Science and literature at loggerheads

I’ m a student of literature married to a biology professor, human biology to be precise. All through these 36 years, I’ve sat through long lectures on the human body, its genetic features and growth; its aberrations and anomalies; whether I liked it or not. Though we share a great camaraderie, our respective subjects have been a sore point between us.

He would insist upon the importance of evolution of human life, whereas I would argue that the more important fact is how this life is, or should be, lived; and literature tells us how people and human societies react and survive in given situations. He would call literature mere emotionalism, I would call science mere speculation; and the perennial debate would go on.

Most of the time, we were at daggers drawn; each sticking to his/her gun. Quite often it would seem like, “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”

I used to have filmy and romantic notions when it came to pregnancies, childbirth, ailments or surgeries. But he would explain things in a plain, prosaic way with the help of pictures in one of his books, taking away my thrill or apprehensions, thus de-glamourising the whole thing.

When it came to the children’s studies, I declared at the outset that I’m not good at science, math and geography, thus dividing the responsibilities equally between the two of us; I taking up languages, history, civics and moral science. Not that I couldn’t manage these subjects in junior classes, but my intention was to make the boys stay connected with their father. It so happened that one day my younger one, while in Class 3 came running, full of excitement about his science lesson (ice-water-vapour-waterice); then stopped short with, “No, I’ll tell Papa, tuhanu samajh nahi aana (you won’t understand it).” Once I helped my elder son with his simple and compound interest sum; surprised, he asked me how I had done it and when I told that ‘you people do it by supposing the amount to be xyz, I do it by supposing it to be 100.’ The answer was correct, but the method was different, and he looked at me incredulously.

Now things have changed a lot. We’ve mellowed down, and are more patient. My husband has written seven books on his subject for teaching and research at the university level; and I’ve translated five books from Punjabi into English. It’s during this process that we got a chance to take interest in each other’s subject. While translating, I would ask him about some folk idioms or rural terms and expressions that I wasn’t familiar with, and gradually he read the Punjabi novels and stories, and we had long discussions about them. He, in his turn would ask me, “Just look at this sentence, does it make the meaning clear?”

But my interest in his subject increased manifold, when he made six short educational films for UGC’s countrywide classroom programme; and asked me to do the voice-over. I had to understand the scripts thoroughly to get the right pitch, stress and intonation; and I enjoyed all the topics, whether it was about BMI (body mass index), body composition, child growth or the most interesting one on twins.

Today, the daggers have lost much of their cutting edge; the guns have gone silent; and East and West have covered much of the distance between them.

HE WOULD CALL LITERATURE EMOTIONALISM, I’D CALL SCIENCE MERE SPECULATION AND THE DEBATE WOULD GO ON