One of the most famous educational institutions in America has multifarious stories to tell
AT the dinner table, you’re sitting and telling a story to your English professor with the maid standing near the door listening to the tale. This is the challenge Harvard throws its students: to state a fact simply yet effectively. Never mind if you’re a scientist, philosopher or a creative writer. The oldest university in America favours stories that make sense to a large and diverse crowd, not just a fistful of crusty intellectuals. And remember: no cliches; no jargon; no clunky sentences — they are the death of a good narrative.
So shall we begin our stories? There’s Rupal from San Francisco. I see her sitting alone at Annenberg dining hall among a crowd of students eating their meals watched by marble-busted academics, who attended Harvard during its 360 years of famed enlightenment. They sit on carved pedestals along the teak-panelled walls and the cathedral ceiling so high that these sages are easy to miss. Instead, the eye of the beholder roves around the stained glass windows with humans, the size of life, dabbed in colours, the style of Tiffany, representing allegorical figures such as “Honour and Peace”. The most striking panel is a battle scene gifted by the class of 1860 that lost 12 of its classmates to the Civil War, the only war fought by Americans on American soil.
To jumpstart a conversation, Rupal points to the beauty of the place and I agree with a mouthful of spinach lasagna, halfway down my gullet. Are you from India? I ask the pretty girl whose hair is tied in a bun and her clothes telling me that they are from Chandni Chowk (or thereabouts) in New Delhi. Even her accent has shades of the subcontinent rather than California where she lives. “I go often to Delhi to meet my relatives and also buy my wardrobe; it costs a lot less,” Rupal says. Her interest in me is heightened when I tell her I am from Pakistan. She “loves” Tahira Syed and her mom and when I tell her I am related to the “famous” singers, her big hazel eyes pop out and we become instant friends. She wants to chat more, but it’s time for us to break our nostalgia romp and get back to our academic pursuits. Malika Pukhraj can wait.
The next day, and the day after, and after, I see her again. Always alone. Why do I feel she’s stalking me? I don’t get it. She seems to be waiting for me at meals and always moves to where I am seated with her tray of food. At lunch, one day she opens: “I hate it when my parents tell me not to have anything to do with boys,” frowning. Rupal has come to Harvard for the summer term, “only to get away from them.” Her father owns a business and they live well, have a “great house with a pool” and, her mom is a “smart” fortysomething. Rupal is 20 but callow. Over many meals, she reveals her story to me in small doses. “I’m involved with a man. I love him and we are secretly engaged.” Her parents are in the dark, obviously. The “man” owns a chain of convenience stores and has a big beautiful house. “I have met his parents and they like me a lot. I want to be a dutiful daughter-in-law.”
Next dose: “He’s from Pakistan.” Now I know why Rupal has wanted me to talk about Pakistan instead of India. When are you getting married? I ask her. Her eyes dart around, she pretends helplessness, “Ali’s married. I love him and he hates his wife because she hates his parents who want their son to divorce her.”
So this guy is going to give up his wife to marry you? I ask Rupal. She evades answering me direct, saying instead “I love Mona, she calls me “chotti mama”.
This is sick. This man Ali is taking Rupal for a ride. He’s married, has a wife and a three-year-old daughter called Mona. On top of it he plans to take a “second wife” and is persuading Rupal to do a nikah with him and not tell her parents.
Do you know that he’s committing polygamy which is against the law in America? He can get arrested, I warn Rupal. She’s not listening. Also, she has not officially come of age, but she couldn’t care a whit. Suddenly, I feel sorry for Rupal’s parents. Their only daughter is cheating on them. Imagine when they (Indians and Hindus) find out that Ali (Pakistani and Muslim) is married with a child? I remind Rupal. “Serves them right. I am doing this to punish them; to hurt them real bad,” she retorts.
Split at the roots — very badly — this girl wants to tell me many more tales of her Internet escapades with boys/men in Pakistan “dying” to marry her. But I am through with such infantile stories. This girl has been watching too many Indian movies. Just remember not to get burnt, I tell her.
My canvas of tales ranges from filmi to forensic. And that’s what makes Harvard omnifarious. John and Joe are best friends. One believes in God; the other doesn’t. Who cares? I tell them. But maybe we should. Because, one day these two science students at Harvard can win the Nobel Prize in biophysics and genomics that deal with evolution of life in all its complexities. “Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?” is the debate everywhere today in America.
“No,” Herbert Hauptman, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, trumpets. Dismissing belief in God as something “supernatural,” he asserts grandly “this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race”. Joe backs him, while John backs the majority of scientists who speak of their faith in a ‘Higher Being’ openly and disdain those who want science to be “a godless enterprise,” practised by “secular elitists contemptuous of God-fearing people.”
Continues John, “I support the theory that divides science and religion into two realms,” citing biologist Stephen Jay Gould’s opinion that “science speaks with authority in the realm of ‘what the universe is made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory)’ and religion holds sway over ‘questions of ultimate meaning and moral value.’ “
What do you think? They turn to me. We are sitting in the leafy quadrangle of Adams House (where we live) enjoying the red geraniums and the twitter of birds drawing our attention that they too want to taste bits of our pizza that we are eating. We happily share our food with our feathered friends. “Their names must be written on these morsels,” I tell my companions, “at least this is our belief — what we eat is predestined by God ... does that make sense to you two?” I see Joe roll his eyes and John is quiet, even he thinks my logic is a tad bit off.
Scientists have compared human genes with those of other mammals, tiny worms, even birds, I remind them, getting back to the serious subject of how life was created. But of course, Darwin says apes were our ancestors, and we laugh.
“You will never understand what it means to be a human being through naturalistic observation,” John concludes the story by quoting his guru, Dr Collins, director National Human Genome Research Institute: “You won’t understand why you are here [on earth] and what the meaning is. Science has no power to address these questions. And are they not the most important questions we ask ourselves?”
Yes, they are, I tell them, adding, we cannot create stories in a vacuum, there’s a Divine source that directs us. You can call it whatever, including the theory of “Intelligent Design”. For me it’s “Allah”.
AT the dinner table, you’re sitting and telling a story to your English professor with the maid standing near the door listening to the tale. This is the challenge Harvard throws its students: to state a fact simply yet effectively. Never mind if you’re a scientist, philosopher or a creative writer. The oldest university in America favours stories that make sense to a large and diverse crowd, not just a fistful of crusty intellectuals. And remember: no cliches; no jargon; no clunky sentences — they are the death of a good narrative.
So shall we begin our stories? There’s Rupal from San Francisco. I see her sitting alone at Annenberg dining hall among a crowd of students eating their meals watched by marble-busted academics, who attended Harvard during its 360 years of famed enlightenment. They sit on carved pedestals along the teak-panelled walls and the cathedral ceiling so high that these sages are easy to miss. Instead, the eye of the beholder roves around the stained glass windows with humans, the size of life, dabbed in colours, the style of Tiffany, representing allegorical figures such as “Honour and Peace”. The most striking panel is a battle scene gifted by the class of 1860 that lost 12 of its classmates to the Civil War, the only war fought by Americans on American soil.
The next day, and the day after, and after, I see her again. Always alone. Why do I feel she’s stalking me? I don’t get it. She seems to be waiting for me at meals and always moves to where I am seated with her tray of food. At lunch, one day she opens: “I hate it when my parents tell me not to have anything to do with boys,” frowning. Rupal has come to Harvard for the summer term, “only to get away from them.” Her father owns a business and they live well, have a “great house with a pool” and, her mom is a “smart” fortysomething. Rupal is 20 but callow. Over many meals, she reveals her story to me in small doses. “I’m involved with a man. I love him and we are secretly engaged.” Her parents are in the dark, obviously. The “man” owns a chain of convenience stores and has a big beautiful house. “I have met his parents and they like me a lot. I want to be a dutiful daughter-in-law.”
This is sick. This man Ali is taking Rupal for a ride. He’s married, has a wife and a three-year-old daughter called Mona. On top of it he plans to take a “second wife” and is persuading Rupal to do a nikah with him and not tell her parents.
“No,” Herbert Hauptman, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, trumpets. Dismissing belief in God as something “supernatural,” he asserts grandly “this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race”. Joe backs him, while John backs the majority of scientists who speak of their faith in a ‘Higher Being’ openly and disdain those who want science to be “a godless enterprise,” practised by “secular elitists contemptuous of God-fearing people.”
