It was in an utterly unremarkable
moment that a good friend handed over to me, a petite book in our high school
library. The awkward smile of the author was equally unremarkable, as were the
large specs that the person had put-on in the photograph on its front cover. What
was written on the cover though was interesting enough to spark the curiosity
of a 15 year old. Those were words he would stumble across on the Discovery or
the National Geographic channel, once in a while when neither Buzz Lightyear nor cricket was on TV-
“From the big bang to black holes”
I barely knew anything about the
book or its legendary author. I did not understand much of it back then and years
down the line today, I do not understand why it is the-most-widely-owned-but-unread book of all times (shouldn’t the
Bible deserve that honor?).
Despite Mr Hawkings' best efforts
to make the daunting science of it palatable for the layman (by not including a
single equation, except for the famous E=mc2), I was too young to understand A
Brief History of Time. But intelligently strewn between a gamut of scientific
jargon and abstruse concepts, were some truly fascinating ideas!
It was about the most genuine of all human curiosities-
Where did the universe come from?
Why is it the way it is?
What is time?
I still think those are the most
important (and uncomfortable) questions before mankind. Dabbling across the treacherous
frontiers of science and philosophy, they come to all of us at one time or the
other- in moments of profound existential despair or times of drug addled thoughtful
inquiry. It is for this reason that I found myself going back to the book over
and over again. I am sure I still do not understand bits of it. But I do realize
what it is about and why it is important. Along with the likes of Feynman and
Sagan, Hawking was among the first members of the scientific community who had endeavored
to extend scientific discourse from classrooms to drawing rooms.
He may not have been able to
produce testable unification of physics, but in this regard Stephen Hawking did
succeed. The sheer number of people talking about him today is evidence of the
same. It was unfair- the cards he was dealt by life. The way he played with
them though, was nothing short of an inspiration- opting to battle the universe
that crippled him for life, by unraveling its deepest, darkest pockets.
And that is the man’s legacy, if
not anything else.
Remnants of my 15 year old self hope
you’ve just begun your journey to infinity and beyond.
Bon voyage!
