The Race That Was Never Lost

Many years later, older and wiser now, the hare and the tortoise had become good friends who would often meet of a weekend at the local pub to quaff the froth while reminiscing their youth. One day, loaded with an ancient paradox, the hare turned to his barstool mate and said, “I know everyone thinks you won the race by being slow and steady and all that guff but you do understand why I couldn’t catch up and overtake you after I woke up from my nap, don’t you?” Tonguing a whisker of foam off his upper lip the tortoise replied, “I suppose because there was an arbitrary finish line imposed which doesn’t happen in real life, right?” 

“Wrong!” said the hare. “If there had been no finish line whatsoever I could still never have overtaken you. Hell, I couldn’t even have caught up with you.” Seeing his carapaced companion’s brow furrow in perplexity he continued, “See the reason is, the moment I reached the spot where you had been, you would have already moved a little distance ahead in that time. Then when I had caught up with you once more you would have moved a short distance in front again. And so on. Realising classical mathematics had outdone me, I knew there was no way I could win. So I gave up and a fable was born instead.”

The tortoise looked at him thoughtfully over the rim of his supping vessel and said, “Okaaay. So what you’re saying is that it takes all the running to stay in the same place because motion is an illusion. But, your point is...?” The hare paused before answering. Then taking a deep breath he blurted, “To prove my logic that I can never overtake you, all we have to do is have another race.”

“Agreed,” said the tortoise, “But on condition I get a head start and you don’t fall asleep. That still satisfies your logic doesn’t it?” The hare’s eyes lit up. “Done!” he exclaimed and they were off to the applause of the forest animals who had gathered to witness the rerun. Within a few seconds the hare had overtaken his sluggish opponent and was waiting with tears in his eyes at the finish line.

“I don’t get it, what went wrong?” he sobbed brokenly when the tortoise finally reached. “How come I lost again?” Gently leading his friend away to their favourite watering hole, the tortoise said, “Well, calculus has been invented since but more importantly, sometimes” (and here he quickly inserted a moral): it takes all the thinking to stay in the same place.

Mukul Sharma