Twinkle Khanna Is Bemused With Nithyananda's E=MC^2 Theory & Tries To Simplify Rafale Deal

The monsoon has destroyed large patches of my garden, and I decide that it’s time to get my hands dirty and fix it up again. The maali had been insisting that he would do the needful, but unlike cooking I find gardening very calming so I promptly set off for a nursery.

As I am paying for the copious quantities of hibiscus, lemonia and frangipani, the owner tells me, ‘Madam, your maali had come here with the building manager. He said he would buy plants from our nursery only if we give both of them a cut.’

On my way back, finding no one else to hear my rants, I begin complaining to my driver Mishraji. ‘Can’t believe the maali and the manager are such crooks. They seem to be really inspired by all this talk around the Rafale deal I think!

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Mishra ji seems familiar with some of the details of the airplane deal and I try filling in the blanks by using an analogy that I read on Chetan Bhagat’s Twitter handle where he stated, ‘Say you order mithai for the neighbourhood, but tell the halwai to take the milk from your bhaiya only. Did someone actually say that? Was milk taken at a fair price? Did halwai choose the milk seller on his own based on quality?’

I tell my old driver, ‘Mishra ji, here I think halwai is Dassault Aviation, bhaiya is Anil Ambani and mithai are the 36 French fighter planes.’

Mishra ji seems perplexed, ‘Achha but Ambani is Gujarati, how can he be a bhaiya?’ At which point I decide to just do some pranayams in the back seat.

Taking a break from work that afternoon, I start surfing and up pops up a video by Swami Nithyananda. Once in the news for a sex scandal, Swami ji is now back with an energetic bang. Wearing saffron and a smug smile, Nithyananda is seen proclaiming (and I quote verbatim): ‘E equals to not mc2. What do you call matter? Anything continuous. What do you call energy? Anything intense.

Chad Crowe

The intensity and continuity is separate for a non-veg crooked brain. Only a vegetarian brain, which can retain the experience continuously without losing the intensity, can understand ‘m’ and ‘c’ is not ‘mc’.’

I’ve heard many non-vegetarian jokes (just last week at a picnic, a girlfriend dangled hotdogs and cold cuts in front of me and teased me saying, ‘Tell me what you want sausage or salami?’) but with Swamiji’s pronouncement, my dimaag has finally become dahi, which I suppose is one way of obtaining a vegetarian brain.

This though is not the first time that poor Einstein has been jabbed by the sword of Indian spirituality. On the 14th of July 1930, Rabindranath Tagore visited Einstein at his home and the two had a riveting debate on the nature of reality and the relativity of universal truth.

A black-and-white photograph of the historic meeting has endured the passage of time and one can see a kurta-clad bearded Tagore and Einstein with his characteristic mop of dishevelled hair seated next to each other.

At one point during this elegant meditation, Einstein says, ‘If nobody would be in the house the table would exist all the same — but this is already illegitimate from your point of view.’ Tagore has a concise reply, ‘Science has proved that the table as a solid object is an appearance and, therefore, that which the human mind perceives as a table would not exist if that mind were naught.’

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May their spirits never come back to haunt me for confessing that their exchange reminded me of a very recent interview with filmmaker, author and infamous Urban Naxal list-maker —Vivek Agnihotri.

When trying to point out the considerable difference between fact and conjecture, a journalist interviewing him asked if the colour of his kurta was indeed white. Point to be noted Milord, my eyes have informed me that it was a blazing Rin ki Safedi white but Agnihotri promptly replied, ‘Facts are not facts and who really knows if this kurta is really white!’

That evening as I work in the garden with my sulky gardener intermittently protesting his innocence, claiming the nursery aunty was trying to bribe him and digging yet another hole for himself, I wonder about the subjectivity of facts in the Rafale deal or to put it plane and simple, where does the truth lie? Is it in former French President Hollande’s claims that the partnership with Reliance Defence was entered at the behest of the Indian government, or in Arun Jaitley’s proclamation, “Hollande has, in a subsequent statement, said that he is ‘not aware’ if the government ever lobbied for Reliance Defence and the Truth cannot have two versions”? Should we believe Rahul Gandhi’s dramatic outcry, “Modiji, you dishonoured the blood of our martyred soldiers. Shame on you. You betrayed India’s soul”? Or Dassault Aviation when it says that the decision to select Reliance as its partner was purely its own decision?

An hour later, drenched in sweat, I clamber onto the garden fence and watch the sun moving rapidly through the sky, though the fact remains that it is relatively stationary and we are the ones rotating as usual.

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This is the Universal Truth that Tagore and Einstein were debating and I chuckle at the irony of having read the transcript of the conversation between the two Nobel prize winners on a website called om=mc2. Bechara Einstein!

Life always seems to have its tongue firmly in its cheek and keeping mine in the same place, I remain sitting on the fence as the blue sky surrenders to a velvety twilight.

Originally Published In The Times Of India