— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Chapter 2
About this quote
हिन्दी में
आख़िर मैं हूँ कौन? आह, यही तो सबसे बड़ी पहेली है!
What it means
Two things happen in one breath. She asks a question of fact about herself — not what has happened to her, not how to get back, but who she now is — and then, instead of panicking, she calls it the great puzzle.
That word carries the line. A puzzle is a thing with an answer, set by someone, solvable by sitting down with it; the Ah in front of it is nearer relish than dread. The line is usually reprinted as a cry of existential confusion, and stripped of its punctuation it reads that way, but Alice is behaving like somebody who has found a hard question, not somebody who has lost herself.
What it teaches you
Watch what you call it the next time you cannot account for your own behaviour. Crisis and puzzle describe the same uncertainty and produce different next moves, and only one of them leaves you sitting with the question long enough to work through the candidates.
अर्थ और सीख
एलिस पूछती है कि अब वह आख़िर है कौन — सवाल यह नहीं कि उसके साथ क्या हुआ, बल्कि यह कि वह ख़ुद कौन है। पर ध्यान दीजिए, वह इसे संकट नहीं, ‘पहेली’ कहती है — और पहेली वह चीज़ है जिसका जवाब होता है और जिसे बैठकर सुलझाया जा सकता है। सीख यह कि अपनी उलझन को हम क्या नाम देते हैं, उसी से तय होता है कि घबराएँगे या सुलझाने बैठेंगे।
Where it comes from
Alice, shortly after the first change in size, trying to establish whether she is still herself. It is the novel’s real question, and she asks it before any of the famous creatures appear.
Carroll italicised ‘that’ — ‘Ah, that’s the great puzzle!’ — which is why printed versions vary. The puzzle she means is not philosophical; she is working through a list of other children she might have turned into.
