Eden Garden and Dinosaur

A Story by Sugata Sanyal

Professor Prashanta Bose is a renowned scholar. Though he has a basic Ph D in Physics from a famous university in USA, I am not sure which subject he does not know. He dabbles in Molecular Biology and Theory of Relativity with equal ease.

I, Kamalesh Mitra, happened to be a neighbor. Just an ordinary B.Com. And I work in a small firm as a clerk. I am not sure what he found in me, but he prefers my company than many others. It could be that I am almost a silent listener and apart from some occasional “yes” and “no”, I do not talk much. But I am a very good listener and Prof. Bose can talk to me about any thing without the fear of his idea being misused. It has happened in the past that people talked to him, picked up ideas from him, and then have built devices, from which Prof. Bose neither got any credit nor any money. Now,

Prof. Bose is very careful, he does not care for money, he has enough on his own and also has got huge amount from his parents. But he hates dishonest people making a fool of him.

Prashanta Babu has a habit of doing experiments as well. And he is a staunch believer of creating practical things of importance. His oven and toaster with a mind-controlled device borders the fringe of reality. He has made me take strict oath that I will not disclose the existence of such invention.

On a rainy day evening, I was as usual at his place, chatting away to glory. And I could get good quality food in great quantity there. Many a day, he insists on my having dinner with him. This works well for us both. I stay in a mess and this food is hundred times better.

He suddenly asked me, “Kamalesh Babu, do you feel like seeing live creatures from past?”

I was trying to get a drift of his thoughts. But I muttered that I did think of seeing the Pyramid of Egypt being built. Even I would be happy if I see Tajmahal being built or the portrait of Mona Lisa being painted.

Prashanta Bose burst out laughing. He told me that I have a very narrow imagination. I am just thinking of a few thousand years. With his mega-mind, he is thinking in a scale of million years. This was beyond me. So I did the next best thing, I asked him to explain. I have often found that by asking him questions, I could move away from awkward situation and very fast. He was pleased about my simplemindedness.

Apparently, Prashanta Babu has already done lot of work in this line. It is impossible to keep track of his versatile mind and the various things he creates or thinks about. His main happiness lies in creating something new, which others cannot even imagine. He does not care about Money or Fame. So he hardly bothers about publications or patents.

Few years back, he developed the teleporting device. Once he took me along to Alaska, but it was so cold, I begged him to take us back to his drawing room. And the device is so simple; it looks like an ordinary carpet, which is now being used to cover the old piano in his drawing room so that it does not draw any undue attention. And he always keeps his drawing room locked with his magic lock. When he locks the main door of the drawing room, it also locks all the windows. I will not be able to explain the exact mechanism but this lock has an invisible hand to slap any intruder. And mind you, these are hard slaps. I have not faced these but I have heard sound of people crying from outside the back window of this room. We were sitting in an adjacent room that day.

Luckily, Prashanta Babu was always very patient with me. He will take infinite care to explain things in detail, for my benefit. It did not matter to him that I do not really understand these scientific stuff. My silent listening and my loyalty were of high value to him.

He told me, “Kamalesh Babu, I am thinking of a device which will allow us to see long back in the past. Later on, I will look at the issue of seeing in future.”

I was taken aback. I have heard of such devices and read about such stuff in scientific fictions, never heard from anybody. To keep our conversation going and to find out more about this new scientific breakthrough, I asked my next question, “So, how will it exactly work?”

“It is simple. I have already developed the theory in detail,” told Prashanta Bose, “Let me explain with some example. Have you heard of people seeing some stars blowing itself out? This phenomenon is called "Supernova" and what you are seeing has happened millions or billions of years back. It takes so many years for light to travel to us and when we see the star blowing, in reality it no longer exists.”

I nodded my head in a diligent manner. I really could not see the actual connection between seeing in the past and star blowing itself, but I thought it would get unraveled if I allow enough time to the Professor.

Prashanta Bose started explaining further. He asked me about my knowledge of his discovery of the teleportation device. I nodded my head, vigorously. I do remember about it. How can I forget the Alaska trip!!

Prashanta Babu told me that if we could go to a great distance, ourselves, then we should be able to see our earth as it was in the past. I agreed. But the question which lingered in my mind was how we could see from that great a distance about things on our mother earth. I blurted out this point to him.

He was mighty pleased hearing this query. He, the great visionary and scientist, had totally forgotten about this simple point. He asked me to give him some time to ponder about it, and I readily agreed.

That was last week Friday. The whole of next week I did not hear from him. His trusted lieutenant, Narahari, could not throw any light, either.Only thing he added was he had seen our Professor charging in and out of the house, holding some strange looking objects, these could be some aluminum foils or very thin glass, Narahari was not sure.

The week after, I got a call from Narahari who was panting and was thankfully gulping a glass of water from the manager of our mess. It was early morning of Monday and I was getting ready to go to my office. Narahari told me that I was to join him back to their home. Prashanta Babu is eagerly waiting for me and I should bring some clothes for a trip for few days.

I knew that this is one trip which I cannot avoid. There is not much point in arguing about it, either. So, I packed one or two dresses, and on further thinking, took a large overcoat (it belonged to my grandfather, bought at a war-surplus stores after the First World War) all the time thinking about our last Alaska trip. I never knew that we would go for a much longer trip, this time.

Once I arrived at his place, I saw huge excitement. Prashanta Bose was pacing to and fro in his drawing room. And I saw two peculiar contraptions in one side of the room.

One was our magic carpet, recently dusted, and it was covering a light aluminum frame, it somewhat looked like a palanquin (Indian Palki) to me. I asked him about this one. He gave me a rare smile, and told me, “see Kamalesh Babu, last time we had some difficulties during our trip to Alaska, you were falling off from a great height and I have made an arrangement so that we both can sit comfortably inside this and move around the whole universe”. Things were getting funny but I knew better than that and I did not utter any word. Time will tell. “Where is the connection of trotting around the Universe”, I thought. But his next sentence enlightened me.

“You see Kamalesh Babu, if we want to see further in the past, we have to move further away from our mother earth, right?” I readily agreed. Prashanta Babu explained that we would travel a great distance to see the Dinosaurs.” I agreed again. He did provide some calculations about how much distance we have to move away, to see how much deep in the past. But I am not the type, seeing things of past will make me agree.

“What about our being able to see from that great a distance?” I enquired. Prashanta Babu gave a beatific smile and produced two binoculars. I could not understand. I had once bought a Binocular from our Village Fair and I could only see the mango tree in great detail, merely twenty feet away.

Prashanta Bose removed my doubts. “These are fitted with special elements, I am yet to name this material, but this element adjusts its power of seeing dynamically. Greater the distance, it adjusts its seeing capability. So if you are seeing someone or something from a distance of one hundred feet or one million light-years, you will always see all the great details, in the same manner.”

After a heavy breakfast, Prashanta Babu instructed Narahari that we were going for a long trip for some time, if somebody asked, he should say that we have gone to the village of Kamalesh Babu. Narahari agreed. Prashanta and I, we both strapped ourselves in the Magic Palanquin. I had also put on the overcoat and was sweating profusely. In between, I paid a quick salute to all our Gods and Goddesses. Prashanta Babu does not believe much in these things.

The Journey to past

Soon as we started, Prashanta Babu asked me what were the immediate past things I would like to see. I told that I would like to see a few Pyramids being built. So Prashanta Babu started maneuvering a control panel which I had not noticed earlier.

Surrounding us was great darkness and the earth was looking like a dot by now. But with the special binoculars strapped on our eyes, I could see the areas of earth, quite easily. One has to just focus on that part of the earth, and this binocular had a mental read-out capability of the coordinates of that location of the earth. It could allow us to see any points of earth. So I did see that some great stones were being lifted by hundreds of people in a huge field. I asked Prashanta that the Pyramids are in a desert land, he mentioned that in those days it was not so barren.

We moved further away from earth. And we saw the Maya Civilization in a flash. We were moving at a great speed. Prashanta wanted to see the Dinosaurs grazing. Soon enough, the scenario through our contraption changed and we were seeing some different type of human beings moving around.

I asked, “Prashanta Babu, who are these people?” He replied that these are our pre-historic forefathers. On further moving away, I suddenly saw some great elephant like creatures moving around. But these were having huge necks like Giraffes and suddenly I realized that we were actually looking at Dinosaurs or some variants. Prashanta Babu vigorously agreed. But he kept on going further and further away from the earth.

Now I was quite curious. We have seen the Dinosaurs, have we not?

What more does one want to see? A peculiar smile was on the lips of Prashanta. He did not utter any word but kept going.

Further in to the past

I did not get all the details of this part of the journey as I remember very little but I did realize that we were going for a much bigger surprise. Suddenly we saw that there was a particular part of the earth where there were extraordinarily beautiful flowers and trees were swaying with the mild air flow. I thought that after all this long journey why did we start seeing gardens and all that. Prashanta was still smiling but his eyes had taken a peculiar glaze. I sat straight and was surprised. I also saw that some big snake was slithering in to an area where two hazy human beings were moving around. There was an apple tree as well. Suddenly it struck me that we were looking at the Garden of Eden. Prashanta had kept the human figures a bit out of focus. Suddenly he brought them in focus and we saw Adam and Eve in their birthday suit.

One thing I forgot to tell all that Prashanta Bose is a bachelor and he also does not feel comfortable in front of ladies. And seeing Eve, he lost his scientific control on his mind. Before the snake (Satan) could offer the apple and induce Eve to make Adam eat it, Prashanta brought his control stick fully forward and we made a crash landing in his drawing room.

I was shell shocked. Immediately I took off my overcoat and asked Narahari for some strong tea with good amount of food. We were both hungry after such a long journey.

Later, I had asked Prashanta Babu about what came first, Dinosaur or Adam. He strongly refused to get drawn in the controversy but he did mention that his control systems had a little flaw and as it was reading his mind and as he was thinking about seeing Adam and Eve, it took us to a right distance. I wish the story could end here. Few days later, Narahari came to fetch me again to Prashanta Babu's house. I went immediately. I found him to be quite crestfallen. On asking what was wrong, he answered that he had a peculiar dream.

Apparently, Satan had come in his dream and asked him not to go after such misadventure. He was thoroughly rebuked.

So time and space travel has got stopped for now. Recently, we are testing food from different parts of the world. Prashanta Babu is taking us to different places with his magic palanquin and we are testing exotic food from different places. We had to recently make a quick exit when we had landed in a peculiar place, they eat raw food, and Prashanta Babu is making some special pills for cure of all types of stomach ailments!!!!

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About the author

Prof Sugata Sanyal is the Research Advisor, Corporate Technology Office at Tata Consultancy Services. He is the Honorary Professor of IIT, Guwahati and Adjunct Professor of  IIT, Kharagpur. He is also a Member, Senate, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Guwahati and Member,School of Computing and Informatics' "Brain Trust", University of Louisiana, USA. He is also the Distinguished Scientific Consultant of a International Research Group in the Study of Intelligence of Biological & Artificial Complex Systems​, ​​Bucharest, Romania​​. More about him can be found here: http://in.linkedin.com/in/sanyalsugata