The Conflation

THE CONFLATION

 

           It was a whole new world. Unlike the one she was born and brought up in, this world was devoid of everything she despised. It was a rebirth. A rebirth like no other, broadcasted worldwide to millions of viewers. Sort of like the exposure she got five thousand years ago. Back then, her floral lehenga-cholis* and hydrangea braids were quite a fad. Teenagers all over the world envied the Indian girl. It wasn’t just her exotic looks or irresistibly poised attitude. Her invention was beyond modern science. Be it the geeks or the trendsetters, the old or the young, the atheists or the pious, Kiara’s invention awed them all. 

 

          Although it took a while for Kiara to process everything in her subconscious state, she smiled faintly for she knew she had succeeded. When her system came back to normalcy, flashes of memory hit. The doe-eyed damsel rubbed her temples and shut her eyes tight in an effort to recollect the past. Frustrated at her futile attempt, she shook herself gently. Realizing immediately that her mental exertion was in vain, she fidgeted aggressively. Nevertheless, she was fully aware that she wasn’t going to get hold of things. After all, she herself build her own sleeping chamber.

 

“It’s quite normal. You’ll get over it in a couple of hours.”

 

          She opened her eyes to see the possessor of that voice " a caramel complexioned woman with dark curls and an affectionate approach. Probably of African descent. She gazed at the woman for a whole minute as if in a trance and then, looked away, a teardrop running through the side of her cheek. An image of her ma* formed in the back of her mind, consequently resulting in the development of a progression of images that multiplied rapidly and then abruptly came to a halt.

 

          She wiped the residue of the salty teardrop from her mouth and turned to the woman only to find her smiling tenderly. “Stop that now! Will you? Smiling like that.”, muttered Kiara feebly in an Indian accent, uttering her first words in the new world. No sooner had she uttered those words than she regretted it. The woman stood there unflinched. That hurt her even more. Her whole body felt numb. Numb, not because of the ‘Five Thousand Years of Hibernation’, but because of the thought that she was just the same even after all these years. A stereotypical teenager - rude, reckless and capricious. Can’t blame her. Circumstances create people. Or do they really?

 

            Uneasily, Kiara stared at the ceiling and stayed like that for the next couple of hours. She had no notion of time. Things were getting clearer by the minute. She was in the limelight. What she didn’t know was the fact that she still was. It was a breakthrough. Distinctly she remembered, it was a titanic cylinder … horizontal … silvery … like the walls in the room she was in. She knew one thing for sure. She was in a deep slumber. Peaceful. Like death. The irony is death turned out to be only an abstract concept five thousand years in the future. Plainly, death didn’t exist anymore. The Grim Reaper was beaten.

 

          Kiara had a dream. A dream, many thought impossible. She proved them all wrong. Faces appeared in her muddled mind. Faces she knew. Faces she loved. Faces she loathed. Faces. It was time travel in a kind of way, the kind in which there was no turning back. And here she was in this empty cubicle, all alone. Did she fail after all? Was this the world she sacrificed everything for? Did she miscomprehend the future? Her heart thumped. And it started beating faster and faster. She started sweating profusely. She felt pins and needles. Suddenly, an excruciating pain took possession of her being. And …. a blackness swept over her brain.

 

“It’s just a panic attack.”

 

          Kiara heard the dark-haired woman saying when she became stable. More images started streaming in. She was in a hospital bed, the sheets stained with dirt. The ward had more people than it could contain. The sight of a rodent running along the floor made her cringe. Sad as it might sound, they couldn’t expect more. Travelling into the city for better medical services would cost them a couple of months earning. Her mother was sobbing. Her father was sitting beside her, holding her hand. “I can feel it.” Kiara whispered to the dark-haired woman, the only person she knew so far in the new world. “I can feel him holding my hands. My baba*. I can feel my ma’s hands running through my hair, lovingly.” The woman simply stared at her with an expression, blank. “They’re all long gone. Aren’t they?” It was almost as if she was talking to herself.

 

          Everything came flooding at once. Denied access to education, a simple village girl from one of the remotest parts of India, does what top scientists all over the world has been trying to do for decades. Rather than just a possibility from the realm of sci-fi movies, human hibernation became a reality. And the culprit? The internet, of course.

 

          Despite being an exceptional student, Kiara dropped out of school since her family couldn’t afford that anymore. That’s when the Digi Gaon* initiative brought free wi-fi in her village. She had a laptop that she got from the state government when she passed tenth grade with flying colors. And, then began her journey from a dropout to an inventor.

        

          “Trying to be the sleeping beauty. Huh didi*?” Her little sister’s voice echoed in her head and her never-ending series of giggles. Then, an argument with her mother began reverberating in her head.

 

“No!!!! It’s suicide. And you’re asking me permission to let you do it?”

 

 “Ma, it’s not what you think it is. If I succeed, I could be thousands of years ahead in the future.”

 

“If you succeed? What if you don’t? You’ll go up in smoke.”

 

“Ma, you’ve no idea what I’m talking about. It’s a quantum leap forward. I don’t have much to live anyway. That’s what the doc said.”

 

 “Oh! For goodness sake, please, Kiara, don’t do this. What would I do without you? Think about baba. He’d be devastated.”

 

“What would you do if I died? If you let me do this, at least you could have the solace that I’m alive, just sleeping. And baba is the one who propounded the idea in the first place. He can’t bear to see his only daughter suffer.”

 

          Her father’s solemn face took shape in her mind. “Good luck, precious.” Although an illiterate peasant, he trusted Kiara’s instinct and intelligence. She remembered walking right into the future, holding her baba’s little finger, like she did on her first day of school. She bid her goodbyes, stepped into the titanic hibernation pod, lied down on her back and closed her eyes. The next thing she knew was she had woken up in the cubicle. It all happened in the wink of an eye, five thousand years!

 

          Eleven hours had passed. At this point, she was sitting up and stretching her arms and legs and suddenly stopped, perplexed. The scaly wood-like warts on her hands have disappeared. Or was she not thinking properly? Yes, she did have the tree girl syndrome and was the second female ever to develop the mutation. Doctors had declared that her condition was untreatable and here she was perfectly normal. Either the dark-haired woman had performed some dark magic (a zero-probability event) or the ‘Five Thousand Years of Hibernation’ had cured her of Epidermodysplasia Verruciformis. She hated the sound of it. Anyway, the recovery remained a mystery for the rest of her life, i.e. forever owing to the fact that mankind attained amaratva* by the year 7020. Most humans had evolved from homo sapiens to a totally different species.

“Adele West. You can call me Adele.” The dark-haired woman extended a hand.

“Kiara” The elfin-featured girl from the past made her first friend in the future.

“I suppose Earth must be a lot different now from what it was in my time. Right Adele?”

“The internet says so.”

“You mean you haven’t been out of this cubicle?”

“Miss Kiara, we’re on planet Mars.”

Her eyes turned a rare green from the usual hazel, a spectacle that recurs each time sorrow creeps in. Yet, Kiara smiled like never before, grasping that it was an unfathomable conflation of the past and the present. Or is it the future?

 

 

Lehenga-choli - A three-piece Indian attire comprising a long skirt, blouse and a drape.

Ma - A Hindi word meaning mother

Digi Gaon - A venture to digitize rural India.

Baba - A Hindi word meaning father.

Didi - A Hindi word meaning sister.

Amaratva - Immortality