When I was a little
girl I had my own theories about the world as I knew it. One thing I was firm
about, we lived on the inside of the earth as geography called it, the mantle. Someone
had already told me that the earth was round so strike out the option of it
being a planar surface. So, the only other conclusion was that the earth was
made of concentric spheres. There was a core, the land we lived on and the blue
sky with empty space between the land and the space, the universe where
everything flew.
The sky was of two
hemispheres – one with holes- the stars and the other with a huge round lamp
that changed its colour from orange – yellow to white, widely known as the Sun.
The sky rotated about an axis as my geography teacher told me but the land
stayed still. If the land rotated, I’d have known right! It did move once a while
and we named it earthquake! Outside the world was bright white light – whose
source I didn’t really give much of a thought about.
The night side of the
sky had holes of multiple sizes one big hole that had some dirt on it; I guess
God hadn’t had time to clean the glass. And numerous other small holes that
kept twinkling.
I also believed that
the airplanes could fly through the little holes at night and go to the other
countries or may be visit the God but not the birds ‘cause they were pretty
huge for the size of the holes... Aliens with green skin and huge poppy eyes
lived there in those other countries outside! I’ve spend so many hours
wondering how small would those people in the airplanes be, were they smaller
than the people on TV or the ones that hid inside my radio? I thought maybe,
just maybe the sky was made of glass, tinted blue –dark and light.
Sometimes the sphere
leaked or cracked causing thunderstorms. My grandmother tried convincing me
that it was the Gods taking a shower or bursting firecrackers. I used to laugh
at how naïve she sounded; I mean come on, how stupid is that!
The other theory was
that the stars were little lights that hung from the sky and the twinkling was
because there was a power shortage!
This one time I was
lying down on the terrace at my grandparents and couldn’t figure out what that
falling star was. They were just, some birds bumping into one of the strings
making one of the stars to sway and fall. Ah, the poor thing!
The clouds, they were
the smoke that gets out of the little airplanes that fly. It made me go like,
“Oh golly, look at the size of those things!” looking at them and making
recognizable shapes of people, things and animals!
The day I experienced my
first hailstorm, I was thinking, may be grandma was right; God's probably
having a party up there and ice cubes are falling ;)
I’ve always had a thing
for the skies and stars and since the beginning of time as I’ve known it, I've
spent hours lying down on the cold floor of my terrace wondering if someone from
the other worlds (continents) outside the earth was lying down on the terrace n
wondering about the same thing as me.
Before I could finalize
on the theory education somehow managed to ruin me and I was forced to believe
that we lived on the surface and somehow didn’t fall off it because of some
strange sticky thing called gravity.