Raveendra was 55 years old. For the last few years, he envied the successful entrepreneurs of his town. A year ago he took retirement from his job and now he was looking forward to setting up a bookshop in Ooty with his gratuities.

It was October. He was driving his old van through the narrow mountain roads on the way back from the wholesaler shop in Coimbatore. Occasionally there were small villages on the way consisting of few huts and small markets where one could manage to buy things for basic needs. Most of the part of the road from Ooty to Coimbatore consisted of hills and valleys with densely packed greeneries. The mist added different shades and the evening sun provided shiny edges to them.

Halfway there was a small village. He was thirsty and his eyes were looking for a tea stall while he slowed down. He saw a crowd make a circle as if it was surrounding something. He parked the car on sideways, postponed the quest to satisfy his carving for the tea, and walked towards the crowd.

At the center of the circle, he saw a fortune teller shouting and claiming to tell the people the number of years remaining in their lives. Very few dared to take his service while most enjoyed being his audience. Out of curiosity, Raveendra handed him fifty rupees which were his bill. After putting the fifty rupee note below the carpet, the fortune teller held Raveendra’s hand and looked at his face carefully. He looked into his eyes and at his forehead like he was decrypting some ancient code written on his face. Raveendra looked blank and clueless, at the fortune teller’s face trying to pick subtle clues of his findings.

The fortune teller’s eyebrows stretched in worry. This triggered the same expression on Raveendra’s face before he could be aware of that. The fortune teller took out a paper, wrote something on it, folded it, and handed it to Raveendra. Ravendra put it in his pocket and looked at his watch. He realized that he was getting late so he dropped the idea of having tea and went to his van.

While he drove back to his home anxiety started taking over him. He couldn’t get the tense face of the fortune teller off his mind. His forehead and palms were sweating in that moderately cold weather. His wrist trembled while he tried hard to retain his control over the steering. He figured out that he could not wait, so he parked the car sideways and went ahead to read the slip.

“10th June 2002” – It was written in with black ink on the slip. He turned over the slip to find any detail but all that he could find in the entire slip was a date and nothing else. Under the grip of extreme excitement and horror, it took almost two minutes for him to figure out what the date was. It was on 3rd June 2002. It meant he had only seven days to live. His heartbeat got louder and his palm sweated more. He could feel his breath getting heavy at this thought. He remembered that people in his neighborhood talked about a fortune teller whose predictions were true. So that was the fortune teller, he concluded.

He started the car heavy-heartedly. His mind had entirely shifted from long-term reaping from his business to the things on his bucket list which could be covered in a short time. He started counting the things he had planned to do before his death. He always wanted to become a successful writer, but the dream had evaporated a long time ago. Suddenly he felt a bit more heartache at the thought of terminal failure. He was planning to start a successful business after retirement, but he didn’t have enough time now. Next on the list was going to Europe for a vacation, but that too was ruled out. He eliminated most of the things from his bucket list and finally settled on a few of his favorite dishes, a movie list, and his favorite wine.

Events of his entire lifetime were passing through his mind.

“There are times when we think our entire life sucked and there are times when we think we had a great life, life is like a glass bottle full of water and white marbles, if you replace water with that of different color the color of marbles would also look different”, he thought thinking of past. His entire life was a beautiful journey with ups and downs at the time he was leaving the wholesaler’s shop. The same journey looks like a sequence of events full of failures, disgrace, and unfinished tasks now. Emptiness prevailed in his mind.

For the moment his only wish was to get a few more years in life. He was praying to God if he could get more time and if the prediction was false. He was losing control over his mind and suddenly a truck came in front of his car out of a sharp turn. He got dumbstruck for a moment. His hands turned the steering involuntarily but he was late. His car went off the road towards the valley.

A few moments later he saw his car rolling side by side striking bushes and small rocks into a valley that was not too steep. After a few minutes, his car stopped rolling. It was lying upside down wedged against a rock. He could not move three out of his four limbs. All were numb. His most of body parts were hurting badly so he could not figure out which hurt more. He could feel blood running through his neck but was unable to figure out its source. All he could figure out was that he had suffered a terminal injury and that death was a step away.

Part of him was devastated by the thought of death, part of him even more devastated by the thought that the prediction of the fortune teller was not true and the accident could have been avoided had he not chosen to read the slip in the midway or didn’t go to the fortune teller at the first place. The regret took over all the other thoughts. He prayed that he could get a second chance to start life all over again.