According to the Big Bang theory, the basic building blocks and first underlying structures of the universe were created in the first three minutes. Jayant Narlikar's tea, in a canteen outside the Homi Bhabha auditorium in Mumbai, is taking longer. Perhaps that's one reason why the celebrated scientist and director of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics has always disliked the Big Bang. "Too much patchwork is going on with that theory." He believes the universe was made by several mini-bangs instead of one mother bang. A paper submitted by cosmologists Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey Burbidge and Narlikar, which takes the Big Bang apart, has been published in the November issue of the prestigious Astrophysical Journal. And a formidable army of scientists are horrified at this new theory called Quasi Steady State Cosmology (QSSC). As for the opposition, Narlikar sees a connection between the huge amounts of money from American funding agencies flowing into research based on the Big Bang and the hostility that is routed to him chiefly through one rather simple question - 'Why do you need a new theory?'.