Renowned scientists disappear between 2020 and 2030. Tabish Khair’s new novel unravels the mystery

Jyoti Lankeshwar was not a scientist. She was a journalist from Assam, and her surname was derived from a famous temple in that state. In September 2027, she was gunned down by unknown assailants in the office of the radical feminist and Marxist weekly that she had founded in 2017. The assailants were never traced. Her weekly folded up after her murder. There were some protests. There are still some online protests on her death anniversaries.

In the year 2028, to mark her first death anniversary, some of her friends collated and edited a selection of her essays, for the first time translated from Assamese and Bangla, the two languages she employed for writing, into English. These were essays in which she had interviewed various radical thinkers and leaders, ranging from professors to grass-root activists.

One of the essays was the last extant report on Vijay Nair, once a major scientist, now a folk-leader in Chotta Nagpur. Lankeshwar had met him in the year 2025 in a hamlet about two hours away from Ranchi. The essay was titled, at least in the English translation, “The Scientist Sage.”

The Scientist Sage

The old Mahindra jeep we were in could go no farther. The last five or six kilometers, my Maoist companions informed me, could only be negotiated on foot. And I had to keep my mobile switched off all the time, until I returned to the jeep. “Are you sure you want to go on?” they enquired, because I was a city person, and dressed in a rather elaborate sari. I nodded, slinging on my sleeping bag.

We had been hearing of Professor Vijay Nair – they knew him as Firangi Baba in these parts – since 2021, when he had been associated with post-pandemic labor unrest in the state. In 2023, the government had put a small bounty on his head. Since then, he had gone underground. He was said to have a faithful following in the tribal villages of these parts, though it was uncertain if that was because of his political radicalism or because of mystical mumbo-jumbo.

Lately, there had even been rumours that he was considered an incarnation of Birsa Munda, who had led the greatest tribal uprising against upper-caste landlords and the British in the late nineteenth century. At a very young age, he had been betrayed to the British and had died in mysterious conditions on 9th June 1900 in Ranchi Jail. The British had attributed his death to cholera – the coronavirus of the time – but there had been no symptoms to suggest it was cholera. Birsa Munda has long been revered as a god in these parts.

As I trekked through the brownish wilderness – it was mostly shrubs, stricken trees and rocks – I asked my tribal companions about their Firangi Baba. They told me lots of stories. How he had led them peacefully in the early years, sometimes aweing the police officers and mining contractors with his fluent English – hence, the name Firangi Baba; how he had the ability to foresee every attack by the authorities or mafia henchmen; how he could leave his body and return to it.

It was the usual stuff of admiration and superstition, and, as an atheist, I bore it only because I sympathised with the cause and wanted to meet the leader who had galvanised these tribes. Also because, as I knew, Vijay Nair had once been a world-renowned scientist. But when I asked my companions about this, they seemed to have no idea. “Doesn’t he tell you anything about science and technology?” I asked them. They shook their heads. “So, he only talks about god and religion?” I added, trying to keep the scoffing out of my tone. No, they replied, he never talks about god or religion either. What does he talk about then? I asked. They thought for a while as we walked on, and then one of them replied, hesitatingly: us. He talks about us.

The village was in a stretch where the shrubbery grew denser. Vijay Nair was sitting outside his hut when I reached him. He was sitting on a small mat, out on the ground. It was still only afternoon, and the huts of the village were small and bare – but surprisingly clean. I have often observed that tribal villages in the interiors are usually very clean; they get dirtier the closer they are to urbanity.

Nair had a white turban wrapped around his head and was wearing the kind of loincloth that the men traditionally wore in these regions. He was bare-bodied, wearing rubber chappals, and had two or three days of white stubble on his cheeks. A dark man, with no fat on him anymore – his earlier photos from academia had shown a podgier person – it was true that he resembled the photos and paintings of Birsa Munda that I had seen. I suppose if Birsa Munda had lived that long, because Nair was more than double the age that Birsa Munda had reached.

I have read you. That was the first thing he said. He said it to me in English. Actually much of our conversation was carried out in English, though we occasionally used words of Hindi and Bangla.

I have read you, he said, looking at me with penetrating eyes, the eyes of a professional godman. Did he say it just to flatter me? Nothing is more flattering to a writer than to be told that someone has read her. I felt immediately hostile to him.

I do not write in English, I replied curtly. In English.

I do read Bangla, he said, smiling. Then he added: I know you do not like me.

How do you know that? I asked him.

You are an atheist. You think that despite my politics, I am a religious fraud.

The way he said it, directly, his dark eyes twinkling, somehow removed the bile of hostility from within me. I laughed.

Well, I said, matching his directness. Aren’t you?

He closed his eyes and thought for a while. Just when I thought he was upset and ignoring me, he opened his eyes and said to me, I recall reading that you are a science graduate. Physics, actually.

I was surprised that he knew so much about me. I nodded.

Then you know something about quantum physics, he observed.

I waited for him to continue.

You know that every quantum entity can be described as both a wave and a particle. In common-speak, we say that a quantum entity is both a wave and a particle, which also means that it is neither just a wave nor a particle.

Yes, I mumbled, not really getting what he was leading to.

So, and his black eyes twinkled as he explained. So, when we say that quantum entities are both wave and particle, we are using the words we have at hand, words we know, the world we can see or imagine, to describe something else. Something that evades us. Something we do not have words for.

He waited for me to think about it.

You see, he said after a while. What else can one use but the words that one has, the things one knows? Metaphors, all.

Excerpted with permission from The Body by the Shore, Tabish Khair, HarperCollins India.