Time traveler

‘What’s your name?’ I asked the boy. Must be in his fifth grade. He was holding his mother’s hands as they entered the gift shop.

He was silent for a long time. I was waiting. The mother of the boy was about to answer but put on a grin. She wanted her boy to answer it himself.

After some time, may be a minute, the mother could wait no longer and prodded him. ‘Tell your name Sundar’.

I got my answer. I smiled.

He followed his mother and said ‘Sundar’ meekly.

‘Why shy?’ I asked the boy.

He was rotating his eyes and sort of moving back and forth holding his mother’s hands.

The mother said ‘He talks a lot at home. Outside he is solid quiet’. Like every mother she expected her boy to be conversant. It would have made her proud for sure, had he spoken few words at least.

I smiled at her and said ‘Happy Birthday’ to the the boy. As she started to ask me something I said ‘Bye’. It was tempting to remain there. But I realized I had to go and pressed on a little device in my hand. I disappeared into the air.

She thought it was a dream. Some one came to fool her on April 1st.

***

The moment he walked into the stage, the crowd in the stadium went into a rapturous applause and whistles. All over shouts of ‘Sundar, Sundar’ erupted. He waved his hands at the crowd. He was shown massively all across the LED projections.

Like a magician he kept the crowd glued to what he is going to show next. He pulled out a small watch from his pocket and showed it to the crowd. The cameras zoomed in on it and everyone could see that it displayed 9:00 AM on it along with April 1 2059 as the date.

I was watching it with excitement as to what it would be.

‘I used to be a very shy kid ‘ he started to talk. ‘But it was that quality that gave me the precious commodity called time to work on this tiny device which is a time machine. You can set any time in the past or future. Only thing when you go to another time, you will be an onlooker, like you watch a movie. The characters in the movie will belong to that time. But you yourself are just a time traveler who ended up being physically in that setting. You can talk to them utmost. But you won’t be able to do anything beyond that.

‘Well, I was a shy kid’, he again came back to his first sentence. ‘My mother was always worried about how I will shape up. I am sure had she been here, she would have swelled in pride seeing her son grow up to this’. He paused.

***

As he ended the talk, I walked up to him to the back stage. There were other demonstrations going on amidst the cheers of the crowd.

‘Hi Sundar’ I said.

He looked at me. ‘You were really shy as a kid, indeed’ I said.

He looked puzzled. ‘You are not supposed to be here. I spawned you to go back in time and not come back’

‘Well there is a bug in the watch that is always putting me in the present when I am meant to disappear’.

‘Oh God, I know where the problem is’, Sundar tried to pick his laptop on the table.

But he could not.