By Surangi Tissera
Vindya never thought she was living with this sort of people in all her life. How she admired the world and the people. It seems all these years she was living in a fairyland. All of a sudden, Satan has become the ruler and once a heaven like her sweet world has transformed into a hell.
How? Or at least when this happened? Nothing comes to her mind. Lately, she was thinking deeply about everything took place in her life.
Being the eldest child of a middle class family; she had all the necessary attention. In fact, she was the apple of the eyes of her parents.
Vindya is a fair girl with a thick long black hair comparable to a fairy queen. If she was a common dumb child; she could have been a spoiled lass by now. But she had a conscience with a brilliant brain. She knew what she should and should not do, what sort of friends she should have and with whom she should not hangout.
However, she wasn’t sure what the sole mission in her life. Then she wondered whether others also think why they do or don’t do certain things. Yet, it was too early for her to understand about the world she lives.
At the beginning her world had just three: father, mother and a little puppy called “Tommy”. When Tommy was killed by a road accident, she had just celebrated her 2nd birthday. “Death”, was a new word to her vocabulary and a new concept to think. Although her mother brought her a new talking doll and her favorite ice cream; she wasn’t playing as usual. Instead, she wanted an explanation from her mother. But, her mother was more concern about Vindya not doing what she supposed to do.
“Babies should play with toys”, said mother repeatedly until Vindya get board with her own questioning.
She thought; her parents worrying because she no longer plays as usual. Vindya did the best she could. On the very next morning, she sang the sweetest song she knew to her father before he went off to work. Then she started dressing dolls and making tea-parties with them. She wanted her parents to thinks that they got their baby back; with the way they wanted. But, nobody understood her struggle with her conscience. Vindya continued her acting.
She got a sister and a brother, when she was eight years old. Her parents were so busy with their new born twin babies. At first, Vindya was very pleased to have new siblings. She thought; she could share with them all the things she knew. May be together; they could find answers to all the questions.
But, she was mistaken. They were like all the others; who had no genuine intention other than following the common routings.
Anyway, she will never meet them again.
“Just people without consciences”, she heaves a sigh of relief.
Tomorrow, she will start her journey to the “Universe Conscience Academy” situated in the other side of the universe; to be trained and to become a pre-human. “Human” as they were called, had extinct from the universe many centuries ago. Their creations, robots are ruling the universe and doing their utmost to create the Human artificially. In fact, Vindya is considered as one of higher generations’ robot who could cultivate a human thing called “conscious”.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This was an entry for the Commonwealth Short Story Cometition 2011.
