Nupur Gupta. Surreal. A vibrant, sassy, next door girl. Oodles of grey cells, dollops of attitude. Family friend, soul sister. IT professional. High-performing asset at Aricent, Gurgaon. Now it so happened, a few months back, that there was a story writing competition in her office. This lousy female called me up at 1500 hrs., a princely half an hour before scheduled close of entry submission, with a request to write an entry for her. Me, being me, agreed to try to meet the deadline, not committing of course. She, being she, demurely acquiesced. I was driving at the moment. Some 15 minutes later I arrived at the portals of my Hotmail Inbox, to meet the following as the given start of the story.

"He woke up suddenly and looked at his wristwatch. It was 06:30 hours, Wednesday, 10 April, 2030. With a shock, it occurred to him that...". I pondered a moment and started writing and once I began it kept flowing. Within the next 10 minutes I had the story ready and e-mailed, to the utter relief of Nukku (as she is fondly called). Though I didn't show up in the top three, but I fondly remember this task as the 10-minute story, which I shall now share.

He woke up suddenly and looked at his wristwatch. It was 06:30 hours, Wednesday, 10 April, 2030. With a shock, it occurred to him that, he was about to die in 12 minutes 22 seconds… And the shock was pleasant.

Robert Collins had just 12 minutes 22 seconds to recollect the almost 85 years of his life.. 12 minutes 22 seconds to recollect every snapshot of his turbulent life.. 12 minutes 22 seconds to relive his 65 years of eccentric research… 12 minutes 22
seconds to fight his inner demons… 12 minutes 22 seconds to again nonchalantly stand in front of his ruthless critics. People who had never held a test tube in their life, people who knew nothing about what painstaking hours in the
laboratory meant, people who had never known
what a passion for new discovery meant. But who had nevertheless, squeezed him, drowned him and hung him upside down by his legs to dry out in the sun, in the face of public mockery and ridicule.

But Robert was not hurt at the people. He thought god had sent every mortal with a purpose on this earth. And his faith in the supernatural powers of god was superlative and unshakable. He was a God’s man, doing God’s work in his own way, the way God had chosen for him. What hurt him was that he had been branded an atheist, stoned by the very
supposed men of God for a sin he was not guilty of, at least he thought he was not. Is stoning someone, the way God has appointed them to work?
On the dawn of his 20th birthday, this Harvard whizkid knew why he had been sent on this earth. He was out walking in his garden before the sun had fully grown on the
horizon, when a meteorite fell at his feet, it was a glowing ember, red by the apathy and deceit of the atmosphere it had been thrown in involuntarily. It glowed for about a minute and dissolved into oblivion not leaving a trace behind, except
the warmth it had brought along in that cold January dawn. Is it possible, he wondered, for a mortal to also disappear into oblivion on its death, be invisible to other mortals and still live on? From then on he spent every part of his day
in the laboratory studying proteins, acids, the building cells of life, their inter connectivity with the ecosystem, meteorites, asteroids, mountains, water bodies…

Then on one fortunate August sun in the summer of 2020, he discovered something that was beyond the scope of petty words to describe, a discovery so stunning that it would shake the entire universe for
centuries to come, so simple in its theory, so ingenious in application, he had discovered the route to physical immortality. Death is eventual and evident, that’s the way of god, but he could now actually stay immortal without the veil of skin to make him conspicuous to the world. For years, Robert prayed to God to deliver him, to show him a way to explain it to the world, he so wanted to, but feared no one would understand it and if they somehow did, it would be exploited
to an extent where its sanctity would lie brutally raped and murdered. There are people in the world, Robert thought, who deserved immortality, but then, there were also people who were not even worthy of mortality.
Father Thomas Sayu was his family mentor since his childhood. Robert had confided his discovery in him. He suddenly looked in a strange fashion at Robert and then changing his thoughts, told Robert to forget all about it and take solace in religion. Robert walked back and stayed up at his laboratory all night, then he slept. When he woke up, two armed men, picked him up from the laboratory, without telling him a reason why. He was taken to an enclosed arena, where
thousands of men and women wearing black gowns started hurtling stones of all sizes at him. He thought he saw Father Thomas Sayu in the crowd, but ignored. He stood unfazed, not asking the reason for this, as if anyone would have answered, had he asked. But he knew why. Suddenly the pelting of stones stopped. A man in white overalls, walked into the middle, set 06:43 hours as the time for the brutally gashed and bruised man’s “penance”,at least that was what he said. An
“Amen” followed in unison from the arena.
As Robert Collins stood to be hanged by his unknown jury, on this 10th of April, 2030, the clock showed 06:43, he had no last wish. He smiled on his about to be discovered immortality.....