the telescope

three friends, normal blokes, every one of them, like peas in a ..a.. pod, alike, perfectly. well, almost. one fine day, they were invited to look at the stars through a telescope. the first bloke didn't go to tech school as planned; he took classes in creative writing. he became a poet. not a very good one at first, but then his girlfriend dumped him for this random fellow with a kawasaki 500 cc bike. then he became much better. the second bloke of the group decided to not be a civil servant like his father and went to study physics and astronomy. he eventually became a cosmologist working on the evolution of the early universe. he got married, his wife eventually reconciled herself to never being able to drag him away from his computer. well, again, she didn't quite reconcile herself to it; she ended up having an affair with a sociology professor who lived down the street. but she stuck with her cosmologist husband for reasons of her own. he was not, after all a bad guy: he cared a lot about his family and wondered how his kids were doing when he remembered their names. no one gave him the nobel because theoretical cosmology is less rewarding, then, say semiconductors.. the last bloke went to a local degree college (community college for americans), somehow managed to scrape through, inspite of concentrating more on his off spin than his studies. he managed to get a small clerical job at the plant wwhere his father had worked for thirty years. he was recognised for his honesty and sincerity (which are not terribly rare qualities, but then, one does have some trouble looking for them on street corners) and promoted, there are limits to how far promotions will take one without an MBA, and he reached that limit by about forty five. he managed to send his son down to bangalore to study engineering like the rest of the country and his daughter did him proud by getting admitted to one of the more obscure dental schools in north bengal, siliguri, perhaps. he then did something his wife didn't like, atleast didn' t like at first: he bought himself a telescope. he went down to the birla museum down on gurusaday road and sat in classes with 9th graders and learnt about focal lengths and then sat in other classes with 10th graders and learnt about glass polishing and then sat in still more classes with 11th graders and learnt about the little math involved. after his retirement, he sold his little flat (and it was little) in garia and moved to kalyani. the skies are clearer there.