To Chandu, it appeared as if he were falling down a long, black funnel with the stars falling through alongside of him. Black holes, though Chandu didn?t know it, were not actually shaped like funnels. They actually dragged matter in from all sides. It was only to the observer viewing his specific field of vision that it appeared like a funnel. Since vision totally depends on light and since light refused to follow Newtonian ideas of travelling in straight lines, due to the extreme curvature in space-time (equivalent to an extreme gravitational field in neo-Physics), Chandu?s vision was distorted by the curvature. As they went deeper, the gravitational field increased, warping space-time into greater curvatures. His vision got further distorted, though it was only the starlight?s curvature he was defining.

But there was an additional problem for Chandu. ?Daa? How is it that the funnel gets smaller and yet the stars and we don?t collide?? he asked.

Little did he realise that the stars had contracted a million times as they were sucked into the black hole, to something the size of cricket balls. But this change in size was not apparent since Chandu had himself shrunk to the size of a microbe.

Before Daa could answer Chandu?s question, Chandu shot out his next ? ?Oh! Daa? look! What?s happening to all the stars ahead? They are simply vanishing!? he squealed.

The velocity must have been tremendous. The next moment the stars that had been falling alongside them and after them vanished from their sight. Now the universe was no more.

?Daa! What?s happened? Where are all the stars? Where are the worlds? Hai Ram! What must have happened to my home?? He shouted in consternation.

To be continued

Manu Mahadevan’s short story, Black Hole first appeared in the children’s magazine Target edited by Rosalind Wilson. It was later published in the short story collection, The Carpenter’s Apprentice, by Katha, a Delhi-based non-profit organisation and publishing house.