The Adventure — Class 11 English

Jayant Narlikar's science-fiction story follows historian Professor Gangadharpant Gaitonde, who, after a road accident, finds himself in a strangely altered India. Travelling to Bombay, he discovers a country still ruled commercially by a flourishing East India Company, with British and Anglo-Indian influence everywhere, yet not enslaved as in the history he knows. Visiting the Asiatic Society library, he reads his own five-volume history and finds that the change occurred at the Battle of Panipat (1761): in this world the Marathas won handsomely, Abdali was routed, and the Marathas grew supreme, keeping the British confined and the Mughals as mere figureheads, so India never became a subject colony. Seeking proof of how the battle was won, he reads a Bakhar describing how Vishwasrao narrowly escaped a bullet. After being mobbed at the Azad Maidan for trying to occupy an empty presidential chair, he returns to his own world. Back home, he discusses the experience with scientist Rajendra Deshpande, who explains it using the catastrophe theory and quantum physics: a single crucial event (the bullet missing or hitting Vishwasrao) can branch history into parallel worlds, and Gaitonde, thinking intensely about Panipat at the moment of collision, briefly transitioned into one such alternative reality. The story blends history with science to explore "what might have been" and the idea of many co-existing worlds.