The Writer Of Short Stories

Sathyamurthy always wanted to be a writer.

He wanted to create his own world with his own characters and decide their fates. He wanted to be their God.

He has been writing stories since the age of 12. He has written over 500 stories by now. He is 35 years old.

This story is about a strange thing that happened after his 500th short story.

Before saying about the strange thing let me tell you about the story.

The story is about an IT guy. He works for a multinational IT services company on Old Mahabalipuram Road in Chennai. He is single, hails from Chhattisgarh and has been working in Chennai for the last 5 years. Having felt like an outsider in Chennai during the first year he gradually adapted to it and in fact, started loving it and feeling at home.

Sathyamurthy names this character as Sachudev.

Sachudev spent his weekends with his office friends over Briyani, coffee, trips to Mahabalipuram and Pondicherry, movies and long conversations. His bad luck, he was never good with girls and he never had a girlfriend. He stayed on the outskirts of the city owing to lower rent.

One night when he was alone at home watching a movie on Amazon Prime, he heard a knock on the door. It was raining heavily. The roads were flooded. He opened the door to find a girl in tight jeans and revealing tops. Citing the heavy rain she asked if she could stay in his room until the rain died down. Sachudev couldn’t believe his eyes. His thoughts ran wild. He invited her and she sat on the only bean bag in his room. It was a single BHK. 

“Would you like to have something?” 

Sachudev asked.

“No thanks” 

she replied smiling.

“Can I know your name if you don’t mind?” 

Sachudev muttered with hesitation.

“Yeah, I am Saaruka. Working in Revenant Consultancy Services as an HR. I was just returning home on my bike when the rain started pouring heavily. Didn’t expect it. It was so hot in the day, I didn’t expect it would pour down this heavily. The rains were so clogged in few moments of rain. Pathetic!”

she complained.

“Oh yeah, Chennai’s climate can sometimes be unpredictable. But Being Hot is her comfort zone. She will return to it as soon as she can”

he laughed at his own joke.

She laughed as well.

Moments passed. 

She looked at him. He looked at her. He approached her.

A few moments later he woke up unable to recollect what had happened between the moment he approached her and the moment he woke up.

He looked around, his wallet was missing. his laptop was missing. his chain, his watch and every valuable asset he had were missing.

“Techie robbed in a peculiar fashion. A girl orchestrates a robbery in style”

read the next day’s newspaper.

Sathyamurthy clicked on to publish on his WordPress editor after reviewing the story, editing it and adding few more lines. 

He went to sleep.

The next day he woke up and went through the newspaper delivered to his room

“Techie robbed in a peculiar fashion. A girl orchestrates a robbery in style”

read the newspaper. Everything mentioned in the article happened the same way he mentioned in the story. There is no way this could have happened after his story was read. It had happened almost the same time he wrote the story.

Confused and scared, Sathyamurthy went for a walk.

What could this be? Has he got a superpower after writing 500 short stories? Could God have given him this as a gift?

Or Is this just a coincidence?

It should be just a strange coincidence. It should be. He assured himself and returned home.

He wanted to test this strange phenomenon.

He opened his laptop and started writing another short story. He worked on it the entire day.

This was about a shopkeeper on the outskirts of the city. After closing his shop the shopkeeper returns to his home and is killed by a police inspector on the encounter. The police wanted to close a case and this poor shopkeeper had argued with the police over a tussle at his shop. The argument grew very bad and was followed by various other incidents growing the anger of the police inspector. The police finally decided to lock him in another case and kill him.

Sathyamurthy reviewed the story, edited it, clicked on publish and went to sleep.

The next day he nervously scanned the newspaper.

On the fifth page of the newspaper read :

“Shopkeeper encountered by a police inspector. An inspector under scrutiny”

He went through the article and the details of the events matched exactly with what he had written.

Scared and unable to comprehend what was going on completely, Sathyamurthy called up his close friend Ravinder and explained what happened. Ravinder could do nothing but console him. He advised Sathyamurthy not to write short stories for some time and suggested he go for a trip to relax. He said he would accompany him if he wanted.

And so on a Saturday early morning, Sathyamurthy and Ravinder rode a car on East Coast Road of Chennai. They planned to go to Pondicherry. Ravinder would have a drink, Sachudev would just give him company. They would then spent some time on the Pondicherry beach and return. That was the plan.

They kept riding.

It should be around 2 hours into the ride. 

An old man with torn up shirt and ugly jeans signaled to stop their car. He looked like a poor beggar but his stare was so sharp even from the distance the car was approaching him. Ravinder advised not to stop the car and keep driving. Sathyamurthy, being the curious guy he is and looking at the old man’s strange demeanor stopped the car. He lowered the front window of his car and looked at the old man.

“Run”

“Run back”

“Run back”

“You are riding on the road to death. There is no destination ahead except death”

“Run”

“Run back”

he said with a mystic smile and disappeared into a narrow lane.

Sathyamurthy was scared again. He couldn’t understand the sudden surreal happenings in his life. This can’t happen he thought. But again another thought crossed his mind. Who was he to decide how life should behave? Life can change its laws anytime. Can’t it? Science can wait to give an explanation.

While Sathyamurthy was lost in thoughts, Ravinder shook him to present. 

“Come on Sathya, he is a drunk old man. He is just blabbering. Cant, you see how drunk he is! Keep driving”

he pressed.

On hearing those words, Sathyamuthy went into panic mode. He remembered his 250th short story about a scared writer going on a road trip with his friend to unwind. An old man stopped them on their way and asked them to return back. The friend advised him to keep driving.

“This is another short story I wrote a few years ago. It is happening to us now the same way I had written”

Sathyamurthy mumbled to Ravinder in fear.

Ravinder now lost his cool temper. His hands started shivering. His friend wasn’t a fool, they have been friends for long. 

“What happens next?” 

Ravinder asked Sathyamurthy shivering in fear. 

Sathyamurthy sobbed heavily knowing very well the protagonist of his short story sobs as well at this moment. He couldn’t control.

“We are going to die. A drunken lorry driver is going to ram us down with his lorry right now” 

he said sobbing.

“Why don’t you park the car in a safer place then?” 

Ravinder shouted trembling.

Sathyamurthy looked at him, this was what he had written in the short story as well. He steadied the steering wheel of the car anyway and tried to move it to a corner of the road.

At this moment, a lorry rammed straight into their car.

“Short story writer and his friend killed in a car accident on ECR”

read the next day’s newspaper