Serious Men

astronomers more nervous. The first wave of protest had already arrived. The peons had gone on strike. They had stopped working and were now gathered near the main lawn. Before that they had left all the taps on and had clogged up the toilets with broken cutlery.
    As the regime sat in uneasy calm, Jal steamed in holding loose sheets of paper, an envelope and a newspaper. His excitement seemed unreasonable.
    ‘Where have you been?’ someone asked him. ‘You know what has happened, right?’
    ‘I know a lot more than that,’ Jal said, stopping for an instant when he heard his voice on the television describing Dalits as genetically handicapped. He put the things he was holding on the centrepiece and rubbed his hands. ‘You will not believe this,’ he said. ‘You will not believe this.’
    ‘What has happened?’ Nambodri asked. There was a faint ray of hope on his face.
    ‘Cheer up, my friend, we are going to war. These last few days, I’ve been checking up on that guy and his son. And what I’ve found is very, very strange. Here is Adi’s answer-sheet. It’s unbelievable. He got thirty-nine.’
    The answer-sheet passed from hand to hand. Jal’s enthusiasm now infected everyone in the room.
    ‘This means he is in the top five. A boy of eleven in the top five. Now, let me try to be coherent,’ Jal said. His glasses quiveredon his nose-bridge. ‘Let me begin at the beginning. Do you remember the day when Ayyan showed us a clipping of his son winning a science contest hosted by the Swiss Consulate? I checked with the Consulate. They have never held such a contest. Never. I managed to call the reporter. His name is Manohar Thambe. He said that the news was given to him by Ayyan. Apparently, some language newspapers officially take money to cover news.’
    Nambodri began to pace the floor.
    ‘Are you listening, Jana?’ Jal asked.
    ‘Go on,’ Nambodri said, beginning to understand.
    ‘Then I noticed something strange,’ Jal said. He looked at the television screen. A commercial was underway. So he took the remote and started flipping through the channels until he arrived at one which showed the face of Adi.
    ‘Look, look. Look carefully. He is wearing the hearing-aid in his left ear.’ Jal then showed the picture of the boy in
The Times.
‘This picture went with the article about how he could recite the first thousand primes. His hearing-aid is in the right ear. The article clearly mentions that the boy is deaf in his
right
ear. But in every other image I have seen of the boy, he is wearing the hearing-aid in his
left
ear.’
    ‘What does that mean?’ Nambodri asked.
    ‘Think, Jana, think. How can a boy of eleven recite the first thousand primes?’
    ‘I don’t believe this,’ Nambodri said, sitting down slowly.
    ‘But what about the quiz?’ someone asked. ‘Hundreds of people saw the boy.’
    ‘Maybe his father had whacked the questions. Like he probably did with JET?’
    ‘He stole the JET, didn’t he?’ Nambodri said softly.
    ‘But that’s impossible,’ one of the astronomers said. A supportive murmur followed.
    ‘Listen to me. Listen to me,’ Jal said impatiently. ‘I called up our printers and asked them if there had been any enquiries from Aryabhata Tutorials recently. Two of them said that they didn’tknow, but one of them distinctly remembered someone calling less than eight weeks ago asking when the consignment was expected to be delivered. I don’t know how he got the JET, but I tell you, he did. An eleven-year old boy cannot score thirty-nine. Come on, we have seen geniuses; we know them. We know what is possible. Put it all together, Jana. Ayyan Mani is a con. His genius son is a fraud.’
    Jal then appeared thoughtful. He chuckled.
    ‘What is it?’ Nambodri asked.
    ‘But that bastard did get into Mensa.’
    The door opened. The astronomers looked with the eyes of the dead as Ayyan Mani entered with some faxes. He went to Nambodri’s desk and laid them out neatly. As he walked back to the door he told Nambodri, ‘I am sorry I’m late, Sir. I had to attend a press conference.’
    ‘That we know,’ Nambodri said.
    ‘I wish I could get you coffee, Sir, but I think the peons are missing.’
    ‘We know that too.’
    Ayyan was about to leave the room when Nambodri asked, ‘Is your son deaf in the right ear or the left?’
    The astronomers held their breath. They waited to see fear on the face of Ayyan. But he smiled.
    ‘Both the ears, Sir,’ he said. ‘But