Prologue
I open my eyes, and look down at my body. I’m covered in a concoction of blood and some sticky fluid. I feel acid in my throat. I feel weak. I feel pain. Lot’s of pain. My body feels like it has been squeezed through a pipe. I try looking up but my neck is too weak to support my head. I hear agitated sounds of people shouting, their cries muffled by the rhythmic beeping of a machine. I see bright lights flashing. “He’s not breathing properly, we might lose him”, I hear a woman say. And then a familiar dreadful odour hits.The smell of life and death carried by volatile phenyl. I was in a hospital. I think I had an accident. But there is something else. No….No No No! This can’t be happening.
17th February. 2024, Location: Dorm room, Time: 0200 hours
I lay on the bed of my hot dorm room, high with paracetamol. A cacophony of thoughts emanated from my cerebrum, but the fever was too high for me to weave something cogent from the tangled thread of ideas. I make a metal note of what to take next time to accentuate my creative thoughts. I’m sick. Very sick. And my neighbour playing trashy rock music at 120 decibels does not ameliorate my condition. I knock at his door belligerently, give him the finger and ask him to turn the volume down and then tell him to go fuck himself.
Swearing might not have been the best way to get what I wanted but it seemed to have worked. The music comes to a standstill but so does time and I can feel my heart throbbing. I let my mind meander. I’ve been thinking a lot about rebirth these days. I’m not religious or anything but for the past year I’ve gone down the rabbit hole and found that many religions mention rebirth in one form or another. All Indian religions do that, the Egyptian and Norse myths mention it, and even Christianity has resurrections. I once read somewhere that the reason babies cry when they are born is because they have just died in their previous life, and when they open their eyes they realise that they have to go through it all over again. Their memories fade soon after. And so the cycle continues. The babies that don’t cry, die. Why? Because not crying is not supposed to happen - at least that’s what my research is about. My parents tell me that I am one of the babies that did not open my eyes or cry for the first few seconds. Everyone thought I’ll die soon, but then miraculously I opened my eyes and started wailing, albeit they said that it sounded contrived and I did not shed any tears. How does a newborn human make up emotions anyway?
Now you might be thinking that I’m deranged. What sort of person thinks about this at 2am at night? In my defence I’m sick. But let’s backtrack, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me give you more context as to how I got here. I’ve been having a bad stomach since last night. Not out of the ordinary for anyone who’s lived on cheap fast food and 4 hours of sleep for a month desperately trying to find an answer to something. What scared me a little was the growing number of typhoid cases in my vicinity, and being the health freak I am, I did not want to take any chances. Not when I was so close to figuring it out. So I went to the hospital this morning, got a prescription for some free blood tests. Sweet. At least that’s what I thought until I got a lot of blood drawn. Like 4 vials. Yikes. I think losing so much blood made me worse over the day, and according to google, my symptoms indicate that I have a 5% chance of dying in the next 2 weeks. I resisted the urge to pop some paracetamol, because fever is supposed to be good apparently, but when it felt like someone was drilling a hole through my head, filling it up with cement and then drilling over that cement again, I conceded to the weaker part of my brain and popped 3 pills at the same time. That’s 2 more than I’m supposed to. So here I am, intoxicated on fever meds, jittery and full of ideas. And I have a flight to catch in the morning. Did I mention I was going home? I desperately need sleep. I set an alarm for 7am, and tried very hard to rest but slumber remained elusive for a long time.
17th February, 2024. Location : Unknown, Time: 0730 hours
I open my eyes to a doctor examining me. It was more of an Egyptian mummy really than a doctor because he or she was dressed in a personal protective suit. The woman, as I gather from her voice says something but it’s imperceptible. There is a ventilator beeping, the sound growing louder and louder. I plug my ears with my fingers, and after what seems like an eternity the sound fades away. I see the mummy bring her head close to my ear and whisper “Seems familiar? No? Don’t worry. It will. Time to wake up now.”. “What the fuck!?” I exclaim. The sound is back now, even louder than before. My eardrums are going to rupture. Wait. Ofcouse. This isn’t real. This has to be a dream. Just when I had this thought, for a fleeting moment I saw the mummy remove her mask, her pale diabolical eyes staring right into mine. That is when I opened my eyes for real. I was on my bed, my phone blaring under my pillow. I snooze it and look at the time. Shit. It’s 7:40. My cab driver has been waiting for 10 minutes.
17th February, 2024. Location : Dorm Room, Time: 0740 hours
I willed myself up and dressed hurriedly, my head still heavy from the drug overdose last night. Waking up in the middle of REM sleep is the worst way a man can start his morning. I grab my luggage and run outside imagining a possible excuse that could placate the pissed off driver. Perhaps I’ll just offer him extra money. It was eerily dark and cloudy outside for such a time. Either I had burned all the cone cells in my eyes or the sun had burnt up all its hydrogen. I moved my head around, scanning for my cab like an owl in search of prey. There it was, at the end of the street, A dark grey silhouette of an SUV. There was something hauntingly macabre about the entire scene. The make and number of the car matched my designated cab so I walked up to the car and knocked at its tinted windows. The driver unlocked the car and I got in. A quick word with him confirmed that this was indeed my cab. I apologised for being late and to my surprise he shrugged it off quite merrily. This joyful personality is definitely an anomaly compared to everything that has been happening to me since last night. “Pradhyuimn, do you want me to drive fast? I think you’d be late for your flight.” He says, in English, too perfect for a cab driver. “Uhh…yes…please.”. How on earth did he know that I was going to be late? And using my name? ….Seemingly reading my thoughts he clarifies, “Oh I ask because you look like you’re in a hurry.” Hmm, he seems too smart to be a cab driver. And then there is his impeccable english. It was unsettling but I was too exhausted to make anything of it and he didn’t say anything after we started so maybe I was overthinking. My sleep deprived brain likes to make up things. Everyone speaks good English these days, and cab drivers know when the passenger is in a hurry. And he can see my name on the app.
All this time my head hasn’t stopped hurting. My brain wants to break through my skull and jump out. I lean against the window and look at the dark sky. I soon fade into oblivion, entering that hypnotic state between dream and reality, on the verge of falling asleep.
17th February, 2024. Location : Grey SUV, Time: 0750 hours
“I’m surprised we’ve come so far this time. It seems to be working.” I wake up with a start. Did he just say that or was I dreaming? I decide to take a gamble and say, “Yeah thanks, we’ve covered a lot of distance quickly, I should be there on time. I’ll give you some extra cash.” “I’m afraid you won’t have enough time for that”, he says. “Besides, I know you’re broke.” Okay, this day is turning out to be very very tortuous. “What do you mean I won’t have enough time? Of course I would have to pay you. Unless you’re offering me this ride for free that is.” I joke.“I never like these conversations. But they are necessary. I’m going to be very frank with you my friend. You are not going to make it to the airport. Let’s just cut the bullshit and talk like smart people. You know where this is going.” He is right. I do know where this is going. My research. But….how does he know? Who is he? No one knows. I’ve kept it very private. There is only one way any of this could be happening. My hypothesis is indeed true then! There is only one way to be sure. “Say the words.”, I say. And he says the words. Softly, but clearly. My heart skipped a beat. Did I hear them right? These are my words. Words which I never spoke out loud or to anyone else. Words that I made up all by myself. Words that I swore not to speak to anyone else. Words that only I knew. “Is that how I looked thirty years ago?”, said the older me. “Glad to see that I’m still fit”, I replied. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I had rehearsed this conversation so many times in my head but when it was finally happening my vocal chords froze.
The doppelganger hypothesis
I have a theory. It is preposterous but bear with me. Reality is not what it seems. Ask yourself this, how do you know that the past has happened? How do you know that there have been wars and poets and tragedies and famines and the industrial revolution and empires being built and burnt and built again? The only life you have lived is your own. Everything else is just stories. From people. And people got these stories from other people. My hypothesis is that the universe began in the very very recent past. Like maybe 80 years ago. Over the past 5 years I have gathered enough evidence to convince even the greatest of sceptics. I’ve written it all down in my journal, but I cannot let this get into the wrong hands, otherwise my life would be in great danger. You see, someone, or something created this planet and this universe very recently, and we just have a finite amount of time here. I don’t know what their purpose is, but it seems to me that they derive some sort of entertainment from all this. There exists two versions of you at any single point in time. Let’s call this person your doppelganger. There are so many people on this planet that you’d rarely ever come across your doppelganger, and even if you do, you two would have no way of identifying each other. Every time one of you dies, they are reborn, and they relive their life from the beginning, their memories erased. Unless, you interact with your doppelganger. Those memories remain in your brain. You can’t access them consciously, but they are present. Never to disappear. Do you know the implication of this? You are essentially immortal. Your doppelganger can teach you things and it’d be there in your subconscious forever! You can live a thousand lives and be a piano prodigy, a kickboxing champion and a world class mathematician. All at the same time. Maybe that’s why human brains are so complicated. Whoever created us, does not want us prodding too deep, because we might be a threat to their existence. I know that I need to establish a connection with my doppelganger. I have to do this only once and then every time we are reborn we’d remember and know how to find each other. So I came up with this idea, well a code word. That only I, and by extension my doppelganger would know of. I still haven’t figured out how we’ll find each other, but when we do, we’d be sure how to identify each other. We have to be careful though. If they find out, this could all be over.
17th February, 2024. Location : Grey Suv, 0815 hours
“Do you not have questions for me?” he asks. “How did you know where to find me?”. “Oh all that does not matter, you’ll figure things out eventually on your own. When you’ve done this too many times. Anyway I need to tell you something important, and we do not have a lot of time left. I need you to find me again when you’re reborn. Holy shit I really can’t believe that we have reached here without anything bad happening.” “If you were so afraid of something happening why did you not initiate the conversation earlier? Why even wait for 30 minutes? There is so much we could have talked about.” “It’s complicated. She would have found us. She still can. We might not have a lot of time left.”. “Who the hell is this sh…” It was at this moment when a truck hit us, I only saw the face of the driver. I have seen that face before. And I will see it many times after. The pale diabolical eyes filled with pure evil. Her eyes. And then the world went dark for me. I was dead. But I was still conscious.
17th February, 2024. Place : Unknown, Time : Unknown
I hear a voice call out to me from the dark. Her. That woman. “I enjoy it, you know.” she says, in a voice, very unlike her persona. “Watching you two. You getting so close to the truth all on your own, your doppelganger trying to make contact with you. Every time it happens in a different way. And every time you manage to elude me. But I get you eventually. So close and yet so far. Do you know what I like about you guys? There are many such pairs like you, people who think they can somehow unlock secrets that aren’t meant for human brains to know. All of you are extremely clever. But the two of you, you are my favourite. You have something no one else has. Do you know what that is? Luck. That’s how you manage to keep me on my toes. That’s how I stay entertained. And like every time, you’ve lost this time too. And now, you start over. Good luck.
Epilogue
17th February, 2024. Place : Unknown, Time : Unknown
I open my eyes, and look down at my body. I’m covered in a concoction of blood and some sticky fluid. I feel acid in my throat. I feel weak. I feel pain. Lot’s of pain. My body feels like it has been squeezed through a pipe. I try looking up but my neck is too weak to support my head. I hear agitated sounds of people shouting, their cries muffled by the rhythmic beeping of a machine. I see bright lights flashing. “He’s not breathing properly, we might lose him”, I hear a woman say. And then a familiar dreadful odour hits.The smell of life and death carried by volatile phenyl. I was in a hospital. I think I had an accident. But there is something else. No….No No No! This can’t be happening. Someone is holding me up. Like I’m a baby. I am a baby.
10th October, 2001. Place : Udaipur, Time : 5:24 AM
I stare into the doctor’s eyes. No, this can’t be real. And then I hear a whisper in my head. “Better start crying honey. Or I might just have to kill you.” And I cry. At least I try to. Everyone will tell me later on that it seemed artificial. I wouldn’t remember a thing. Not until 22 years later.