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[Chapter 4] The Telescope
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January wind tugged softly at his nightshirt as Taran sampled the cloudy sky. The gibbous moon hung lonely. He swished the optical tube up.
It took him a good ten minutes of fiddling to get the moon in his view. Pupils dilated, he soaked in the brightest object of the night-sky. He put in his highest magnification eyepiece.
Dhruv’s cellphone buzzed. It was the school. He picked up the call with consternation.
“I was not aware; I will look into it... He is usually reserved but that hasn’t affected his studies so far. We will make sure he catches up,” he hung up. He sat down and considered it for a minute. Taran’s headmistress thought something was up with him. He had better check the room.
Taran was at school. Dhruv entered the small room. He noted the calendar with the red circle, the assortment of pens and notebooks on the table, the slightly open loft door. He checked the loft, flipped through the notebooks, inspected the closet and the pockets of all clothes, peeped behind the study table and the bed. A book lay stashed behind.
He paused at the title: A Brief History of Time. It took him a couple of seconds to shift his context. A forgotten dream, a vague feeling of intimacy. He worked in marketing now, but once upon a time, this book meant something to him. He felt a wave of affection for his son. The world indeed worked in curious ways.
He read a few pages, then put it back where it lay. Why would Taran feel the need to hide this book?
Dhruv calmed himself – he had found nothing of concern. Then why was Taran so inattentive at school? His phone buzzed again. It was work. Dhruv parked his unresolved questions in his phone app. This was not the time to obsess, but he would need to handle this situation before it escalated.
Taran watched the calendar with a rising heartbeat. It was only a week before the exams. And now you would pay the price for your fun, a voice in his head chided. I still have time, he whispered out loud. He opened his eyes wide, furrowed his forehead, and sat at the study table with fury.
First, I need to find the chapters which would be tested in the exam.
He opened his diary, and read the exam notice. Six chapters in Physics alone!
If I cover one subject a day, I would be able to cover six subjects, and English and Hindi are anyways my strong subjects, so I won’t need that much time for them.
He opened the Physics book, and started underlining at random. After reading a page, he came to a statement that stopped him.
Plasma is considered the fourth state of matter; and it is found in stars, lightning and neon signs.
Solid, liquid and gas were the three states of matter depending on their atoms’ excitation levels. Plasma seemed to be only ionised gas. Why then was it considered a separate state?
He kept on mulling on that question, but could not proceed beyond that text.
He imagined lightning falling from the clouds onto his balcony. He could see the air being ionised, the plasma cutting a zigzag to him – his body heated to thousands of degrees. He felt himself released from the weight of that moment.
He looked out of the window to the amber sky. Out there, in those stars, swirled superhot plasma. In those nebulae baby galaxies were arising out of that plasma, even as he sat in his room, worried for his exams.
The universe was vast. It was his to see.
Dusk had settled into a deep black canvas, on which stars glittered as if busy in talk. Dad had dropped in, and had been pleased to see him at study. Taran had closed his textbook shortly after. In the balcony now, the din of the city seemed far away. Taran looked up at the stars.
He pointed the telescope up. He let his hands take over. Focuser out, eyepiece out, fine motion controls. He locked on to the star. He zoomed in until the star was a blurry amorphous shape with criss-crossing floaters of his eye. Then he carefully inserted the lowest magnification eyepiece. He saw a donut ring which he shrunk into – whoa – two separate points of light!
He flicked up his head to stare at the star in disbelief. The star glimmered impishly. He looked back into the eyepiece, but of course it was gone. Without a murmur, he repeated the process again.
The two points of light were not of the same color. One was golden-yellow and the other was blue-green. The golden-yellow point seemed much brighter than the other. They soared across his eyepiece, bound by the invisible pull of gravity.
They were separate stars, but over a long distance they were not different. They existed out there as two truths. He was reminded of the eagle.
The sky kept on giving.
Taran had never felt such hunger before.
Read the next chapter in this series:
[Chapter 6] The Telescope
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The first exam was tomorrow. Taran lay stretched on his bed, his Chemistry book a right-angle and his elbow supporting his head. He still had four more chapters to memorise. Dad had already checked up on him.
He soldiered through the chapter, drilling equations and compound formulae deep into his brain, lest they might loosen away by morning. He would get stuck often, but now was not the time to research.