The Time Machine of Marwar

Epilogue

Witnesses

Even today, among the camel caravans that still cross the deserts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, an old story survives.

They say that somewhere in the Rann of Kutch, where the white salt crust begins to soften into mud, when the hot wind carries a veil of shimmering mist across the horizon, a figure sometimes appears.

A one-armed man wearing a pair of worn boots, holding a wooden box against his chest, walk across the endless salt.

If you call to him, he never turns; If you try to catch him, he never comes closer.

The locals usually laugh. “A desert mirage,” they say. One shrugs. Another changes the subject.

But if you remain at the roadside tea stall long enough, after the camels have been tied for the night and the desert wind begins to whistle through the ropes, the old guide who always sits alone in the same corner may lower his voice.

“I once knew a man,” he says. “I saw him disappear into the salt. He was holding a box, like a father holding his child.”

The old guide stares into the darkness for a long while.

“He never came back. But sometimes… I still think I can see him. Walking, for days, for months, for years.”

Then he smiles at himself. “I am an old man now. My eyes are no longer what they used to be. Who knows? It was a very long time ago.”

⸻

The Professor

The Professor was very old now. He sat quietly beside his bed. From the bedside drawer he took out a small jewellery box. Inside lay a yellowed piece of paper. A single line of mathematics.

Then his eyes drifted to the small photograph standing beside the box. That was Ramu on the day he graduated from Elphinstone College.

The Professor smiled. Very slowly, he touched the young man’s face in the photograph.

“My beta…”He whispered.

He placed the paper back inside the jewellery box. Closed the lid. Returned it to the drawer. Closed the drawer.

Then he lay down upon the bed. Folded his hands across his chest. Closed his eyes. And quietly left the world.

⸻

The Jewellery Box

January, 1903.

A teenage boy knelt before the family shrine. In front of him lay a sheet of paper. Upon it was written a mathematical formula.

He did not know where it had come from. Like so many others before it, it had arrived in his dream.

At dawn he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Bowed once more before the shrine. Then he folded the paper and slipped it into his mother’s jewellery box.

On the inside corner of the lid, written in a young hand, were the words:

Srinivasa Ramanujan

⸻

The End