ISHA SANGHVI

The Heir to the Throne

It was the April of 1998 when Mother asked me for a favor. She asked me, quite petulantly to write a letter.
But, she stressed that it wasnt just any letter. She wanted me to write a letter to Albert Einstein. Precisely, my
reaction was a rather rude scoff in her face and a rather intrigued subconscious, for Mr. Einstein was long gone and
any such letter I would send would merely be a thin paper in his box of grievances. But, mother felt differently. She
argued that heaven was for real and that somehow, somewhere, he would read it. And I couldnt argue with that
logic especially with Mothers rosary in her hand. So, I complied and brought out a fresh piece of paper to talk to Sir
Einstein about the latest troubles at St. Marys High School. What an odd and unimpressive topic for someone as
impressive as him. For what else could I talk about? I didnt have a proclivity for physics. Instead, I stayed in the
comfort zone I was brought up in, where the only physics I ever understood was Newtons first law for it explained
my civil war in getting up early for school and my reluctance to stop completing an editorial at night. But still, being
the obedient daughter that I was, I followed Mothers requests, with very little thought onto why she asked me.
Dear Albert Einstein,
I am sorry if I am troubling you at this peculiar hour. I thought it was most appropriate to write to you on your
119
th
birthday. I know, that it is oddly impossible for one to live that long. But, sir, with all due respect, everyone in
this world has lived this long, at minimum because as long as one is alive to mourn for them or love them, they are
still alive in every thought, moment, and instantaneous second of life. So, with that being said, Alles Gute zum
Geburtstag.
I do hope that Mother was right when she told me that the angels would somehow send this to you. But, I am
not a big fan of middlemen. And, I hope that you are reading this right now as I am writing it, because that makes it
all the more raw. So, before I begin telling you of my life, I would like to at least tell you about me.
I feel that I do not need your introduction because I know who you are. Every man alive knows who you are.
Ive heard stories about you from my teachers and the boys in the courtyard talk about you, while I stealthily
eavesdrop, divulging my discoveries in my latest Agatha Christie novel. But, I highly doubt that you know who I am.
I doubt you overheard any angel ruminating over me.
I am not your definition of a scientist, but I am in the most crude form, an observer of the world in its purest
element. And in that reasoning, I am a mathematician, intuitive in the nature, in that I believe every problem has a
solution, imaginary or not. But theoretically, I am neither. And if this letter is solely by me, I do not believe in the
power of the Almighty, but in the power of words. If writing can link the past, the present and the future and prove
that what humans feared or loved yesterday, is what humans will fear or love today or tomorrow, then life itself is
simply a repeating decimal and that all events are just isotopes of an element, the difference being the people.
I know that you are probably wishing that this is some brilliant assemblage of works crediting your theory of
relativity or the theory of everything and to be honest, I do too. But, Im not a genius in that aspect of life. I
understand people and so far, I understand you very well. You were stamped as someone who couldnt do so, but
little by little you tore away the label until you were nothing that package told us you were.
My point of this long soliloquy is that you exceeded all expectations, and now maybe its my time to do the
same.
Sincerely,
Joanne Rand
And so that day, I sent the letter and I didnt show it to Mother or Father because of my Satan-like remark on
God. And I waited for a week hoping for a reply from the dead genius himself until I got one. A very intangible,
abstract answer of the single word And? Of course, I was confused, and brain dead expecting a much better answer
than the one I got, but to the likes of his response, I kept writing. For months, I sent letters until one blessed day
where And turned to:

Hello Jo,
I know you might be very inclined towards dropping our conversations, but I am here to write under my
own name and not under the name of my father, who was a great man, who unlike many others, indulged in the
happiness of life. He would like your letters. He would like the satire and the honesty and the rawness that you
portray.
I knew I wasnt talking to Einstein and that I was talking to an accompaniment of sorts, but I never guessed that
an heir to the scientific empire was writing to me, but I continued because the ominous voice told me to.

You see, I am here to tell you something my father told me. He told me to never question the ability of an artist,
because intelligence was in every one, but very few people had creativity, which is merely intelligence at its best. He
told me to never scoff at them, for they are the brilliant ones. He would love your writing and your analogies
because you would be the artist he would talk to me about. I hope you know that just because I am not answering
doesnt mean I am not listening, for sometimes silence speaks louder than words. It is the comfortable silence of a
listening friend that saves a man from ending his life and it is the comfortable silence of a friend that encourages a
man to let go of his emotions. From your last letter, I understood that you were worried about your book manuscript
not getting accepted for publication. And I cannot console you if you do not for I am merely the heir to the throne,
but the king would have said that if a man did not reach his goal once, he would never have found the drive to
accomplish it.
Sincerely,
The heir to the throne

And in my last letter to Einstein, I took out a fresh piece of paper, and wrote my final entry, for my childhood had
departed and I was changing and the world that I knew was gone.

Dear Mr. Einstein,
This is but my last letter of the collection of hundreds of letters I have sent to you in the few past years. I have
learnt quite a bit from you and I will continue to learn quite a bit from you. I wanted my last letter to you to be
memorable, a single account of the world as I know it and how it will continue to be.
Once upon a time, there was a big world. And the main character was a little girl, the youngest of a strict
Christian family, who was told that anything was possible. Anything at all as long as you believed. But, that was just
a fragment of the idea. Anything is possible if you believed in God was what her mother told her. And so she did,
while reading stories of science fiction by H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury. And she learnt much more than she ever
thought. She turned to books for help to overcoming this difficult enigma of the world. And throughout the wave of
life, she coursed the seas with prowess and independence. And when the waves crashed on her parade, she turned to
books to help her stand on her feet again. Whilst in second grade, when she learnt of the resurrection of Jesus in full
detail and precision, she kept that information in the back of her head stored in a tiny crevice, so when she entered
seventh grade, she read The Insanity of God in the corner of Walsh Brook Library on rainy April Sundays. And
when she was twelve and taught the profound weight of being a woman in society, she read Little Women and
admired Jo, who had a hot-head like her and a deep hatred for being a girl. She learnt so much from the thick
bounded pages in books and she learnt so little from the text books and pamphlets she read for school. And then,
when she was fifteen and asked on her first date by a Jewish boy, she read Romeo and Juliet in vain hope that she
would survive the night. The bottom line is that this girl found refuge and safe haven and the truth in the world of
fiction, and found lies in the real world. It was then that this girl determined that she would read every book written
to satisfy her hunger for the unknown. She was parented by the books to stand on her two feet and achieve the
unknown. And finally, when Harry Potter, was published last year, she found a new Bible. One where the good men
defeated the bad men, and that magic was real. She learnt that the magic Harry had was inside of her instead of
inside a wand. She learnt the ways of the world in the way Pocahontas read the colors of the wind or in the way
Harry followed his prophecy, and made the world hers.
So naturally, I am sure, you guessed that this girl is me. And naturally, I know who you are and completely
disagree, you are not the heir to Einsteins throne, but the king to your own. So, I hope one day, you are crowned
king and I need only thank you for listening to the stories that have always only lived in my head, so that one day,
they may live again and again and again.

Sincerely,
Joanne Rand

And I sent my letter and waited for days until I got a reply, one so familiar yet so full of meaning. And I
laughed, and smiled, and cried at my new found friend, a page of blotchy handwriting which held more truth then I
ever anticipated. It said in thick, inky scrawl:

The world we read about is so much better and different than the ones we have seen, but who is to say that that
world is not real?