Keeping quiet when the answer is not known and not answering a question that is not directed at you is enlightenment. Asking a question and waiting till such time that no one has the answer and then answering it is enlightenment by education, of others.
You see the book in his hand, before you notice his presence. He keeps constantly turning the pages and avidly reading them. Don’t jump into a false conclusion that he is enriching his knowledge! He is only trying to assimilate doubts rather than clarity. To clear the pile of doubts, he tried to reason it out to himself and frequently resorted to turning the pages of books, which obviously got dog-eared. Aware of this fact, his friends have come up with a nickname which they thought of as apt - “bookworm”. If they have done their due diligence, they would have come up with a modified moniker – “doubting book worm.”
It would not come as a surprise to know, what he did after coming to know the nickname. - he started searching for the origin, worldly meanings and its applicability as a universal epithet!
Then, he found out that this word also referred to the larva of a beetle, which happily thrived by feeding on the paper- handwritten or printed and the glue used to bind the books. This again took him on a hunt to know whether his nickname placed him in the literary pursuit category or consigned him to the status of a larva in the woodworks. Are you wondering now, why his friends did not coin the nick name as "doubting bookworm" to begin with. The inside scoop is this is a cleverly constructed façade of Imaginch.
He used his free time to undertake seemingly unproductive quests. He dived headlong into them not bothering about a helmet. Once a problem or confusion gets his attention, he seldom lets it go easily. He starts the process of dissecting and re-assembling it in his quest to find a solution. He has become an example for the famous Peter's principle, " there will be some left-over parts, after completing the assembly." To keep Don Quixote in good humour, he relentlessly went on tilting at the windmill.
It is not by chance that he identifies one of many such unproductive pursuits. He only has to pull it out from a mental list, which sometimes hangs in confusion. Once successful, it buoys up his spirit to crave for one more. With redoubled efforts, he repeats this endless cycle of fruitless quests for analysis.
One of his grandchildren presented him with one such problem. He wanted to use every opportunity to impress upon them the value of discipline in education. To lit fire to their imagination, he put up a parade of great scientists, inventors and innovators and explained their struggles and life achievements in great detail. He emphasised that their minds filled with purpose, combined with tireless effort made it possible to achieve their goals!
After patiently having heard these acoustic laden accounts, with minor variations on different occasions, one day they confronted him with this stumper - as a kid, did you not know about all these greats personalities and their hard work? If only you had, now you might be quoting yourselves also as another shining example to emulate, instead of importing them! After this encounter, Imaginch though in discomfort, that he had managed to identify one more unproductive quest to pursue. Never minds defeats, when he is firing on all cylinders. His credo - Ignore the backfire or Octane number or any other fancy description!
Undaunted by this set back, he was on the lookout for another one. His sight settled on looks, not of the appearance type. He has heard and at times he himself had experienced that faraway look or closed eyes phenomenon. The faraway look focuses on nothing but still people employ it, in deep thinking or doing no thinking! How is it possible to be not thinking of anything and why the eyes refuse to register and transmit to the brain what they are observing?
What happens in the mind when the eyes are closed - does it receive signals or messages from sources unknown? Personally, he had seen nothing with that faraway looks and received no messages when the eyes are closed shut. Is it a common experience or only he failed to get something out of these exercises? Another dead end reached in yet another unproductive quest.
News items on psychics or clairvoyants having predicted centuries ago about today's miseries caught his attention promising to be the next unproductive quest to follow through. Sceptic but curious, he decided to pose these questions and find answers for them. How could the psychics or clairvoyants travel forward in time? Was the travel faster than light? And if so, why none of them found the answer to settle the doubt on the big bang or just like that our universe got squeezed out of a tube-like the tooth paste we are familiar with? Whether the visions came to them or they went in search of them? What was the format - analog or digital or some other form of communication yet to be invented by human beings?
For argument’s sake he was ready to accept their vision on the origin of big bang. But they should clear these points: How could a psychic or a clairvoyant reach the origin of the big bang, unless he or she had prior knowledge of its location? Are they not bending the rules of Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger et al, all the way to that point and back to earth? What was the source for that phenomenal speed of zillion times the speed of light? Were they privy to locations of wormholes and licensed to steer warp drives?
For a long time, he had been pursuing another unproductive quest - of astrologers decoding what the planets had to foretell. For him, the motion of planets around the Sun maintaining the status quo looked fair enough. The other thing that held his interest is the arrival of comets or comet-like objects from Oort Clouds or beyond. They have rendezvous with the Sun and make their return journey. He wanted to find out what for these icy rocks undertake such a journey. Are they not capable of contributing some icy portends to these astrological predictions based on the planetary positions at birth of an individual or a nation and current planetary transits in various parts of the zodiac?
As many astrologers there are that many varied predictions there will be. Why there is no unanimity as the planets are the same? Why these predictions predictably come out at the fag-end of every year or whenever a war breaks out or when natural calamities strike? As a fallback arrangement, why, these comets and comet-like non-resident objects are roped in to play the villain? He hit the pause button here, to end another unproductive quest.
The hue and cry about the denial of hall-marked visas and the surgical strike on the workforce to reduce foreign skill and the loss of face of the returnees back at home, catapulted Imaginch on another unproductive quest. He did not understand why the so-called developed nations fail to foresee the reactions that will visit them out of their own ill-advised actions. The first sized European nations and continent-spanning country, bleeding from self-inflicted wounds are themselves the reason. When unchecked immigrants choke their throats, they belatedly shut one door and opened another.
The door that got closed will cost them billions per year. The international students shut down their ATMs that was bank rolling academic institutions and augmenting helping hands in business establishments. The door that they opened is by way of toeing the tariff footprint in procrastination. The choke holds what they wanted to apply on other passive nations will turn back to choke them economically. Both the doors left the businesses gasping for air and walking with crutches.!
Why don’t nations operate under logic rather than discrimination? Utterly defeated in his quest to straighten the world order with a few words, Imaginch took a deep breath and closed the file as a foolish attempt.
Why photon does not get tired even after travelling, at the speed of
light and for billions of years? What will happen when they really get tired?
Even
for a bright bulb (required to emit photons), Mr. Einstein’s interwoven space
and time is a far-fetched concept. He managed to bend and wrap Imaginch’s mind
in confusion with the theory “At the speed of light, time dilates (slows
down), length contracts(decreases) and mass increases all conspiring to keep
the speed of light a constant”.
Then, he tried to emulate Einstein and did a thought experiment. A photon having no mass, travelling at the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s) did not get tired, because from its reference frame it experiences an extreme time dilation, to reach its destination instantly. Hence has no time even to register its tiredness! Imaginch not being a photon became dog tired during his thought experiment and did not have the energy to read that article again!
If and if, earth decided to take exactly 24 hours, not a second more or less, to complete one rotation what would happen?
He needed help from someone who had understood the implications. Imaginch simply nodded his head in confusion but remembered whatever was explained. “The sun rise and sun set will not be in the morning and evening. A new cycle will be established that also will change in a cyclic manner, such as midday sun rise and midnight sun set and so on. A mere four-minute increase could throw our life permanently out of gear”. Feeling frightened, he started to worry about his life at this point.
Disbelief and curiosity still hammering around the walls of his brain, he raised the white flag. In defeat of his fruitless and unproductive pursuits, he sent out an appeal for help. "I hope it will not be too much of an ask, if anyone of you could clear all my queries at your convenient time, dispassionately and logically. Keeping this in mind, I will wait in anticipation."
Wait he did. Number of people responded with their own list of unproductive pursuits that they have carried out, unsuccessfully. Equal number of people replied with suggestions for him to consult a psychic or clairvoyant for a séance to ascertain his mental health. Apologetically, they admitted that whatever names of psychic or clairvoyant, they wished to suggest, are no more in this world and their whereabouts unknown to them.
In the pile of letters, one of the envelop was looking different in size, texture and colour. With unbridled curiosity, Imaginch opened it and withdrew an equally different in size, texture and coloured sheet with foldings and creases perfectly done with care. In a calligraphic style lettering, the note advised him to visit a famous psychiatrist in the city. Thoughtfully the writer had furnished the address, contact phone number with e-mail particulars.
Master in the field of unproductive quests, Imaginch locked the letter in a safe, planning to take it out when no other unproductive quest demanded his immediate attention!
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