If cracking the Travelling Salesman Problem wasn’t difficult enough, imagine weaving a mystery novel around it. M.N. Krish has achieved just that in his debut book, The Steradian Trail . “My friends who are in tech were amazed by this,” says Krish, over the phone from Chennai.
The worlds of numbers and words effortlessly come together in a crime story in The Steradian Trail . Joshua Ezekiel, a world-renowned computer scientist, is trapped in a dangerous situation when his former student, a criminal genius, is murdered. Helped by his friend Professor Lakshman and Divya, among Lakshman’s brightest students, Joshua unearths the mystery behind the murder. Although a gripping crime thriller, The Steradian Trail should be read a little more deeply to enjoy the nuances within it. The research does not overwhelm the story, which moves at a good pace, made more interesting by the humour. “People could read the book again and savour the nuances,” says Krish.
The idea for the book took root in the 1990s. The stories came from the research.
"I came upon stories of religion and culture playing a role in the development of science, not in the sense of science for the sake of science, but to understand science to fulfil a religious or spiritual need. I also read up research on the Sulba Sutras, conducted by David Henderson from Cornell University at the Sankara Mutt at Kanchipuram. ”
The essence of Chennai, where the book is located, emerges from the characters, from the drivers to the peons to Lakshman and Divya. The characters are well-rounded. “Characterisation came very easily to me. These are people you see everyday.”
Krish pieces together the plot and sub-plots as though arriving at a fool-proof mathematical solution with numbers and words play an important role in the story. “ The Steradian Trail is book number zero of the Infinity Cycle. Zero expands to infinity, collapses back to zero and the process is repeated. Zero and infinity are two sides of the same coin. You can’t understand one without understanding the other.”
The book is also a must read because of the glimpses it provides on the life and works of one of the greatest mathematicians in the world, Srinivasa Ramanujan. “He is my inspiration,” says Krish, a graduate of IIT and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He rues that not enough has been done to honour Ramanujan. “In an interview, Janaki Ammal, Ramanujan’s wife said people won’t even make a bust of Ramanujan and install it. A bust was eventually made, but not by Indians, but foreigners. They made a bust of him and gifted it to her.” Krish says, though, that in the last few years people have taken some action. “A lot more could be done in his memory than what is being done.”
The Steradian Trail is a Westland Books publication and is priced at Rs. 295.
