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enchanted musicians kept playing their ragas and the royal audience kept swooning (and murmuring). Soon carbon disulphide evaporated in the lamps and the phosphorus caught fire. In a flash the wicks lit up high with a strange glow to dazzle everyone. There was a loud cheer in the court. And a stunned silence in the train. I don’t know when exactly one of us (pretending to be drunk) came up with the bright idea to transform ‘bad odours’ into fragrance. (The toilet in our bogie lacked a door, and there was an ensemble of houseflies on human vomit. Someone said a new bride had been throwing up.) Professor Singh very playfully massaged the student’s idea and they discussed the experimental procedure . . . He had a smile. To this day I cannot forget his sardonic smile. As engineers you are expected to be ‘ingenious’, he said seriously. In our country we end up becoming ‘one-dimensional’ and ‘obedient’. We must learn to pose the right questions, and question what is considered right. Soon some of you might get involved with the three most important questions. What are they? The origin of the universe. The origin of life. The origin of mind.
    Several times I have tried to recall the train journey. Every attempt a failure. Every attempt a mere fucking iteration (if I am still allowed to use that word). I recall most of us disappointed (and terribly thirsty) because the managers at the brewery had refused to gift us bottles of Mohan Meakin. ‘Company policy.’ This detail is perhaps the most insignificant from that journey.
    The catering-wallah passed by and we ordered twenty-one lunches, eight veg and thirteen non-veg, dal and chawal and dahi and oily parathas with achar. Non-veg thalis had fish curry or mutton with gravy. I ordered fish and this detail for some reason is stuck. The fish is stuck inside me. Some chutiya mentioned surrogate mothers and then a bad joke, ‘Do female mannequins have pubic hair?’ and Professor Singh stared at our silliness and there was a stunned silence. Then someone suggested antakshari and we sang old film songs and Michael Jackson and Prince, and even David Bowie, until someone turned on the radio, first All India Radio, and immediately afterwards the short-wave BBC Radio, which confirmed that Mrs Gandhi had been assassinated by her own bodyguards.
    Good, the bitch is dead, a class fellow said, and Professor Singh stood up and raised his voice. ‘You should not talk like this. So many bullets have been emptied into the poor woman, no one deserves to die like that. To disagree with someone doesn’t mean you assassinate them.’
    The slow-moving train got more and more delayed, and perhaps it was one of the most difficult nights for the entire country. The delay was a tense six-hours.
    Early in the morning we saw people defecating by the railways tracks, Subzi Mandi passed by, and then New Delhi station. Even before it came to a complete halt we saw traces of violence on the platform, but there were cops stationed there, and because the cops were armed with guns and lathis we thought the situation was under control. We spontaneously formed a circle around Professor Singh (for he was the only Sikh in our group) and stepped out of the bogie. I wish my father had been there to receive us, then there would have been no need to worry, but in those days cellphones didn’t exist. Suddenly an angry mob, armed with the most elementary weapons (metal rods and rubber tyres), crossed the railway line and climbed up the platform. ‘ Khoon ka badla khoon say. Give us that traitor sardar .’ We started to run. ‘Blood for blood.’ What broke the circle was a Vespa scooter on the platform. Sudden screeching of brakes, tyre marks, rubber smell. A photojournalist in a yellow windcheater started snapping pictures of the mob, which had fished out our professor. ‘Stop taking pictures,’ said one of the thugs, ‘otherwise we kill you.’
    The thug points at Professor Singh. ‘This traitor