Particle physics in the animal kingdom - Part I

We found them in my dad's garage one evening, crying their lungs out, scared, away from their mother, trying to find a sense of security by huddling together. They were trying to find their way back to their mother. Max Planck was the more adventurous of the two, and he would be the one to occasionally creep out of the dark garage from under the tin door. However, fear knew the better of him, and at the lightest sound of the falling of a foot he'd hurry back in.
I was the first one to hear the cries, The kittens were still very young, and even in their loudest, the desperate cries could not have carried beyond a few metres. I only heard them because I happened to be playing cricket on the street, and the stumps were just next to the door of the garage.
Dad was out; he had taken the garage keys with him. In the evening Niels Bohr, in the darkness of the night, perhaps hoping that no one would be able to spot him now, or perhaps scared of being in the dark in the locked garage and wanting to go out where he could at least see some light, ventured out. I was at vigil outside the garage door. Having literally grown up with cats, it did not take too long to take Niels into confidence, and soon he was comfortably huddled in my arms, the task of getting hold of him made easier by his weakness.
Max, however, was a more difficult fish to catch. He preferred to stay within the garage. My chief concern now was that when dad came back, he might accidentally run over Max with his car.
Dad came home late that night, but luckily he did not crush poor little Maxie. The key to the garage now available, we could finally manage to get Max out of the garage.
Mom was a very loving person and she loved cats. It broke her heart every time a cat died or was killed by the curs that made their way through our house. The most favourite cat that we ever had was called Gultu. Once Gultu had such a big boil in his neck that he had stopped eating, and as a result, he had become weak, transformed from a bubbly cat to one that would spend hours lying at the same spot without even stirring.. When mom finally realized the cause of Gultu's fast, she applied hot water on the boil for two days till the boil burst and pus oozed out. Mom nursed him back to health, treating him no worse than she would treat us. One night we had gone out, and when we returned, we found Gultu lying dead in the middle of the courtyard. The curs had killed him. It broke my heart. I cried a lot that day. Gultu was my best friend then. I remember mom had once locked me up in a dark room for being mischievous. I was crying. Then Gultu came in through the ventilation and sat with me till mom opened the door. When Gultu died, mom, too, was heartbroken.
Mom did not want to take the emotional trauma any more, and although she gave our visitors a bowl of milk, she was staunchly against the idea of adopting them. We pleaded with her to take them in, but we only managed to get her to agree to let them sleep the night outside the house in a box with blankets. She deferred the decision of what was to become of them until the morrow.
Mom couldn't put up a hard face, but inside, she was made of soft and warm wax. She could not bear the thought of the kittens sleeping outside in the cold, and at eleven thirty at night, the kittens were in a box under the table which hosted the television.

The Best Laid Plans

Long ago, in the distant and forgotten past, the lion men had been forged in the depths of the underground crevices where lava was hot enough to fuel the never ending power hungry experiments of the Eagle men. Work in these underground laboratories knew no day and knew no night. One group of Wizards worked as two other groups of wizards rested. The work never stopped for they knew that there was not much time.
Cloudbearer was a chip of the old block, the venerated supreme wizard, and although the father was perpetually dissatisfied with the performance of his son, Cloudbearer, was indeed, a prodigy. It was on one of those usual days, after the not so uncommon reprimand by has father, having shut his ears long before his father had uttered his first word, Cloudbearer bent over his microscope.
Something he saw troubled him, something he knew that couldn't be, or rather something that couldn't come so easily. He rose from his stone bench, looked up, closed his eyes, stretched every muscle in his avian body that he could stretch. He felt that he did deserve a break, after two sleepless nights followed by his father's harangue.
Having done that, he returned to his work-bench, squinted his eyes again, and peeped through the same old microscope at the same old spiral structure.
He knew that the only person who he could really go to was his father. In the blink of an eye he was back in his father's room, and before his father could complete the first word of his continued reprimand, he, in his excitement shouted, "Look, father, what I have here!!"
A week later the rocket was launched, and in its heart a single titanium tablet protecting the very secret of the Gods, and a prayer, "Go to the world, be fruitful and multiply." It wouldn't be long before they could move off their dying planet. Very soon, another planet would be habitable. All they had to do now was to track the trajectory of the rocket, and then wait, anxiously for centuries, feeding on the diminishing resources of their own planet, battling the growing heat.

***

Millions of centuries passed. Cloudbearer was totally forgotten, not even a statue remained. Evolution took its course, the Eagle men were no more, but their successors managed to retain the knowledge that was once learnt. However, their ability to make further progress deteriorated, and much of their energy was so directed towards their daily chores so essential for survival in that inhospitable climate, that there was not much room left for any other activity.
Meanwhile, where once a pristine rocket had landed, bearing the very seeds of life, great changes occurred. The pristine DNA that was once deliberately planted was no ordinary DNA born by mistake, from a chance union of the elements; rather it was made by the Gods to be fruitful, to multiply and to mutate. The planet, once filled with vicious and caustic gases and liquids, was slowly but steadily changed to a beautiful blue-green planet.
However, there happened something in this beautiful planet which the Gods themselves had never planned or predicted. Somewhere, deep beneath the blue oceans, a DNA muted and the first animal cell was born. Quickly it multiplied until the sea was swarming with trillions of them. In some deep trench of the ocean, they grouped together. Evolution was now faster than ever. Species appeared and disappeared. Some of them broke the phase barrier and jumped out of the sea onto the dry land. There was mayhem everywhere, creatures both big and small; suddenly the once quiet and beautiful planet was full of activity, full of movement, full of the thumping sound of stamping feet, full of the crunching sound of powerful jaws and sharp teeth.
Centuries rolled by. The planet saw its ups and downs. But the greatest change was yet to occur; the very power borne by the very Gods was yet to be acquired, a power that the Gods themselves were slowly losing - the power to think. The inevitable could not be stopped, and as soon as that ultimate divine power was acquired, the face of the planet changed faster than ever. Unknown to the Gods, the once green and blue planet that they once planned to forge, through their primordial DNA, had turned into something similar to their own - dry and scorching.
For the second time the rocket blasted off, this time never for ever, never to return, carrying the entire planet's life with it and travelled towards what they had planned to be their new abode. But they arrived too late - too late to stay, too late to turn back.

In a blog I read regularly, the blog owner had posted that she had recently taken to writing with the pen again. She always writes well, but I was particularly fond of this post. I was about to put up a follow-up comment to the post saying that I had become so much dependent on the computer that I could no longer write with a pen, for the simple reason that my pen could hardly keep up with the pace I thought at. For some reason, I was unable to post this comment, and, later on, I forgot all about it.
A few days ago, I discovered my old Parker. The ink had dried within, and it took me a couple of hours of work to get it back to working condition. Eager to use my newly found antique piece, with the same excitement a child has when he discovers his great-grandfather's half-working pocket watch, I started to use my Parker.
The result was clearly visible when I wrote my first technical article with the Parker. It turned out to be the best technical piece I had written in a while. When, earlier, I was under the impression that my pen could not keep up with the speed of my thoughts, and my eight fingers at 80wpm did a better job, I was utterly mistaken. In fact it were my thoughts, which, in my hurry to publish them, emerged half baked. The use of the pen essentially slowed me down, giving me more time to refine my thoughts, fill in the holes and add beauty in the whole.
I may use the metaphor of the computer for everything that makes up hurry up and multitask in life, but it will not be incorrect to say that the computer has ensured that we will not have another Lev Tolstoy and another War and Peace; we will at best have our Chetan Bhagats and Five Point Someones.