Another Mortal Life

It is the beginning of March, again. It is the time when life starts moving just too quickly, the time when the old sunken leaves know that they and the tree are not going to die together. It is that time of the year when my friend Ved likes to live a few moments of sanity. It is here, again.

Ved is a writer. He mostly writes fiction. But like any other such writer, his characters too are based on the real people he meets on the street, in the train, etc. He writes short stories for a newspaper, to make a living; but in his mind is the idea of writing a great novel, an epic saga. He says he would make me a central character of the novel. And the character of the vamp, he once said, would be inspired by Ananya, our old friend. All this, in his moments of insanity which, I have to tell you, constitute the major part of his life.

He started writing the novel 2 years ago, in summer of 2007, or so he says. He doesn't tell me how much he has written till date. Nor does he tell me if I've made an appearance in it. But he has introduced Ananya in it, and in a positive role.

I've to tell you that, with the pitiable writing skills as his, only insanity could have made him think of writing a novel. And a little excess of hash on a hot June night did the trick for our first timer. God, he told me the next day, talked to him personally, and even handed over a tape of His conversation with a human. God explained that the population explosion on earth was driving him mad and he didn't have time to talk at length with everybody.

When I asked him where the tape was, he said I was a non-believer and won't believe the tape was God's even if he showed it to me.

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(To be continued.)
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P.S.: Fiction