Apples are aplenty in the market these days and oranges scarce and expensive, though at one time they were also aplenty in winter, probably because of the abundance of kinos now. If an apple falls from a cart nobody is bothered, but the one dropped into the hands of Paris of Troy by goddesss Aphrodite earned him the love of Helen, the most beautiful of women.

Much later, when one fell on the head of Sir Isaac Newton in a garden in England, it set him thinking and the result was the theory of Gravity, said a West Delhi colony intellectual, Sharmaji, who has scores of PhDs to his credit.

Advertisement

Now a BJP leader has claimed that it was actually Brahmagupta II of the 7th century who discovered the power of Gravity a thousand years before Newton. However, if we were to go by what the 19th century French writer, Pierre Louys stated in one of his wonderful stories, A New Sensation, the Greeks and Egyptians believed that it was Aristotle who first discovered Gravity (“Things always fall down”).

That would make it more than a thousand years before even Bhramagupta II. He also predicted that another continent, besides the then known ones, must also be there ~ which pointed to the existence of America long before Christopher Columbus found Newfoundland, emphasised Sharmaji.

But to tell you the truth, adds Sharmaji, Newton should get full credit for his theory (just as Einstein gets for the one on Relativity) because he was one, who explained it in precise scientific terms and the result helped humanity in its progress enormously, with little thanks to Brahmagupta II or Aristotle, who just philosophised.

Meanwhile, Sharmaji is not interested in buying the easily available inferior apples. He’s waiting for the big, juicy oranges from Nashik to flood the market instead as he doesn’t care much for the local Pusa variety.