My Grandpa was a poet by heart and a professor of entomology by profession. Entomology is the science and study of insects and to my nine year old self, it was something extremely gross and fascinating.
Perhaps, the only creature my Grandpa was more fond of than those green and brown grasshoppers in his labs was I, so he often took me to his lab. Probably, he loved the idea of having all his favorite creatures in one place. I loved to look at hundreds of specimens of insects he had there and they were all like my friends- I wasn’t so choosy then. I had given all of them names.
One fine morning, I was playing outside in the garden where my Grandpa was growing a family of Earthworms. I saw him emerge from his lab with a jar in his hand. “Come quickly!” he exclaimed in excitement as he ran towards me as fast as his ageing legs would allow. I started running towards him as fast as my growing legs would allow. He was excited to show me something and I was excited to see that something so we both ran in equal excitement.
“It’s a mayfly and they’re found in Canada and we managed to get some of them here and look, this one is being born right now, my dear boy, look!” Grandpa said in excitement. The little insect, hardly larger than the butterflies I chased in the gardens, opened its wings and then fluttered them. The scene of that little thing coming to life had the kind of serenity which I found on hilltops or seashores later in my life. It filled me with pure joy.
After just a few moments, the insect started flying within the confinements of the jar and Grandpa fed it another insect the size of a bed-bug, probably a bed bug, I am not sure.
“Why do you give him ‘those’ Grandpa, they look so gross, let’s name him. We shall call him Flutter and it’s Flutter’s birthday today and I will ask father to get Flutter a cake when he comes home from work and I will bring that cake tomorrow and we will feed Flutter that cake and…”
“My dear boy!” interjected my Grandpa, knowing well that there is no end to my ‘ands’. “Flutter will not be with us tomorrow. He will go to sleep. He’s small and he will be tired so he will be resting.”
“Then I will wake him up and I will…” but before I could end my sentence, Grandpa handed me the jar.
“Why don’t you play with Flutter today? Why wait?”
I took the jar in my hand and forgot about the cake and whatever plans I was having for Flutter’s birthday party. Had I been the smart, intelligent person I am today, that would not have been the case. As a nine year old, I was stupid so I enjoyed that day with Flutter to my heart’s content, without worrying about what I wanted to do with it the next day.
***
Seven years later, I happened to come across an article about Mayflies on Wikipedia. Suddenly, I could remember Flutter and some very vague memories of the day I spent with my friend. So many days had passed since then, but what disturbed me the most was that Flutter would have died before the day ended. “Mayflies have a very short lifespan, which is usually less than twenty-four hours on average.”, the article read. For some reason, it disturbed me. I decided to take this up with my Grandpa.
He was now a retired professor of entomology and a full time poet. A little older, a little wiser, he wrote satirical poems on how our neighbors ill-treated their elders and would recite them at gatherings. It would frustrate them but we couldn’t dare to ask him to stop lest we become the subject of his next poem and we enjoyed them anyway, so we encouraged him. We loved the sense of humor of this seventy year old man.
But that day, I did not seek amusement. That day, I was seeking wisdom. I knew where to look for it. I went to Grandpa and sat near him.
“Grandpa, why did God create mayflies?” I did not believe in God but he did.
“What do you mean, my dear boy?”
“What is the point of having any life if one couldn’t live expect to live until the next day, even with the best of their chance? What could one achieve in just one day and it is even not enough to experience different weathers and different times of years and what could one eat and drink in one day and what could life of one day possibly mean and if life of a mayfly is so unfair why did God create them at all and since we all descend from a common ancestor, what meaning could possibly our lives have and…”
“Oh ho stop! My dear boy, calm down, a racing mind is just like a racing car, it goes fast but you must race only when you’ve learnt to drive and never forget to push brakes when things stop making sense! Calm down and tell me what happened!” said Grandpa with his usual aura of amusement. One of the unsolved mysteries of my life had been to figure out the reason behind his eternal amusement. I kept that mystery for some other day and asked, this time trying to sound calm and composed, “What is the meaning of having such a short life?”
Grandpa seemed even more amused, he spoke and I listened, “You think that one day is short only when you compare it with a hundred years of our lives. But compare hundred years of human life with two hundred years of life of a turtle. Compare it with 4 billion years of life of our solar system and billions of years of our Universe. Everything which exists including the Universe itself has a purpose. The purpose is simply to exist and when the time is over, it will stop to exist. Living beings like turtles, human beings and the mayfly are just one aspect of the Universe. They are not different from it, rather a part of it. They also have the same purpose. The only difference between life and death is that we are aware of our existence while we are alive. When the awareness is no longer with us, we call it death. All living creatures get to enjoy this awareness based on the bodies they have accumulated which can process some information about this Universe and call it an experience. A mayfly is small so it enjoys it for one day. We are relatively big so we enjoy it for a hundred years. We also have very complex and developed brains so we not only enjoy it, we are also able to comprehend it to some extent. But do not forget the purpose of life, is same as rest of the Universe, you might want to call it no purpose at all if you like. Still, we are experiencing it, so we must. Mayflies get this experience for twenty-four hours, we get it for about a hundred years, give or take, and the Universe itself has several billion of them. What difference does it make?”
He left me with the question and retired unceremoniously into his room . I sat there contemplating, trying to make sense of what Grandpa just said. It was just philosophy- a story, a smart answer. It didn’t have any meaning true in the real world. Death did mean something, didn’t it? Everybody takes it so seriously! But is it? The world didn’t stop existing the next day since Flutter! What does it means then?
I spent the next couple of weeks grappling with thoughts of my Grandpa, and my own developed rationale which sometimes felt not developed at all! I kept wondering!
Then, on a fine Sunday morning, Grandpa called me to his room. “Dr.Dwivedi happened to drop by yesterday and for some reason he brought me this!”. He produced a jar and there was a mayfly struggling to flutter it’s wings for the first time. It was serene to watch. Maybe, that was all there was to the life. Understanding it won’t change it, why not rather just live it?
“Let’s call him Flutter! Go and Enjoy your day but be careful!” He said with a calm smile as he placed a box with some dead bed-bugs in it.
