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Indian Library

Literary Review
24

All that muchness
In spec-fic,
literature is not
forced to be a
mirror to the world.
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THE LEAD European savants upon one of the
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physical science.” What was the point
Off to Serendip, with wasn’t also the impossible?
of the imagination if the unimaginable
Remote-sensing
When we read, we imagine stuff. The
a bottle of Kuntalin projector playing scenes in our head.
imagination might seem like a movie
This sort of imagining is an extension
of our senses. Let’s call this ‘remote­
sensing’. But the imagination also has
a subtler and far more important job.
Imagination is back with a bang in Indian literature, if the bookstore aisles clogged It keeps us from identifying facts with
truth. A fact exists, or so it seems,
with all manner of speculative fiction are anything to go by independent of us. The truth however
has human fingerprints all over it. It is
a fact that there never was a Don
ANIL MENON lose? You rush to your cabin, seize the Hertz’s experiments, found a way to Quixote. But it is still true that Don
bottle of Kuntalin hair oil, rush back generate and control microwaves, Quixote can inspire us. All facts are
magine this: You’re a Bengali gent on deck, uncap the bottle, and — well, conclusively demonstrated that true, but all truths need not be facts.
of a scientific mindset, middle­ you can imagine what happens next. electromagnetic waves had all the This function of the imagination
aged, tired and recovering from a properties of light waves, and enables us to be more than automata.
Ilife­threatening fever. You were a Imagine Bose published two papers in the research Anyone who has recently
lion once, with a lion’s vigour and a The original version of this story, journals of Asiatic Society and Royal wandered into an Indian bookstore
lion’s mane, but now you’re just a Niruddesher Kahini, was written in Society. On September 21, 1896, at the must have surely noticed that the
balding old cat. Worse, your eight­ 1896 by Jagadish Chandra Bose. For British Association of Science in aisles are clogged with imaginary
year­old daughter, the apple of your Bose, then just an obscure 36­year­old Liverpool, he would stand before worlds that never existed, can never
eye, makes fun of your bald “spot”, Professor of Physics at Presidency some 3,000 white guys, many of them exist, may never exist, and to be mean
comparing it to the Pacific Ocean. College in Calcutta, the year would pre­eminent authorities in their fields, but honest, probably should never
Before you set off on a ship to prove to be a watershed. He had and reveal revolutionary new results exist. Much of this new literature is
recuperate in Ceylon, your daughter begun his research into that would establish him at the terrible, much of it is good, much of it
informs you she’s packed a bottle of electromagnetics in 1894. In the face forefront of experimental is derivative, much of it is innovative,
Kuntalin hair oil. of racial prejudice, bureaucratic electromagnetics research. much of it is this, and much of it is not
A The first couple of days are fine. harassment, lack of financial support, Jagadish Chandra Bose, who stood this, but what is undeniable about all
What was the But on the third day, the ship runs heavy teaching loads, recurrent at the threshold of many worlds, was this ‘muchness’ is that the imagination
point of the into a massive storm, a typhoon. It is malarial fever, and near scientific the first modern research physicist has made a comeback.
from the subcontinent. Like us, his
Comeback? When did the
headed for land. Death is imminent.
isolation, the physicist had converted
imagination if Naturally, you recall the face of your an abandoned bathroom at contemporaries would have been able imagination retreat? Hasn’t it always
the beloved daughter. You remember her Presidency College into a lab, and to easily imagine his story, but unlike been a part and parcel of fiction? Well,
unimaginable words, the bottle of hair oil. Oil? Oil! with the help of an illiterate tinsmith, us, they were scarcely able to imagine no. Writers need several talents to
wasn’t also You’d recently read a scientific paper Putiram Das, designed and built that they’d one day see, as the London come up with a good story. Keen
the on oil and turbulence. A layer of oil, it delicate electronic instruments of Spectator reluctantly marvelled, “a powers of observation, dogged
seems, has the ability to calm exquisite sensitivity. Bengalee of the purest descent curiosity, patience, an ear for
impossible?
turbulent water. What do you have to In two years, he had replicated lecturing in London to an audience of conversation, a sense of empathy,