IT was a hauntingly beautiful day. The surrealistic light had descended upon a place called Princeton. Man and nature were one. This was Daniel Pearl’s hometown. Thousands of miles away from the terror of his death. Perchance, to stumble upon the house his parents lived, I scoured the streets and stared at charmingly quaint homes that flitted across. Surely, one of them must mourn his loss.
Unlike Pakistan, where you can tell the house of death a mile away by the parked cars and silence of the shamianas, here in America, funeral homes play the host while the bereaved look for a closure behind lonely outposts of life — physically cut off from the world outside. Still, each sequestered home must have a tale to tell, a tear to shed, a loss to share, a soul to bare.
Pearl’s parents shun publicity and his paper, the Wall Street Journal, has set up a fund for him where one red rose if you buy, $3 goes to his family. Americans like celebrating the life of the demised. They are clinical about grief — if you want to condole, give charity. Monetary benefit is better than empty words — is how practical they are. Imagine, if this was to pass in Pakistan?
In search of a soul, I met a soul, inside centuries-old slate and teak corridors of the grand Alexandar Hall at Princeton University. The paling afternoon sun peering through a dark latticed arch cast a candescent glow. He wore a tuxedo and looked around seventy. Was this sudden sighting (like Pearl’s home) imaginary or was he for real? The woman sitting beside moved. And then came crashing memories of another day.
Fifty years ago, David Todd studied Chemical Engineering in these magnificent halls of fame. He earned a Ph.D and ventured forth to conquer the world. He revealed in the wisdom of the ages, conversed with men who made history, married his sweetheart Marilyn and 14 years ago returned to his beloved alma mater and his former classmates.
One of them is John Nash. If you already have not heard of him, you will, two Sundays away, when his life story, A Beautiful Mind, becomes a show stopper at the Oscars. Russell Crowe, playing Dr Nash, can well walk away with the Best Actor award.
John Nash is schizophrenic. He is a brilliant mathematician. He is also a Nobel Prize winner in economics. “As a student, we found him weird,” recalls Dr Todd, “there was something very distinguished about him, he was a loner who avoided attending classes.” In the film, Nash is shown scribbling math problems and their solutions on the windows of his dorm.
Grappling with his mental disease that ate into his genius, Nash lives in Princeton with wife Alicia. He still walks to the university each morning to lecture. He still fights the demons of delusion that live with him: “Statistically, it would seem improbable that any mathematician or scientist, at this age would be able through continued research efforts, to add much to his or her previous achievements. However, I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation my situation may be atypical.
“Thus I have hopes of being able to achieve something of value through my current studies or with any new ideas that come in the future.” Filmed on site, A Beautiful Mind is a movie not quickly forgotten and Princeton not easily erased.
Another Nobel Laureate found his quiet life here “indescribably enjoyable”, and wrote his friend, the physicist Max Born, that he had “settled down splendidly — I hibernate like a bear in its cave, and really feel more at home than ever before in all my varied existence,”” said Albert Einstein, who elbowed out world’s richest billionaire and founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates to make Time’s Man of the Century cover. Besotted, he bequeathed all he had to Princeton — a timeless legacy of fame and wealth.
Today, Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay — who within three years made the small US-focused Internet trading site into a global marketplace with 42 million users and more than $9 billion in sales — has gifted $30 million of her fortune: “I had a great time as a Princeton undergraduate. It inspired me to think in ways that have guided me throughout my life.” She belongs to the class of ‘77.
Four years prior, when Princeton first opened its portals to women, in walked Queen Noor Al Hussein, to be the first of a “golden process — a challenge that ended up being irresistible,” she recalls.
She’s a queen born to wealth, but what about the Pakistani sons and daughters — fortunate enough to get accepted — who must cajole their parents to cough up yet another 3.9 per cent hike in tuition fee at Princeton? As endowments and contributions from the rich slip in today’s sagging economy, ivy leagues and others have raised the economic bar. Out-of-pocket cash grubbing from foreign students, mostly from the Third World, have singularly supported these behemoths for decades.
Even old, rich and retired, clutching their dreams, gravitate around Princeton. From across the street that runs parallel to the 250-year-old citadel of the academia, I saw a sprinkle of seniors basking in its shadows, not wanting to slip into the sunset. Akin to our aged-out politicos refusing to go away — Hamida Khuro ingratiatingly told NYT, post Pearl: “We are bowed down in shame.” Who gave begum sahiba a carte blanche to make Pakistan apologize to the Americans? Nawaz Sharif and his clique of corrupt?
IT was a hauntingly beautiful day. The surrealistic light had descended upon a place called Princeton. Man and nature were one. This was Daniel Pearl’s hometown. Thousands of miles away from the terror of his death. Perchance, to stumble upon the house his parents lived, I scoured the streets and stared at charmingly quaint homes that flitted across. Surely, one of them must mourn his loss.
