You know when you walk into the library and everyone stops in the midst of their work and throng to catch a glimpse of your physiognomy, their mouths agape, their eyes filled with wonder and a message of change punctuated in the fresh dribble of saliva produced from their glands as they drool. They are all wondering, “What the heck is he doing out here?” And then—exeunt Romeo and Juliet—the librarian comes up and before you have willingly ceased being that flashy and snazzy superstar, you are forced to stop, and ushered, with a sharp ‘hiss!’ into the study room, the endless labyrinth of books where you can loose yourself and leave it to God or fate to dig you up and so let you continue the remainder of your life in relative peace and comfort.
I know I've exaggerated a great deal, but that’s what probably happens on the first day back. I mean, I was expecting a warm welcome from the dusty shelves at least, but fate, displaying its whimsical attitude, slapped me in the face as I moved on to discover that two of my favorite sneezy volumes had been dusted in the summer holidays preceding term start. I was taken aback; I mean, can you withstand parting with what has been the cause of thousands of germs migrating to your body after their temporary exodus? So I was standing there cursing the librarian for his heretic act and demonic spirit when all of a sudden a book, not unlike the voluminous tome of Ecclesiastes (this one was rather weaker and marked a presence showing a propensity towards being lean), fell, as if from the vast blue expanse stretching before us which we call the sky, upon my head. The timing was perfect, the hit palpable and the initiating stroke represented impeccability of the finest order. The book knocked me down like a hammer ton, and then slid down, as if enjoying striding down the versant slide that represented my V-angled body, only to stub my foot, finally stopping its rather jumpy ride at the base of the floor and opening, as if by magic, to reveal the infamous title that has been, by way of a ritual, instilling, in the hearts of pupils enjoying the prime bloom of brio, terror and melancholy of the deepest order.

It was a Physics book, and right on the front page was a picture of Einstein looking eccentrically ‘grand’ (as the book put it) with his hair ruffled and scattered like some pajock who has been beaten by a group of friends of the peahen he was unsuccessfully trying to woo, in an instinctual attempt to continue his filial generation. And before anyone, and that’s me included in the mix, knew it, I was shrieking like a cornered chicken, trying to make a dash for it down the hall. I don’t know why it was like that. I mean, I usually just puke whenever I see a physics book. These books give me the shivers. I’d rather take on a grizzly singlehanded than be stuck in an absolutely dark abyss with Einstein and Newton trying to shove insidious formulas and boring derivations down my suffering-from-physics-tonsils throat. I am not at all partial to physics, though I’m partial to physical entities, like chocolates and cupcakes, and if you get what I mean, it’s rather rummy for a feller like me to deprecate and vilipend that subject that changed the course of events and triggered a momentous flow of time from high to low potential, washing in the way emotions which are for it mere figments of the imagination. So why I’m doing this? I’ll tell you, but that will probably change your mindset and you’ll swear never to hear anything of Physics again.
When I was a kid, an apple fell from the branch of the tree in whose shade I lay enjoying a respite. It banged against my skull, and that got me thinking: what was there in my skull that had attracted that particular apple? Years passed. Man learned how to travel back in time. High-tech devices that could trace the tiniest speck of radioactive uranium were invented and still my question went unanswered. So when that book fell on my head, it got me thinking again. Newton, a tad too bright for us poor blighters, had found the solution to his problem. Will I ever succeed in doing so? I doubt it. For centuries will pass in oblivion, and one day some bloke whose progenitor had the sense to preserve my brainy mind will discover that hitherto unidentified material that marks me a special case. And then there will be features in top science magazine about the fact that an ingenious Einstein has discovered the working mechanism of the brain of Neanderthal man. A milestone, that is. For another Darwin will be born who will judge that our fossils are 300 million years old, inscrutable yet identifiable souvenirs of the days of long ago, when beings bearing a ‘slight’ resemblance to modern-age man traversed the face of earth, in pursuit of wild and abhorrent ways…