Choose Your Life..

It's almost like resting your sore, tired butt on a fleecy cushion and let is sink a few inches into it. And then being handed a martini to get your cerebrum to dilate and puke what it was finding hard to digest...Bloody reality! But I was just being given time to unbend. That's what they do to the new recruits. It was then when the silken pixie by my side pointed her finger towards something down there. I leaned and peeked from the tip of the cloud and almost fell over. It was me lying down there, flies buzzing on the gray matter that had started to squeeze through my pulverized skull.

I turned to her, aghast, my jaw touching the ground ..err cloud ..too stunned to utter a word. "But how???" Her expression instantly made me realize the futility of it and I looked down again. It was unreal, to express it conservatively, to see myself lying there on the concrete sidewalk amidst a huge mob, who didn't want to miss the freak show.

So is this the end? What next? Do they collect my brain splattered out over concrete and carry me to a morgue? Cut me down and sew me up on the autopsy table? Wrap me up in white cotton sheet and garlands and march up to the crematory carrying me over their shoulders? Put me on the logs and fire me up? Why don't I shudder at that thought anymore? After all its my body, MY. MY.... Why does that word feel strange now? Earlier I would look down when I thought about myself and I saw a torso and I knew I was talking about something in bone and flesh. Now what? What exactly am I? Bloody hell!

"It's time", she quipped. I unglued my curious gaze and looked at her again. She had that receptionist's smile at her face, the kind you see when you walk in for an interview and you are left wondering whether she actually knows that you are about to shit in your pants. I had a feeling I was about to have some real tough time soon. My list of sins was pretty lengthy!

Past that august golden gate I used to imagine elysium's doors to be like, walking on the clouds past the cabalistic strata of fog, I was led into a lyceum engulfed in mist. And there they were, the Shangri-la's version of the jury, sitting on a raised dais. Clowns, I thought. I soon realized that they knew everything about me, I mean EVERYTHING. The number of times I had hit that sissy in my neighborhood, the number of roaches I had squashed under my boots, the number of times I had fantasized about that English teacher, times I had pretended to be unwell to skip office, pretended to be truthful, cursed, helped, cried, laughed, had sex, fallen, shaken, feared and other miscellaneous stuff which better be left alone. With time, date and duration stamped against each act of mine arranged chronologically and aggregated for statistical purposes I had nothing left to do but nod. Open and shut case!

But I was in Zion and I deserved some miracles. And I got one! "After a thorough review of your case, though you qualify to be reincarnated as nothing more than a duckbilled platypus, you are just in time for a promotional offer we are running for the male middle aged suicidal cases."

"Why for this category?"

"They are the sleaziest things on earth and we want to encourage them to hurry up on their way up here! Now, this offer is called 'Choose your life'. Are you interested or you would like to earn the distinction of being the only mammal to lay eggs?"

I didn't quite like the idea of laying eggs in cold highlands of Tasmania and I eagerly looked at the three cards they spread out on the table reading the obvious on my face – whoever refused a freebie as good as this, ever?

"Choose one"!

Three cards bearing a snapshot of my potential reincarnated self lay in front of my eyes.

1 - Me standing, holding a large piranha, on the deck of a private yacht, like – 'What a catch!' I look rich, with a little paunch, sun shining on my rather large temples.

2 - A newspaper with my photo on page three. I look pleasantly different in long kurta and jeans. Wearing specs as well! Grinning amidst all the Ramanis, Thakrals and Shankars. I seemed to have made it big in the filthy patronizing creative world.

3- A stolen photograph from one of my albums. They had been doing their homework! Her arms round my neck and we pulling off that funny face. Of course our hands in each others' back pocket didn't get captured. So did the secret little bum squeeze.

I felt a lump in my throat as I gazed at her pearly whites, her disheveled hair in that cold morning breeze. That was the last photo of us together taken a fortnight ago. My hand started to move to pick up the third card.

"Yes, she was here a week ago" – quipped the seemingly oldest one in the jury…"and she did not take up the offer.....”