Year after year, his friends had fooled him on this day. Sometimes he forgot, sometimes his friends devised too good a plan. This year, he had decided, he would not be the man they fooled and talked about for the rest of the year. Whatever they had for him, he would beat them this time.

Soon, he was ready for work and out on the road. He worked in a Govt. office, which was about 15 minutes walk from his house. He liked to walk to work for the road was wide with almost no traffic and one could hear and watch birds. But today his mind was focused on one thing: Get the day over without being made a fool.

The road as usual was desolate. His mind began to wander. He brought it back into the present. There was a man coming from the other end of the road. The man had something about him that attracted Amish’s attraction, what it was he could not put a finger upon. Soon they had reached each other and were past each other.

Suddenly Amish felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped in his skin and turned around. It was the man.

“ I almost missed you… you are the guy who lives in that house.” the man said pointing to Amish’s house.

At once Amish was on the defensive. So, his friends were up to it again but this time he would not let them do it to him.

“Yea,” he replied.

“You are going to die in one hour from now.”

The man said without making much small talk. Prepared though Amish was, he had no reply to this very strong contention. He was awestruck and hence silent.

“ I am an angel and my duty is to inform all the men and women who have to die sudden deaths, about their death one hour before they actually die… You don’t believe me?”

“I do.” was all Amish could say.

“ Well I see it in your eyes that you don’t. No one does… I am doing this job for years now and no one believes me until they actually meet their fate.”

Saying this the man went his way. He did not actually disappear but to Amish it seemed that he did. For by the time he had recovered from the shock, the man was gone.

“ That’s nothing more than my friends getting desperate to get me.” Amish said to himself aloud. And continued on his way.

But once a worm enters a plant or a virus a computer, it doesn’t lie still. Similarly the thought, like a parasite, began to feed on Amish’s grey cells and his mind was not where he was. And before he knew he felt something hot and hard hit him…

…Amish was dreaming. Someone was trying to say something to him but his eyes would not open. He tried hard and was able to open them a whit. He saw some girls in white and two men wearing lab coats. Doctors, nurses and a hospital.

What happened? He tried to recall but nothing. He saw that the doctors had serious faces and as he opened his eyes fully, he saw that his bed faced the window and the window was open and through it he could see the big Ben of Behrampur- the clock that was the main attraction of the small town.

It showed10: 30. It reminded Amish that it was 10 when the man had told him that it would be one hour before he died.

So he began to think:

“ I am really going to die. What have I done with my life? So many plans, So many ideas, So many girls to ask out? Why did I never do that? What was I waiting for? This cannot be it. I have so many things in me, will they be in vain. Does everyone who dies a young death waste so much talent. Is this what God wants? But if he wanted that, why put so much talent in a person who he knew was going to do nothing about it …or maybe God did not know what he was doing. But I should have known I should have made better use of my time. I can still use this time to tell these people about some of the ideas I have”

He tried to speak but found that the mask on his face prevented him from speaking and the effort just choked him. So that chance is also gone, he thought.

He resigned himself to his fate.

“If I have to die, I better do it like a man”, he thought. And a look at the watch showed him that it was fifteen minutes to death, to freedom.

He looked at the door and saw that the man who had told him about his death was walking through the door. So, he has come fifteen minutes before time. It didn’t matter to Amish anymore …what was fifteen minutes when he had wasted fifteen years leaving aside the ten that he spent as a child. He wanted to move ahead and see what awaited him in the next world or wherever his angel was planning to take him.

The man now seemed somewhat more human than in the morning and his face seemed to be mournful. Amish wanted to tell him that he did not have to worry. It was not his fault, but his boss’s.

The man came and sat on the bed besides him, held his hand and said:

“I am sorry friend, I am just an actor who was paid by your friends to say what I did. I just came to say sorry.”