“Don't rush, read them as you grow.” That's what grandfather told me while handing over tons of his old books to which I was never interested. I was like, “Rush? I might not even read them once in my lifetime.” Grandfather laughed at me and said, “I bet you would, but you better remember, don't rush!!”
It's been twenty years since my grandfather died and as I said, I didn’t even touch those books for once, never ever. But the irony of fate is that the country is going through some hard times, the government has imposed a nationwide curfew and the internet connectivity has also been cut off. So as time passed, finally I brought them down, tiny books, lots of them with numbers marked on them to read serially.
The first story was about a kid, a moral lesson, things that each of us faced like what happens when we respect others and what if we don't. Then I read another, then another, and it kept going, as I was reading one after another I felt like they were related to our life. Some were so relatable that I felt like they were based on my life. Suddenly I remembered my grandpa's advice, not to rush. So I took a break, given a pause.
Life became normal again, back to the internet and my regular life. Months have passed and I haven’t touched them ever again. Started my professional career. Life has become too hard to maintain. Suddenly I found myself in so much deep shit that it was going to be a do-or-die situation I would kill two or three persons, or I will be in jail for lifetime imprisonment due to a misunderstanding that I haven’t committed but everything is against me, they trapped me.
I managed a gun, the plan was to shoot whoever came in my way, I must survive, no matter what. I am at my house and see people surrounding my house from everywhere. I have a few rounds of bullets but how many of them outside? How many of the police? “No, no, no, I must get out of it, no matter how many of them die, I don't care,” this is what was going on in my mind.
Suddenly I remembered one story from my grandpa's book where a man was in a similar situation, standing between truth and false like he is now, had chosen the path of truth and the moral of the lesson was as well about sticking to truth no matter how hard it is. I felt ashamed and sad, came out with white clothes and surrendered. Mysteriously, I was found innocent and was released from all charges. Can you imagine where I was saved?
And this was the moment when I realized that those books represented different crucial moments of my life and left instructions for me to follow. The childhood ones were funny and now heading towards the realistic ones. I started reading them again and seeing them come true in my life and I am making decisions, and seeing reflections on my life, some are on my hand and some just come automatically.
“Ah-ha, this is so impressive, I get to know what to expect and how to act, amazing!” soon it turned into an addiction to reading them, to experience them in my life because day by day they were getting intense.
“Stop reading them so fast, your grandfather forbade you to rush, take a break, or else you will reach the end of the books very soon,” said my father. However, I was curious to explore them beforehand and was excited to experience what was ahead of me and to get prepared.
When I was left with the last ten percent of books, I realized another thing. There was a time when relatable things used to happen occasionally as I used to read them after long breaks as well. The faster I am reading those books, the faster those events are coming alive in my life. I said to myself, “What happens at the end of these books? Am I going to die? Is this the end of my life?”
I stopped reading them and felt like throwing them away. There is always a fear of what's coming ahead as things are now way more complex than the beginning ones. Yeah, they are helping to predict and make the right life-saving decisions. Curiosity is a mysterious thing, even though we know there might be a dead end, we would feel like stepping in to see if it's really true and how that feels. The same happened to me, I couldn’t resist myself from reading them ever again but this time, with my grandfather's advice, “No Rush!!”
Years have passed as I am going slower than ever and suddenly there comes a day, when there is a quote, "We are born to die. It is the way we live that makes our lives meaningful." I was shaken, by a death note, am I going to die? When?
The End!!
Rihan found this diary in his late grandfather's belongings. The ending note was, “If anyone is reading this then the last death note has been executed as well. I started writing this diary after reading those books, after the death note, while waiting for my death…..”