Draked

word droppin 9

DRAKED

This weekend I went to Dharamshala on a junket. To our surprise, we discovered that we’d not be staying in a hotel but at the bunglow of a herbal-medicine-would-be-baron whose herbs we had gone to check out. There were twelve guys and a couple of scientists, and we were packed off in two rooms, so we chose to sleep under the open sky on rooftop. I am in reverie whenever I am with stars or rains, and so I mumbled to myself, “If there are so many stars, with so much light, why is the night sky, not bright?” “You are talking about Olber’s paradox aren’t you?” came a voice that was a paradox for me, for I could see no one. I turned around to see Dr Bhoon smiling through his long white beard.
“I don’t know any Olber,” I said.
“Well you have coincidentally said what one of the most profound scientists said. Olber proposed that if it is an infinite universe with infinite number of stars, the luminosity should be enough to keep the night bright,” the scientist chuckled.
“I did not know that poets and scientists think alike,” I said.
“What do you think about aliens?” the professor asked me.
“Well they never land in Delhi. They land only in the land of Donald Duck. By the way it should be Donald Drake and not duck,” I smiled.
“You sure are a science student my boy,” the prof was enthusiastic, “you know about the Drake equation as well.”
“Well a drake should get a duck, he should have that much luck, that’s the drake equation,” I said.
“ You must be kidding me,” the prof gleamed, “Drake was the man who proposed an equation to find out the number of planets that extra terrestrial life. It is also discussed in Frederick Pohl’s “Fermi and Frost” where technically advanced civilizations destroy themselves.”
“Sir can we move beyond drakes, ducks, dolphins?” I said a little irritated.
“Oh you know the Order of the Dolphin too. The famous ten people who decided to find out more about the drake equation and possibility of extra terrestrial life. You sure are kidding me,” the prof said.
“I wish dolphins turned horses and ran away,” I said.
“You know cetology too!” the prof exclaimed, “in the medieval records, the cetologists who study whales and dolphins, say they encounter names like red whales and horse whales.”
I had to run like a horse to the garden before he declared me a Nobel winner.