Nalanda Mahavihara, Rajgir, 6th century A.D.

The sun sank down the western horizon as the Ratnasagara towered high against the bleeding crimson sky. A tall building made of baked bricks, the Ratnasagara was the largest of the three libraries in the university. The young man in a saffron monk’s attire, with his head shaven and eyes bright with mischievous intelligence, looked up at the building with respect before entering. He could not suppress a sigh, though. All this magnificence would one day end up in ruins.

Inside one of the rooms, he met Dhyanabhadra, who was nearly in his eighties, poring over a pile of manuscripts with his short-sighted eyes. At the sound of footsteps, the old monk raised his head, but could see very little in the fading daylight, “Is that you Dignaag?”

“It is me, Acharya. You know what I’ve come for.”

“Yes. Yes, I know,” replied Dhyanabhadra, “But you must be very careful with it, boy. The world is not yet ready for it.”

Dignaag smiled, “You can trust me.”

Dhyanabhadra walked to the other end of the room, opened a chest, and brought out a golden tumbler with a tightly fitted golden lid. He handed it over to Dignaag and raised a finger in warning, “You must ride straight to Pataliputra and stop nowhere in between. Remember, this must be kept away from any contact with water, and the skies foretell a thunderstorm today.”

Dignaag bowed in reverence to the old scholar and took his leave. But before he left the library, he unfolded a piece of a weird oily fabric from one end of his robes and wrapped up the tumbler in it.

“Despite all your years and knowledge, Acharya,” he said to himself as he mounted his horse, “You cannot see the centuries ahead. But I can.”

—    —       —

The horse galloped through the deserted road as clouds gathered over the western horizon. Dignaag looked up at the sky and bit his lips. In the darkness, his eyes searched for a bifurcation in the road that led into the dense forests. He soon spotted the path, and led his horse into the shades of the sal and kendu trees. He soon pulled the reins to halt in front of an abandoned stone palace.

Dignaag entered the dilapidated building with the ease of a person coming back home. He lit the earthen lamps and closed the doors. This was what he called his temporary laboratory. He had everything he needed to carry out the next task. With the thunderstorm brewing in the distance, even nature seemed to be coming to his aid. 

With experienced hands he removed the waterproof fabric. He did not have much time. The storm would be here soon. 

He brought out two large crystal plates. With practiced efficiency, he put a gold bar in the furnace and started heating it. As the gold started to melt, he picked up one of the plates and covered it with a patterned iron stencil. He then gradually poured the molten gold over the plate, the unearthly gleam of the glowing liquid metal lighting up his face. As the metal cooled and he removed the stencil cover, his patterned gold electrode lay ready. He deftly began preparing the other electrode plate, coating it with tin oxide, a chemical unknown to his contemporaries. He then dipped a piece of fabric in zinc dust and a corrosive acid, successively, and began to wipe out the tin oxide at specific places on the plate, the pattern emerging complementary to that of the gold-coated plate.

It was then that he heard the first roar of thunder. Frantically, he adhered the two plates together with resin, leaving sufficient space between them so as to fill up his material. He connected the ends of the plates to copper wires that led to iron poles on the roof of the building. The rumbling of thunder grew louder. Dignaag gently emptied the contents of the tumbler between the plates and heaved a sigh of relief.

Then, he sat down to wait. He had the electrochemical set-up, but electricity was yet to be known to mankind. So Dignaag was taking the same approach that Victor Frankenstein would take centuries later. He was waiting for natural lightning in a carefully chosen geographical location prone to being thunder-struck.

And then suddenly, lightning struck. Activating the copper wires, it injected charge into the electrodes that shot through them. As the material conducted current, it started to glow. The jelly-like material that had been in the tumbler seemed to have a life of its own. Its greenish-blue luminescence soon radiated brighter than sunlight, and Dignaag was forced to bring up his palm to shield his eyes.

The gel-like substance took a form and stepped out from its place between the plates. What stood in front of Dignaag was now almost like the Genie from Aladdin’s lamp, a fluorescent human-like entity with a distinct shape, but no prominent features.

Dignaag felt pleasure surging up in his heart. He touched what might have been the hand of the figure. Judging by the amount of light it was radiating, one would expect it to be surging hot, but it was surprisingly cool to touch. Dignaag knew that it could read his thoughts through the touch, analyzing the signals of his neurons.

“How are you, Mahajyoti?”

 —    —       —

Mohali, Punjab, 2022 A.D.

Rik Banerjee, twenty-eight years old and frustrated beyond measure, stormed out of his laboratory and banged the door behind him. Leaving the academic block behind, he walked to the sports complex of the institute. Finding the basketball court deserted, he sat down on one of the spectator seats.

“Hi, Rik!”

Rik jumped. He had not expected anyone near him, but here was a young man in an orange T-shirt sitting right next to him, his eyes twinkling with mischief and intelligence.

“Sorry?”

“Rik, I need a favour.”

“Look here, brother. I don’t know you, and I’m in no mood to talk. So, off you go!”

“But I didn’t come all this way to be rejected.”

Rik nearly exploded at his words, “Rejection! Do you know that my article on novel energy materials was rejected by three journals in the last seven months? Do you know that I’m now in my final year of PhD without a single publication? And you stand here refuse to be rejected! Who are you, by the way? Haven’t see you around before.”

“I’m Prometheus.” 

“Ha! So, you steal fire from the Gods and give it to man! Bro, you’re a funny fellow, but I’m not feeling humorous right now. What is it that you need?”

“Access to your lab.”

Rik frowned, “Are you a first-year PhD? Who is your supervisor?”

“What if I tell you that there’s a living energy more powerful than nuclear-fission?”

“Goodness, where did you get this weed you’ve been smoking?” 

“What if I showed you?”

“What! The weed? No thanks, I don’t – “

“Not the weed, you fool. The energy.”

Rik suddenly started laughing, “Okay, Mr Prometheus! Let’s see this energy.”

—    —       —

“Mahajyoti is eternal,” explained Prometheus. “He was there before the world existed, and will be there when the world is destroyed. He defies all your laws of science. He can create energy from blank, and can destroy it willfully.”

Rik couldn’t speak as he stared. He was a scholar researching on alternate sources of chemical energy, and yet what he saw was beyond his wildest dreams. 

“Once the human civilization exhausts all energy resources, which will probably take another century, I will act true to my name. I will unleash Mahajyoti into the world. He will act like a power bank, charging the world with energy to last for another two-thousand years. But you see Rik, just as an artist requires practice, Mahajyoti too, longs for an occasional flow of charge carriers within him, just to feel alive and awake. He is really like a child longing to play. So, I need a basic electrochemical set-up.”

“S-sure… we have all the instruments in our lab…”

 “Thanks, Rik. Of course, I could have arranged it myself. I’ve been doing that since time infinite. But I felt that you deserved this chance, because you’ve selflessly worked hard in this field, and didn’t get the recognition that you rightfully deserved. Do this Rik, and I assure you, it’ll be the best thing you do in your doctoral research.”

 —    —       —

No one knew what happened in Rik’s lab that night. All people could see was that within the next few months, Rik Banerjee published articles, one after the other, in the most reputed scientific journals of the world. Everyone thought he was a prodigal researcher who had synthesised new energy materials to reach exceptionally high efficiency parameters in the devices he fabricated with them.

No one could ever guess that Mahajyoti, in a gesture of thankfulness, had touched Rik’s already-synthesised material samples like a playful child.