Chosen Twice
1726 Words
Bombay
Governor Charles Harrington sat alone in his office.
The boy’s face would not leave him.
Mahadu Patil.
Five years old.
A handsome child.
Bright-eyed. Quick-witted. Always smiling.
He had visited Government House several times with his father.
Charles remembered him standing beside Anand during one of the tea receptions, dressed in a neatly pressed angarkha and trying very hard to behave like a grown man.
The performance had lasted perhaps five minutes.
Then the boy’s eyes had begun wandering around the room, examining everything with unconcealed curiosity.
Exactly like his father.
Charles closed his eyes.
The memory lingered longer than he wished.
A heaviness settled in his chest.
“I never touched the boy.”
The words escaped almost as a whisper.
He leaned forward and buried his face in his hands.
“I only told the officers to apply pressure.”
For several moments he remained motionless.
Then another thought arrived.
“This was for a greater purpose. Great purposes always demanded sacrifices.”
Yes.
The greater purpose.
Charles slowly lowered his hands and straightened his back.
Fairness.
The logical path by which a man should rise.
Family resources.
Hard work.
Understandable talent.
Not what seemed to emerge from the mouths of Indians whenever a conversation lasted more than five minutes.
Myths.
Inspiration.
Miracles appearing from nowhere.
Memories drifted through his mind.
A discussion with the Maharaja about a new school for girls. They talked about the teachers, the buildings and the funding. The conversation had gone sensibly enough. Then, somehow, it slid into a speech about girls were lotuses, embodiments of Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom.
Charles had spent twenty minutes trying to determine whether the school would actually be built.
Another memory surfaced.
A merchant explaining the success of his trading house. Charles had expected an demonstration involving routes, contracts, and prices. Instead the man had smiled and said,
“When the Divine wishes a seed to become a tree, even the desert provides water.”
The merchant then spent half an hour discussing destiny.
Then there was the scholar.
Charles had asked how a particular mathematical insight had occurred to him.
The answer should have been straightforward about hypothesis, reasoning and proving. Instead the old man had touched his forehead and replied,
“It arrived.”
As though ideas were migratory birds.
Yet the irritating thing was not that people believed such things.
The irritating thing was that reality occasionally seemed determined to agree with them.
His eyes drifted toward a drawer on the far side of the desk.
There was the letter arriving several months earlier from Edward Sinclair, an engineer serving in the Madras Presidency.
Edward had been assigned to inspect an old temple in a village called Lepakshi. To make it specific, one pillar.
A stone pillar that did not touch the floor.
Edward had naturally assumed the villagers were mistaken. He measured it himself. The gap remained— small, but undeniable.
The engineer then spent weeks examining the structure. He measured angles, the loads, the distances…
Eventually he ordered the pillar shifted.
The result was disastrous. The pillar moved slightly. Several neighbouring stones cracked. The ceiling settled by a fraction of an inch. The entire hall seemed to complain. The work stopped immediately.
No explanation followed. Only measurements. Pages and pages of measurements.
Charles could still remember the final paragraph.
“I am entirely convinced that there exists a rational explanation which is called by the locals—the miracle.”
Charles threw the letter into the drawer with frustration.
A few days later he was having the afternoon tea with Professor Jhunjhunwala.
The two men had become close friends after Charles arrived in Bombay. Both loved mathematics and believed in education. For years they had spent countless afternoons discussing numbers, proofs, and impossible problems over tea.
That afternoon Charles mentioned Edward’s letter.
The professor smiled.
“A miracle.”
Charles snorted.
“I do not believe in miracles. Edward simply missed something.”
The professor stirred his tea.
“Perhaps.”
Then, after a moment, he added,
“I did not believe in them either.”
Charles looked up.
The professor was silent for a long while and then said,
“Until one happened to me.”
“Go on.”
What followed was the most inconceivable story Charles had ever heard.
When Narayan had been a young man in Rajasthan, he had dreamed of a machine, one that supposedly manipulated time.
He had built it. Tested it. Nothing happened.
Eventually he dismissed the entire project as youthful nonsense and left the device behind in the family haveli before moving to Bombay.
Charles frowned. The professor’s tone indicated that the story had not ended.
“Last month,” continued the professor, “My wife returned from the market with several small items she had purchased.”
“She was quite proud of them.” He smiled.
“One of them was a jewellery chest.”
Charles waited.
“There was a note inside.”
“A note?”
“A formula.”
“I studied it.”
“And?”
“And I realised it explained the machine.”
Charles held his forehead, not knowing if he should keep paying attention or pretend to.
Not having the reaction from his friend, the professor gave a self-deprecating smile.
“When I built the machine, I did not know why it worked.”
“When I finally understood why it worked, I discovered that I no longer remembered how to build it.”
“What do you mean?”
The professor spread his hands helplessly.
“I cannot explain where the design came from.”
“The dream showed me what to build.”
“Not why.”
“I spent an entire month trying to reconstruct it.”
“And?”
“I failed.”
Charles remained silent, as though weighing the credibility of the entire story.
“Where is the machine?”
“Actually…What was the formula like?”
The professor brightened instantly.
“Here.”
He reached for the paper that always accompanied their afternoon tea.
Within moments equations covered the page.
His excitement grew as he explained.
He pointed at one section.
Then another.
Then another.
Charles leaned closer.
At first he followed. Then his expression changed.
He took the paper and began calculating. His pencil moved faster. Then faster still. A bead of sweat appeared on his forehead. The room grew silent.
Finally he looked up. A strange mixture of emotions crossed his face. Excitement. Shock. And something else.
The professor studied him carefully.
“Where is it?”
His voice was somewhat sharp.
The professor hesitated.
Charles looked away.
“Your wife found the formula inside a jewellery chest?”
“Yes.”
“Bought from a market?”
“Yes.”
“Randomly?”
The professor nodded.
Charles stared at the equations.
Then back at the professor.
“And the machine?”
He voice sounded higher than usual.
“You built it from a dream?”
The professor did not answer.
Charles rose abruptly. The chair toppled behind him.
For a long time he stood with his back turned.
When Charles finally broke the silence, his voice was heavy and dry.
“So you are another chosen one.”
“What?”
Charles turned slowly.
His face looked almost pained.
“Narayan.”
“I always thought you and I were alike.”
“We succeeded through discipline.”
“Through study.”
“Through effort.”
“Through years of training.”
A bitter smile appeared.
“I thought you belonged to the same world I did.”
His eyes reddened.
“But you were chosen.”
He laughed, hollow.
“Chosen twice.”
Something flashed across the professor’s face.
Recognition.
Then regret.
He glanced away.
“It is getting late.”
Narayan was gathering his papers.
“I should be going.”
A hurried farewell.
Moments later the door closed behind him.
⸻
Charles rubbed his face. The conversation with the professor still felt unreal.
Oh but of course it was real.
He remembered visiting the professor several times afterward, trying to persuade him, offering funding, engineers and scholars from London.
The answer was always the same.
No.
Then one afternoon, unable to endure his thoughts any longer, he went walking in the garden.
That was when he saw Elizabeth.
His daughter sat beneath a tree beside an elderly Indian woman, both cross-legged and had their eyes closed.
“Elizabeth!”
The girl opened her eyes immediately.
“Papa!”
Her face brightened.
“What are you doing?”
“Meditation, papa!”
A sudden irritation surged through him.
He struggled to keep his voice calm.
“And what exactly do you gain from meditation?”
Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled.
“Inspiration, papa.”
“The secret of the universe.”
“Just like mathematics.”
Something snapped.
“Inspiration?”
“Inspiration is in books.”
“Inspiration is in calculation.”
“In proof.”
“In discipline.”
“Not in sitting beneath a tree doing nothing!”
Elizabeth recoiled.
The old woman lowered her gaze.
But Charles could not stop.
“We built schools.”
“We built observatories.”
“We crossed oceans.”
“We measured the stars.”
“And now you are telling me wisdom comes from closing your eyes?”
Silence.
His daughter stared at him.
Frightened.
——-
The breeze drifted through the open window.
Charles closed his eyes. He was still in front of his desk, in his office.
Elizabeth was seven years old, couple years older than Mahadu Patil, Anand’s son. Hours ago, he died. He did not order the death for him, but he did lose the life due to the “pressure” he ordered for Anand’s family, no matter how “necessary” these methods were.
For a brief moment guilt stirred within him.
Then another thought rose and swallowed it.
If all of this was true— the dreams, the miracles, the inspiration, the machine… then the world had never been fair.
It does not qualify, it picks randomly.
“That, is cheating!” He sounded as if he was declaring something.
Now the thought settled into him with terrible clarity.
I was not wrong.
It is the unfairness that has been wrong.
- Writer
