The engineer, the dead fish and the bag of earth-III

From chapter 2
jiva-rajjusarjo nAma tritIyo .adhyAyaH |
Somakhya and Lootika breezed through their doctoral programs in two and a half years after over coming several obstacles placed by mlechCha-s who stood like vR^itra-s and prahlAda-s in their path. In the process Somakhya, unlike most of his coethnics, learned not to fall to the empty enchantments of the sweet tongue of the mlechCha-s. This was just one of their faces in an enforcement strategy involving both good and bad cops. Lootika who had been informed of the history of the mlechCha-s by Somakhya in the past was also able to do the same. Having fathomed the mlechCha, they navigated their systems to use their vast resources to further their scientific explorations. Now that they were equipped with the requisite educational upAdhis they started their own labs.

It was then that one day Somakhya was visited by his friend Indrasena. Indrasena: “ O Somakhya you are to me like shaunaka kapeya to abhipratAriNa kAkShasenI. I seek that you enlighten me about the secret mantra of kubera.” Somakhya acceded and said: “For that we need to head to the secluded spot in the mountains.” Thus, the next day they decided to take some time off. First they went to the shooting range to practice their rifles and then headed off the mountains. There under a large cedar tree they set up sthaNDila for the ritual and invoked vaishravaNa and Indrasena was conferred the mantra. Thereafter they wandered off to a still pond high on the mountain and collected some water. Upon returning they prepared a hay infusion and inoculated it with the water they had collected. Few days later they placed a drop under the microscope to take a look. While Somakhya had done this many times over from the time he was a child it was something that never ceased to amaze him, even as it had captivated van Leeuwenhoek centuries ago or the forgotten naturalists like Bütschli and Müller. The microscope field was abuzz with all manner of bacteria: bacilli, cocci, vibrios and spirillums in a chaotic frenzy like marUnmatta-s pouring out of a Karachi masjid after the Friday ShalAt to rage over the latest bombing of their brethren by a mlechCha drone. They saw the ciliates Paramecium, Pseudomonilicaryon, and Dileptus making their way like giants in the world of the bacteria. Paramecium propelled itself elegantly as a submarine, while Pseudomonilicaryon and Dileptus navigated their way with their waving “trunks” amidst the bacteria like elephants clearing a throng of men. Then there was the ciliate Euplotes, which literally walked on its bundles of cilia – truly an animalcule but all in a single cell. Halteria, yet another ciliate seemed to them like a sputnik which jumped around, leaving the field as quickly as it entered it. Then there was the beautiful but sessile Stentor, which created eddies drawing the buzzing bacteria to their doom – the wheel of life and death playing out at the level of single cells. But all of a sudden a new ciliate zoomed into the field and dashed straight for a Paramecium.

continued…