin box … the box is inside a bag with polka dots in the second drawer of the nightstand on my side of the bed … I cannot explain what a polka dot is right now … yes, lots of dots on the bag … I don’t know why they are called polka dots and not dots … don’t forget to put the nail-clipper back in the box … dry yourself after your bath … And why haven’t you been opening the door for the maids?’

Despite his condition, Acharya was aware that the Balloon Mission was entering a crucial phase. The problems in equipment procurement were slowly being solved. His friends in Nasa were helping to release equipment that the American government had blacklisted after the Pokhran nuclear tests. Despite the torments of love and its weird distractions that expanded time, he worked hard on the many finer aspects of the Mission. He was talking to government servants, scientists and weathermen, redrawing the design of gadgetry, scrutinizing the physics at the altitude of forty-one kilometres and commanding everything in him to ensure that the lab in the Institute was worthy of testing the samplers at the end of the Mission. But he had lost his peace. And the privileges of high thought, and his isolation that had once guarded him from the trivialities of life. The beast of genius inside him was now fatally infected by what he diagnosed as common infatuation, but through a minute crack in the fog of misery his mind could still see the beauty in the conviction that alien microbes were always falling from the heavens and they had once seeded life on Earth.

The thoughts of the origin of life sometimes diminished his longing for of Oparna. Microbe to microbe – that was all there was to life and death. Love was insignificant – a devious evolutionary device. Nothing more. These thoughts comforted him, but only briefly. Ultimately, he realized, Oparna was the unavoidable inspiration behind his renewed attempts to keep the Balloon Mission on target. She was deeply involved in the project, the very heart of the core team. It was the most important time in her professional life. That was why, despite the discomfort of unrequited love, she was not leaving the Institute. Any serious snag in the project would disappoint her, and as a consequence, embarrass him. So he ordained

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