By Vimal Kapoor
Arvind stared at the stack of files on his desk and sighed in exasperation. At 42, his life was meandering along a predictable path: commute, work, TV, dinner, sleep. His wife Priyanka had left him two years ago as there were frequent volatile arguments and eventually communication between them became nonexistent; she said she was tired of his lack of interest. “You never take decisions,” she had lamented.
That weekend, cleaning out his late father’s aluminum trunk, Arvind found a small velvet box. Inside lay a rusted old lamp with a note in his father’s handwriting: “One wish at a time.” Unconvinced but desperate, Arvind held the lamp that night. “I wish I had taken that promotion to manager in Bangalore ten years ago,” he whispered.
The room spun. Suddenly he stood in a sleek high-rise apartment, wearing a tailored suit. He was successful, wealthy, respected—plush office, sleek company car, lots of staff. But Priyanka was missing. In this timeline she had never married him, having moved on with someone more interesting. The children they once dreamed about never existed. Alone amid luxury, Arvind felt a hollow ache in his chest. “I wish to have my old life back with Priyanka,” he said urgently.
Another dizzying shift. He was back in his cramped apartment, but now Priyanka stood in the kitchen, perpetual scowl on her face, eyes red and bitter. “You promised you’d change, Arvind! All these years of the same excuses.” There were no children here either, and their marriage was collapsing faster than before. He was still stuck in the same dead-end job.
Panicking, Arvind gripped the lamp. “I wish for a perfect family life where everyone is happy.”
The world brightened. He woke in a sunlit house filled with laughter—Priyanka smiling over fresh ‘aloo ka paranthas’, two adorable children chasing each other in the front lawn. Picnics, games, bedtime stories. For weeks it was pure bliss. Then one quiet evening, as he watched them sleep, the walls swayed like bad film. A doctor’s voice echoed in his mind, was he dreaming, he wondered. Arvind was lying in a hospital bed, machines beeping, tubes in his arms. The perfect life was always a dream. The real accident had happened the day he drove distracted to the grocery store. Priyanka sat at his bedside in the actual world, holding his hand, whispering, “Please wake up.”
It dawned on him that there was no magic wand or ‘Aladdin ka chirag’. He saw all the miraculous transitions in his dream, in reality he was lying in a hospital bed.
Recovery was slow and painful. Arvind realised that real magic was always in him choosing to change. Don’t chase ‘what ifs’. Create your own ‘what is’. He had been running from responsibility for years. The Bangalore job? He could have applied anyway. The marriage? He could have listened. The coma had been a near-fatal warning from his own distracted driving that day.
Arvind understood that there is no magical shortcut in life. As he recovered he sincerely tried to change. He started small. He communicated with Priyanka—not with grand promises, but with honest conversations. They went for counseling. He enrolled in night classes for a better career.
One year later, Arvind sat on the porch of their modest new apartment, Priyanka beside him, their adopted dog sprawled across the floor. Life wasn’t perfect—bills arrived, arguments flared, there were differences of opinions—but it was theirs. Authentically lived.
He finally understood. Life’s most surprising twists often lead us back to the same truth: true fulfillment doesn’t come from wishing for different circumstances or alternate realities. It comes from actively embracing and improving the one you already have. Shortcuts and endless “what ifs” only trap us, the huge sandpaper of life grazes everyone, it’s the courage to change from within that sets us free.
(Vimal Kapoor, a Dehradun resident, is passionate about literature, creative writing, cricket and exploration through travel)
