Ghosts of the past, the present and the future!!!

A play cum story cum silly account of a really surreal night( i hope you have an idea of "Christmas carol" by Charles Dickens, in which the niggardly scrooge is visited by three ghosts)

(as you will see the tense used is present, because i think that it does justice to the story)

So here goes, the story of the night of 21st January 2010:

It's 8 in the night and i am doing what i usually do at 8 on a day when there is college: cursing the college, cursing my luck, cursing my neighbourhood dog(what for, don't ask me, its just random: i need to curse and blame someone and too bad the dog gets the rap!!) and cursing...well lets leave it at that, i am also fanatasising (no no my friends, you won't get to know about what!!) and also am thinking about what sort of excuse to make for all the things i should have done but have not done till now. Well i could go on and on about this but lets cut to the chase..ummm lets just say lets move on. I switch on the tv and and some idiotic English channel is running and to top that it is running a adaptation of the "christmas carol" by Charles Dickens(i don't mind Charles Dickens(cheesy surname i must say), but its jan 17, a bit too late for christmas stories).

I look closely, the scene when Scrooge is told that three ghosts will visit him is currently on, disinterested I turn back to my thoughts and I look start reflecting on the past few years, its been one presentation( they call me ajay 'ppt' singh in college!) and exam(just too many, i have lost count) after the other, i have missed(or just attended for such a short time that at one time, a treasure hunt was organised to spot me at a wedding) family weddings, parties and perhaps all those moments that i should have spent with my family and friends are now gone, how many times have I shirked away from helping somebody who really needed it, countless

times perhaps....I again turn back to the TV and what the..the scrooge scene is STILL ON!!!argh, I should have listened to shahrukh khan when he said "thoda aur wish karo" instead of sticking to my silly cablewallah, I switch the channel and.....lo!!! Star Plus is running the same scene!!! What is happening...I furiously skip channels and all the channels are running it!! I decide to watch the scene, maybe my cablewallah wants me to see it(i am seriously lunatic to believe this!)

A bespectacled man on the screen says " listen carefully, starting at 9:00pm today and uptil tomorrow morning you will be visited by three ghosts, heed their call or you will be doomed like me uncared for, unloved...hahahahaha",he says ending his line with cruel, mocking laughter, suddenly the normal programming routine starts on all channels...this is a first, how did this happen, ah well, chuck it I think and I turn the TV off. I have nothing to do, my exams are over and nobody is at home so i decide to doze off on the couch.

///****At around 9:00****///

tik tak..dhum..Whats the noise?? i wake up with a start and i see a shabbily clothed figure standing beside the couch, startled i ask him.

"who are you and how did you get in". I ask

"Lad,I am the ghost of lohri(i hope you know this festival, i am saying this not the ghost!!) past, didin't you get the message that we were arriving" He answers while having a look around the room.

"What ghost of Lohri past??, was the message on the TV for me ?? and if you are that ghost are you not supposed to a ghost of "christmas" past and what do you mean by "we"?? I retort back.

"Easy lad easy, that message was for you and i am the ghost of christmas past but since you are a north Indian I have orders to act like the ghost of "lohri" past because the actual ghost of lohri past drank a patiala peg too many, these north indian ghosts argh.., so you see i am doing overtime covering his a**, and just like the tale there are three of us: Ghosts of christmas er..lohri past, present and future" he says with a bit of anger in his voice.

I look around stunned, dazed, i think i am still in sleep...

Suddenly he interrupts rudely and says "close your eyes i am leading you to back to your past"

///****Year 2003****///

My mom is dropping me to school, ohhh what surprise, i can see myself as a kid. We(me and my mom, that is) arrive at the school gate and i see myself getting of the car all the while ranting about how i am late because of her(my mom) and then i run into the school...The ghost grabs my hand and leads me to where my mom is standing near the car.....and what... my mom has tripped and she is still looking towards the school and smiling in her pain, i try to help her up but my arm passes right through her...the ghost shouts from behind "you will be an illusion in all your trips, you can't be seen, touched or heard". shaks! i see my 'kid form' running into school, not even once do I look back towards mom...how ungrateful and uncaring.

Suddenly the ghost grabs me and leads me into my class in the school and i see myself at the last desk, a girl approaches me and says hi, i glare at her and do not respond, she syas hi again but i remain silent...i sheepishly ask the ghost "why am i silent, this girl used to be best friend, i even liked her a bit" The ghost retorts back "don't you rmember you had a fight but you refused to forgive her and that ended the feelings she had for you, only if you could have been less stupid, things would have been different"

///***Year 2006***///

I see myself stting on the couch watching TV, I check the calender on the wall while my 2006 form watches TV, its a day before my board exams and my past form is watching TV!! The ghost says "your parents left and you watched TV all day, only if you had studied and not betrayed their trust, but come i must lead you back to the present"

I land on my couch and immediately i see the ghost of lohri present standing by the couch, he is nattily dressed, he holds my hand and says "come, we must not waste time"

///***My uncle's home, present day***///

I can see my dad and mom, my dad is happy and he seems to be saying something, I start to listen carefully "ajay has proved to be a good son, in a few months he will be an engineer with a sound job or will be pursuing a MBA from a good college, what a proud moment that will be" he says beamingly to my uncle. My mom is also praising me, tears well up in my eyes, I always thought my dad thought of me as a loser, someone who could not qualify the exam he wanted me to qualify..but alas he was sitting here praising me, how wrongly have i been judged my own father for the past few years, i stumble and fall to my knees.

The ghost barks "don't get emotional sonny boy, just try to be more grateful and trusting towards your parents from now on, get that, now come i must lead you back, the future ghost has a habit of arriving early"

Again I am in front of my house and suddenly i hear a car horn from behind and a finger points out of the car and tells me to get in, i do as told and on the driver's seat is not a man but a hazy figure, who i presume is the ghost of lohri future(which he tells me he is).

The car starts flying and everything goes white,i get out of the car as the mist clears, i read a calender on the wall, its the year 2016.

I see a restaurant, the ghost points to a bunch of people sitting on a table, they seem to waiting for somebody, amongst them a girl looks restless. The ghost says " these are your future friends and the gorgeous restless girl perhaps likes you and maybe today she wants to say that to you , but you are late..attending a meeting i guess as always, busy"

After a few hours the group walk away(after having tired of waiting for me) with the girl having tears in her eyes, I try to stop them in vain because I remember that I am an illusion and they can't see me.

The ghost then grabs me by the collar and shouts disgustedly into my face "can't you ever think for others, you careless, loveless idiot...hah who am i to say, i am sending you back to the present do whatever you want, get lost"

zooom and I am back at my study table, the clock shows 7am...wooh what a night, oh its my friend's birthday today, i pick up the phone and wish him, I am planning to throw a surprise party for him...maybe i will do some extra chores for mom today, maybe i will look towards my dad with the pure love that i had for him once...maybe the night has changed me and miracles do happen after all..............

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Read at your own risk - Time altering material!!

AJAX production house presents

"A maverick account of regionalism"

Statutory disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and entirely a work of the demented delusions of ajay pal singh sethi who is a fledging software engineer born in obscurity in 1989.

Narrator : Ajay Pal Singh Sethi

Welcome to the future friends

thud....thump, the door is rattled, what the....Its morning time and I think our newspaper vendor has just delivered the textovisual(don't go looking this up, it’s my creation) bomb aka the daily newspaper. I open the first page and a striking visual of some student activists demanding a separate state for the "engineering students who have passed with more than 70% marks" hogs the front page and below it the pros and cons for the idea of the state are listed, the same old hogwash, don’t be alarmed, its 2020, welcome to the future in the united(or is it untied) states of India.

Hi, I work for a company called soft tech (reserved for "Indians" from the united kingdom of Punjab and Haryana in the state of gurgaon(it is a state formed by the untiring efforts of CSUE(Compulsive Shoppers and Useless Engineers) party). Its Monday today and I have to go to office passing through 4 states, 3 of which are unfriendly towards the people of my state(southwestern northern... oh forget it, all i can remember is that it has got lots of directions in the name). Finally after nearly getting mugged and having my car windshield smashed I reach my office, oh what is that... not again, its some members of the NUUW(National Unemployed and Unproductive Workers) party (with a presence over about..ah..70 states, yes thats it) demanding jobs in my company and today they are even burning an effigy of our peon who greets me at the door and seems quite chuffed about it(his effigy getting burned that is, not meeting me).

He says "saheb, look they are even burning my effigy today, you must see a picture of this i posted on facebook, i already have 100 comments, i am finally famous."

"How many times have i told you that people from my state are not allowed to surf facebook?, we use only twitter". I retort back rather rudely.

"oh yes saheb, I am sorry(apologetically) and listen sir i forget to tell you something(now rather ebullient)"

"what is it, I have tons of statehood applications ahem..work waiting to be taken care of, come on blurt it out" I reply as I finally slump into my chair at the third floor.

" saheb, my son has got a job as a toll officer in the neighboring state of noida and that too because due to reservations he was the only candidate appearing for the interview" he smirks and chuckles in unison.

He departs leaving me into some deep thoughts, i doze off and in my dreams i see my childhood when India had a handful of states and then how demands for separate states based on language, caste , common place of birth etc. etc. divided the nation.Then in 2015 came the coup de grace, some people in northern Maharashtra(a new state created in 2012) demanded a new state because they belonged to the same ethnic sub sub sub(get my point, it was a lot of subs)...race of marathi-english speaking marathas. Initially there was huge uproar but then a compromise was reached and they were given a separate state of about 1000 acres. Then what, all hell broke loose and new states have been created almost every day since then, in protest the government of India has refused to draw a stable political map of India, its dynamic as the daily weather maps are.

A stone crashing the window of my office breaks my troubled sleep. I cautiously peer outside and voila..just what the day needed: a riot between the opposing statehood demand groups. Now India has about 128 states(last updated on Saturday, 14 March 2020) some even as small as 500 acres, each state has its own evangelist party fiercely protective of the rights of its citizens in terms of job reservations, college admissions etc.. Fierce battles are fought everyday and loss of life and property is common but who cares, everybody wants his state and consequently his small(getting smaller everyday) piece of the power pie under the guise of "helping the brethren acquire their true rights". Local businessmen who earlier voted and more importantly helped politicians to power now dictate terms both economically and socially in their tiny fiefdoms. Before applying for a job one has to look up a tediously long list to see if one is eligible to apply to the particular job or not The list of woes is endless, but fear not the promised land has been delivered and power centers have been established.

Just then I feel a tap on my shoulder and the guy from the next cubicle hands me the demand letter of a new state, ahh I forget to tell you my company maintains the records of new statehood demands.We have a board meeting to decide the fate of about 20 new demands, the parliament is too busy to deal with all this messy stuff and it has outsourced the decision making to us, its a hell lot easier and maybe we will get a new state for our company alone as a kickback.This raises a question: Its 2020 and blogging is a huge hit and we "still" don't have a state for bloggers, well maybe I can make the boss agree to one over a power lunch.hah, some things will never change and human greed is one of them.

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feeling like a free bird

Success, the word is itself enough to ignite a good debate among people belonging to any sort of background, why i bring it up is to just highlight my changing mindset for the past few days. Is MBA the equivalent to success or is it a good job or am i being too short sighted here. For the past one year i have been zooming from one presentation to the next, from one examination to the next...life has been a blur. Time, people and experiences have flown by. Its been a journey that has given me joy, sadness and a host of other feelings, for the past few days i have reached a halt, probably a milestone..there has been nothing to do but to look back at the year gone by and more importantly it has allowed me to observe life go by, that too in a very long time. I have a question for u all.

So i put up the question that has come out from my last few days of introspection - "what does success mean to you and how do you plan to achieve it"