The rain wouldn't stop. The alley leading up to the building where I lived was waterlogged. I had to wade through the water submerged up to my thighs with an umbrella in one hand and my bag in the other. Even though the wind was a little less strong than yesterday, it was strong enough to upturn the umbrella and expose me to the rain that was pouring down the sky like water from a tap.
Most of the city's sewage suffered a water jam in more or lesser proportions every time it rained. I could see students crossing the alley with water reaching up to their chests. Some of the kids walked through the water looking at each step that they took in and out of the water, while some just didn't care enough and splashed water all around. The smaller ones were carried on the shoulder of their fathers who also carried the school bags on their backs. Cars translated down the street through the water creating a wave like motor boats.
Even the torrential rain couldn't stop the city from living the life that it was used to living, except for the hawkers and the shops that were built so low that keeping them open would cause water entering into their premises. The shops, which were on a higher level than the street river, remained open as if it was any other day. The shopkeepers though had an extra job of keeping the water from wetting their wares or entering into the shop whenever a car passed the street.
By the time I reached my place I was already wet from head to toe. I went in to take a bath immediately. When I came back she had already returned. She wasn't wet at all as if she just came in from a different city where it was a normal summer day.
"Your clothes are all dry?" I asked.
"Yeah. I took a cab today." she replied.
Should I now ask her about what really happened during the night before? I had been having this discussion in my mind all day long with myself. A part of me thought that I should confront her and ask her point blank that I had evidence which supported my theory that I didn't dream the musical piano delight which I had heard last night. The consequences of me being right meant that she lied to me in the morning, the probability of which was as low as these clouds sailing off immediately to some other land and leaving us to dry a bit- almost impossible. During all this time that we have been together, there hadn't been an instance where she hid anything from me. And why would she hide something as mundane and recreational as playing piano in the dead of the night in her own house? Well, now that I put it that way, it sounds a bit strange. But this strangeness wasn't enough to eclipse the implicit trust that we had built around each other. I decided to skip this topic and went back to working on my thesis; the submission date for which was already knocking at the door.
"What are you reading?" She asked.
"Some Physics stuff, you know. Working on that thesis." I told her.
"Tell me." She came and sat beside me on the bed. She picked up my left hand and placed my palm on top of hers. She then closed her hand and I could feel her fingers fitting snugly between the gaps of my own fingers like a jigsaw falling into place. "I love it when you talk those daunting theories and equations to me." She said as she poured her eyes into mine.
"I would do that. In fact I too love to talk science to you, but before I do that you will have to release me from the magic-spell of your eyes." I whispered.
She laughed and placed a peck on my forehead. "You haven't got used to it yet, have you?" she said.
"I don't think so. And I don't think I could ever. It's a new feeling, a new pulsation of chemicals in my brain every time. It's magic." I replied.
I could notice that she was blushing as she stood up and went to the kitchen. She came back to the bed carrying with her a plate of noodles. She picked up a fork and passed another one towards me.
"Tell me now will you?" She said while mining the noodle-field with her little fork.
"Well, I am studying about this stuff called gravitational lensing, which is a small part of my thesis." I said as I mouthed a fork-full of noodles.
"That doesn't ring any bells. You see I don't know even the alphabets of science." She said as she pushed away the advances of my fork from her noodle-territory on the plate.
"Well, I will try to explain it in simple words then. You might know that light travels in a straight line which is what we are taught in elementary schools. They use a group of fancy words to denote this: rectilinear propagation of light. This means that you can only see objects which are directly in your line of vision." I pushed the fork in my hand up and down fork to visualize a ray of light travelling straight. She was listening with rapt attention while consuming noodles at her set frequency. "Now, this seemingly rational observation took a backseat when Einstein announced that gravitational forces can cause even light to bend. To visualize what he meant, consider that light is made up of very tiny particles called photons and they have mass. As a result these photons are affected by gravitational fields, just like any object of mass is. What it all means is that light doesn't travel in a straight line." I could see surprise clambering in her expressions: her eyes widened, her eyebrows were raised and her mouth was open even though the plate of noodles was already empty except for a few crumbs.
"That's sensational!" She said. She then stood up, placed the plate on the table and then lied down on the bed. "Tell me one thing though: How do you people know that it's true, because we do not see it in real life?" She asked.
"You are right. In daily life, light still travels straight. That is only because the mass of objects involved in daily life is tiny. But in the face of very massive bodies like stars, planets and black-holes we have observed evidences of the bending of light. The most famous of these observations is known as Einstein's Cross." I paused to see if I was doing a good enough job at explaining. She pulled the blanket over herself and blinked and then relaxed her eyes which meant that she wanted me to continue with my lecture.
"So this Einstein's Cross is a set of images that we see in the sky because of the bending of light." I started again. "I will tell you without being very specific that there is this black hole, which is a very massive thing in the universe, and behind this black hole there is a quasar, which is like a galaxy with lots of light coming out of it. Now technically, if light travelled in a straight line we shouldn't see this quasar because it is blocked by the black hole that lies in between the earth and that quasar. But the truth is we actually can see that quasar and what's more we can see as many as four images of it in the sky. This is because the light from the quasar bends due to the mass of the black hole, travels tangentially through the black hole's borders and then reaches us. Also, since light from the quasar reaches us from all directions we can see four concentrated images of the same quasar in the sky. Those four images are known as Einstein's Cross." As I finished my discourse, I started hoping that I had been able to reduce the topical jargons and difficult thoughts so that she could grasp it easily.
"That's a very beautiful and scary theory." She said.
"I get the beautiful part, but why do you say it's scary?" I asked her.
"Actually, I had this scary thought while I was listening to you talk about the multiple images of the same thing in the sky." She began explaining. "What if we are behind a black hole and there is only one star on the other side of it, and all of the stars that we see in the night sky are just repetitive images of that one lonely star?"
I didn't know what to say to that. I mean yes, there were technical loopholes in the assumption that she had made, but for a moment I was seized by this unknown awe mixed with fear while contemplating the sense of what she had said.
"I will skip dinner, I think." She murmured the words with a smile. "Good night."
"Good night." I wished her back.
As I leaned to switch off the big light and switch on the bedside lamp, my sole mate at this hour, I caught a glimpse of the night sky. In the lightning that flashed at that instant, I saw a few dim stars shining beside a small cloud. Resonating with the sound of the thunder, a shudder ran through my spine as her remark on the Einstein's Cross echoed in my mind. I forced myself to turn and look the other way. She had already sunk into a deep slumber with a tender ignorance blooming on her face.
I couldn't focus on the papers now, so I decided to skip meal and sleep as well. I put aside the laptop and the papers, pulled up the blanket and closed my eyes trying to sleep.
I didn't know when I had slept but I could see the time on my phone when I woke up. It was 3:14 AM. And I could clearly tell what had awoken me up. It was not the scary thoughts that I had slept with. But like the last night, it was a fine piece of piano melody coming from the other room.
© Zeeshan Akhtar