25. The Story of Time - Nita Berry - Arvind Gupta

130 Pages·2010·9.83 MB·English

by  Nita Berry

A CBT PUBLICATION
The Story
Of Time
Nita Berry

By Nita Berry-
Illustrated by B.G. Varma
Children's Book Trust, New Delhi
The Story of Time won the Shankar's Award and
First Prize in the category Non-fiction/Information
in the Competition for Writers of Children's Books
organized by Children's Book Trust. Apart from
stories, the other works by the author, published
by CBT, are The Story of Writing, The Wonder of
Water, Rajendra Prasad and Vinayak Damodar
Savarkar in 'Remembering Our Leaders' series.
EDITED BY GEETA MENON AND SUDHA SANJEEV
Text typeset in 13/17 pt. Palatino
© by CBT 2001
Reprinted 2002, 2003, 2004 (twice).
ISBN 81-7011-891-3
Published by Children's Book Trust, Nehru House,
4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi-110002 and
printed at its Indraprastha Press. Ph: 23316970-74
Fax: [phone] e-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.childrensbooktrust.com
The Riddle Of Time
Just suppose you could clamber aboard a
Time Machine and press the 'Forward' button.
Z...a...ap... Would you hurtle forward through
a blinding flash of days and nights, months
and years—even long centuries— perhaps, to
land into an alien world of the future...? A
world that will be a marvel of technology. And
then suppose you pushed the 'Reverse' button
and took a trip in the opposite direction— g
journeying into the dim recesses of the past.
You might just land right into your favourite
period of history...
Imagine a scene, set in ancient Macedonia.
A gleaming, black steed is resisting all efforts
to tame it. It rears wildly and throws every
rider to the ground—until a handsome, curly-
haired youth, who has been watching intently,
approaches it. He murmurs gently into its
ears, and turns the quivering creature to face
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the sun, away from its moving shadow. This
has been disturbing the horse all along...
If you could re-enter the past, what a thrill
it would be to watch young Alexander tame
the splendid Bucephalus who would later
lead him to victory in all his battles! Or to see
for yourself the lavish Mughal court with its
'nine gems'. You might even travel further
back into the primitive world and wander
through dinosaur country, with a friendly
brachiosaurus, perhaps, for company!
Can man indeed travel through time? So far,
it is only in the pages of science fiction that he
has travelled at will into the past and the
future. Or, of course, in his dreams which can
take him into any period every night!
However, he has always dreamt of conquering
time which, more than ever before, rules our
lives with a firm hand, without ever seeming
to slow down.
Could you think of a world without time?
Imagine what it would be like not to have to
tumble out of bed to the shrill buzz of the
morning alarm and to hurry to catch the
school bus! To be able to play on endlessly
without being told that it was time to go home...
or to watch a late night, horror film without it
ever being bedtime!
It all sounds too good to be true, or even
practical for that matter, does it not? For
a world without time would probably be
a totally chaotic place to live in, where
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everything happened all at once—a kind
of topsy-turvy land! Without time you
would be late for school or forget to go to bed
at night. You would either reach the cinema
too early or after the show is over. And how
embarrassing to arrive at your best friend's
birthday party after all the guests have left!
Without the steady ticking of our clocks,
nothing indeed would run smoothly
anywhere. Factory machines would work in
absolute disorder; and buses and trains would
run at all hours, instead of to a schedule.
On the other hand, life without time could
perhaps be a kind of timeless existence,
where nothing moved forward and existed in
a static state. It is difficult to imagine either
state, actually.
No doubt, you do know what time means to
you, because it is so very important. You
probably look at your watch or clock at least a
dozen times in a day. Yet, if you were asked to
explain 'time', you would most likely be too
perplexed to answer.
Time is a funny thing. It can mean different
things to different people. It is rather like the
story of the six blind men who felt the
elephant. Remember how each one gave his
own description of the animal! Similarly, if
you asked for a definition of time, you would
probably get a lot of varied answers.
For a physicist, time along with space makes
up the two basic building blocks of the

universe. A science fiction enthusiast probably
views time as the fourth dimension. A
biologist, on the other hand, will see time as
the internal rhythm of our bodies that keeps
us in harmony with nature. For the watch
manufacturer, time ticks away as accurately
as his timepieces. Time means money to the
busy businessman. As for the student taking
an examination, time is always running short!
What about when you are bored? Time just
does not seem to move on, then!
However, for some people time has no
meaning at all! The great French General,
Napoleon Bonaparte was a strict disciplin-
arian. He was a stickler, too, for time. Once he
invited some important generals over to
dinner. When the guests failed to arrive on
time, he sat down to eat a solitary meal. He
then asked his servants to clear the table and
put away the rest of the food. When the generals
arrived, they were surprised to find no dinner.
Napoleon calmly announced that dinner time
was over and it was now time to leave. It was
a bitter lesson on the value of time!
"So, what then is time?" You might well
ask, just as St. Augustine did as far back
as the fifth century A.D. He had gone on to
comment, "If no one asks me, I know what Napoleon Bonaparte
(1769-1821)
it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks
me, I do not know." This most familiar of
concepts used in organizing everyday
thought and action is also the most elusive!
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It cannot be given any simple definition.
"We physicists work with time every day/'
the late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman
remarked once. "But do not ask me what it is.
It is just too difficult to think about!"
Modern physicists, mathematicians and
philosophers are determined not to let time
slip through their fingers, eager to probe its
many mysteries. They have been thinking
hard—what really is time? How did it begin?
Can it be reversed or even slowed down? After
all, who has not wished to turn back the clock
or calendar at some time—to redo a test
perhaps, or erase a mistake? Again, they have
wondered, could time be accelerated to move
'Fast Forward', rather like a video cassette?
When did the universe come into existence?
Will it expand forever and the galaxies fade
and disperse into an ultimate 'heat death'? Or
will it recollapse into nothing, so that our
descendants are doomed to share the fate of
an astronaut who falls into a 'black hole'? And
then, will time end? The questions are as
endless as they are puzzling.
Early man too probably realized that time
was passing, when he saw he lived in a world
of constant changes that time was passing.
Seasons came and went. Rocks crumbled into
dust. He watched buds bloom into beautiful
flowers and wither away. Little babies grew into
young men and women, before time made them
old and grey. He saw that nothing or nobody
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