Sultans of String

Beyond those tree-lined avenues once stood British barracks. There8217;s no trace of them today in this self-sufficient, reclusive city within a city: A 60-acre spread with 40 gardens somebody sweats over changing flowers in at least 100 important rooms.

Here in the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research TIFR, in an unlikely physics setting studded with 276 paintings and Einstein busts, a G-7 of Indian scientists8212;string theorists, to be precise8212;confronts the universe8217;s big unknowns.

Rated among the world8217;s 10 best of its kind, Stephen Hawking and Nobel laureates are insiders to their science. 8216;8216;In a tribute to the vitality of the group, almost all return to India even when they have lucrative opportunities abroad,8217;8217; says David Gross, last year8217;s Nobel Laureate in physics, from Santa Barbara, USA, over email.

Mumbai, puzzled by this alternate reality on its edge8212;that is not quite science fiction8212;mostly ignores them. After all, the shy men inside these seafacing rooms, wearing floaters and thumbing Linux-driven laptops stuffed with classical music, don8217;t look anything like Einstein.

But like the legend surrounding the man, they do need large dustbins for all those random thoughts.

8216;8216;This group is easily on par with the best string theory groups anywhere in the world,8217;8217; adds Andrew Strominger, professor of physics, Harvard University. 8216;8216;And China has invested more in string theory research than India.8217;8217;

IIT-Powai product K Narayan, 30, often gazes at photographs on his laptop, of the suspension bridge he crossed daily for five years to get from his apartment that smelt of sambhar the way his mom taught him, to the physics department of Cornell University. Last year, he drove down for a farewell look at Washington DC.

8216;8216;The number of revolutionary string theory breakthroughs from TIFR is mind-blowing,8217;8217; he sums up his comeback as a postdoc, one of several annual entrants from USA, Japan and Europe.

8220;I didn8217;t know much about India, but I had heard of string theorists here who do very famous work,8217;8217; says Mikael Smedback, 30, a Swedish postdoctoral fellow who arrived last October. He8217;s learnt to politely eat canteen rice and dal while secretly pining for potatoes.

Then we get ambitious.

Narayan picks up a black marker and after uncertain searching, finds a far-left spot on his whiteboard8212;the only squiggle-free space left8212;to dumb down string theory with drawings of a hill and what happens to a ball on its peak. After some stressful minutes, met by blank silence, we mutually decide it8217;s best to change the subject.

String theory is deeply complex, it is still in the making and its applications won8217;t grace your living room next year.

But if you ask, a string theorist will happily skip lunch to give you a whiff of what they are trying to do: To make a near-hopeless match8212;helped by a share of the 100,000 Rs 44 lakh endowment managed by Harvard University8217;s physics department, no less.

Look around and quantum theory is omnipresent. And then there8217;s Einstein8217;s theory of relativity which explains, among others, the expanding universe and black holes.

8216;8216;If you try to marry the two, it8217;s a disaster. But string theory is a paradigm within which a unified theory of gravity and quantum mechanics can emerge,8217;8217; explains Spenta Wadia, who led the formation of TIFR8217;s string theory movement around 1984, when string theory took off worldwide, and who has just won an international 10,000 Rs 4.4 lakh prize.

8216;8216;Those were hard waters to wade,8217;8217; recalls Wadia, who knows artist Tyeb Mehta8217;s signature diagonals as well as open and closed string loops. 8216;8216;It took time to convince people it8217;s worthwhile. But encouragement came from Pakistani Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam.8221;

More were soon convinced. 8216;8216;It was exciting because Spenta had a different way of doing physics, and frustrating because we were too few,8217;8217; says former Stanford postdoc Avinash Dhar, then one of the earliest to grab the string.

With seven faculty, TIFR8217;s group is one of the largest concentrations of string theorists within one centre.

8216;8216;You won8217;t find many places in the US with such a large group,8217;8217; says postdoc Kevin Goldstein, 31, from South Africa, mumbling that his mind needs a break. Perhaps it8217;s because colleagues dragged him to Page 3 the previous night instead of the Friday night favourite8212;Kingfisher and a battered permit room called Gokul.

8216;8216;String theory will completely, stupendously modify our notion of space and time,8217;8217; Atish Dabholkar, 41, tells you. Growing up in Maharashtra8217;s drying sugar belt of Kolhapur, Dabholkar headed to IIT Kanpur after a farsighted Fergusson College teacher egged him on. The next 12 years whizzed from PhD at Princeton 8216;8216;Here I realised IIT had given me world-class training8217;8217; to Harvard and Caltech.

Then Dabholkar came home to TIFR in 1996.

8216;8216;There is some satisfaction in building a group here,8217;8217; he explains. 8216;8216;I feel no difference from my days in the US. International postdocs agree to low salaries around Rs 13,000 a month because our science is internationally competitive.8217;8217;

What8217;s taught here you won8217;t locate in books, cautions Ashok Raina, here since 1970, first as a student. Raina8217;s been around since the group8217;s early days, when writing a book meant airmailing handwritten manuscripts to co-authors and waiting in line for the single computer with Internet access.

8216;8216;It8217;s a demanding subject, there are a lot of blind alleys,8217;8217; says Raina. 8216;8216;I had more social contacts abroad than in Mumbai because it8217;s an esoteric subject.8217;8217;

The fog around the theory is one reason why, when this all-male group does step outside TIFR8217;s studies, canteens and residences, it8217;s not for a day in downtown Mumbai but to string theory meetings from Khajuraho to Seoul. One of Raina8217;s skills, besides that paper he wrote in French thanks to three years in Geneva: 8216;8216;I can eat anything8212;rice and sambhar to snails and frog8217;s legs.8217;8217;

8216;8216;The picture that has emerged from our work is that of a rich landscape, with many hills, dales and valleys. The universe should be thought of as a golf ball rolling around in this landscape,8217;8217; Trivedi describes his enchantment.

Now why would a developing nation want to invest in that? 8216;8216;For a country as large as India, the small group at Tata working on this problem is a miniscule investment,8217;8217; says Strominger. 8216;8216;Over time, such investment gives a better return than any other kind. String theory does not require large laboratories.8217;8217;

Ashoke Sen, one of TIFR8217;s earliest and influential string theorists, is now setting up an active group at Allahabad8217;s Harish Chandra Research Institute. Shiraz Minwalla, joint faculty of Harvard University and TIFR, will return for good next year.

Trivedi8217;s enlivened the boring steel cupboards and table in his study by plastering them with spiral sketches by two-year-old son Abhay. They look suspiciously related to profound affairs of the cosmos.

Like every whiteboard frantically scribbled on with red, black and blue markers, some stuff stays on for days. While attacking a problem, many hands calculate on the whiteboard and forget to shut the doors, despite desperate notices warning that the air-conditioning has just been repaired.

On Trivedi8217;s whiteboard too, little Abhay has already added his pictorial contribution. Like the problems string theory takes on, it defies explanation.