SWEET N SALTY CONVERSATIONS-2

They both were two pegs down and were sitting on the ground with their arms around each other, gazing up at the starry summer sky.

‘Just look at the sky,’ said Jobin, stroking her hair. ‘ what we are looking at now is how the sky  would have appeared thousands of years ago.’

He had told her the same thing on the day they first met but Christina thought not to interrupt him- this was his way of sharing his world with her.

Many of those stars have already died, but their light still fills the universe. Other stars were born far away, and their light has not yet reached us.

So no one knows what the real sky looks like? She asked.

We don’t know. We study what we see, but what we see is not always that exists. He said.

‘ I want to ask you something. What are we made up of?. Where did the atoms that make up our bodies come from?.

Jobin looked up at the ancient sky and said: ‘ they were created along with the stars and the river. In the first second of universe’s existence .

‘ so after the first moment of creation, nothing more was added.’

‘no nothing. Everything moved and continues to move. Everything has transformed and continues to be transformed. But all the matter that exists in the universe now is the same matter from all those billions of years ago, and not one single atom has been added.’

Christina sat studying the movement of both river and stars. It was easy to see the river flowing across the earth, but it was hard to see the stars moving in the sky. And yet both were moving.

Jobin, she said at last, after a long silence during which they both watched a boat passing by. Let me ask what might seem an absurd question: is it physically possible that atoms that make up my body could have been in the body of someone who lived before me?’

Jobin stared at her in amazement. She surprises him everytime.

What do you mean, he asked.

What I said, is such a thing possible? Is it possible that the atoms that made up the body of someone who died could be in my body and in someone else’s body?.

He said nothing for a moment, then said:

Yes it is.