When I tried to peep into my future...

The date is 6th December 2053. And I am sitting on my couch facing the full moon on a chilly winter night in my house in Guwahati while I can smell the aroma of the tasty dinner my wife is busy making in the kitchen. Today is my 66th birthday. I have completed 65 years of my life. In this time I have achieved almost everything. I was born on the 6th day of December in the year 1988. As a child, I wasn’t a headache for my parents unlike other kids at that time. I went to one of the best schools of my city and was always good in studies. After passing out my HS I made my parents proud by getting admission in one of the most reputed institutions of my country. After five years of study, I got a good job for myself. Then I married an understanding wife who supported in every phase of my life. And since then my life has been consistently improving. Now my son has a beautiful and caring wife and a good career and my daughter is happily married and living abroad. Throughout my life I have been striving for success and now that I am successful I have totally nothing to do. After I retired in 2048, my muscles were tired and my soul was fatigued but in these 5 years I have had too much rest and I am now energized enough to fulfill my long lost passions which I left in the midway of the journey of my life. Now I am happy that I have no homework to do, no sheets to make, no design assignments because of which I spent countless sleepless nights, no clients whom I have to impress, no co-workers who eat up my head and no responsibilities at all. Though I miss them I am happy that now I can do whatever I want. Now that I am free from all these I can revive my old passion of reading novels and writing short stories. 

I have been devoting the majority of my free time during my teenage to do what I love most: reading and writing. Reading and writing is the fuel for an everlasting healthy and fresh mind. I mean besides reading the NCERT textbooks in school which I rarely do and writing in the examinations which is very less, I used to read a hell lot of novels and write stories too. First it started as just a means of passing time but then this hobby became kind of a passion. I still remember clearly how I used to keep my textbook open on my study table and read a novel instead during the study leave of my board exams. It was just wonderful those days to let myself lose into a whole new world every time I open a book. It can be the fascinating world of ‘Harry Potter’ or the amnesiac CIA assassin of ‘The Bourne Identity’ or the Sicilian Mafia don of ‘The Godfather’. Reading comes as the most useful facility for me to see this wonderful world through others' eyes, thus offering me the scenes of all over the world. Reading helps develop a sense of creativity. Reading novels can take me to the romantic city of Paris or the dense jungles of Vietnam or the cold arctic Siberia. Thus, reading is the ultimate pastime which also helps in enhancing the capacity of our minds. 

My passion for writing also ran parallel with my reading. My love for writing germinated when I was asked to write an article in the English exam, the subject being the menace of monkeys in our English exam. The article was quite impressive. But the turning point was when I was in class 12. Then I had created a comic character and I used to write stories on that fictional character. It was kind of a series. Though I admit that after I got to college I left this passion of mine. I became too busy with my life. I began writing just for the fun of it and that was pretty much it. I had been told by several friends, that I write really well. Obviously, every time I got such a compliment, I felt very proud but most importantly, I felt really very happy and this happiness all the more encouraged me to start writing. They asked me to take this passion of mine seriously and they even offered to publish my stories as a series in a local English newspaper. But then before I knew, I became busy in college and then in my office and then with my family. And hence I never got the time to nourish and enrich my passion. So now is the time to pursue my passion for reading and writing and who knows-I may write a whole novel or an autobiography. 

Now I have to start with my reading habit. But I have to plan it in such a way that it doesn’t hinder my other daily activities. So I am thinking of setting a goal for myself of finishing reading at least one novel in a week. I mostly read espionage novels or novels about organized crime in the world. Now it will be fun to enter into the world of action and suspense again after a gap of almost 45 years. It will be awesome to imagine the scenes described in the novels and give some work to my cerebral muscles which have been in rest from the last 5 years. So on 10th December which is next Wednesday, I am going to the North East book fair and buying loads of novels by my favourite authors Robert Ludlum and Mario Puzo. Since I was a kid, I have always wanted to read the holy book of the Christians-The Bible. I am also going to buy The Bible and read a chapter every night before going to bed. I have had very less time for God in the passing years so in the process of reading The Bible, I can also draw myself closer to the Almighty. Apart from all these, I was a comics-worm in my childhood. I remember how I used to finish one Tinkle in an hour. Few days back when I saw my grandson reading a Tinkle I couldn’t stop myself from searching my childhood in my grandson. Where have those sweet days vanished??? I sometimes wonder and ask myself. I get no answer but a sickening emptiness in my mind. I want to relive those days again. I want to be the 13 year boy who was always lost in the characters of Tinkle like ‘Tantri the Mantri’ or ‘Kalia the Crow’ or ‘Shikari Shambhu’. And so I have already bought many Tinkles and Chacha Choudhury comics. These books are like my second heart which pumps out a rush of imagination and knowledge in my old age. I am now jubilant that I will be able to reconnect with my passion for reading once again after such a long break and hence keep reading always till I die. 

Writing has always been something which lets my wings of imagination fly high. I was encouraged to write by my best friend back in my school days. He had always praised my style of writing. Through writing I can do anything-I can build a castle in the clouds or reach the peak of Mount Everest or steal a billion rupees or maybe even date Megan Fox(not in real but only in my stories). Writing lets us do things which we would never imagine. Writing takes our mind from Bhopal to New York in a fraction of a second. So writing is more like a hypothetical means of transportation and a tool to let my soul do whatever it wants than a mere hobby. Writing is the weapon to remove my solitude and induce my mind with a lot of creative ideas. So it wouldn’t be wrong to say that it acts as an innovation injector for my brain. Though I had written stories in the past about my friends in college and stories with morals but this time I want to take my passion to the next level and maybe publish a book. It will be a lot more difficult to revive this old passion of mine as reading can be done easily but writing needs skill and patience. So what I have done is that I have rearranged my room so that it best provides the environment to boost me while I write stories. I have also asked my servant to increase the frequency of giving tea during the day to me as it has been found in the recent Human Development Analysis (HDA) by the UNO that Assam tea increases the efficiency of the human brain. I had already thought in my mind during my working years that I would start with my short stories once I am done with all the responsibilities of my life. 

So now is the time to take my passion of writing seriously and do something fruitful with it which will give me satisfaction and also provide a platform to show the world the hidden author in me. I have had this all planned out. I had written stories on a superhero I created myself when I was 17 years old. There were thirty three stories on him. In the college I tried to write about this fictional character but I couldn’t write any farther than four stories and all of them written during the ‘Structures’ class as I didn’t understand a thing of that subject. This superhero was more of a sarcastic take on the typical superheroes of today. This superhero was created at a time when superheroes were very popular but I can guarantee that they weren’t more popular than the superhero of our school. He was a very big loser and used to become flop in his each and every step and which eventually results in him making a mockery of himself. He was actually a superzero rather than a superhero. These stories were really funny and everybody liked them which was a very cool feeling for me. And to be frank this character was inspired by a real life guy who was actually my friend at school. Now I am seriously thinking of bringing that superhero back to life with the ink of my pen. I am going to continue this story or should I rather say novel. I don’t know if I would be able to live upto the expectations of the fellow friends of my school who were all praise for my stories forty seven years back. But still what is there in trying it out. Like some great man once said, “Try try till you cry and then die”. It’s always better to regret doing something than to regret of never trying to do it. I am already in the process of thinking of a plot for my next story. The editor of ‘Literatte’, a literature magazine is my friend as I once designed his company’s head office for which he was quite impressed. So I talked to him and he agreed instantly to publish my story. So now the only thing left was to start writing which I will be doing very soon. And with this I am beginning the second innings of my life as an author not as an architect. The only thing I want with this story is that people recognize and appreciate me as an author. This maybe a small step but it may prove to be a very big leap afterwards. 

The last important thing which I have always wanted to do in my entire life but then it wasn’t the right time to do it than now is writing my autobiography. Now I have very less years to spare in my life and have no duties to fulfill. I think this is the ripe time to start with it. I wanted to write the autobiography because my mother once said when I was in class 12 that I could write my autobiography when I will be all free in my life. These words of my mother were more of a request than a suggestion. I have also thought of the title of my autobiography. It would be ‘The Architecture of my Life’. This book will merge my career and my passion, blend architecture with literature, show the unique relationship between buildings and books and at last communicate the importance of these elements in my entire life. 

Thus, reading loads of books and writing a novel are the two things I would like to do, now that I have nothing to do. I wouldn’t let God take me away from the face of the earth until and unless I finish these tasks I have vowed to complete. From tomorrow begins my new life without AutoCAD and parallel bars but with a pen and paper and countless hardbound books. A new dawn awaits for me on the horizon..a dawn rising in the dusk of my life. Wish me luck for this new beginning….folks!!!