But if you haven't heard the deal about the answer to life being 42 and all that, you've seriously been living under a rock. I mean, I know decently intelligent people who have tried convincing me about it, without any possible logical explanation. So I gave them the f-word. F-I-N-E. No point arguing regarding my own misjudgment of their intelligence.
More than the question itself, what baffled people, atleast to the few over-inquisitive ones like me, was "Why '42'?". The answer from the horse's mouth was a simple Google search:
It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story.
Best,
Douglas Adams
London, UK Currently in Santa Fe, NM If Douglas Adams lived to see all the furore, he would have been having the best laugh about it. Again, he might have died laughing.
Anyway so one night during my usual long "alone-time" train journeys I couldn't sleep. The train was giving me violent swings and singing harsh lullabies. And everytime a train passed by on the parallel track I imagined a very "Final Destination Part-5" happening. I tried to distract myself, and that's when this struck me. Behold! *drum roll*
Statement 1: 42 = reverse of 24
Statement 2: 24 = number of hours in a day
Statement 3: We could attain true happiness if we could "rights our wrongs" which could happen if we could turn back or "reverse" time, lets say one day at a time, which means 24 hours
And as per Statement 1, 42 is the reverse of 24.
Hence, answer to life (I don't know about the "universe and everything") is 42.
Now we could debate about existence of happiness without sadness and all that BS, but I would only leave you with one of my favorite Coldplay songs :)
10 comments:
ahhh...now i feel enlightened :P
Haha...So Simple...Gal you have an interestingly intelligent and random mind. And I liked the peep into it. Very much! :)
@BE - You're right. I should write a book.
@Choco - You know, I try :P Zanks!
How can you be so clever and yet not finish the book in THREE tries. (yes, a HGTG lover here) :P
Haha. I will, I will. It's been on my agenda for the past 2 1/2 yrs! It's just my concentration levels. I came with a 90% to a B-school and left with a 40 :P
Hello! I have also tried and failed to read "Hitchhikers ..." but there is this one other Douglas Adams book called "Last Chance to See". Apart from being absolutely hilarious and very very easy to read, it is also tragic and will hopefully makes the reader more sensitive to the precarious state of existence, that much of life on this earth is today. Copies of the book are very hard to get, but try it out; its worth its weight in gold and is only less valuable than the animals it talks about. Happy blogging!
Mr. Demon, I will try my best to lay my hands on it :)
wow that was some analysis :) proud of you atrisa..i should read. the only part i could get from this post was your analysis.
Yay! It's cool, analysis is the only thing worth reading anyway :)
Quite intriguing Archita :)
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