We were only very few in our class. The subject was Astronomy. Little I realized earlier that rarely students opted for Astronomy as one of their elective subjects during their college studies. When I was young and in school, I had visited Chennai during summer vacations and during those days, my grand-mother used to take me to Marina beach and there, lying down on the beach sand, I used to watch stars and get excited and curious about ‘space’ and whatever is out there. Ever since those days, I was a keen star gazer and I was reading tit bits about planets and stars from time to time. In my small town, there was no reading library worth its name and I had very little access to current information on sky and the stars. Luckily opportunity to study Astronomy knocked my doors when I entered college and Astronomy was available as one of the elective subjects.
We had a very interesting professor Dr.Mohan who taught us Astronomy and he was a master story teller. It was intriguing to learn that it took more than a millennium before the geocentric view of the universe got disproved and rejected and we accepted a heliocentric view, where Sun is the centre of our universe. I was appalled at the knowledge of existence of several universes like ours. I got thrilled at stories about this universe coming into being from ‘seemingly nothing’ during the “Big Bang” and about several stars and planets coming into existence from gaseous masses. I read with great awe how this universe keeps expanding at a great pace. Thinking and contemplating on the possibility of existence of black holes somewhere out there in the sky, from which nothing can escape in their ‘event horizon’ region, frightened me. I never missed Dr.Mohan’s classes and his stories. Our mutual relationship worked on an excellent chemistry of understanding, appreciation and interest in astronomical events and discoveries.
“Binary stars are stars that move around their common centre of mass. Some of them could be large, bright, ten to one-hundred times the size of the Sun, with a cool surface, believed to be at the end of their life cycle. These are known as Red Giants. When a Red Giant sheds it outer layers as a ejected gaseous envelope, a very dense, small, hot star in the last stage in life appears, and these stars are known as White Dwarfs. When matter that accumulated on the surface of a White dwarf explodes, then the star suddenly brightens very dramatically and remains bright for a few days, and then fades away, gradually returning to its dim appearance. This phenomenon is called Nova. The largest and most luminous type of star is known as Supergiant. They are dying stars and have diameter up to thousand times that of the Sun. They are formed when very massive type of star uses up its hydrogen fuel and begins to expand and cool. An exploding supergiant is known as Supernova. It attains temporary brightness of hundred million suns or more and it can shine as brightly as a small galaxy for a few days or weeks.”
Even, as Dr.Mohan was explaining this candidly, his majestic voice exploding in the class room, my mind slowly drifted away to my sister Brinda.
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Brinda, my sister, is extremely brilliant, active, inquisitive, studious and very, very pretty. Simply, she is a star in our house, a pet for my parents and adored by many. I have envied her and her talents from time to time, but I was also proud of her. She was in class seven last year.
Nine months back ago, one day she complained of fatigue and fell ill for a week. She was diagnosed as suffering from anemia and was put on medication. She turned normal soon.
Around the same time, Mr.David, a new mathematics teacher joined her school and he taught mathematics to Brinda’s class. He was very likeable and many students adored him. Brinda, already looked upon as a mathematics genius, was seen interacting with Mr.David more often. Her keenness to learn more and more in mathematics had puzzled Mr.David and he gradually realized that she was not only brilliant, but growing beyond her age in mathematics. Brinda went to him about problems that were more complex and involved a higher learning. She took extra pains to learn calculus, differentiation and integration, trigonometry and a few other areas that were meant for higher classes. Week after week, she was presenting to him tricky problems and her own solutions, in topics that were way beyond her class. Mr.David concluded that he was dealing with a kind of wizard. His own mathematical skills were challenged a few times by Brinda and he also teased her with more complex and varied problems. This went on for a couple of months.
Initially, Mr.David kept things to himself and one day he reported this to the Principal of the school. When the Principal and another senior interviewed her, Brinda astounded them with her speed in solving problems of higher mathematics. They commended her and informed our parents who were extremely pleased and soon, Brinda’s extraordinary brilliance became a common topic of discussion in the school and among our friends and relatives.
The Principal soon began wondering whether they were dealing with a child prodigy in Brinda and sometime later, they decided to put her to test. A few university professors were invited to test Brinda and after several sessions of grilling, they agreed that Brinda was definitely an extraordinary brain.
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While her anemic conditions appeared to have improved, Brinda started reporting sickness more often during the same period. She complained of loss of appetite, sore throat, and had erratic high fevers. Once while walking, an iron nail plunged deep into her toes and she bled excessively. It took several days to heel. Doctors diagnosed that her immune system was getting weak and she was put on further medication. Our parents were very frugal and managed the family on a meager income. They started feeling the pinch of her medical expenses on our finances and their debts were rising. But they loved us a lot. Our residence was shifted to another locality to save Brinda from mosquitoes that were breeding and spreading disease from an open drain near our old house and this added to their expenses and debts. In the new place, Brinda enjoyed better ventilation and clean air.
Meanwhile, there was an open competition in mathematics for students and was conducted at national level at New Delhi. Brinda was sponsored from her school. The judges were intrigued by Brinda’s performance in those competitions and decided to put her on a few higher testing. Brinda won in every test put to her. Learning about her outstanding performance, Brinda received a personal award from the President of India in a special gesture and also the unique privilege of spending a few hours with the President. The President was once a professor in Mathematics in a foreign university in his younger days and he treated Brinda as a very special and unique guest.
As soon as Brinda returned back from New Delhi, she fell ill once again and was hospitalized. The doctors shifted her to much bigger facilities in another government hospital at a nearby town where she stayed for a month. During that period she had a roller coaster ride about her health. One day she was bright and charming and on another, she looked totally devastated and miserable. Whenever she felt normal and was about to be discharged from the hospital, her condition would dramatically worsen. Diagnosis went on and on without any end and doctors had no clue. After a month, she left hospital with a long list of medical prescriptions.
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After she returned from the hospitals, Brinda went on an unprecedented steep ride. She suddenly appeared to have developed the ability to solve many mathematical problems mentally without needing a paper and pen. She solved many complex algebraic equations instantly. She said she was getting images of answers before her whenever problems were posed to her. She literally saw the answers in her mind. She went through another series of testing by several expert groups and she was finally pronounced a mathematical genius and prodigy.
Another day, Brinda vomited non-stop and diagnosed as having serious inflammation in her throat. She was admitted to the hospital. Dr.Surinder from Stanley Hospital, Chennai was on a visit to our place on some mission and our hospital Chief requested him to look at her case. Dr.Surinder suspected that Brinda had something more serious than what was imagined and he wanted to examine her at Chennai. We all rushed to Chennai and admitted her at Stanley Hospital.
And that is when we had the rude shock. Brinda was diagnosed as suffering from Leukemia, a kind of cancer of bone marrow and doctors recommended transplantation of bone marrow as they felt that she might not be able to bear and go through the painful chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Her condition was considered very critical.
The news somehow reached the President of India, who, by-passing all procedures, ordered airlifting Brinda to All India Medical Institute at Delhi. Her treatment began fifteen days ago and is going on right now. I had my classes in the college and my semester exams were due. So, I returned and I am now listening to Dr.Mohan, my astronomy professor describing Nova.
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“Nova and Super Nova are nature’s great wonders. Science is still trying to understand these phenomena and get better explanations. Why some stars accumulate mass, why they explode when others don’t, are all matters of speculation even today.” I heard Dr.Mohan speaking. “But you know something …………… Nova and Supernova are not peculiar to stars alone. If you look at it philosophically, there had been Novas and Supernovas among men, men who suddenly arose from no-where, stayed shining brilliantly for some time and then disappeared without any plausible explanation. That is how, some great men, had appeared among us, made tremendous impact, and left a huge trail of storm and dust. There was one Ramakrishna, a poor Brahmin who was made a priest in a Kali temple in Calcutta. He rose suddenly to a level where he was reverently called Sri Bhagavan, a god like stature and his disciple Narendra, later on known as Swami Vivekananda, for whom Ramakrishna had waited for, shot even further though under the shadow of his Master. Swamy Vivekananda showed Shri Ramakrishna to the entire world. Was Ramakrishna or Vivekananda a Nova and Super Nova? Extend this thinking further. Many names might come to your mind. I am leaving it to you to guess and determine for yourself. Yes, we have had Novas and Supernovas among us too.”
He concluded when the bell rang to tell us that the class was over. The entire class left while I was still seated alone brooding and ruminating: Is Brinda a Nova or a Super Nova? Tears rolled down my cheek.