His Father Visits · The Quiet Exam · Pulse Beat
Mr Malhotra came to Bangalore in the third year, unannounced, with a single suitcase. He stood at the gate of the institute, a lean, grey, upright man in a pressed shirt, and looked at the banyan…
Mr Malhotra came to Bangalore in the third year, unannounced, with a single suitcase.
He stood at the gate of the institute, a lean, grey, upright man in a pressed shirt, and looked at the banyan trees as at a long-lost relative. Dev, who had been told only that his father was "in the area," came running across the lawn. They shook hands, awkwardly, then more awkwardly embraced.
"I wanted to see where you work," said his father.
He took him round: the labs, the library, the dome on the hill. At the telescope, Mr Malhotra stood very still for a long time, looking up at the huge white curve. Then he took a small black sketchbook out of his coat.
"May I?" he said.
He sat on an upturned crate at the foot of the dome and, for an hour, in the cool of the evening, drew it: the white shell, the slit, the long arm of steel, the banyan above. The pencil moved confidently. His hand, which had spent thirty years making bridges, remembered everything.
"It's not very good," he said, when he had finished.
"It's the best thing I've seen in my life," said Dev.