Entangled

I went up the circular winding stairs at the back of my house to water the plants on the terrace. It was cold and dark. When I was about to leave, I got a glimpse of the sky above. There were some stray clouds in the winter sky. I could see few distant stars blinking.

‘Wow’, I said to myself.

‘They are light years away. Yet, I can see them so clearly. Nothing in between me and that star’. That very thought suddenly made me feel out of this world.

What if there was a planet circling that star? and What if there was someone looking at my star, right now, the way I look at it and think all of this? my thoughts began to run wild.

Suddenly the word ‘Quantum Entanglement’ surfaced in my mind. It was that ‘spooky action at a distance’. What if there is someone out there, as I am about to go down the stairs now, he begins to walk up the stairs in that exoplanet ?

‘Wow’ I again shouted, a bit louder this time.

As I walked down the stairs I had a vague feeling of my ‘other’ moving up the stairs. When I entered the house through the backdoor into the kitchen, I saw my wife fixing up fruits and salad for the evening. She was busy chopping them. I could see in my mind’s eye the ‘other’s’ wife walking with the salad in her hand. Or may be she is waiting for my wife to finish chopping the salad and walk away so that she will walk in to cut it.

“you are alright?”, my wife felt something strange with the way I was looking at her not knowing I was floating across the universe.

Next few days I was busy in the never ending last bit of an App I had been onto for months. I had put a hard stop for myself to get the first release out. I was frantically behind it all my waking hours and I slept only to take breaks from what I did.

But the thought only grew bigger whenever I paused in between while moving around the house, as I tried to fill in the constant sitting and seeing with some cleaning activity. ‘He must be cleaning the other side of the glass’, I thought as I cleaned the shower cubicle. ‘He may be looking exactly like me or will he be like an alien with puckered nose and pouting lips?’.

When I met my friend over a drink that evening, he asked ‘how is your stuff coming along?’

‘Not bad. This time, it is going to be out of my laptop. That darned thing has haunted me for years sitting there. Wait for my mail’, I said.

‘Oh, that sounds all the more familiar to me’, my friend laughed as he gulped a black label.

After couple of rounds, suddenly I felt my friend was trying to get up and go. I asked ‘where…?’ looking up to him.

‘To the loo’,

‘Oh, wait, let him come out’.

‘Who?’, the friend looked puzzled.

‘Well, your other’, I said as my friend burst out in laughter saying ‘this time you are going to release man, for sure…something has gotten into you’, as he started walking to the loo.

As I tried to wrap up the work and get the App deployed for a Beta run, I was feeling as if the ‘other’ is trying to get me move faster and faster. I had never felt that energy in me before.

‘Dad, can you play with me?’, my twelve year old was holding a basketball in his hand.

‘No, I can’t. Got things to wrap up’.

‘Please Dad, only one game’.

I looked up at him. I was working too hard. It would be good to give a break. ‘Okay’, I said. We began to play in the small area in front of the house.

‘How long ?’, I asked.

‘Half hour’, my son said.

I saw him dribble the ball, trying to pass it in between his legs and across and move swiftly.

For some reason I could see things more clearly. I tried stopping him moving towards the basket, grabbed the ball when he wasn’t quick and started dribbling towards the basket very rapidly.

I was not used to playing basket ball at all. I used to be just there to block him while my boy tried the techniques he learnt on Youtube.

Today I felt different. I was at ease. I could move very swiftly. I knew the ‘other’ is working on me. The boy was feeling dejected that he was not getting things right.

‘’No…No…”, he was hitting his head with his hands.

‘’Don’t hit so hard. Your brains may fall out’’, I joked trying to bring his spirits back.

The boy burst out laughing and immediately began to sulk. He went and sat on the stairs holding his head. “I am not getting it right, not my day”, he said.

I looked at him. “Get up buddy, go and just play”.

“No I can’t”

“Look you are burdened with trying to apply all those techniques you see on those videos”

“Get up and see the ball and move swiftly with it. Don’t think. Just play.”, I said.

A minute passed.

The boy felt a bit alright to try it out. He was now back to his self. I could feel the ‘other’s’ kid complaining to him.

After few quick baskets, I shouted “awesome, you are so quick”.

“Thanks Dad, I liked the game”, he was happy. “Today you too posed a good challenge to me”.

I looked at the sky above. There were few stars visible.

“I could see the ball unlike the other days”, I said.

It was clear to me that the ‘other’ is moving faster doing his stuff and I am just responding to it.

All along I was entangled in my Self. Reacting to it. The ‘other’ was not visible. Now that I realized Him, I became insignificant before that. I am entangled but no longer within me.

I felt very light. As if I am there and I am not. Never had things looked so normal. My hands were dancing on the keyboard.

When I woke up to the beautiful morning light from Proxima Centauri, I could feel my ‘other’ still rolling in his bed on Earth.