Schrödinger's Cat May or May Not Have Been Here

By Nilam McGrath

What good is a superstitious scientist?

 

For Krishna Kumar, what starts as a harmless superstition sparks a journey that no scientist could have predicted.

 

Aged 12, Krishna is recognised as a child prodigy and gets a prestigious scholarship to St. Sebastian's, a Himalayan boarding school, uprooting him from his Bombay home. There, he discovers his gift for physics and an all-consuming superstitious streak that he believes helps his academic career. A PhD scholarship at an early age to the UK's top Rushbridge University seems almost inevitable, but disaster strikes at the last minute.

 

With his star burned out, he returns to Bombay believing that this path is now closed. But when he's asked to mentor Naveen, a young maths prodigy, his past comes hurtling back to remind him of duty and destiny. Can he face his demons and confront darker practices in the academic world to salvage a new life for himself? And what does Schrödinger's Cat have to do with any of this?

 

Beginning in 1970s India, Schrödinger's Cat May or May Not Have Been Here is a heartwarming story about loss, rejection and finding your place in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nilam McGrath
• Release date: Aug 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781999746520

Book preview

PART ONE

TESTING, TESTING

The memory of how Krishna ended up in the hills was tainted by time. But he knew that it didn’t start with his father’s death, but six months later, with all the tests. Krishna’s orbit changed when his maths teacher, Mr Sen, asked to speak to his mother.

Krishna, please give this to your mother.

Yes, Sir. The envelope was thin. Only one sheet. It can’t be marks, Ma already has those. Outside the class, the rest of Krishna’s trio waited for him.

What’s that? Raju and Amit said together, pointing to the envelope. Krishna shrugged.

More tests? said Raju.

Maybe.

What are you doing all the tests for? Amit said.

Don’t know, I think they just like testing me. Krishna kicked a plastic bottle top while they walked towards the school gate. Shall we go to Delaware? The boys nodded and Krishna’s energy shot up. He didn’t have extra work tonight, just the note to give to his mother. He slipped the envelope into his canvas satchel and ran with the rest of the boys out of the school gates.

Across the city children spilt onto the street after school, sauntering home in packs, past shop windows piled high with syrupy pyramids of gulab jamun and bright orange jalebi, stacked next to tiny bread buns packed with lamb or chicken. Boys jostled their way to the front of the displays, counting out the rupees in their chubby palms before squashing them into the shopkeeper’s hand and making off with patties or crisps or Limca. They huddled together at corners, practising karate chops until each peeled away to move slowly home and the groups of boys dwindled.

Krishna dodged through the crowds with Amit and Raju, taking the long route home, first to The Jubilee Ice-Cream Parlour for pistachio scoops, and then into the Delaware Bookstore. The entrance to the bookstore was framed in red. Its double doors swooshed open and welcomed them with an icy blast. They scattered immediately, each finding sanctuary in their favourite subjects.

Krishna scooted up the stairs to the gallery, knocking each of the bannisters with his sticky fingers until he reached the wall of garish superheroes, knowing exactly which one in his sequence to read. He looked over his shoulder at the assistants skirting the aisles, before plucking a Judge Dredd and taking it to a corner crevice. He sat on the floor, flicked open the comic and let his eyes rest on one speech bubble after another until, finally, Judge Dredd stood tall and proud over his foe. Krishna skimmed through it again, backwards this time, looking at the detail of each picture and mouthing the conversations when it excited him. Smiling to himself, he looked one last time at the cover and stood to take it back to the shelf.

Normally, he would reach for a second comic to skim over – the new X-Men was in – but today he stopped. He opened his bag and took out the envelope Mr Sen had given him, but he panicked when he felt his fingers stick to its middle. There was an ice-cream fingerprint on it now, so he rubbed the envelope against his shorts. And now it was smudged with dirt. He used his thumb and little finger to put it back in the bag, his heart beating in his ears. I’ve done all my work properly. What does Mr Sen want?

His nerves had left him no time for another comic. The assistants were prowling. They were used to the boys coming in to read, but their muddy, sticky fingers were ruining the stock, so now the Delaware Bookstore’s NO TOLERANCE FOR FOODSTUFFS POLICY was very prominent and enforced each afternoon. He was rounded up with the other boys, scolded and sent away.

The peak of the late afternoon hum began to change the sky. It moved from its boundary-less blue into streaks of pink and orange. At a small cluster of teashops, the boys said goodbye and Krishna turned to walk home through the cool blue alleys, deep into the centre of the sprawling colony of houses off Hospital Road. Road Three, leading to Malabar Square was wide enough for five or six people to walk comfortably side by side, and for a rickshaw to rev its way through these ramblers without too much bickering. The road was lined with open shop fronts; heavy stone steps separated customers from the spit and dirt lining the alley edges. Every crevice held congealed mud, litter and dung. Years of city life had made this inevitable. The stench of stale rubbish that had been strewn by bullocks and scavengers cut across the nostrils. Nevertheless, the smell of parathas sizzling and the vats of dhal and masala chai tempted nearby shopkeepers and customers. All along the lane, small doorways opened up to sell everything from plastic and chinaware, to kitchen utensils and dishcloths, swathes of linen and rolls of thread, to electronics and cassettes. As the light of day dimmed, spotlights showed off silk saris, school uniforms and shoes to passing customers.

Further along Road Three, a poster advertising the latest blockbuster – Amar Akbar Anthony – filled the wall up to Singh’s General Store, where Mr Singh sat upright on a stool, framed by the turquoise woodwork of the shop doorway. Nestled next to him, a display of stainless-steel pots, each shrinking in size as they reached a towering pinnacle. Already catering for all eventualities, the enterprising Mr Singh had recently installed a long-distance telephone line and an electronic timer in the window, underneath an enticingly worded HELLO POINT sign.

Opposite Mr Singh’s shop, a short alleyway led into Malabar Square. The houses in the square were pastel coloured, each distinct from the other in small but significant ways. Krishna’s house had jasmine, mint and tulsi resting in pots on the window and porch ledges. The flowers and herbs were his mother’s way of wiping away the nastiness of nearby death and city life; a sickly-sweet combination of cremated bones and flesh, incense and firewood regularly wafted across from the other side of Hospital Road, mixing with the stench of open gutters carried across from the railway tracks on the other side of Malabar Square. The smell would linger over the square’s dusty centre until the next downpour or change in wind.

He stopped at his mother’s side and took the letter out. His mother was shelling peas on the porch. He silently handed over the envelope.

What’s this? Usha ripped it open straight away. Krishna stood close, watching his mother’s eyes dart across the sheet. Ok beta, get changed for dinner.

What is it?

Nothing.

But why is he writing to you?

Because...because you’re doing very well with your extra homework. He’s very pleased. Yes, she said solidly, as if to persuade herself of the contents of the letter.

Mr Sen had been setting Krishna extra homework for months now, which made Krishna feel like he was trailing behind the others. When he reluctantly showed Raju and Amit the first test he was given, they shook their heads.

This is different Krish. We don’t get those.

Sir, he asked when he was handed his next set of questions, why don’t Amit and Raju get these?

Because they can’t do these questions.

But they’re in the top set also.

Krishna, Mr Sen was sitting behind his wooden desk and took off his half-moon glasses, I think you’re finding what we do in class easy, aren’t you?

Not easy, just...boring.

Mr Sen smiled. That’s what I thought. So these questions are to stop you getting bored.

They’re to stop me getting bored, he told his grandmother, Dadima, when they were preparing dinner that night.

You told Mr Sen you’re bored in class? His mother stopped rolling chapattis and threw her hands up in the air, have you no shame?

No Ma! He asked me if I thought the questions were easy, so I said no.

But...? said Dadima. She was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, spreading ghee on each chapatti as it came hot off the stove. Her smile told Krishna it was alright to tell his mother what happened. Dadima wouldn’t let his mother scold him.

But they’re boring.

They were silent as Usha took in her son’s words.

Boring. Because they are easy. Hmm. Dadima said the words slowly and chuckled.

When did they become easy? Are they not teaching you properly? his mother’s voice was gentler now.

Yes, but they’ve always been easy.

Again, Usha was silent, continuing to roll out fresh chapatti. Over dinner, she asked, Why didn’t you say something?

I told Papa, Krishna said eventually, before pushing food into his mouth and swallowing hard to stop tears springing from his eyes.

***

THE JOURNEY

In spite of the choking haze that hung in the air, the membrane of diesel that clung to your skin each day, and the lingering smells of incense and cow dung in porches and alleyways, Krishna thought that the city always shone. It shone and vibrated and hummed with friction and hope. And it was from this shining, vibrating, humming existence that Krishna was eventually taken away.

When he delivered the letter to his mother, he knew something was coming. He waited. Then, he came home and found Mr Sen sitting on the porch with his mother, leafing through a thick folder. Mr Sen’s teacup was empty and there were no biscuits left. He had been there a while. A discussion, no doubt; ideas floated. After Mr Sen left, Krishna’s mother showed him the folder; pictures tucked neatly into plastic wallets of buildings, dormitories and a coolly lit library. Thank you for considering St. Sebastian’s College read the sloping script on the first page, which floated over an aerial shot of a campus. Tinted in the background was the anchoring presence of the Himalayas. The folder had a gold embossed emblem on the front that glinted in the sun when his mother pushed it toward him. Krishna hated it. He sat mute, sulking at the thought of leaving his friends.

You’re brain works differently,’ Usha concluded. ‘Think of what you can become, she had added, almost breathlessly, looking at him with wide eyes. On the phone that night, he heard his mother talking to his uncle. The scholarship will open up so many things for him. But it was when she said, his father would be so proud, that he began to wake from his petulant haze.

He noticed a change in his mother. When Parsotam, Krishna’s father, had died under the tyres of a truck, it was Dadima who held him to her chest while her daughter raged through the house and tore down all the pictures of her gods. That day would always lay heavy with him. He remembered wailing coming from the porch and running outside to find his mother kneeling on the ground, sobbing, and his uncle crouching next to her. His uncle looked up at Krishna, then Dadima.

Ma, take him, he said, pointing to Krishna.

And Krishna knew, even before Dadima grabbed his wrist and led him upstairs.

It was an accident, Dadima said, holding his head tight into her shoulder.

With each explanation of his father not being there, he had felt the rope that had shored him to the world fray a little more. Can I see him? I want to see him, he kept repeating in the days afterwards, not hearing the Nos and the Sorry betas, not seeing the heartbroken, watery faces.

For six months, Usha’s body ached with grief, the thumping in her head blinded her, and her stomach gnawed continually. Now, Krishna heard