Dear earth people,
My name
is...well, it cannot be communicated in any of the languages you talk on earth.
In our planet we name people based on the body fragrance they carry as new born
babies. Just like the fingerprints you have, each one of our babies comes with
a unique odour at the time of its birth. And we name a baby based on the way
the newborn baby influences our olfactory setup. But, unlike your finger
impressions and the palm lines, the body fragrance of our babies remain exactly the
same throughout their lives - no matter what. (Even when someone is turning
into ash, her body still gives out the same fragrance that she had as a new born,
though for one last time.) It means the names we give remain relevant forever.
It also means we do not have to bother about remembering anyone's name; we can
know the name of a stranger walking down the street by just taking a deep breath
in that direction. It is as simple. And if I were to tell you the greatest
beauty of our planet, I would vote for the uniqueness in the names we carry.
There are no repetitions in our names; the 33 billion of us carry different
names. I am sure you will find it hard to grasp that, just like how we found it
difficult to understand what was meant by a lie - until, that chap whom you
referred by the name PK, kept hitting all of us with that thing called lie.
Things were
okay during the initial days of his return to our home, over twenty years back.
PK (allow me to use the earth name, please) manned our 17th mission to your
planet. Though he was not as smart as the earlier ones we sent, he had an
inherent charm that helped him gloss over his certain lack of substance. Yes,
we do not talk to each other in our planet, as PK might have told you. But
things changed. We had huge expectations from his mission. One of its
objectives was to study the life expectancy of the desert animals in various
arid zones of the earth. But a rude shock was in store for us. Our efforts to
trace anything relating to the mission from the samples PK had brought turned disastrous.
There was not a single item that was related to the mission. All that we could
find was loads and loads of worn out cassettes; and much worse all the tapes
had the very same human's voice. It was just baffling and annoying at the same
time. I mean, you spend something around $75 billion and all that you get in
return is some strange earth lady's voice? We just could not believe it! PK had
taken us for a very long ride. The Body for Inter-galactic Travels and Studies (BITS)
immediately blacklisted him from all future missions and slapped a handsome
penalty too.
Well, from our
earlier mission notes we were aware that something called as love existed in
earth and it drove people real crazy. Perhaps, PK was a victim. He was the
first recorded case of alien love in our planet. Soon, our fraternity ended up empathising
with him. But that is only one side of the story.
As I said, all
this happened before twenty years when PK got back to us. Within a few days of
his arrival, we could see there was something strange with his actions,
behaviour. But he said "Aall is well". (He actually started talking.)
One fine morning he invited all of us to come to his two bedroom house,
apparently to have a look at a sample he had collected from the earth. Reluctantly,
for the sake of friendship and science, some of us went. It appeared to be
something like a brass coin flicked from one of our highly guarded museums. But
he said it was a magical talisman that an earth godman blessed him with. He did
not stop there. Closing his eyes, he started chanting incoherent and
cacophonous couplets, and claimed them to be the namtras taught by the earth
god himself. He said the earth god and godmen chose him. He claimed he had
acquired supernatural powers. He boasted he did not have the need to go to
earth anymore. He announced just by sitting at his home, with eyes closed and
the namtras on his lips, he would be able to know what was happening in your
lives. He said a lot more. We were all thrilled by his words. The director of
our 16th mission, who happens to be me incidentally, was the man who was the
most excited one. I wanted to learn every bit of the namtras that PK uttered.
He declared he knew the techniques to transfer his super human powers to us. Is
there someone whom greed has not touched? Temptation trampled our scientific
temper.
Soon there was
a beeline in front of PK's house to learn the namtras and acquire the advertised out-of-the-world
powers. Everyone wanted to be like that Kryptonian who landed on your planet and who whenever
wanting to fly had only to raise his hand towards the sky. Naturally, it was
impossible for PK to teach all of us who pestered him, or perhaps he did not
want to teach all of us. So he started an education centre with a capacity of
one hundred pupils in its first batch. He fancily called it zero2infin2years.
The classes were for two hours every day for two years.
Good so far. But our jaws dropped when he told us his tuition fees. Normally,
we spend about $70,000 for a reputable 2-year MBA course. PK's course was priced
at an astronomical figure of $1,50,000! But, though most of us will not be
comfortable wearing the briefs over the trousers, who does not long to be a
superman? The entire batch got sold out. Most of us took study loans. As
planned our classes ran for two hours every day and went on for two years. By
then PK had left his job with the laboratory. He acquired two husbands, three
wives, and a lot of stones and trees. He just rocketed into the zone of elites
in no time. All he did was just sit at his home, make us utter (yes, we too started
talking) some gibberish, eat and sleep.
I was
simultaneously pursuing a fellowship program with the linguistics department of
the Sentre for Advanced Alien Studies (SAAS). It was the third year of my study
on earth languages and it involved analysing about 17,600 fully developed language
formats of your planet on a daily basis. And to cut a long story short, gradually,
towards the end of the second year of PK's course, I realised four things - that
I was poorer by $1.5 lakh, that PK was richer by $15 million, that I was not
getting anywhere near the promised infinity, and worst of all, that the blabber
of PK did not conform to the syntax of any of the earth languages.
Luckily around
the same time I remembered what one of your best detective characters had said
"...when you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
At last, I realised what he meant by truth. I understood what was a lie. Truth
was something like air to us. We were living with it, but we did not know or
realise or understand or even define what it was, as it was the default and the
only setting we had - until I realised PK was not speaking the
truth; until I realised he had acquired the functionality of telling lies from you, the
earth people.
As
you say truth alone triumphs, very soon most of us were aware that there is
something called lying. It was an act by which you cover or misrepresent or twist or
deform certain events for various reasons like profiteering, wooing others, making
fun, seeking attention, so on and so forth. We had the best quality of life
among all the planets of the three neighbouring galaxies, including the Milky
Way. Perhaps, as I realise now, it was due to the fact that none of us lied;
rather we did not know what was meant by lying though we were vaguely aware of
such a thing existing in various planets including the earth; we also did not
know what was a truth. We just had a mind that was understood by one and all
instantaneously, and exactly in the same manner - all without exchanging even a
single word. We did not have any hassle ever.
But
PK changed everything forever. A lie. Two lies. Many lies. Liars. Good liars.
Better liars. Best liars. Super liars. Petty lies. Pranks. Big lies. Betrayals.
Crimes. Scams. If you have seen closely in some BBC videos how a zygote
multiplies and ultimately becomes a bubbly baby, you can appreciate what I am
trying to say. The only difference is that, in our planet a mother lie
multiplied uncontrollably unleashing an over-sized, despicable demon. Okay, I
think it was more of a cancerous cell than a zygote.
Today,
PK is in total control of our planet. He has assumed the title "The Supreme Lord". No wonder as he is the inventor of lies in our planet. People
like me feel earth is a safer place now. I am planning to come there soon.
Yours
truly,
.
(PS:
By the way, that initial part about the unique fragrance, etc. is not true.
Lying is fun.)
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