A beutiful legend

This one struck me as particularly beautiful. I am sure there is some psychological analysis of why it seems to be that way but I could not care less :-)

One day a priest was getting ready for the Mass. When he reached the church, he saw that very few people have come. So he said, "I'll wait for some more time for those who have not come yet." and started waiting. While waiting, he heard the most beautiful song of a bird that had ever fallen on his aged ears. He looked outside and saw a bird singing. He sat down and started listening. It was lovely. Suddenly the bird flew away into the forest. Priest decided to follow it and he went into the woods. There he spotted the bird which was again singing and set there and listened to it. He felt very happy. Suddenly he was reminded of his mass, so he hurried back out of the woods and to the church. When he reached there, he found, to his surprise that there was nobody there, not even those whom he had to wait. There was however an old man there cutting the grass. The priest asked the old man about the men. The old man denied having seen anybody there but said that there was a story about a priest who went into the adjoining woods some 200 years ago and never came back. Hearing this the priest immediately grew old and died.

Nice ! Isn't it? There were many more among the 97 contained in the book that were enjoyable. Since reading this, I am having this strong urge to read Nandan again. It was a really good children magazine. I do not know what condition is it in now.

The second book on the list, Verse and Universe, I found a little disappointing and much more demanding in terms of time than I was willing to and had the opportunity to put in since someone put a hold on it and I had to give it back after a week. May be some other time and in some other mood !

Right now my time is being consumed by "The Mathematical Tourist" which has small journalistic type pieces on modern mathematics. The presentation of the technical details is not very satisfying but probably alright for the kind of reader it has been written for. I am mainly reading it as a source of a little history of modern mathematics, history that is being created right under my nose and by people some of whom I have a fair chance of meeting within my lifetime. It is good, specially when combined with Wikipedia and Google :-).