Star-Children

It has been a while since I’ve blogged. Apologies to you, and to myself as well for not writing. I have been planning this piece for a while, and it has been so long that I have probably forgotten what I was going to say. But then, this is a ramble, really, so it doesn’t matter in the end.

A few weeks ago, I came across an article about the first phase of a major radio sky survey using Low Frequency Array telescope, revealing “hundreds and thousands of previously undetected galaxies.” Without going into technical details, seeing as I am not a sciencebro, here’s a figure: “their radio signals have traveled billions of light years before reaching earth,” (one light year is 5.8 trillion miles)- which just blows the mind, really.

The actual article shared on Twitter had a highly entertaining comment thread, with people talking about mass, infinity and multiverses. All of it reminded me of Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy. For all its subversions, politics, imaginative leaps and quantum realities (which were all brilliant), what stays with me most about the novels is the image of Lyra and Will going to the same park, sitting on the same bench, on the same day every year of their lives, and never, ever meeting each other. The windows between universes have been closed, all orders balanced, and one must travel impossible distances to find that which is closest, and all pathways gone.

Imagine knowing someone in a galaxy billions of light years away. It’s a technical impossibility, but imagine. Perhaps someone sent a letter through space and it came to you on a fine spring morning, having traveled billions of light years. And you feel like you know this person, except they are long dead. May be their planet is dead too. Or may be they are a race of celestial immortals. You don’t know that, you have no way of knowing, but you write back, knowing you will never receive a reply, knowing you will never meet, and you love them, anyway.

Thing is, the universe is so huge and we know so little and it all seems mind-numbingly immense! There are so many things we will never know in our lifetime. Such as the elements that make the human body that were all formed at the moment of the Big bang and who knows what part of the nascent universe they travelled from for you to be the physical being that you are today and for me to be me. Who knows how far those unknown stars have expanded since then. May be some of those radio signals came back from those memories of home. May be that is why we are always so fragmented, conflicted, restless. May be that is why all our stories speak of a lost paradise, and a home to be.

Because the sky is endless, and our planet just a tiny speck hurtling through a tiny corner of it, because it is all so overwhelming when you try to think about it, we turn our gazes to the ground, looking for badges to wear, for identities to claw on so we don’t fall through the bottomless cosmos. All our little spaces- borders, altars and battle-fields are only gravity keeping us safe in a little bubble. Because the alternative, letting go, is too enormous to even begin to comprehend.

Does this make sense? Didn’t think it would.

‘this string of events that is life

this string of cells that is the body

this string of moments that is time

do they ever sit together, have a chat,

come to a sort of a modus vivendi? (From ‘This Poem is Going Nowhere Nor is Life’ by Keki N. Daruwalla)

There’s the universe without, and the universe within. Our soul. Or psyche. Or unconscious. Whatever one might call it. And some say if harnessed right, the inner universe can encompass all of the wide unknown cosmos. Which is just as scary a thought as hurtling through an endless, purposeless, indifferent universe. Imagine holding the universe in this little, fragile bounded self! But if we did looked inward to find the harness, perhaps we wouldn’t need to shout out our badge numbers from burning rooftops. Because we only shout to smother the lack of what we’ve forgotten. Because we chose to forget, and let the black hole open up and swallow our universes within. An infinite universe must have infinite stars. Infinite stardust shaping infinite lives. If we knew we were all star-children, we wouldn’t need to fear those who don’t look like us, for we would know them by the light of a billion light years hence. There would be no need for hate, for if the universe was within us, nothing could topple our feet on earth.  

The brain is just the weight of God- (‘The Brain is Wider Than the Sky’, Emily Dickinson)- that is all.

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(Images- Original Instagram content+ Samsung Galaxy Wallpaper Gallery @Getty Images)

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