Hey, do you know that scientists have split the atom and now the Earth will end?" "Oh yeah, I do," I replied sheepishly. I could not comprehend half the words my niece said as my cerebrum was no longer registering new data; its memory disk for the day was full. It had been a tiring nine hours in office and I was is no mood to discuss physics, that too at 1.30am.

I could have told her to just zip it and let me rest. But the quote of Saint Augustine that I was forced to memorise at a theology class years ago flashed before my eyes. ‘Patience is the companion of wisdom'. Maybe she is having some difficulties in her science assignment and was seeking help. That's why she must have called me at this hour from Toronto, I reasoned.

"Isn't it great news for humanity?" I intoned. "What humanity, there will be no living beings, the Earth itself will disappear in a black hole. Now that they have split the atom, they have also created a minuscule black hole. It will become bigger and bigger and will gobble cities and countries over a period of time," she lectured.

"So you have an assignment on black holes?" I asked. "I know about them as I have studied them in college. The only collider that we had heard in the '80s was the cyclotron." She must have thought I was sounding pedantic, but it didn't bother me a bit as I flaunted my knowledge of the subject.

"Are you a retard?" She reprimanded. "You work for a newspaper and don't you know what's happening in the world? My class is talking about it, so are the other pupils in school," she said.

"What did you say, retard?" She probably inferred that I was hurt and quickly apologised.

"No probs," I pacified her. I have heard people calling me that a thousand times when I was young; now maybe a hundred times! Those who study science are mostly retards, morons and nerds, I reassured her and consoled myself, feeling proud of being a member of the retarded cognescenti club!

"So you are worried about the black hole?" I asked.

"Of course, I am concerned, my whole class is paranoid. It is going to be doomsday soon. Wake up. Wake up to the reality."

Eh, wake up … wake up the words started ringing in my ears. With a start, I rubbed my eyes, opened them wide, rolled my eye balls up and down and from side to side. I stretched my ear out to listen intently to the faint voice emitting from the mobile. Indeed, I was asleep on the armchair with the communication handset pressed to my cheek.

‘Big Bang'

Now that I was awake, I heard her say: "I was trying to tell you that in Geneva, scientists have succeeded in colliding two beans of protons at a very high energy and speed to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang."

I replied with journalistic pride that we have published the news about the Cern experiment on the Swiss-France border. "It was a success," I said.

"But the success of the experiment is a problem for all of us," she countered. "Check your email, I have sent you links to the various websites and Youtube uploads, predicting the end of the world."

I opened the email and lo and behold, the doomsayers seemed to have worked overtime to explain the approaching apocalypse.

"Nothing to worry," I offered. "Finish your homework and go to sleep. The only time a person needs to worry is when the bank account is not in the black and the credit card goes into a hole for lack of funds at your local grocery store. When these things happen, the data would be used as another sample for the empirically proven law of bankruptcy. Nostradamus and the doomsayers can take a hike. I live for the day and have earned my dirham to sleep for the next eight hours. Que sera, sera."

I don't know if my pedagogy helped. After a long pause, I heard her ask: "You mean to say it's a hoax?"

I had no more strength left to answer that question and politely cut her short with two words — good night.