A LIFE'S SCRIPT

(The workers were finishing the preparation for the auditorium. A worker was screwing in the last chandelier when his boss shouted at him and told him to hurry up. He quickly tried to complete it and left a screw loose.)

Aditya was lying on his couch, with a bowl of Doritos in his lap. It was a lazy Sunday and he had no intention of working. His son was sitting in a chair next to his couch with a frown on his face after a long argument about who would get to lounge on the couch. They were peacefully watching Shrek (his son’s choice) when the serenity was broken by his wife’s shrill voice. “Honey, could you clean the attic today?" she said.

Aditya didn’t even try to object and simply replied with “Sure!”

“And I mean right now!” she yelled this time.

“I get one day away from work, and you’re asking me to clean the attic. Why do we even need to clean it?”

“A single holiday is it? Do I get one? Why don’t I just take this day of as well, stop cooking this pasta midway and serve undercooked pasta with only half the vegetables!! It’s been a year since that attic was touched and who knows what creatures are growing there!”

Aditya put down the bowl of Doritos, somehow lifted his body up and began walking towards the kitchen to get the tools. Arguing with his wife was not as simple as arguing with his son was a lesson he had previously learnt. He didn’t want to make his wife any more furious. He remembered those first few months of his marriage. The subtle romance, the naive love…. It didn’t take much time for it to transform into this constant quarrel.

He had barely gotten up before his son threw himself on to the couch and gave a sound of relief and victory.

“At least wait till I get to the kitchen,” said Aditya to which his son grinned.

After donning the appropriate attire and taking a broom, dustpan, a bucket of water and an old cloth, he began his ascend to the attic. There was a small staircase which led to it. The attic was usually dark and dusty and one could not see anything till one turned on the light bulb in the center. As Aditya reached the top of the staircase, he felt he could see more than he should have been able to. Something in the room was projecting a strange white light. He went to look for its origin and found a small sphere in the corner.

It looked like a piece of the moon. It was pure white without a speck of dust on it even though the rest of the attic was covered in it. Aditya couldn’t figure out what it was and bent to pick it up. As soon as he made contact with it, he felt of jolt and was thrown aback. All of the light in it had vanished and it disappeared. Aditya felt a sharp pain in his forehead as if he was overusing his brain. He could not withstand the pain and he fell on the same dusty floor of the attic that he was supposed to clean.

He came to a few hours later and he was sitting in his bed with his wife at his side. Seeing him open his eyes, she screamed for her son, “Dilip, he’s awake.”

Dilip came running into the room. “What happened?” asked Aditya in a slow, deep voice.

“I came to check if you had finished and I saw you lying there unconscious,” replied Preeti. 

Suddenly Aditya sprang up on the bed and started speaking with a tone of astonishment, “I saw this ball of light and I touched it, it filled me with information about my life. It’s like a saw the future, my entire future.” Aditya felt a chill crawl down his spine as his brain reloaded with what had happened. He could see his future, everything that would happen in his life. It was inside of his brain like memories. He could see what was going to happen a week later or a year later, every moment until… until his death. 

“Adi, what’s going on? You’re scaring me!”

“What? Oh, it’s nothing, I’m sorry. I just feel like I had an allergic reaction to the dust sorry. I breathed it and it shook my brain a little. It was nothing, I’m better now.” Aditya couldn’t realise what was going on, he wanted to tell his wife what happened, how he could see into the future. But he couldn’t, something was stopping him, he couldn’t control his body unless he acted the way he saw in the future.

Preeti had no idea. She accepted what he was saying and replied, “Okay, I guess if you’re feeling alright. Still I feel you should take some rest. I’ll bring you some soup.”

She left the room and Dilip looked at his father for a second and then followed her. Aditya had just realised the effect of that white ball. It showed him his entire future, but not as he thought. He could still see his future, but he couldn’t change it. It was like his life was playing played by someone else, and he was just watching. As though he already knew the plot, the twist and the end, but still had to read the book. He went through the memories and saw something that made him want to end his life then and there. He saw his own son’s death just a week later. 

Even though he wanted to cry, he couldn’t control his expressions. He could only control his thoughts and not his actions. In his brain, he was sobbing, thrashing his arms and smashing objects in grieve but his body wouldn’t move and he couldn’t shed a tear to save a life. 

His son brought him soup a few minutes later in a tray, smiling as he always was. “You’ll be fine right, Dad,” he said with a concerning voice. “Yes sure I will,” replied Aditya with a smile. He wanted to hug his son, hold him close and never let him go. He was bound by invisible strings and gagged by an unseen cloth. 

A week later, he dropped his son off at a class, knowing he would never return and yet not showing a slight emotion in his eyes. He got his son his death, as a gift. He gave him a new pair of headphones as a birthday gift. Dilip was listening to a song, swimming in the melodious waves of different instruments as a truck ran over him. Aditya felt something that is worse than losing a child, to know about the child’s death a week in advance, seeing him dancing and flittering, living his last days and yet not saying a word to him or anyone else about it. It killed Aditya from the inside. He felt like dying and but he couldn’t because he knew when that was coming as well. At least he was allowed to cry and yowl in agony after his son’s death. 

It was destined that after he had lost his son, for him to make an organization. He created it as a medium to help people out of their grievances, to aid them into coming out of trauma that they had suffered. It wasn’t just psychiatric help; it was group sessions where the people could learn how the others were coping with their tears. If they had had an outburst of emotions lately, they played games to clear their mind. This organization boomed, and several people gained from it. Aditya was the chairman and when it completed 10 years, he was told to make a speech to everyone who was a member or had taken part in it. He was told to tell the story of how he founded it and the journey he had completed. 

He didn’t prepare a speech, he wanted to but couldn’t. He was used to this by now. It was in a huge auditorium with 5000 seats. At 7pm the auditorium filled and the host gave a short introduction about Aditya before handing the microphone to him.

Aditya stood up there, in front of all the people and tried to begin his speech. He went to open his mouth and that was when he realised. As he was so close to death, the effect of that ball was starting to wear off. He wasn’t able to move his body but he could at least talk what he wanted to. People expected him to speak about the death of his son, how moved he was because of it and how it changed him as a person. The truth was, it didn’t. And so, he began, “Many years ago, I found something. It changed my life for good. It took all the surprise out of my life. Every single bit of it. Life was an uninteresting piece of dullness. Still, I had to live it. I would say I endured it. Nevertheless, it taught me something about life. If you know everything that will happen, it takes the fun out of it. To all of you that don’t yet know what will take place in your life. I have but one message for you. There’s a theory that life is scripted and none of us have any free choice. Just because that is true as I have found, it doesn’t change anything. You knowing your actions and purposefully doing something different does not change anything. Perhaps it was destined to be so. I might have bored you with this talk about life but it is exactly my point. Don’t waste your life in thinking about how life is, in mourning over a lost one. My advice to you is- If you still have life, live it. And be ready for death. The fact that death can come at anytime is what makes life worth living. It gives you an incentive, a push to do something. I saw the whole script of my life and it was full of twists and turns. You don’t even know your own script, don’t act like it’s predictable.”

Aditya felt the chandelier tilting. He quickly added, “And if you ever see a mysterious shining white ball in some corner of your house. FOR GODS SAKE, don’t touch it!”

The chandelier fell from a great height crushing Aditya’s bones.