مكتوب

I was in class 9 when I bought The Alchemist. I saw it one evening, while walking with Amma and Acha, at a second hand book seller's rickety old bookshelf. The copy was a pirated one I think, with paper as grey and spotted and rough as the ones on which bills were printed in Margin free markets. The ink was blurred in many places. The cover pages were ugly as sin. It is the most unattractive book I own. I still remember my Maths tuition teacher telling me, that by buying that pirated copy instead of an original, I must have contributed to some terrorist organisation.

But it is a book that has influenced me the most; maybe the reason why that book made such an impact on me could be because I was kinda evolving at that time, like a Pokemon. I used to look for shiny black and white stones, hoping they'd be my Urim and Thummim and guide me when I needed guidance. The Alchemist's theory of something definitely happening a third time if it had happened twice was something I wholeheartedly believed in. But the thing that got etched on my mind most was maktub (مكتوب). 

The Alchemist told Santiago just this word, maktub, and said it meant "it's written". He explained to him that everything happening in this universe was written, by someone somewhere. I believed his words, I still believe them. I believe everything that is happening to me and around me are written. The heartbreaks that came my way and the greater joys that followed, the indecision that led to something far more beautiful than what was planned, the strong decisions that led to massive disappointments, everything, is written. Maybe some things are getting written or getting erased and rewritten right now,a this moment. And maybe we'll get to read them too, one day.