Rituparno Ghosh leafs through Mani Bhaumik?s book at the launch. Picture by Aranya Sen

The spiritual odyssey of a man of science. The subtitle sounds almost like an oxymoron. But that is what Mani Bhaumik?s book aims to do ? marry faith and science, two terrains drifting irreconcilably apart over the centuries.

Code Name God, which demonstrates how divinity can coexist with developments in science, was launched in the city on Tuesday. Says the California-based scientist, who shot to fame with his work on laser technology that made Lasik eye surgery possible: ?Science is now validating many age-old traditions. Until the last couple of decades, spirituality was all a matter of blind faith. Experientially, we saw it had beneficial effects but did not know why. But this experience has a repeatable brain pattern. There is a correspondent reality, that we perceive as god, in a transcendent power.?

The crisis that science has pitted religion against has been precipitated in the world of 9/11 where there is ?so much killing in the name of religion?. A whole generation of people, says Bhaumik, has grown up thinking that if one kills an infidel one goes to heaven. ?But ironically, Allah means ?god is one?. Science also says all of us can be traced to one single cell 3.5 billion years ago. We are all cosmic brothers and sisters.?

There is another duality embedded in the book, published by Penguin. It starts off as a chronicle of his personal journey from impoverished rural Bengal to the hedonistic heights of his Bel-Air mansion, frequented by the rich and famous of California. It talks of the women in his life, from his grandmother who starved herself to death to feed him as a child during a famine to the society sirens who sparkled as brightly as the chandeliers lighting his parties. Then, it takes a leap of faith to launch on a supremely erudite but lucidly explained course of quantum field theory and cosmology, where David Bohm and Descartes brush cognitive shoulders.

?It was my editor?s idea to use my life as a inspirational start to what might otherwise be too dry for the lay reader. And that?s exactly what has happened. Minister Kapil Sibal, who launched the book in Delhi, said he had started leafing through the book at 1.30 am and couldn?t put it down till 4.30 am,? Bhaumik says. The Delhi experience was echoed at the city launch where film-maker Rituparno Ghosh said though he thought the ?idea of a book by a scientist intimidating, the sheer prose of Bhaumik?s work was irresistible?.

Bhaumik is happy with the changed form of Code of God. ?I wanted to reach non-scientists and not remain, like A Brief History of Time, the most unread bestseller.?

His first book in popular writing had taken the scientist as many drafts as would ?fill up from the floor to the ceiling?. Hitting the Los Angeles Times bestseller list and being translated into three other languages must be making the 75-year-old boy from Krishnagunj village in Midnapore feel the trouble was well worth it.