Skip to main content

Halley’s Fishes


Fiction

Arjun was contemplating with considerable amusement on how Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica came to be rejected by its first patron, the Royal Society. 

“You are under arrest.”  The steely voice jolted him out of his amusement. 

“But why?  What have I done?”  Arjun asked as he extended his arms for receiving the handcuff without realising what he was doing.  Life was always a mechanical thing for him.  When his wife served the meals he ate them.  If she was not there, he wouldn’t eat.  It wouldn’t make any difference.  When he saw the handcuffs, his hands stretched themselves as naturally as the sunflower turns towards the sun.

What was the action of mine which attracted this reaction?  He asked himself as he felt the steel of the handcuff scalding his skin.

They were silent, the cops, as they led him out of the National Museum where he was looking at a copy of the cover page of The History of Fishes which jettisoned Sir Newton’s Principia.  The cover showed a flying fish.  The book was written by the scientist Francis Willughby and sponsored by the Royal Society.  The Society went broke after publishing the book.  There were no takers for a book of ichthyology, study of fishes, that is.

It was then that Edmond Halley – yeah, that very same man after whom the comet is named – suggested the publication of Sir Newton’s masterpiece.  If fish cannot sell, how can mathematics?  The Royal Society put its foot down heavily on Halley’s recommendation of Newton. 

Halley sponsored the publication himself.  Sir Newton didn’t bother a bit to help.  He was as cool as when he inserted a bodkin into the space between his eyeball and the frontal bone and turned it there a number of times just to know what would happen.  It mattered little to him whether his book was published or not. 

“So, Mr Husain, you are antinational,” said the Inspector of Police as soon as Arjun was brought before him.  The Inspector’s face strangely reminded Arjun of a shark.

Arjun turned back to see the anti-national Husain.

“What the f**k are you turning back for?”  The inspector roared and implicitly accused Arjun of doing unimaginable things to his mother and sister.

“Answer my question, you BC MC,” demanded the Inspector.

“But I’m not Husain. I am Arjun.”

“What do you think this is?  Melon City?  To change your identity as you please?  We’ve got clear reports from our nationalist wing that you refused to stand up while the national anthem was played in the cinema hall.”

“I never visit a cinema hall.”  Arjun was flabbergasted.

None of the police tricks could establish beyond doubt that Arjun was Husain. 

“Do you have an ID card with you?” asked the Inspector finally.

“I have an Aadhar card, a ration card, a PAN card...”

“I see.  Then why the f**k don’t you show us one of them?”

“They are at home.  Even my cow is going to get an Aadhar soon.”  Arjun thought that the mention of a cow would prove his nationalism beyond doubt.

The Inspector glowered at him.

“Sir!” ventured one of the constables.

“What?”

“There’s one way of proving that he is not Husain.”

“What’s that?”

“Check his dick.”

The other constable giggled.

“Hey, I think you’re right.”  The Inspector turned to Arjun and ordered, “Come on, open up.”

Arjun stared blankly at the Inspector.

“Didn’t you hear, you BC MC, what I told you?  Open your zip and show us your dick.”

Arjun’s hands wanted to move to the zip but he was handcuffed.  Mahatma Gandhi winked from the faded portrait nailed behind the Inspector.

The Inspector motioned to a constable to open the handcuff.

Arjun stood with his trousers lying in a mocking curlicue around his ankles.  One of the constables tapped on his organ with his baton before raising it and staring at it. 

“This thing has that thing, Sir,” said the constable.  “He can’t be Husain.”

“Come and show us your Aadhar card tomorrow.”  The Inspector ordered as Arjun walked out of the police station.

Halley was working also as the Royal Society’s clerk.  Arjun continued recollecting the story from where he had stopped when the cops took on him.  Having run out of money after publishing Sir Newton’s Principia, when he demanded his pay, the Soceity gave him the unsold copies of The History of Fishes

Newton’s laws are wrong, chuckled Arjun, in the world of human affairs. 


Comments

  1. A masterpiece. A perfect blend of modern political scenario with history and science. Might I say a kafkaesque work. Somehow it reminded me the absurdism mr. K faced in The Trial by kafka. Yet another brilliant work.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad to see you here after a long time.

      Yes, it is a Kafkaesque world. Similar to contemporary India.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Good Friday and Some Arithmetic

Two and two is not always equal to four, my young friend Tony says. 2 + 2 ≠ 4, he reasserts. Tony doesn’t think linearly though his thinking has the precision of mathematical logic. See these two, Tony offers an illustration, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. Then add another 2 to them, Ambani and Adani. What do you get? I smile in answer. It’s dangerous to answer Tony verbally. Now, Tony continues, let’s take two beggars from the street. And then add you and me, another two, to them. What do you get? Tony goes on with more arithmetic because he thinks I didn’t get it. (Modi + Shah) + (Ambani + Adani) = 4 persons (Beggar 1 + Beggar 2) + (You + I) = 4 persons Is the first 4 equal to the second 4? T oday is Good Friday. Good Fridays are sad because they are about the victory of vicious political power over simple goodness. Just a few days back, on what’s known as Palm Sunday among Christians, Jesus was led like a hero to Jerusalem, a political fulcrum in those days, by a hu