My Cosmic Connection - By Darun Subramaniam

Introduction: This piece is the description (a supplement actually) of  the “Life Map” sketch that I submitted to Christina Ma’am as a part of my 3^rd CA. In my sketch, I tried to trace the entire 13.8 billion year history of our universe and where I fitted in that unimaginable stretch in time and space.

MY COSMIC CONNECTION.

 It would be appropriate to start my story with the story of the universe. One of my great heroes Carl Sagan said,” If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you have to first invent the universe.” We must be grateful to great many events that turned out to be just right for our very existence here today. Well, maybe we don’t have to be. It could be true that you and I exist not because of luck but because of mere inevitability! I would be doing injustice to science and the scientific community by being your poor guide to your cosmic voyage. That, I would leave it to the Sagans and the Tysons and the Coxs and the Attenboroughs.

My interest to know about my story happened when I came across one of Hubble’s iconic images of the Eagle Nebula. The image’s name is a beautiful metaphor,” The Pillars of Creation”. It is more than just  a metaphor, it is truth in all its splendour. The image shows a new star forming out of gas clouds clumped together by the beautiful workmanship of the master architect, gravity. This image is one of the most spectacular images ever taken by man-kind, not because we captured nature in her creative muse but even if it was hung in an art gallery, it would make for an astounding picture. Neil deGrasse Tyson,a man who is rapidly becoming my hero said that the “universe called him” when he first went to the Hayden Planetarium as a kid. Similarly I guess the universe compelled me to know about her with this picture and only later did I realise that when I tried to know her, I knew myself a tad better because of a deeper connection and the realization that I’m not only a part of the universe, not only that I’m in the universe but more importantly that the universe exists within me. The atoms that make up my body were once upon a time in a star, manufactured in its violent core and that star was gracious enough to die so that I could have my atoms. This reflection makes me to bask in the majesty of the cosmos. I try to use words to translate my wonder often in failure but more importantly, it brings me a smile. The vastness of the universe and the utter insignificance of our tiny planetary speck, to me, is humbling but not saddening. Our kinship with the universe is a fact worth celebrating and I celebrate it and I feel big because I know, my atoms came from those stars!

The Pillars of Creation