His Sixty years old father swept the floor right next to him with a cloth under his feet, while Pranshul shamelessly sat on the bed writing a novel on his laptop. This was his Plan 'B'. Pranshul had been rejected the previous day by a film institute he applied for as his Plan 'A'. Although it seemed like his father was suffering more than him because of the rejection, Pranshul was fighting a more complex battle within him.
He had spent the previous Two years creating a Character within him to a point that he had lost touch with his real self. He couldn't differentiate between what parts of him he had created as part of the Character and what parts were his real self. He could no more tell which of the emotions he felt were genuine and which ones were just the outcome of artificial attachments he had created in his mind in order to develop the Character.
For the past few months, he was segregating these characters but it inadvertently gave birth to even more complex multiple realities within his head, which he was forced to live while trying to act sane in the real world. He wasn't even sure which of the worlds he lived in was real anymore. It was such an unusual and seemingly funny situation that he couldn't even tell anyone what he was going through. He knew that it was only himself who could help him out of this. So, he had recently been trying to manipulate the different characters in him to align in a way that would help him figure out his One true identity, based on which he could take normal life decisions.
The novel he was writing was also an attempt towards achieving that. He tried to write as a different Character each day while connecting each chapter in a way that by the end of it, he would have manifested himself in the text, so he could read later and understand himself better. His best bet was to start at a random point which was a fragment of his Reality, go through all the different realities while weaving a Story between them, and finally come back to the initial point that he started with. He used numbers and alphabets to keep track of different characters in him and tried to structure them in a way that made it easier to understand them.
Like, if he chose to name a Character in the Story starting with a particular letter, he wouldn't choose a name for another Character starting with the same letter. He linked various elements of his real life to the Story in order to keep things authentic for himself, not caring about what the world would say about him if he revealed his private world to them. For all he knew, this draft was going to end up Being just another saved document in his laptop. For instance, once he made a joke to his Gemini girlfriend, about him having Twenty-Six faces while she had just Two. He wrote about it in the novel but in his mind, there was no way for the audience to know if that incident was real or just fiction. He continued to write anything and everything that came to his mind while the only constraint Being that he'd remain honest to himself. As for the Reality he was in during that day, his father was cooking food after he cleaned the house, took a bath, performed his religious rituals and had an afternoon nap; while Pranshul continued to sit on his bed typing on his laptop.
Pranshul had had a recent obsession with the number Ninety-Six. He considered it as a symbol of love, since it was the reverse of the number Sixty- Nine, which had a sexual connotation, and since the figurative bodies formed by the digits of the number had their backs towards each other, with even their faces on opposite sides. That was how he had experienced love at its peak. He thought he'd probably fall in love with a girl who was born on the ninth day of the month of June in the year 1996. He didn't know how to translate this obsession in the Story he was writing. So, he just mentioned it as it was and went to eat lunch.
Changaswami sat down next to Pranshul's father and watched him lay the plates, bowls and spoons. He wanted to help but held himself back. Ever since the speech he had made at the political rally, he had been trying to develop an air of importance around him. He had stopped getting involved in menial jobs which he felt didn't go well with his image. Not that there were people observing him in the drawing room of Pranshul's father's holiday home, but he always knew that if a habit is to be formed as a part of One's Being, it needed self-discipline even at times when no One was watching. So, he sat there watching the Sixty-year-old serve him salaad, daal, sabzi and chapattis, One after the other, in that order.
Forcing the tasteless food down his throat, Changaswami thought what his life could have been if he had been successful in love. All the ambitions that burned within him would have been extinguished long ago. He must have been eating better food or similar food in better company. The company must have certainly added to the taste. He wondered what made him choose this path of never-ending suffering when he came across the crossroads. When he had to choose between lifelong happiness and eternal misery. He wasn't sure that the choice seemed that clear at the time he was making it. Back then it didn't really seem like a choice at all. He never had a chance to stand at the crossroad and weigh the pros and cons. It was more like swimming in a fast current of river and a little bit of deflection here or there would decide the stream he would end up swimming in for his remaining life. At the crossroad, he wasn't really thinking which stream would lead him where, rather all his effort was to choose a direction so that he didn't collide into the land that parted the Two streams. Maybe sticking to the land would have been good too. Just spending the rest of the life watching people swim by, observing who chooses which stream, try and give advice to those who ask for it while waiting for someone to choose to stick to the land. Then do the same things over and over again in that person's company. "Maybe Pranshul's father is that company." he thought to himself as he picked up his plates and went towards the kitchen. He kept the utensils in the sink, washed them, dried them with a cloth, stacked them neatly in the shelves and went back to his room to continue writing.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
This wasn't Changaswami's first attempt at writing a novel. He had tried writing a couple of times earlier. The First Time, he tried to get together all his childhood memories and create a Story out of it. He called it 'Pages of Deep Shit'. But it turned out to be Fifty pages filled with narration of his memories without any Story or link between them.
The Second Time, he tried to capture his day- to-day life in a humorous fiction called 'Personality Full of Gas', but by the time he reached the middle of the Story, he had thought of so many possible endings in his mind that he could not decide which route to take. So finally, this time he had figured out the beginning, middle and end of the Story and was hopeful of getting it published. The only problem was that he wasn't able to sit at length and type pages after pages. He had too many distractions.
Just as he sat before his laptop and hit the first key to start typing, his phone rang. It was Ahmed.
"Now is not a good time." Changaswami said instead of a 'Hello'.
"I won't be long. I just wanted to let you know that I have quit my job and am now looking for some freelance work. Let me know if something comes up."
"Ok."
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to write."
"Still stuck at the ending?" "No. I started something fresh."
"It will never work out like this. You must complete your pending projects before you start new ones. Otherwise this project will also have the same fate as the previous ones. How many times will you have to fail to learn?"
"This time it's different. I have got my whole Story sorted before starting the draft. I have learnt from my previous mistakes."
"Are you writing about the Twenty-Six characters you have created within you and how they all turn into this One personality at the end, which you call The Twenty Seventh Character?"
"What? How did you know that? Did I tell you?"
"We are all writing the same thing. Some of us are aware of it and some of us are still too involved in the plot that we can't see clearly that we are not a part of the Story but the Creator themselves."
"Listen! I don't have time for all this mumbo jumbo. I have work to do. Talk later."
"Alright! Just tell me, did you at least find a way to introduce The Ninety Si..." Changaswami hung up the phone before Ahmed could finish his Question but he understood what Ahmed was asking.
The Ninety Sixth Lady. She was what all the characters were deeply concerned about. At a level much beyond understanding it or writing about it. She was the One to be experienced. The One, just a glimpse of whom would be enough for a lifetime. Anyone could happily live their whole life with the Memory of Hers that they would possess. She was never visible to those who searched for Her as She felt that seeking Her was unworthy of experiencing Her. She lived where the lowest particle of sand below the seabed and the highest fragment of air above the clouds met. Many humans followed One of the Three Gods; the Destroyer, the Preserver and the Creator, in hope to reach Her but it was all just a myth. What She stood for was just Being. Being One's own self; because that was the truest and the purest anyone could be since the beginning of time till the end of it.
Anyone who could truly be, in Her eyes, deserved a visit by Her. But like most women, She too had conditions. Three, to be precise. One; that when She appeared, the person must not stop Being their true self and the moment they do so, She would disappear. Two; At all times during Her visit, the person must maintain an eye contact so that She could clearly see through their soul and nothing can be hidden. As much as an unnecessary blink of an eye and She would be gone, never to return again. Three; once She decided to leave, no questions could be asked and no requests could be made for it would mean to Her that the visit was not enough for them to know all answers and fulfil all desires.
In hundreds or thousands of years would there be a person, who'd be so pure and true to earn Her visit. She waited patiently for the worthy One while She observed all that happened in the meantime.
As Changaswami started to write about Her, he felt something strange. As he wrote, his life started to change. He wrote that he met The Ninety Sixth Lady once, but he broke the third rule; that when She was about to leave, he thought what harm could asking a Question do. After all, She would have left anyway. But before Changaswami could open his mouth, She devoured his tongue and as soon as he wrote that last sentence, Changaswami's life changed completely, both the Future and the past.
Changaswami was born mute. He grew up to be a man of no ambition. He lived with his father all his life. Even when his father became really old and couldn't do anything, Changaswami kept lying around like a waste of Space.
All his life, all he could think of was the day he wrote about meeting Her. That One Memory of Hers that he possessed became a curse that tormented him to the point where he was no more willing to live. One night he went to the terrace of his father's holiday home and jumped off. In his last breaths, he laid on the ground, looking at the night sky. There were no stars in the sky except just One, which was inside the crescent formed by the illuminated side of the moon. "This is not possible. A star could never be inside the crescent. The dark side of the moon would cover any star behind it. This must be an illusion." he thought to himself when a realization suddenly hit him.
Before life left his body, he was looking at the symbol of Islam, a religion he had hated all his life. Probably because he knew that it was the only religion out of all the existing ones which had the capacity to spread all across the world to become the first religion to do so; while he had spent his life, both past and Future before meeting The Ninety Sixth Lady, trying to promote Hinduism with the hope to make it achieve that destiny.