Destiny

Note: Few lines are lyrics of the song 'Hotel California'. I (with help in the story from a dear friend Sandesh and his sister Reshu) wrote this as a part of a creative writing contest at my college (where in I was supposed to build a story around the first para of the song). Well, it came fisrt there and later I decided to make it a part of Sulekha.com's 1999 Fall Challenge ..was a finalist there. Unfortunately, I am no more at Sulekha as I have lost the login/ID details.

[1999 Sulekha Fall Challenge Finalist]

If God in His wisdom have brought close
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie.

A firm believer of this and an acute optimist, I was going on a dark desert highway, cool wind blowing in my hair. A night sky full of bright stars, soft music on car stereo and warm smell of colitas rising up through the air -- all this left no room in my mind about the fierce winds coming up ahead on the way.

Suddenly, up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light. "Must be the reflection of headlights on the sand," I thought. "But no, reflections don't move so abruptly. It...It is a flashlight!!" I sped up my car and stopped half a minute later. The light was coming 300-400 meters away from the highway. I rushed towards it.

The scene there shocked me to the roots. Somebody was buried in the sand dune and was desperately trying to come out of it. Only his hands, holding a flashlight, were visible and were moving violently. By this time, the weather had changed abruptly. The wind came without warning. My blue baseball cap was swept off my head. The wind was head-on and sand particles had already started filling my eyes. For forty-five minutes, I struggled inspite of the storm's fury and eventually managed to drag the person out of the sand. Thinking of my next steps, I realized that the car was made invisible by the blowing wind and I had left the compass in the car itself. So I was there, standing in the middle of a sandstorm with a semi-unconscious man beside me, with no idea of direction whatsoever.

By freakish coincidence, I saw a shadowy figure of a wall a couple of yards ahead. "Is it a house? Yes!" I lifted the man on my shoulders and rushed towards the house. I took him in and lit a matchstick. He was a man in his middle thirties. He was semi-consciously staring at me with a glazed look. His hair and ears were full of sand, his limbs were rigid and his words undecipherable. Looking around, I found that it was a small room which was almost empty. After twenty minutes, the man gave his first coherent response. "Water" he said weakly. He was safe, that meant. It was one of the most gratifying moments I ever had, and one that impelled me on. Realising that there was no water in the room, I decided to search for my car. I dashed outside. But to my dismay, the storm had worsened. Visibility was down to zero, but still I had to go.

At this moment, the lines I had so firmly believed throughout my life were coming to my mind repeatedly. I breathed a prayer of thanks. I had a sneaking suspicion that fate fabricates these incidents, assigning us our roles, often without even giving us the satisfaction of knowing that we are mere actors playing our part, till the curtain falls. "It was this man's destiny not to die such a fateful death. Death doesn't come before it's time," I thought. I felt my optimism getting stronger with each step I took. It was a jubilant feeling.

And then destiny struck...

As I wildly walked in the storm, the whirlpool action of the wind sucked me. I fell down the dune I was walking on. I furiously tried to balance myself but prospects, now that only my hands were above the sand, seemed hopeless. The trip down the sand dune was a funeral-like contrast to my merrily playful arrival just two hours before. Once again the same lines echoed in my mind before my eyes closed. I was swept off my feet by my own destiny.

If God in His wisdom have brought close
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie.