Today looked like just another drowsy mid-summer afternoon. I lay rolled up on the couch, listlessly hopping from one channel to another, staring blankly at the television screen. I had almost dozed off as the countdown began: "Movie resumes in 4...3...2...1..."
Then I jolted upright.
8 questions, 8 tasks, 21 crores. No contact with outsiders, no quitting mid-game, and no messing with the rules. What rules? Just one: if you lie, you die.
Sounded like a fair deal. So what if you couldn't quit? How bad could the truth get?
Real bad.
Possibly the 8 easiest questions ever, with the toughest of answers. Because the truth, my friends, ticks off a dormant time bomb of emotions. Wipes away years of grime from a past long forgotten. The past that travels a full circle and greets you with vengeance.
The 8 tasks- some easy, some disturbing, some life threatening. Each one of them intimately tied with a shameful history. A history of the past decade, of a contemptible youth and a trail of disgraceful events.
To quit meant having to lose an arm. To continue, meant having to lose ones life, ones love, and everything interim. But 21 crores could change all of that, couldn't it?
So it went deeper into the gutter. Money- that was prime. And so wrecking another man's property, making a carnal exhibition of ones wife and holding a gun to someones back became the rightful thing to do. Money lay at the end of virtue.
We act without considering repercussions. We believe in living 'in the moment' and forget how the next moment is going to return fire. Then there is one slight brush with the past, one chance meeting with a face from the bygones, and life crumbles down. A stage is reached where regret and repentance holds no meaning. The stage where the cash stood, smiling an ingratiating smile.
"You shoot him, or I shoot your wife."
Shoot, and then the money will flow.
Shoot, and bid goodbye to your past.
A dam bursts open somewhere within, and in an overwhelming wave of self-reproach, the trigger is pulled.
I sat stunned, stone cold. Did I see what I just saw?
A series of instances flash through my mind. All the things I had done and gotten away with.The circle would definitely be complete someday. The boomerang I threw would trace it's path back to me. Would I ever have to pull the trigger as the last means of escape? An extremely uncomfortable scenario to envision, but not one to be ruled out.
I had seen arrogance turn to helplessness. I had seen pride transform into shame. I had seen the perfect mix of realism with surrealism.
I had seen it all, on Table No. 21.
With that, I switched the television off.
Then I jolted upright.
8 questions, 8 tasks, 21 crores. No contact with outsiders, no quitting mid-game, and no messing with the rules. What rules? Just one: if you lie, you die.
Sounded like a fair deal. So what if you couldn't quit? How bad could the truth get?
Real bad.
Possibly the 8 easiest questions ever, with the toughest of answers. Because the truth, my friends, ticks off a dormant time bomb of emotions. Wipes away years of grime from a past long forgotten. The past that travels a full circle and greets you with vengeance.
The 8 tasks- some easy, some disturbing, some life threatening. Each one of them intimately tied with a shameful history. A history of the past decade, of a contemptible youth and a trail of disgraceful events.
To quit meant having to lose an arm. To continue, meant having to lose ones life, ones love, and everything interim. But 21 crores could change all of that, couldn't it?
So it went deeper into the gutter. Money- that was prime. And so wrecking another man's property, making a carnal exhibition of ones wife and holding a gun to someones back became the rightful thing to do. Money lay at the end of virtue.
We act without considering repercussions. We believe in living 'in the moment' and forget how the next moment is going to return fire. Then there is one slight brush with the past, one chance meeting with a face from the bygones, and life crumbles down. A stage is reached where regret and repentance holds no meaning. The stage where the cash stood, smiling an ingratiating smile.
"You shoot him, or I shoot your wife."
Shoot, and then the money will flow.
Shoot, and bid goodbye to your past.
A dam bursts open somewhere within, and in an overwhelming wave of self-reproach, the trigger is pulled.
I sat stunned, stone cold. Did I see what I just saw?
A series of instances flash through my mind. All the things I had done and gotten away with.The circle would definitely be complete someday. The boomerang I threw would trace it's path back to me. Would I ever have to pull the trigger as the last means of escape? An extremely uncomfortable scenario to envision, but not one to be ruled out.
I had seen arrogance turn to helplessness. I had seen pride transform into shame. I had seen the perfect mix of realism with surrealism.
I had seen it all, on Table No. 21.
