Skip to main content

The Universe is Crazy


Through the haze of the twilight walked in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Little Prince.  He was still the same old Little Prince (LP).  That’s why he appeared in the twilight.  When they grow up they become princes or princesses of darkness.

“The Universe is a crazy place,” said LP when I asked what he had learnt after so many years of wandering among the stars and meteors.  Just imagine your own situation, he said.  Right now you are moving at about a speed of 1500 km per hour. 

“You mean the speed of the rotation of the earth?” I ventured to ask.  It is dangerous to ask questions to enlightened people.  You never know how they will take your questions. They live in a different universe altogether.

Precisely, he said.  If the earth is rotating at a speed of about 1500 km per hour on its axis, you are moving at that speed, aren’t you?

“The earth is also revolving around the Sun at about 30 km per second,” I said. 

Indeed, he consented immediately.  So you are spinning at about half a kilometre per second and rushing in the space at about 30 km per second. 

He had converted 1500 km per hour into km per second, I understood.

Then there are your airplanes and maglev trains and what not, said LP.  So much rush, so much rush.  He shook his head as if he didn’t like all that rush.

“Rush is the law of the universe, it seems,” I ventured again.

That’s why, I said, it’s a crazy system.

The madness is perhaps its beauty too, he went on.  There’s a method to that madness.

“Yup.  Our scientists have found out the formulas of those methods.”  I wanted to add that the formulas make the system very sane.  Not crazy. 

Well, you never know when a shooting star will appear from nowhere, said LP.  I have had to dodge quite a lot of craziness during my cosmic wanderings.

“Maybe even the shooting stars follow some formulas,” I suggested.  “Our scientists...”

Little Prince
What is essential remains beyond the formulas and rules, said LP cutting me short.  What is essential reveals itself only to the heart.

“But the heart is crazier than the universe,” I blurted out. Every terrorist is a lover at heart, I thought. Every hater is.  Every fanatic is. 

The heart is the root that keeps you from being tossed about in this crazy universe.  LP peered into my eyes as if to check whether I had a heart.  Your religious people haven’t discovered the heart, he said, they only discovered gods.


Comments

  1. Jyotirmoy SarkarFebruary 7, 2017 at 8:59 AM

    Beautiful presentation and loved the last line a lot...that's actually happening all over the world.
    Loved it a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  2. sunaina sharmaFebruary 8, 2017 at 4:53 AM

    Yes, they have discovered only gods, their gods - his god, and her god and they are all antagonistic to all the other gods or others' gods.....there is no heart in the matter - absolutely no heart - just blindness.....

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

In this Wonderland

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...
12 comments
Read more

Death as a Sculptor

Book Discussion An Introductory Note : This is not a book review but a reflection on one of the many themes in The Infatuations , novel by Javier Marias. If you have any intention of reading the novel, please be forewarned that this post contains spoilers. For my review of the book, without spoilers, read an earlier post: The Infatuations (2013). D eath can reshape the reality for the survivors of the departed. For example, a man’s death can entirely alter the lives of his surviving family members: his wife and children, particularly. That sounds like a cliché. Javier Marias’ novel, The Infatuations , shows us that death can alter a lot more; it can reshape meanings, relationships, and even morality of the people affected by the death. Miguel Deverne is killed by an abnormal man right in the beginning of the novel. It seems like an accidental killing. But it isn’t. There are more people than the apparently insane killer involved in the crime and there are motives which are di...
7 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more