This incident happened a long time back. I cannot really remember the precise time. I was doing some workouts in the garden and noticed a woman staring at me. She seemedawfully familiar although I’m pretty sure I had never met her. She had blue eyes just like mine and lovely round nose. I was in love but she seemed way out of my league. I am a shy guy. But for the first time in my life I decided to say hello to the girl sitting right across me staring at me. Was she smitten by me and checking me out or did I have something on my face. Perhaps it was the gray hair she noticed. Either way, she had caught my attention and now it was time to make a move. But what should I say to her? I kept asking myself for about 2 minutes and finally I decided not to think anymore.

“Hi there. My name is Sid. May I know the reason why you are staring at me?” as soon as I said those words I regretted them but hey it’s better than not saying anything at all.

“Hey grandpa. The name’s Teresa.” She said softly smiling at me.

As soon as I heard those words, I kept staring at her for 10 seconds. Then I simply said, “ummmm ok. I need to leave now.” and even as I was saying those words,  my feet had started taking steps in the backward direction. Needless to say I was heartbroken. I mean I have a bunch of gray hair. But jeez. A nice looking girl called me a grandpa. My ego was hurt and it might sound wimpy but I was almost in tears. I immediately developed profound hatred for the lady. Perhaps I was over reacting. But when you are a teenager, you have a tendency to do that. You are a rebel.   I wondered though. I knew everyone in the neighborhood. And she was definitely not someone I had seen before.  I decided to give it another shot. If I ever met her again, I resolved to talk to her again. I decided to wait. I waited for days. The days then turned into weeks, weeks into months. Then finally after a 3 month gap, I saw her again. However, she seemed a little old. She had managed to grow about 10-20 gray hair”s”. I laughed. Talk about poetic justice. It was my turn to call her a grandma. I decided to walk up to her and make her feel like crap. As I walked, I enacted my rebuttal in my mind. I was feeling triumphant and was congratulating myself. And so I reached her. She looked at me. Before I could say anything, she smiled at me and said, “Whaddup grandpa?” I was immediately robbed off my confidence and my dignity. I just ran away. I never wanted to see her again. She called me a grandpa. And what I found most insulting and disturbing was the casual way in which she said those two words. As if, as far as she was concerned, that was my bloody nickname. I decided to let it all go. I was sure that 10 years down the line, I am going to have a good laugh about this incident.

My prediction was correct. 10 years later, I was happily married with one child and was a successful businessman. We named our son, Brandon. When he was 10, we sent him off to London to continue his studies and learn the “way of the British”. He always called us everyday at 2PM India time. When he was 23, and had graduated from Oxford, I decided to call him back to take care of our business. He declined my offer as he wanted to stay in London only. However, as it turned out, he had married a British girl. He gave us the news a couple of years after he had married her. When he gave the news to us, his wife was already pregnant. We were both happy and sad. Happy to know that he was happy but sad that he had hidden all these facts from us. We told him we’d come over to London at the time of delivery, which was expected to be around August, 2432.

The time of deliver came. We had reached the hospital a day before. Carol, Brandon’s wife was in a lot of pain and finally pop came out the head. The doctor cleaned up the baby girl and now she was in my arms. She had blue eyes and a snub nose. She smiled at me and I waved back at her. After a few minutes, I passed her back to her mother who kissed her on the forehead and whispered into her ear, “I love you, Teresa.”

Copyright © 2010 Siddharth Goyal Email: sidgoyal1@gmail.com
Disclaimer: All characters in the above story are fictitious and bear no resemblance to any person living or dead. You’re requested not to assume anything based on your reading of this fictitious work (from a legal point of view).

Did you get it? Tell me about it!

Author’s note:

Some criticism has come from people about the use of expletives in the dialogues of this story. I would like you to assume that this story was written circa 2065, and the way things are going, use of expletives is getting more and more common with instances of celebrities dropping the F-Bomb in public and in interviews becoming more and more frequent. I believe that’s a very good thing since we should speak in public exactly as we speak in private since almost anything else smells of hypocrisy.

Girish Shukla was a retired heart surgeon in AIIMS who used to treat patients for his monthly salary of 2 lac rupees which was a joke in the year 2064. As far as he knew, he had been a wonderful husband, a caring father and had had an impeccable record as a surgeon. He was right now shaking from head to toe. The end was near. But he could hear some footsteps. A glimmer of hope. “Maybe someone might just save me.” He opens the toilet door and before he knew it, he was on the floor. He didn’t even have the time to have any last thoughts. His life did not flash before his eyes. He was now blind. His brain had gone blank. Now he was feeling no pain. Then he stopped hearing the sound of the traffic which was right outside the window. “Help!”, Girish tried to shout but only air came out of his mouth. His whole body shook one final time and finally his heart stopped pumping blood in his veins. “Girish Shukla had suffered a major cardiac arrest and his death occurred due to natural causes”, said his post mortem report which had by now flashed in every compi in India, the most powerful and influential country in the world.

“Hmmm…” said Abhimanyu Rathi to his girlfriend Asthapriya Murthi. They had been living together for some time now.
“That’s sad news Priya. It seems as if the air in India has become rotten. We better get out of this country soon. Hahaha.”
“Oh come on. Just because a heart surgeon died? Don’t be such a panicky asshole Manyu.”
“Well, mark my words bitch. It’s like- our life expectancy has reduced or something. Did you know what our population was back in 2010?”
“No. What was it?”
“It was roughly 1.1 billion you ignorant whore. Aint that shocking?”
“How’s that shocking? We did grow didn’t we? As per the last census it was 1.3 billion wasn’t it? And Don’t call me a whore you bastard.”
“I mean I don’t know what the heck happened man. Us Indians are always reproducing so much and with so many advances in medical science, our population should have at least doubled by now. I mean heck we have always reproduced so much.”

“Stop worrying so much yaar. People grow old and people die. That’s how the nature has been working always. And let’s face it. Europe’s population actually reduced by 5 percent in the last 40 years or so. The whole of earth has become shitty. Where the heck will you go fucker?”

“ The Europeans simply started using sex as a means of recreation rather than procreation long time ago. No wonder they have reduced in number. I mean their average age is like what? Fifty now? And what’s our average age? Twenty fucking Five?”

“It’s 24 actually.”
“See? It’s bullshit man. Our age has actually reduced by a year in the last 50 years.”
“Whatever. My birthday is coming in a couple of weeks. What are you going to give me fucker?”
“Oh yeah. Your birthday. You’ll never let me forget about it. This reminds me. Matt flashed my compi. He said he’d be coming over on your birthday.”
“Really? That is great news!”
“Yeah I know. So there’s your present.”
“You cheapskate. So how’s Matt? Everything ok at his end?”
“Well he’s doing great. I think he’s switching over to American Express by the end of this month.”
“Nice. He didn’t tell me about it. His life will finally get comfortable. Don’t know why he worked for that department for 4 years”,
“Yeah. Well anyway.”

The two weeks pass in a highly uneventful manner and finally Priya’s birthday comes. A doorbell awakens them in the morning and as expected, it was a bouquet of flowers from Manyu. It contained a note “Happy birthday sweetheart.” Priya’s compi kept getting flashes, messages as well as video calls from all around the world. She had over 20,000 friends all around the world, which was normal for an average Indian. Evening time comes. It was the time for celebration. All the 100 guests had arrived except for Matt. The doorbell rings and finally Matt arrives. He wishes Priya a happy birthday, gives her a bottle of champagne.
“So when and why did you resign?” asked Priya
“Well the bureaucracy in the department was killing me. Believe me, we may have come a long way but the government departments still suck! The red tape hasn’t gone if you’ll take my word for it.”
“Hmmm…I always told you. Well you have made the right decision now. Anyway, time to cut the cake.”
“Yep, let’s go.”
Priya cuts a piece of cake and Matt becomes the first person to get the first piece. Matt, then proceeds to cut a part of the cake himself and forces it in Priya’s mouth smearing it all over her face. Everyone starts laughing including Abhimanyu and Matt then proceeds to smear Abhimanyu with the cake so that Priya starts to have a laugh. After 3 hours of eating and binging,  everyone was now bidding adeiu.
“I’ll leave you two love birds then.”
“So when do you join Amex?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Now that’s quick”
“Yeah. It just wasn’t possible to work in the government anymore.”
“Alright then. Goodnight.”
Matt raises his hand, nods and leaves. He reaches home, undresses, relieves himself and plays soft soothing music. He takes out his gun from the cabinet drawer. He hears footsteps. “I am sorry mom and dad. They made me do it.” The door to his house slams. He puts the barrel of his gun to his head. The door had now been forced open. Matt had shot himself 5 seconds before that happened. The man now stood in front of the dead body lying face down. He flashes on his compi. “Man found dead in his apartment. His name is Matthew Murthi Rathi, son of Abhimanyu Rathi and Asthapriya Murthi” He puts the suicide note in his pocket and gets out of the site.

3 days later, the page 4 of the newspaper modes of compies of the people carried a small news item

“3 deaths in the same family
A couple was found dead in their bedroom when their compies flashed a news about their son’s death. The son, Matthew Rathi committed suicide. According to his colleagues, he was suffering from severe depression the causes of which are yet to be established.”

“Your work David?” asked the 35 year old 6 foot tall Ram Sharma of his colleague in the  Ashoka Hotel building which the RAW had rented ages ago but still hadn’t bought it.

“What’re   you talking about man? You know I am merely the janitor!”

“Aah yes. The janitor. So found something interesting?”

“I found something so bad that it can change history if it is ever made public.”

“Hmmm…what is it?”

“Matt’s suicide note. He wrote it on ‘paper’.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Have a look at this. But we’ll need to burn it after reading. Heck I should have burned it already. But here you go.”

Ram reads the suicide note,

“By the time anybody reads this, I will be gone. For the record, I have just poisoned my parents who were 70 and 72 respectively. I could not live with myself after carrying out my final assignment as “The Agent.”   I have no complaints against my seniors who gave me this assignment. However, at the same time, I believe we should come up with a better solution to curb our population. Till that happens though, the operation should go on. To my parents, all I would like to say is, I am sorry. We are unlikely to meet after death since I will probably have a hard time crashing the gates of heaven. I did what I did to keep our country strong. Long live the young India.

-Matt
”

“AAAh. Dun-gerous.” Ram says even as he sets the paper on fire. “But like the martyr said, Long live our young India”

Copyright © 2010 Siddharth Goyal Email: sidgoyal1@gmail.com
Disclaimer: All characters in the above story are fictitious and bear no resemblance to any person living or dead. I have not read the constitution of India and do not know how the court system actually works. The story is completely based on what I have seen in the movies and other media and the narration is completely my imagination. You’re requested not to assume anything based on your reading of this fictitious work (from a legal point of view).