The N-Galaxy: Object F9

-Dad, can we land on the stars up there?

-Yes, son. We can.

-But grandpa said that it's impossible!

-Do you see that star over there? The brightest of our sky. There's someone who reached beyond that.

-Really?

-Yes. Would you like to see how?

As the eight year old kid nodded in awe, I carried him in my arms to my study. I opened my DVD drawer and smiled back at him. It was time for his initiation.

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As human beings are we simply meant to reproduce and keep populating the planet or is there something worthy of being chased that we should seek, even if without answers, till one generation merges into another? Speaking in Christopher Nolan's language, we always have a choice. Nothing but our own actions determine our future. WE get to decide what we'll have. Surely a privileged class, aren't we? Spoiled with more chances than we can handle what if there comes a day when the choices are suddenly taken away? 

Voila! Welcome to the grandeur of Nolan Galaxy. This galaxy, like any true galaxy is mostly dark with dots of light scattered throughout in order to pave way for the signature of life - you know right what it is? - hope.

In this darkness we are asked repeatedly not to go gently. May be the creator never meant mankind to be gentle - hence the arrogance, ambition, wars and civilizations; progress manifested through layers and layers of evolution.

Oh you saw a man being trapped inside a Black Hole (Big term!) and then getting rescued as well! Stupid, right? But did you consider replacing science with hope and man with mankind? Did you even bother to think that there was a time when man would only know about killing wild animals for his survival? The man back then would not know that the moon was reachable but why would he care? You surely know where I'm getting at, don't you? O, the comparisons of past and future! Does it really matter whether the totem falls or not ? A Black Hole - something that doesn't even allow light to escape... Oooo...scary!! How dare the director allow a freaking human being to escape? Cancel, we must his artistic license! How dare he believe that a powerful conscience (Do not go gentle, remember?) can rescue humanity from the clutches of Ignorance? Film lovers, we are. At least, we claim to be.

I thoroughly enjoyed a film that took me back to my childhood when everything was assumed to be possible. But then, reality has served dust over dust over decades. A child's universe had long since decided to hibernate until someone docks at the relevant station and wakes him up, even him momentarily.

What is reality? The mathematics that we are able to solve, the lust for power, the moving life forms all around us, what exists in our textbooks - isn't our reality just what we believe it to be? Why is then an imagination, a dream not equally real? If your sub-conscious shows you images of you steering a spaceship or living inside the Sun, how can you even call it unreal? Doesn't just the choice of believing make all the difference? We speak of science, of Einstein, of relativity. What about the reference frames in the Imagination space?

Memento. Inception. Interstellar. The Choice is the reality.

Do I believe in the subsequent giant leaps of mankind? Oh yes, certainly. I'm probably one of the optimists, one of the "Greater Fools (for reference, watch The Newsroom, Season 1, Episode 10)" of this generation(- an interval along the time axis where the higher dimensions are neglected for the ease of calculations, for the laziness of the privileged!). 

 Edmund, eh? Mt. Everest, anyone? Can't we hope that our next leap at least takes us to the highest point, which is yet firmly grounded?

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-I wish I landed on Miller's planet, Dad.

-Would you not be afraid of the waves?

-If I know when to take off, what's there to be afraid of?

I was about to say, 'An improper take off ,may be'. But I caught myself. I saw an optimist in him that I never was. 

-What about the Gargantua? Would you pay it a visit?

-Only if you come with me!

-I might have to leave for Edmund's planet.

-Then I'll either come with you or stay here with mom.

Someday son, I thought, you'd have to visit the Gargantua on your own! And then he asked the question of all questions...

-What's a sphere?