Life after death!

I look forward to the last Sunday of every month because I get to meet my best buddies from school… over a meal, movie, bowling or shopping – that is never decided beforehand. We always meet at my place and then decide according to the mood! So there we were, lazing on my couch… chatting about how our lives had turned out, catching up on the new and reminiscing about the old… when I casually asked “What happens when you die?”

Silence prevailed for a few moments. Everyone knows there is heaven and hell, that we are reborn, that we get a human life after many other lives, etc… but we still wanted to know exactly what happens. So we decided to explore… and suddenly became children all over again, dancing with excitement as we had found our agenda for the day!

We jumped into our Tata Safari and set off on our 300 km journey to Souliland. You must be wondering… that if it’s a place accessible to man, the knowledge of life after death must be publicly available. The catch lies here – once you enter Souliland, you become Amir Khan – not literally – but you experience what Amir does in Ghajini. The memory of whatever you see in there is completely erased once you leave. Nevertheless, we wanted to go and get answers to the questions in our minds! 

We reached Souliland at noon. We were very excited! There was a single castle, that looked a little like Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies. We expected to see something that depicted heaven and hell – may be a sparkling white land on one side and a dark sight on the other. People being treated like kings, with angels all around them... or some being fried in a large cauldron by demons!

I don’t remember what we saw in there, but I do remember what I felt when I came out – as if the Gods had given us a message to take home: These days, both heaven and hell are found on earth itself, you don’t have to wait to die to experience it! If you do good, you get good - you attract good things for yourself for this life and the next… If you do bad, your life will become hell on earth, sooner or later…

We might not have found an answer to our question about what happens when we die… but we did find out how we should live while we are alive… that life is a circle - you will get back what you give :)

Shopping in 2030

I wake up to the sound of my phone buzzing. I have a new notification. ‘Reminder: Alumni meet today.’

Damn, how could I have forgotten the most important event of the year for every girl? A single platform to flaunt your latest size zero figure, your expensive designer outfit, your Gucci’s, your Prada’s, your Jimmy Choo’s and your recent promotion to corporate Vice President. You want to be the envy of every other girl out there, who by the way, is looking to do the same. 

Even though I have a perfectly stocked versatile wardrobe, nothing seems good enough for tonight. I quickly instruct my laptop to switch on; of course it recognizes my voice very well. It springs to life almost instantaneously. 

In this age of electronic cash, all your purchases are made by a single card with a single identity worldwide and webwide. There is a single login ID for every site – your UIDAI number! So eBay knows that you bought a Louis Vuitton from Singapore last month and Flipkart knows that you bought a tee shirt from the store next door last Saturday. More importantly, your purchases over the last decade are no secret! So whenever you login, the stuff that you are most likely to pick is displayed right on top based on your recent purchases from both brick & mortar and online store, worldwide.

So I login to eBay and quickly choose a few outfits. Now I need to decide what looks best on me before I leave for work. How, you ask. With their Virtual trial experience J A 3D representation of the outfit emanates from the screen and you can position yourself in front of the laptop so it looks like you’re wearing the dress. I look at myself on the webcam and I decide that the colour is too dull for me. I pick another outfit and it looks wonderful. 

I purchase it immediately, lest someone else picks it up before I do. It will be delivered by evening. After work, I get dressed and pick out matching accessories. I can’t wait to see everyone’s reaction at the reunion. 

I hear my phone buzzing again. Wait, this time it’s the alarm. It’s 7 am and it’s only 2013! Guess I got confused between thirteen and thirty in my sleep… Right now, the only single identity we have is to login to any site using our Facebook accounts! :D And sssh... no one knows that I splurged on that designer gown even though it was not on sale.. ;)