Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

1

It should have been the greatest day of his life. His youngest daughter, Jasmine, had flown from Colorado to share in his triumph. There had been pieces in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal which were all but premature celebrations: ‘Like Usain Bolt in the hundred,’ the former read, ‘like Mrs Clinton in November, this is one front-runner who cannot lose.’ The Academy were famous for their secrecy, their cloak-and-dagger strategies to stave off leaks, but this time even the bookies agreed – the Nobel Prize in Economics 2016 belonged to Professor Chandra.

He did not sleep that night, only lay in bed imagining how he would celebrate. There would be interviews, of course, CNN, BBC, Sky, after which he would take Jasmine out for an early brunch before her flight, perhaps allowing her a glass or two of champagne. By evening the college would have organised a function somewhere in Cambridge. His competitors would be there, all the naysayers and back-stabbers and mediocrities, but Chandra would be magnanimous. He would explain how the million-dollar cheque and the banquet in December with the King of Sweden meant nothing to him. His real joy lay in being able to repay the faith shown by his departed parents, trusted colleagues and his old mentor, Milton Friedman, who had once helped him change his tyre in the snow in the days when Chandra was still a lowly Associate Professor.

By mid-morning he had rehearsed his victory speech a dozen times. Still in his dressing gown, he brought a cup of coffee to his bedroom and placed it by the telephone before stretching out on the bed, his hands behind his head, in anticipation of the call. An hour later his daughter entered to find him snoring on top of the covers.

‘Dad, wake up,’ said Jasmine, shaking his foot. ‘Dad, you didn’t get it.’

Chandra did not move. He had waited so long for this, suffered through so much; his BA at Hyderabad, his PhD at Cambridge, his first job at the LSE, that punishing decade at Chicago and, after his return to Cambridge, the crash of 2008, the instant vilification of his tribe, the doubts, the pies in face, and every year afterwards the knowledge that though his name had been on the committee’s longlist in April and their shortlist in the summer, that 18-carat-gold medal had still ended up in someone else’s fist. This was the year his ordeal was supposed to end, the year that should have made it all worthwhile.

‘And who, may I ask, was the lucky recipient this time?’

‘There were two of them,’ said Jasmine.

Chandra jerked his body erect, shoved two pillows behind his back, his reading glasses onto his nose.

‘Names?’

‘Can’t remember.’

‘Try.’

‘Heart and Stroganoff, something like that.’

Chandra groaned. ‘Not Hart and Holmström?’

‘Yeah. I think so.’

‘So who will it be next year? Starsky and Hutch?’

‘I don’t know, Dad. Maybe.’

‘Well, that’s that, then,’ he said, pulling the covers over his body and realising that, were it not for his daughter, he would probably remain in that position until next year.

Ten minutes later Jasmine returned to tell him that a group of journalists were outside the house. Chandra met them, still in his dressing gown, and politely answered their questions. It was his daughter’s idea to invite them in for coffee, which meant he ended up sitting at his kitchen table with four members of the local press: one from the Grantchester Gazette, one from the Anglia Post, and two from the Cambs Times.

‘We’re so sorry, sir,’ said a young woman from the Gazette, who appeared close to tears.

‘It was yours,’ said the man from the Times, who smelled of gin. ‘We were hoping for a fine party tonight.’

‘Well, now, now,’ he replied, touched by their kindness. ‘C’est la vie.’

‘It should have been you, sir,’ said the woman. ‘It simply should have been you.’

‘Oh, de rien, de rien,’ he said, wishing he could stop speaking French, a language he had no knowledge of at all. ‘Laissez-faire.’

Before the journalists left he assured them he was delighted for the winners and was glad it was all over and was looking forward to seeing them again next year. His performance fooled everyone except for Jasmine who for the rest of the morning repeated the same sentence with a seventeen-year-old’s mercilessness, asking, ‘Are you all right, Dad? Are you all right?’ keeping at it no matter what he said until finally, on the way to the airport, he lost his temper and shouted, ‘Can’t you see I’m fine?’

In the past he would have assumed Jasmine’s inquisition was motivated only by sweetness and concern, but now Chandra was convinced there was malice involved, that Jasmine had finally entered into the family tradition of torturing the patriarch, if this was what he still was, for she was a teenager now and lived with her mother in Boulder who blamed him not only for the divorce, three years old now, but also for the rise of Ebola and Boko Haram.

As soon as he reached home the phone began to ring with a stream of condolence calls that continued throughout the day and then, more sporadically, for the rest of the week. For the following month people he barely knew stopped him in the street to offer their sympathies, men and women who couldn’t have named three economists had their lives depended on it.

By November the hysteria had died down, replaced by horror at the US election, and it was then that Chandra realised, in all probability, he would never win the prize now. The odds had gone down a decade before when the Bengali had worked his unctuous charm, but even if time enough elapsed for another Indian to win, the field had changed. For years economists had wantonly obscured their profession, rendering everything absurdly technical with incomprehensible logarithms such that they were treated more like mystic seers than social scientists. Economics was little more than a poor man’s mathematics now, but Chandra still struggled with calculus, considering it beneath him, a task for a penniless research assistant.

In any case, his slide to the right was hardly something the Scandinavians were likely to reward; that sub-subcontinent of mediocrity would consider it a signal of intellectual and moral deviance. It was what Chandra loathed most about liberals – their shameless self-righteousness, as if the species’ failings were always someone else’s fault, while anything they did, murder and arson included, were heroic acts in the service of liberty and justice. In point of fact, the Swedes weren’t even liberals. They were neutrals, abstainers who behaved as if they had deliberately chosen not to become a superpower in the interests of preserving their objectivity.

Chandra wished he had just one Swedish student he could torment mercilessly, but the closest thing was a Dutch girl with an American accent who was, regrettably, quite bright. And so he went on giving his lectures and affecting the appearance of a man too wrapped up in his own research to notice that such a petty and trivial thing as the Nobel Prize even existed.

On the Wednesday morning after term had ended, Chandra walked across the meadows from his home in Grantchester to the university, something he did only when breakfasting with the Master of the college. Chandra’s was at Gonville & Caius, where he was Emeritus Clifford H. Doyle Professor, a lifetime appointment that left him free to teach as much or as little as he wished. Like Professor Hawking, Chandra was as permanent a fixture at the college as the flock of stone gargoyles on the roof.

‘Morning, Professor,’ said the head porter, Maurice, touching his bowler hat.

‘Morning, Maurice,’ said Chandra, accepting his post which consisted of the new edition of the Economic Journal and half a dozen invitations to tea parties and functions he would almost certainly not attend.

‘Master’s expecting you, sir,’ said Maurice who, like many porters, succeeded in being deferential and authoritarian at the same time. ‘Mind your step. Heavy frost this morning.’

‘Excellent,’ said Chandra, and tramped into Tree Court, so named after the ‘Swedish bean’ trees which, now bare and spindly, lined the path.

At the entrance to the Master’s Lodge, he was received by a waistcoated, poker-faced servant who took his coat and scarf while Chandra crossed to the dining room where the Master was reading The Times in front of the fire.

‘Good to see you, Chandra,’ said the Master, who always pronounced Chandra’s name as if embarking upon the word ‘chandelier’ before losing his train of thought.

‘And you, Master. Freezing outside.’

Like many English intellectuals, the Master preferred his home only very lightly heated in the manner of a bleu steak, claiming it ‘improved the mind’.

‘These are cold times,’ he said, a reference to the election, in all probability.

‘Quite,’ said Chandra.

The Master looked younger than his years. He had a full head of hair, slicked back with brilliantine, and his eyes, though pointing in different directions, were very blue. He had been an Olympic hurdler many years ago until a rival kicked grit into his face and he lost the sight in his right eye. Rumour had it he had gone to Kenya in the early seventies to give private coaching in track to Idi Amin. From the battle lines on his face it wasn’t hard to believe he was a man who had lived several lives.

The Master ushered him to the dining table, large enough for forty. As always Chandra enjoyed the surroundings, the Dutch masters on the walls, the servants standing by the doors, the solid silver cutlery and soup tureen collectively worth almost half a million pounds. Usually their conversations were about the economy, with Chandra taking on the role of therapist, gently reassuring the Master that Britain would not become a Third World country in five years’ time.

‘So how are things, Professor?’ asked the Master. ‘Recovered from your little disappointment? I must say, we were all terribly sorry you couldn’t become our fifteenth.’

The college, thus far, had produced fourteen Nobel laureates. Indeed, earlier that year some of the more well-informed fellows had taken to referring to Chandra as ‘Fifteen’, a practice they had now discontinued.

‘Oh, I’m quite well,’ said Chandra, pushing his coffee cup towards the servant and nodding at the offer of fresh strawberries to accompany his croissant.

‘But the last few weeks must have been difficult, eh?’ said the Master. ‘Rather stressful?’

‘Oh, not at all,’ said Chandra, who was now accustomed to spending entire weekends in bed. ‘I tend to rather take these things in my stride. Medals come and go.’

‘Yes,’ said the Master, and put down his knife before running his fingers through his hair. ‘Yes, they do, but … this is a little delicate, but some people seem to think you may have been feeling the strain somewhat of late.’

‘They do?’ said Chandra, sensing an ambush.

‘Well, there have been complaints.’

‘From whom?’

‘Students,’ said the Master. ‘Undergraduates, mostly.’

‘Oh,’ said Chandra, relaxing. ‘Oh, I see.’

‘Yes, it seems you’ve made a few rather abrupt comments. Of course, they have no idea what you’ve been going through, but a few did take it rather hard. I mean, ordinarily this would be a matter for the Dean, but seeing as it’s you, I thought I would talk to you personally.’

‘I’m sorry, Master,’ said Chandra. ‘But I can’t recall saying anything abrupt.’

‘Yes,’ said the Master, taking out his notebook, which was not a good sign. ‘Well, some of them are a little oversensitive. But there was one girl whom it seems you referred to repeatedly as an “imbecile” in front of her peers, owing to what she described as a legitimate intellectual difference.’

‘Yes,’ said Professor Chandra, who remembered the incident well. ‘You see, Master, I am often lenient with my students. I don’t expect them to show up sober to tutorials; I didn’t object when one plagiarised his essay from my own book; but I do expect them to acknowledge fundamental economic facts. This girl described the Keynesian multiplier as a “trickle-down myth”. This isn’t something one can have an opinion about, Master. It is a fact that if companies make higher profits they invest more and so employment increases. One can’t go out in a thunderstorm and say, “In my opinion the sun is shining.” But the student in question did exactly this, and so I pointed out another fact.’

‘That she was an imbecile,’ said the Master.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, of course, I quite understand. But in this day and age the word “imbecile” is rather, shall we say, politically incorrect.’

‘Even if the person in question is an imbecile?’

‘Especially if the person is an imbecile,’ said the Master, and smiled, though in a manner more suggestive of toothache than mirth. ‘Look, Chandra, it’s understandable that you’ve been feeling the strain of late. It can’t be easy being such a high-profile figure, with so many expectations from so many people. That’s why I did think – in fact, a few of us thought – you might benefit from a short holiday, or a sabbatical perhaps. It’s up to you of course, we’d never force anything like that on you. But it might be worth considering.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Chandra.

‘But it’s worth thinking about, isn’t it?’

Chandra nodded, though he had no intention of doing anything of the sort. ‘Yes, it is.’

‘Well, that’s enough of all that,’ said the Master as the servants arrived with bacon, eggs and toast. ‘Let’s talk about the economy, shall we?’

For the following half-hour the Master expressed his concern about Brexit, the credit crunch and China’s slowing growth, and whether this would leave the world ‘up manure creek’. The trouble with the last question was that it was equivalent to asking, ‘Will I die in the next five years?’ or, ‘Will we win the Boat Race?’ In microeconomic terms the correct reply was, ‘It is uncertain,’ but that would have left him without sufficient time to finish his second egg, which, as always, was poached to silky perfection. He decided to err on the side of positivity, which was always a good way to cope with such an encounter.

‘Unlikely,’ he said. ‘When the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold, but when China sneezes, we say “Gesundheit” and move on. It’s a question of capital controls.’

‘Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it?’ said the Master, brushing crumbs from his trousers. ‘It’s reassuring to hear it from someone who actually knows what he’s talking about.’

‘My pleasure,’ said Chandra.

‘It’s the poverty I can’t understand,’ said the Master, going off on a potentially endless tangent. ‘It’s within our means to feed the entire world, but look at us. It’s absurd, Chandra. I mean, will this ever change? Will we ever come to our senses?’

Professor Chandra took a deep breath.

‘Certainly.’

‘Excellent,’ said the Master.

They shook hands and Chandra marched into the hallway, taking his coat and scarf before exiting into the sharp November breeze. His categorical assertiveness had owed little to his own feelings on the matter, which were non-existent, but to his appointment with a student for which he was now twenty-two minutes late.

He trampled across the grass, a privilege accorded only to dons, and out the college gate (the Gate of Humility, as it was called). Gonville & Caius was an oddity in that it was split in half by the road and, as was his habit, Chandra barely noticed the tourists and cyclists as he crossed Trinity Street before bounding up the wooden spiralled staircase to his rooms on the third floor.

Ram Singh, his PhD student, was sitting on the landing staring at his iPhone, which was how all his students seemed to fill up those long hours when they weren’t asleep.

‘Sorry, Ram,’ said Professor Chandra. ‘My bad.’

‘It’s all right, Professor. I was late too.’

‘Good, very good … What the hell is that?’

The book under Ram Singh’s arm was called Statistics for Dummies.

‘Just a little light reading.’

Chandra unlocked the door and sighed. Why on earth a PhD student at the top-ranked university for economics in the country should be reading such foolishness was beyond him. But this was the root of the problem. Popular books sought to storm the intellectual barricades by ‘de-jargonising’ the discipline, a well-intentioned but absurd idea. You couldn’t learn in three hours what it had taken others years to master. Whether the public liked it or not, knowledge still mattered. Economics was still the province of experts and not, as his thirty-four-year-old son, Sunny, was fond of saying, ‘all common sense’, as if any Tom, Dick or Bengali could become Clifford H. Doyle Professor at Cambridge.

‘So how was Delhi?’ asked Chandra as he pottered about his rooms sweeping books off the sofa, making coffee and watering his spider plant, something the bedder had neglected to do.

‘Delhi was Delhi,’ said Ram Singh. ‘Usual stuff. Beer’s getting expensive.’

‘And the fieldwork?’

‘Fieldwork was damn good. Got most of the data. Just a question of …’ Ram tapped his Dummies book.

‘Well, not much for us to talk about then,’ said Chandra. ‘Good to see things are ticking along.’

‘There’s still the question of Brazil.’

Ram Singh’s thesis was supposed to be a comparison between Gujarat’s economic performance and that of what he insisted on referring to as ‘TROI’. He would just slip it into conversation: ‘If you look at TROI’s average growth rate,’ and Chandra’s mind would hurtle in the direction of Agamemnon and a thousand ships before remembering it meant ‘The Rest of India’.

‘Brazil, yes,’ said Chandra.

This had been a point of contention between them for months. They both knew that the reason Brazil had suddenly become of such importance to the thesis was because Ram Singh’s girlfriend, a Miss Betina Moreira, had returned to São Paulo a year ago.

Ram needed Chandra’s backing for extra research funding and, thus far, Chandra had been resistant. It crossed his mind that Ram might have been one of his betrayers. After all, only last month Chandra, misquoting Churchill, had told him that if he had ‘only a few more brain cells he would be a halfwit’.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you can get the money, why not? It would alter your thesis dramatically, of course, not to mention the workload, but if you feel it’s necessary …’

‘You mean you’ll write me a reference, sir?’ said Ram.

‘Well, I suppose you could use it as an example of what could really go wrong – Brazil’s credit rating is about to go to junk, as you know.’

Ram Singh was taking notes and smiling broadly, which Professor Chandra pretended not to notice.

‘And of course,’ he continued, ‘consider the impact of the World Cup and the Olympics and so on. All that will make a difference.’

Ram licked his lips at the mention of the World Cup, with which his last ‘research trip’ had coincided.

‘Try to focus on the nineties for your first few chapters. Then bring in Modi. That should be enough for now.’

‘Thank you, Professor,’ said Ram, almost bowing. ‘And my family send their regards.’

‘Oh, do they?’ said Chandra. ‘Very good.’

‘Yes, my parents insist you visit next time you’re in Delhi. And I’m sure you’d love the dogs. I always miss them the most.’

‘Dogs, yes,’ said Chandra, who hated anything with a tail. ‘Splendid.’

‘And, sir …’ Only the subcontinentals called him ‘sir’, even the ones who addressed their other tutors by their first names. ‘I forgot to add my commiserations, about the Nobel, I mean. I hope you aren’t letting it trouble you too much.’

‘Oh, I’d forgotten all about that. If awards were all I were in it for …’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Ram Singh, who was in it for the money. ‘I quite agree.’

‘Well, good of you to stop by.’

This was hardly any way to end a scheduled supervision, as if Ram had merely popped over to return an extension cord for a lawnmower. There were some who might even have called it unprofessional, but those same bureaucratic harpies would have been unaware that Chandra had all but financed his student’s conjugal visit to Brazil two years ago.

‘I’ll get to work asap, sir,’ said Ram, pronouncing it ‘ay-sap’.

Ram saw himself out while Chandra switched on his computer and stared at the ever-increasing pile of books on his desk. Remembering the coffee, he poured milk into his ‘Keep Calm and Study Economics’ mug, a gift from his eldest daughter, Radha, before she cut him out of her life, and reflected that he really ought to have offered Ram a cup. But it was Ram who had brought up the Nobel, a clear sign that there was nothing of any consequence left to say.

The bloody Nobel. They always made that same face, as if trying to persuade a two-year-old to put a gun down.

Chandra shifted to the sofa and put his feet on the coffee table. When things had been at their worst with Jean, he had begun shifting his entire life into these rooms: the pictures of his children, the ‘standing’ desk at which he never stood. He had spent several nights on the red Chesterfield sofa, conducted more than one supervision in his dressing gown and slippers. But since Jean had moved to Colorado, Chandra had begun to spend most of his evenings at home, spurning dinner invitations in favour of watching TV or reading novels he wouldn’t have dared take into the SCR, as it slowly dawned on him that he was not only divorced now – that oh-so transgressive, Middle English word – but also alone, a word far less exotic. That cottage in Grantchester with its black thatched roof and seventeenth-century beams that used to be filled with children and laughter, was now the dark retreat of a tragic recluse, an Indian Miss Havisham with an Emeritus Professorship and a takeaway menu.

Sometimes he wondered if it wasn’t all a giant con, the gaggle of letters after his name, the dinners with Angela Merkel and Narendra Modi, the notes of admiration from Gordon Brown and Larry Summers. They were like those fake Oscar statues bought at pound shops and given to employees, inscribed with ‘World’s Greatest Photocopier’ or ‘Best Light Bulb Changer in the Galaxy’. When he died only his writing would remain, until it was rendered obsolete when the oil and coal ran out and the species established its first settlement on Mars.