Your novel treats a particle collider almost like a sacred site. What did science offer you as a language for awe that religion, by itself, could not?
When I was in my freshman college year, my physics professor explained the subject and the history of discoveries so clearly that I understood not only the subject but understood the methodology of science. I came to admire the integrity and commitment of the scientists to the methodology. As I practiced physics in its different disciplines and saw the foundations of other branches of science, theoretical and experimental, I came to realize that this whole human enterprise is based in the human aspiration to scale new heights both of intellect and spirit. As I had my own “aha” moments, I experienced the spiritual union with all that is natural and felt that the Universe was speaking to me. Unlike in religion which is doctrinaire, science only needed me to strive for discovery with all my human instincts and without regard to presumptions and wanting a particular result. The the Detector, the accelerator tunnel or a tokamak are functioning monuments to this human enterprise, no less than a church or a temple.
Krishna, Jesus, and Buddha appear not as competing authorities but as expressions of a Collective. What was the hardest part of writing revered figures as conversational, mischievous, fallible teachers rather than icons?
I have always had the idea that gods must be humane. While most people wish for the same, it conflicts with their need for gods to be superbeings who defy laws of nature. As a scientist, I need the physicalist explanation for gods and that if gods created the natural laws, they cannot be above them. The mythological stories about Krishna always showed how playful he was. Most stories of Krishna, Jesus and Buddha always emphasized the wisdom in their teaching as well as their skill as teachers. These teachings were guidance on how to live this life with compassion for all and with honor and dignity. So the narrative was not difficult. Yet, the hard part was not to overplay their abilities in causing miracles while helping Arun and keeping their part within the confines of the physicalist explanation of the Collective’s abilities.
The Link Force is both speculative physics and a metaphor for belonging. At what point did you know it had to be more than a fictional scientific discovery—that it had to become an ethical principle?
First I would like to point out that I have written down the speculative equation for such a force in quantum field theory, one that is consistent with the cosmological model in the novel. The Link force is a representation of my belief that physical laws are the organizing principle of the Universe, they must be behind the feelings we feel for each other, for a person that we have only just met or even a person that we have never met. The novel talks about these longings which we feel in our bones to be noble and ethical.
Arun begins as someone who trusts falsifiability and method, then receives knowledge that cannot initially be tested. How did you keep his skepticism alive without making his transformation feel like a surrender of intellect?
A scientist such as Arun, like any man, is not an island. As the novel shows, he feels like any other man. He would always seek corroborating, consilient evidence for he feels is true, even compulsively. The physics information that the teachers gave thrilled him and made complete sense to him though, as noted here, not verifiable or falsifiable through experiments. But this is how many modern physics theories, such as string theory which explains the phenomena that are explained by the Standard Model of physics, are. The cosmological model in the novel too is the same. In this instance, the models were sufficient to explain the phenomena he was seeing and for the impetus to act. This is where his intimate knowledge of Pragmatism in the practical application rather than theoretical understanding came into force. The phenomenological “bodily” experience of transit provided a third way of having the scientific evidence- though not sharable in the traditional scientific way. In other words, modern philosophies is guided him in overcoming his skepticism. He came to the philosophical guidance that, the fully explained urgent practical need and the solutions trump the requirement of rigorous scientific proof before acting.
The book repeatedly asks whether passivity is a form of complicity. Which kind of silence concerned you more while writing: public silence under authoritarianism, or the private silence people use to avoid moral responsibility?
The novel is centered on the value of empathy across humanity- not only for kins and the immediate community, but for all living beings. Such empathy automatically inspires the urge to care for others. This must form the basis of morality in a society. Public silence under authoritarianism, maybe passivity in fear, which is understandable. But if the brutality is being perpetrated on others and oneself is not affected, then that passivity is morally irresponsible. The key question in this novel is -what is it that makes us human- is it our genes, our technology, our science, our language abilities, our economic power, our music, our art? The novel says what makes us human is our empathy and whenever and wherever it is not present, it is morally irresponsible behavior.
Prithvi and Arun both want to rescue humanity, but their methods diverge sharply: one engineers disruption through technology, the other moves toward empathy and restraint. Did you see them as opposing answers to the same question, or as warnings about what idealism becomes under pressure?
This is a direct experience of the present times. Utilitarian methods have been winning the arguments in the society. For example, increase in the Gross National Product and absolute availability of energy and water for increasingly thirsty technologies and living standards have been and are justified for causing climate change, environmental damage, wars and even global injustice.
The novel opposes this (Prithvi’s) way and says that harmonizing human needs with restrained and balanced development is the way- not trading one good in one sector for a bad in another.
Arun points out that systems are not stationary and even idealism can wear out. This is why he becomes a conduit for the Link force that sustains the society.
Project Mirage turns entertainment into an instrument of political transformation. What made you choose pleasure, immersion, and consumer desire—not propaganda alone—as the dangerous doorway to mass control?
Propaganda assumes that all people have the same basic belief system, hopes and fears. Propaganda can make people distrust the message even more because it happens without public debate and true evidence. In an atmosphere of fear, this would be amplified. Entertainment, however, is captivating and anesthetizing and creates limbic, reflexive reaction while becoming unresponsive to other drives.
The novel refuses an easy answer to whether changing minds biologically can ever be ethical, even when the goal is empathy. What ethical boundary did you most want readers to argue with after closing the book?
There are no easy answers to true ethical questions. The context for applicability will always come up and the issue will have to be debated and the answer negotiated. One answer is given in Heidegger’s Phenomenology and Buddhism, namely that the truth (ethical answer) is revealed when one lets go, stop calculating and navigate the “clearing” through attuning to the mood of the situation. The only question that a reader/person must ask is – if I let go of all my notions, attitudes and beliefs, what ethical boundary would I not cross.
Art in the novel is not decoration; it is infrastructure for resistance, mourning, and recovery. If the book itself is part of that argument, what do you hope fiction can do that a political manifesto cannot?
A political manifesto, created by a single person or a committee, however well written, is one dimensional. It would reason and state through words which appeal only to the intellect. Even when a manifesto is inspirational, it needs a messenger to deliver it. Even though it is only words that are delivered by a charismatic leader, the message is rendered by a combination of his/her presence, voice, style and passion. Fiction can do some of what poetry and art can do. It can give different weight to different ideas, different slant to different experiences, can deliver the same or different messages in multiple ways through multiple characters, some humorous, some joyous or some stern or in pain. Striking examples are mythological stories that can convey deep meanings with symbolism.
The ending imagines a world stabilized by the “Music of the Spheres” and pillars of compassion, yet it leaves open the danger of turning Arun into a new god. Is the final question of the novel whether humanity can accept guidance without surrendering responsibility?
This point is debated in the last chapters and drives the point that gods are not omnipresent, they are made by us for our purposes, including worship. The novel ends with this question of whether Arun would be/should be made into a god. For long, humanity has feared unknown forces of gods and has shirked responsibility using the excuse of this visceral fear. A person once told me that he does not commit bad acts only because he fears God would punish it. The novel turns it upside down- if an entity helps us independent of our behavior, should we turn him into a god?
The question then is to ask the Pragmatic question – for what practical purpose do we need a God or even gods, and yes, once they have an answering god, would they seek guidance in solving their problems or just resign to the authoritarian god’s doings and feel no responsibility?