Choice

Coal eyes. Black, unruly hair. Glowing red cheeks. I almost bundled over the child in one of D-Mart's grocery aisles. Not over four feet tall, the little boy scampered back to his parents, perhaps scared that I'd try to run him over again. Laughing at his antics, I continued to the next aisle searching for the perfect soap.

Fiddling around with three-for-the-price-of-two packs, I was moving a few racks to my right when the kid appeared again at the corner of the aisle. His mother bent down to match his height and whispered some instructions in his left ear. She seemed to point at the dental-care shelves as she said something in a hurry before returning to her husband.

The child was rooted to the spot for a moment, eyes wide, in the big scary supermarket. Then, gathering some courage, he walked up to the toothpaste rack and looked up at it carefully. I smiled at the kid and tried to identify which paste he was looking at. It wasn't clear; so I let him be and returned to searching for my soap.

I picked out a few things I thought I needed, and a few more things which I knew I didn't. And then, I turned to look at the kid again. He still stood there, only looking at a different toothpaste now. He then walked around to the other side of the shelf, as if looking at things from a different angle would help him. By now, I saw frustration getting to him and I decided to help him.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Toothpaste," he said quietly. Simple enough.

"Colgate, Pepsodent, Close-up or Sensodyne?"

He didn't respond. He looked scared. I had just uttered some meaningless words.

"Okay, I'll make it simple for you. What do you use at home - do you know what it looks like?"

"No," he said. "It looks red. And it looks blue and green." He was confused. And now, he was confusing me.

"Does it taste sweet? Or sour? Or cold?" I asked, prodding patiently.

"How does it matter?" he asked. I was trying to get him toothpaste. And he was asking me existential questions.

"Dammit kid, do you want cooling crystals in your paste?" I said losing my temper.

I quickly corrected myself realizing that he was nearly in tears. "Don't cry," I said. "Just tell me if you want salt in your toothpaste."

He turned away from me as tears came to his eyes. He ran to his mom rubbing his face. I exited the aisle quietly before they came back.

"Choice. Humbug."

Difference Between Life and Tetris

There is none.

We all theorize. Every time you stare into the ocean, or at the moon, or at the caramel sands in the blazing desert, you begin pondering about life, its meaning and therefore about its futility. The greatness of the view makes you feel like a rather insignificant speck in the grand scheme of things, and thus initiates such a thought-process which, quite obviously, has no meaningful end. But we dutifully go through this painful realization every time we sit alone in front of nature's magnificent might. And every time, we have a new theory about life.

My theory begins with Tetris. It all began three days ago when I was playing the wonderful game, resplendent in black and white. That was when it first struck me how similar it was to life itself! Blocks of different shapes and sizes were raining upon me with the spontaneity of the immense drops in a thunderstorm. They fell with such randomness that they were entirely indistinguishable from the stochastic events - opportunities and worries - that Life throws at us. You can't obviate or avoid them; you can only arrange them, try to absorb them.

As the 'Z's, the 'L's and the 'I's fell upon me, I could but divert them towards the different corners of the little screen I looked at, with the hope of achieving something spectacular - an order in a chaotic universe, which would be so beautiful that I couldn't ever take my eyes off it.

The 'Z's snuggled cozily with the 'L's, even as the spectacular 'Is's occupied those elusive voids which have always been left incomplete. And then I saw the beautiful pattern being completed. There were no voids. No spaces. No white places which required reason. The completed pattern imprinted itself in my mind in a way, I knew, I could never be freed of the haunting memory. The thought of the pattern gives me goosebumps even now - when I'm almost entirely sure that I will never again be able to replicate such splendor. Magnificent in its magic, Life is. Much like Tetris.

And then, I witnessed the greatest climax ever possible when the pattern satiated itself and collapsed. It disappeared! And it left no trace. The experience was complete, and now it was absent. It was but a memory, and therefore it was perfect. Experiences, after all, are only as perfect as the memories they are capable of creating. And it was apparent to me that day. There are no goals in life. There are never any! There are only roads which we imagine are ways to a destination. But ever so often, these roads are so romantic themselves, that you must forget the destination! Just like Tetris.

Rules of Tetris: When you make a perfect line, it disappears and all the blocks shift accordingly, leaving only a void on your screen. If you let the blocks reach the top of the Tetris board, you lose. You cannot win a Tetris game, though you can attempt to get the high score.

The point of Life isn't to reach the top, is it? The objective is to make patterns more beautiful than you can imagine, until they complete themselves and remain only as memories - memories that you want to relive. But sometimes, they come back! And we all wish that, one day, we will have the opportunity to recreate those spectacular designs.

It's the same thing with Tetris. You can't win Tetris; you only get to make a high-score. A score so high no one else can match!