The One Who Wrote Destiny

by Nikesh Shukla

  Before I leave, I take as many deep breaths with my oxygen tank as I can. I don’t need it all the time. It just makes it easier for me to breathe when I am sedentary, working on computer screens, ignoring my body, trying to forget I even have one. I am so angry. Only a drink can quench the thirst of my rage. Months of work, my entire legacy, fucked up by my useless father. The only good thing he ever did was move to this country. I look at myself in the mirror, switch the oxygen tank off and leave the flat.

  And where is Ba?

  How did she die?

  It haunts me.

  I feel the fresh breeze in the open-air corridor caress my face. Like recirculated aeroplane air. I gulp at it. I walk down the three mini stairs from my front door to the building’s main front door, one lump of a foot at a time, slowly, holding on to a cold handrail that sends a pleasing tender shiver up my arm. I reach the bottom and hobble out on to the high street in my suburb of my city for the first time in a few days. It is bright. All the grey dust particles gleam like diamonds. It hurts my eyes. I close them and wait for my eyeballs to stop throbbing. I open them.

  I cross the road and wonder what I’ve been missing all these years when families shared stories and reminisced and talked about the good ol’ days. I have no good ol’ days. I only have now. And that’s just how I’ve been ever since I was a teenager. When your earliest memory is some creepy dude in a nappy squeezing your hand till it hurts, and a beloved animal being beaten by a stranger, you decide not to retain things. You make new memories. You overwrite bad code.

  My father is in the pub, with two pints and a packet of crisps in the centre of the table, on his phone, texting. I told him not to come. Yet, just hours later, here he is, oblivious to my wishes. We sat here only weeks ago, at the same time, at the same table in the window, when he regaled me, once more, with the heroic story of how he met my mother.

  I feel engulfed in my coat, wondering whether I can disappear into nothingness.

  Seeing his stupid smiling face reminds me of how angry I am with him. That I am related to him bewilders me sometimes. Replaying those memories over and over in his head. Grief can do funny things to you, but sometimes you have to be in the room.

  I do not want to see this man. I cannot look at him without feeling as though my destiny machine has failed.

  I try to take a deep breath. I can hear the crackle of immovable phlegm in my lungs. Much as I hak-hak-hak up what I think of as disgusting snot, it will not budge from my bubblegum-lung.

  Mika notices me as I enter the pub. I acknowledge her with a swift nod of the head. She smiles that crooked smile, adjusts the straps of her spaghetti top and carries on wiping down the bar.

  I acknowledge my father and nod at him too, walking over as purposefully as I can without my breathing aid. I am sweating with the effort. I haven’t done any exercise for a month and my face stings with sweat, my lungs ache. My dad rises to greet me with an outstretched hand followed by a one-shouldered cuddle, the badge of greeting for the male ‘in touch with his feminine side’. I plop myself down on the seat as quickly as I can, managing not to keel over. There, I place my forearms on the table in front of me, lean forward and draw in as much oxygen as I can. I close my eyes and wait for the wave of nausea and weakness to pass.

  ‘You okay, Neha?’

  ‘I’m fine. Under the weather. That’s all,’ I say without looking up.

  ‘You don’t look well. Eating okay? Your famous egg-fried rice?’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘How is the test site coming along?’

  ‘It’s ruined,’ I tell him. ‘Databases are only as good as their data.’

  ‘Oh, Neha,’ my dad says, pushing my pint closer. ‘You mean, my birthday? What a silly thing to forget. Funny, na?’

  ‘I need to start the whole thing again. You interconnect with me, Raks, Mum, our grandparents, your grandparents – don’t you get it? If your birthday is incorrect, it ripples out; it affects everyone around you in the system. Your mother didn’t have you when the program thinks she had you; you weren’t doing what it thinks you were doing when she died; you weren’t at the point in your life that it thinks you were at when I was born. Everything is out of sync.’

  I rub my shoulder blades against the back of the chair, sitting up straight, then allowing my body to sag into comfort. I can feel the room fizz and throb around my father. I look at the premium-strength lager in front of me and gesture to ask if it’s for me. My dad signals for me to help myself. As I do the thirst takes hold and I neck half the pint in a gulp. I hold the glass to my cheeks, first one and then the other, and close my eyes. I am thirsty, out of breath, and a cold lager poured from a keg is the stuff of beauty John Keats refers to. It is a joy for ever. I only know that reference because of the film White Men Can’t Jump, which Raks made us watch incessantly in our early teens, because he wanted to be as wisecrackery (or black, as I ribbed him) as Wesley Snipes and as good at basketball as Woody Harrelson.

  ‘So,’ my dad says, elongating it until it’s practically a sentence of its own. ‘I think you are mad at me.’

  ‘I am mad at you. I told you not to come, Dad.’

  ‘Let me make it up to you, kiddo. Why don’t I . . .’ After a long pause he says, ‘. . . tell you about the time I met your mother? You love that story.’

  I laugh. 3–2 to Dad.

  Amazingly, he manages to cut the tension.

  This is the pattern that is most consistent in my life, this story that Dad always tells me. It suddenly feels like a comfort. The room is spinning, the beer smells horrible, I can feel my arms shaking. Everything in me is weak and shutting down. Of course I want to hear this story. I’ve always found it tedious. But today, now, in this moment, it’s the pattern I need the most.

  My dad, this is the only thing he can give me. A GIF of the past.

  ‘Okay then, Father. I’m game. Tell me everything,’ I say. ‘I don’t want the glossy details you always give. I don’t want the yadda-yadda-yadda omissions. I want every detail. I want to feel like I could walk away from this and know enough to have a conversation with her. I don’t want you to think any detail is too sordid or horrible or unnecessary. I want to know everything. Don’t get anything wrong. Don’t make this story the tragedy that is your birthday. If your legacy to me is this story, tell it to me in a meaningful way.’

  My dad pauses.

  ‘That much? That sounds like hassle.’

  ‘This family exists in patterns. I want to see how she fits in, so I know how I fit in. Don’t tell me anything is a hassle, Father. You being my father is a hassle. You cannot keep trying to pay for things with the credit card of losing the love of your life. At some point, you have to remember that your children are people, and we’ve been in your life longer than she was. You hold on to this story as if it’s the most important thing. Tell it to me like it’s the most important retelling.’

  My dad drinks his pint. Slowly, a smile comes over his face.

  ‘Was it destiny that brought you two together?’ I ask.

  He must see the ghost in me because he puts the pint glass down and leans forward.

  He takes a deep breath. He is nervous. He looks at me and smiles, as though this is the first time ever he has told the story of him and her and them. The story of who he was and the story of his best friend, the love of his life. The one who only exists in memory now. There are connections to be made, patterns to be established, genetic code to be analysed and interrogated.

  ‘I have no reason to be anywhere,’ he says. ‘I find myself in an in-between world, with no purpose, except to lean with my back against the wall, across the road from Nisha’s amee and papa’s house. Not like a stalker, yaar. No, instead, I am posed like the poet I am, my pen poised to make ink marks and etchings on an open notebook page . . .’

  *

  He tells me everything. He spares no detail. He tells me how he met my mother. In one long stream of excitement at reliving the memory. He assures
me constantly, this is exactly how it happened, because he replays the scenes every night in the video tape of his head. So he does not forget. Memory can trick him. Muscle memory cannot. So he plays the story out in his head every night.

  He tells me the story of immigration itself, of him and my mother, and he leaves nothing out. He looks at me with concern. I must seem desperate and drained, like someone with nothing left. My dad, over the course of the next three hours, four pints, several packets of crisps and the innings of a one-day international being projected on to the back wall of Pivo, tells me everything I need to know.

  As he tells me the story, I revel in its familiarity, and surprise myself by being nervous at some points about how it’ll turn out.

  He starts to make sense to me. The line of code he represents in the algorithm in my life is to tell me this story.

  Finishing it, he tells me more – about our birth, the first weeks grieving for his wife and looking after us, the confusion, the support from my mum’s brother Chumchee, the endless nights walking us both up and down the street he lived on, me falling asleep with a thumb in my mouth and Raks on his chest. All these remembrances confirm his fatherly feelings towards me, that he does things for a reason, and I am here for a reason. And that is love. Love is a code that cannot be written. I make no notes, have no reaction on my face to indicate happiness, relief or a sense of closure, but I listen to everything my dad says, and when he finishes, I say the one thing he has never said before, to anyone, because people think that I think I’m always right and that I have no empathy.

  I realize that this is the story of when my father was happiest, and I cannot begrudge his happiest moment not featuring me. He must relive it. In that moment, I want to be as happy as him when he lives in that story again. I want to not always be right. I want simply to be happy.

  ‘You and Rakesh look just like her,’ he says. ‘Well, Rakesh looks like her with a beard. But you do. Every time I look at you both, it’s all I can think about. The family I could have had. Which upsets me. Because I have that family. You are here, right in front of me.’ He wipes his eyes. ‘And all this stupid fool can think about is what he lost.’

  I see tears in his eyes.

  I look at him and smile and say, ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so very sorry.’

  THURSDAY EVENING

  GoTo: The End

  Dad leaves an hour later. Telling me the story has brought all manner of things up for him and he wants to go home and listen to Rafi and think about Nisha. I let him go. I feel at peace with him for the first time in ages.

  I think I am nearing the end. The ol’ cancer is beating me. I am weak. I’ve done the thing I thought I would never do – forgive my dad for his endless grief. Will I drown? I need to finish reworking the program, to expand the data sets and to prove that patterns exist. Logic requires consistency. Life must have patterns. If we are to be logical beings, we need consistency and patterns.

  However, as Spock says, Insufficient facts always invite danger, Captain.

  Mika walks over to my table.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she asks.

  ‘I’m doing well,’ I lie. ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m okay. I feel like I’m wasting my life here, as ever.’

  ‘You should leave.’

  ‘So should you,’ she says. ‘You don’t look well.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s good advice.’

  I gulp down my pint even though I don’t want it. It tastes metallic in my mouth.

  ‘Mika,’ I say, as she starts to edge away from my table. ‘If there was a way to know, would you want to know how and when you’ll die?’

  Mika thinks about it for a few seconds.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I love your weird tangents. I don’t know where they come from or what they mean, but they give me life. No, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘Imagine the pressure of knowing how long you had to get the most out of life. Not knowing keeps us moving forward. Would you?’

  ‘I thought I did,’ I say. ‘I thought that in order to understand our purpose, first we had to understand our patterns.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Mika says.

  ‘Neither do I, as it turns out.’

  Ba, I think, is the key to everything. I text this to Raks. She is the anomaly in our pattern. She taught us so much in that one week we were with her. She formed us as people. She pushed us towards ourselves. Subtly, maybe. I have regrets about forgetting about her for so long, about throwing myself into my career.

  That slip of paper written down by Mum, that I saved from that Kenya trip. Neha: egotist, hard-working, stubborn, avoid these numbers: 16, 12, 9, 22. I am these things. Is that destiny or a pattern? Ba said Mum was an egotist, hard-working, stubborn. I wonder what Raks’s fortune was? Am I my mother? Am I her image? Is that why my father struggles with me? Because I remind him too much of what he lost. He has never told me I look like Mum. Ever. I don’t see it in the few photos I have seen of her.

  To exhibit the same traits as my mother. There is no scientific basis for this, only that it is a learned behaviour. But if I never knew my mother, how could I become her?

  Mika is right. We should not know these things. My father is right. We have ended up where we are because of coincidences. I wanted to believe in destiny as a way of mitigating my diagnosis. I wanted to believe that there was a pre-written path. I think coincidence and patterns can coexist. But destiny is retroactive.

  The algorithm told me I would drown.

  I stand up. I feel drunk. I need to go home and delete the algorithm. I need to go to Kenya and trace Ba. I will then return to Lamu and visit the donkeys that I loved so much. This is how I will spend the rest of my days. In Kenya.

  The room is spinning. I must go home.

  I stumble towards where I think the door is. I walk into tables and chairs and squint as much as I can to see through the tears filling my eyes. I feel confused all of a sudden. My vision is blurry and my mind feels like the inside of a vacuum cleaner – white noise and dust particles. I take my glasses off to see if I can focus. I reach the front door.

  Outside, the breeze is cold but my head still reels. I stumble home, struggling to breathe, gulping down as much air as I can. I trip over the foot of the Indian man in the puffy jacket, and as he smiles at me, I try to recollect where I know him from and I tumble into the fountains, feeling the cool splash of murky slick oiled water around me as I submerge head first. I can hear Ba calling to me, I can feel the impact of the alcohol, I can feel something tugging at my body, while at the same time, a pressure is pushing me under. I try to make myself weightless. Let whatever fate claim me. I let someone else drive. I hand over keystroke control. I remove myself from the admin list. I am drowning.

  It is as it should be.

  I try to relax my muscles despite them tensing, fighting what’s happening.

  A loop closes. History repeats and repeats. My father has seen all of this before. It’s not even the cancer that will kill me.

  It’s the water. Ironic, given how dehydrated I feel.

  ‘I am done,’ I say into the water. ‘You were right.’

  This was my destiny.

  I think of my brother. And my mother. And my ba. And the ol’ cancer. You cannot combat fate. It is the override code.

  Goodbye. One day you will die. Until then, goodbye.

  I try to empty my mind, but I feel a tug at my back. A pain in my shoulder. And I am rising, violently. Being pulled at.

  There is a sheen of white noise all around me. The vacuum-cleaner sound is deafening.

  I feel myself fall to the floor. I look up. Mika stands over me, her arms and front soaking, panting heavily.

  ‘Spectacles, are you okay?’ she asks.

  I am alive, I think. I have broken the pattern and I am alive.

  RAKS

  Multiple. Now

  Colonialism, what’s up with that?

  Raks Jani
r />   ‘A Flea Can Trouble a Lion More than a Lion Can Trouble a Flea’

  Laila. London

  She masturbates with tears in her eyes. No nudity but good facial expressions needed.

  Not for me, I think. No thanks. I log off the casting-calls app and open my phone’s camera. I practise what I imagine are good facial expressions for wanking. Biting my lip seems forced. Scrunching up my face and smiling makes me look as though someone has placed a vinegar-soaked rag under my nose. I close the app and look to make sure the bus hasn’t gone past my stop.

  I know it hasn’t, I’m too familiar with the area to let that happen – the event’s in a house opposite my old school.

  I can’t do wanking face. I won’t be applying for this casting. I didn’t study for three years as an actor to take jobs where a fee constitutes £5 contribution towards my travel and a sandwich lunch. All for the artistic satisfaction of simulating wanking with good facial expressions.

  The men get the castings where they need to be a good-looking nerd, or a superhero, or the type of guy everyone wants to fuck. If I’m lucky, I get to play one of the girls who gets to fuck the guy who’s the type of guy everyone wants to fuck rather than the girl who doesn’t get to fuck the guy who’s the type of guy everyone wants to fuck.

  I close my phone and put it in my pocket.

  I get out the printed-off email with information about today’s gig. I look at the photo of the guy who I’m supposed to act for. I recognize him. A comedian. I’ve seen him perform before. He’s okay, seemed too nervy to get his jokes out, which were funny, could have been funnier with better execution. Comedy is, ummm, errrr, what is it? That thing, what is it again?

  I look at his face, tracing the froth of his curly hair with a finger.

  Timing.

  Comedy is timing.

  This is the weirdest acting gig I’ve ever had. But it beats masturbating with tears in your eyes.

  The door to the house is wide open so I enter. I take my shoes off and blend in.