Before You Set Out an Evening Walk!

"Now I am the one with the most turbulent heart, in the world. I have become a millionaire.! Whatever dreams such a person can have? To own a huge bungalow, to marry beautiful girl, in short to lead a luxurious life as a renowned gentleman of high status. I too have dreamt of such a life. But now to me all these luxuries have become horrifying. I have suffered all the hardships of penury and now in spite of all my fortunes I can only confront my life helplessly and hopelessly. Can you explain it with the word 'destiny'? "

It was the play of chance that I got my friend's diary. Before putting an unexpected full stop to his life, he had entered these words into his diary. A strange life he had, I can say. I was one among the only two or three friends he had. We strengthened our friendship by hiding secrets from each other and telling lies to each other.

My curiosity turned me back to his diary.

"Though very ordinary and simple, my days were comparatively happy till now. But this unexpected condition... a kind of ghastly darkness is spilling into my life. There are some people who beget and feed huge dreams and when they are only one step behind it, they flee away blaming their circumstances in order to find out self-justification. I am not one among such weaklings and fools. Still... those words are resonating in the recesses of my memory... My God what is happening? I am getting shattered. Is it a sleep-walk through the unending shores of darkness?"

Fear! His words seem to be insufficient to contain that monstrous fear. Perhaps he could not write more .Like an impatient gentleman caller, death was waiting for him. I dived into the depths of my thoughts. What was it that frightened him so horribly? I am not given even a clue to do a good guess work.

But he has left behind something for his friend - one strange incident entered in a diary a decade old. "During my usual evening walk, today I happened to meet a stranger. I could sense a scaring keenness in his eyes. I looked at him with a doubtful air 'Through I do not know who you are, I can say who you will be', he came to me and told abruptly without any introduction or courtesy. While he uttered it his expression had such a change that I was all the more frightened and bewildered. At a loss, I continued to look at him in silence with an idiotic air."

"You believe me or not it is up to you, still I tell you-you will become a millionaire within ten years! But after that you will not be there to watch more than thirty sunsets" He walked away in haste leaving me, still looking at him in indifference. A lunatic, I concluded, the aftermath of a frustrated love or the play of some wanton genes of heredity! Otherwise even the wildest imagination can't hold me to be a millionaire."

Allowing the letters to continue their peaceful slumber, I closed the diary and sank into my brooding. A dilemma, one among the rarest of the rare- what an agony and anguish it would have been? On the one side you are provided the opportunity and the fortune to actualise all your dreams, while on the other side you are perpetually reminded of the fact that those will last only for a few moments. Most of the times, is not it our beliefs which sustain and guide us? What would have happened if my friend had not met that stranger or he could neglect the second part of the prophecy-those words wrapping his death within them...? If so, could he be able to avoid such a tragic end? Could he be able to live a happy life? I can't give you an answer...It's time for me to start my evening walk....