Letter from the future in a dinosaur egg

Last night, as I plunked myself on my bed after dinner and cut a swath trying to find the remote, I was surprised to find a dinosaur egg on my bed. Geet, who was gargling standing near the bathroom door, almost sprayed the fine blue Listerine all over me. The egg had a sparkling display on it which read –

This is a Time capsule.

From – Amit Sharma

Dated – 23 Sept, 2042

Please bang your head on the top to open it.

“Bang it. What are you waiting for?” Geet said.

“Are you crazy? There might be a baby Godzilla inside it!”

She caught hold of my neck and banged my head on the egg. It neatly split into two, displaying a letter inside. I took it out and opened it, half expecting it to burst in my hand. The capsule vanished. This is what the letter said.

Dear Amit,

If you are reading this letter, it probably means that the time capsule worked, although I am not sure if it has landed in the correct past or in an alternate one, but never mind. I got my first time capsule yesterday and decided to send it thirty years back. If you are mulling over who I am, I am you, thirty years older, with a lot of wrinkles and a lot of white hair. Yeah, they did not fall, as you suspected.

I really do not know what to tell you. I do not want to tell you about your future as it is the worse I can do to my past. Also, it will change the future for me, as you may decide not to do certain things, and I don’t want that to happen. So, I will tell you about general stuff, which does not concern you after a point.

You must be wondering how much the world will change in the next thirty years. Well, it will change but not as much as you would like it to. We do not use a lot of physical things now. Our mobiles, televisions and laptops are projections in the air. They are just small devices, as large as a ring on your finger which could produce the projection when you require. Our cars now run on water and garbage. Scientists have revealed that the first water car was created thirty years back, but putting it in the market meant making a lot of countries bankrupt, so they kept milking the people, till there was no more to milk. Ditto for quantum computers. Petrol went up to 3000 Rs a litre before it was put to sleep. Now we have a bottle of it in the Science Museum.

We had flying cars too. A lot of nations still use them as they are fast and yes, they run on water. They tried to introduce them in India too, but the way we drive on the roads, imagine the chaos in the sky where there were no solid roads. They banned them after the sky turned into a scene out of Star wars. You must be finding it amusing, but technology was never a problem, was it?

India beat China in population a few days back. It’s so crowded everywhere now a day. We are like ants, brimming over everything. A kind soul invented air-conditioned clothes a few years back. Thankfully, the heat and cold are not a worry anymore, at least for the people above poverty line. Yes, there are still poor people in India. What were you expecting?

Oh! Something funny happened yesterday. Kasab died in his sleep in the jail. The trial is still going on. And Rahul never became the Prime Minister, if you would like to know. He is old now, like Advani old. Sons of SRK and Hrithik are huge stars, so is Aishwarya’s daughter. Salman never married. The only good thing that has happened in the last few years is that our movies are a bit sensible now. Anil Kapoor recently acted in Transformers 18. It was fun to see him turn into a car. Anyways, he gets blown off after five minutes into the movie. Abhishek turned director. Now he is directing flops.

You must be wondering what happened to the Lokpal Bill? Well, it got through but it had its own flaws. It was quite a mess for a few years before things ironed out. We are not in deep shit as we were in your time but there is still so much to do and so much to change. Indians still honk, in case you were pondering. Men still pee on walls and spit on roads. Sigh! Delhi is still the rape capital. That was another reason flying cars were banned.

Sometimes when you look into the future, you are all positive. But then you start realising that you will not reach the other end of the spectrum in your lifetime. Utopia is always like a mirage. You will see what I mean.

You will be happy. It will be a good life. It is all a state of mind and you know that.

I hope this letter reached the right dimension in my past. I hope I haven’t disappointed you in any way. I know our movies give us a very wrong impression of the future, but we are getting there. The pace is slower than the human imagination though.

Best of luck

Amit

p.s. We made contact with aliens. They were nowhere like what they show in the movies. And no, they did not land in America. More in my next letter.

Geet and I looked at each other as I folded the letter. There was silence for a moment.

“Abhishek turned director?” both of us said simultaneously.

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