March 25, 2054
“THE EXAM IS OVER. STUDENTS, PLEASE PUT YOUR PENS DOWN,” said a voice of a woman from the speakers installed in every classroom.
As the teachers collected the papers from the students, they left their places and started rushing out of the classes.
The school was filled with shouts and laughter of joy. Children scattered here and there chatting.
Zara was keeping her stuff in her bag. She knew she had to rush. Her father had told her to come home early because he wanted to talk something important to her. She wondered how her father would have got time from his busy job. Her father was a government officer – a quite respected one. His reputation was very important to him. She had never liked him that much. Though he wasn't such a father who expected complete discipline but he wasn't also a person who enjoyed having fun. But that wasn't the main reason why Zara didn't like him. Though she never had told this to anyone but she always had a feeling that Kapil was selfish. Zara was his only child because he had got orders from his seniors who promised to double his salary. Zara had been alone all these nineteen years.
“Hey! Hi!”
Startled, Zara looked back. It was Nishant, her classmate. She resumed her work.
“Hi!” she replied back.
“So…what after this now?! What have you thought of doing next?”
By now a group of students had gathered around the two. They were all Zara’s classmates.
“Nothing so great. Just plan to give the medical entrance after a month and then…you know the rest of it.”
“Determined!! Huh?” exclaimed Ria, one of the girls standing in the crowd.
“Of course!! Today was the last exam and it was great. Just waiting for the results now and then all set for my goal. I have been dreaming of becoming a doctor from childhood! And now that seems to come true!”
“Haven’t you all planned anything for yourselves?” Zara asked.
Ria smiled.
“Well, not really. I think of going with the flow.”
Zara’s blue eyes widened with surprise.
“You got to be kidding. You should plan something. I mean you should know what you’ll be doing in the future!”
Ria remained silent. Zara knew she wanted to say something. She sensed Ria chose to be quiet because Zara was a good student.
It was Manisha who voiced Ria’s thoughts.
“I think one shouldn’t always be so planned and predetermined about our future. I mean who knows what happens the next moment! Any unplanned thing happens and all our future plans go vain! Then it’s difficult to compromise with something else. So rather than being so particular about making plans we should enjoy today and be ready for tomorrow!”
“Well said Manisha!” said Juhi.
Nishant was the only one who opposed.
“I think making future plans is a more preferable choice. At least we are on the safe side. Isn’t it Zara?”
“It’s just people’s preferences and we shouldn’t interfere with them!” Zara replied.
Nishant was quiet. He was embarrassed.
“Well…best of luck then!” Nishant said.
“Thank you!”
“Bye guys!”
Zara came out of the class with Sarika. Sarika had been Zara's best friend for the past twelve years. They had been together from kindergarten and since then no force was able to break this bond between them. Sarika loved Zara’s sweet and patient nature whereas Zara too liked Sarika’s fun-loving, humorous nature.
They were like the two different poles of magnets.
Different, but always attracting each other.
“Do you even know how irrevocably is Nishant in love with you?!” Sarika suddenly said interrupting the silence.
Zara looked at her for a while giving her a I-don’t-know-why-we-are-friends look.
“May I know what are you talking about?” she asked pretending not to understand anything. She knew very well Nishant liked her a lot. It was just so obvious. First, Zara was too beautiful. Blue eyes, shoulder length brown hair, tanned face with pretty features – something for which anyone could have fallen. Second, she was the most popular girl in St. Andrew’s Junior College.
“You don’t need to pretend. You know what I am talking about. I bet Nishant has a huge crush on you. Do you even notice the way he looks at you? He surely loves you!”
“He doesn’t and besides do we have to think about all this? He is not something important to me. And please for god sake let me concentrate on the exam ahead. You know how important this exam is for me.”
“Yes Miss Clean I get that. Sometimes I think will you ever marry or not. I mean a girl with zero boyfriend records!! Will she ever find love? And I still don’t understand why the devil are you so popular?!”
“Beats me,” said Zara smiling.
Zara reached her car.
“Open!” she commanded.
The car beeped for a second and then the beautiful voice of a woman came from the speakers.
“Voice confirmed. WELCOME MISS ZARA. YOUR CAR IS IN PERFECT CONDITION. THE TEMPERATURE INSIDE IS 35 DEGREE CELSIUS, 48.69% FUEL IS REMAINING…”
“Skip!”
“Thank you! Hope you have safe and pleasant journey!”
“Shall I leave you on the way?”
“No thanks buddy! I have my car today!”
“Oh great. See ya!”
“Bye!”
~*~
Zara’s two storey bungalow was the largest in Mumbai. When she initially made friends at her school all of them practically craved to visit her house.
She came in front of the main door. It had a beautiful name plate on it. It read:
Kapil Sharma
Senior Commissnor
She placed her palm on a glass plate attached to the wall beside the name plate. She waited for a while. The screen above the glass flashed brightly. It had something written on it.
WELCOME ZARA.
AT THIS MOMENT EVERY ONE IS PRESENT IN THE HOUSE.
She opened the door. The living room wasn't empty as usual. Both her mom and dad were seated on the couch as if waiting for her only. The room was dark. Only a small lamp was glowing beside the couch on her mother’s side. Zara could smell some bacon from the kitchen. She pulled out the earphones from which she was listening while coming home.
“I am starving mom. Can I please have something to eat? And not that bacon please.”
No one replied.
Her dad spoke.
“Come Zara, sit here.”
“Just a second papa. I will keep my bag in my room and come. And let me just get something in my stomach. I am really hungry. I felt like I was writing for ages!”
“No. Just sit here and listen to me.” Kapil’s voice rose.
Zara was slightly shocked at her dad behavior.
“What’s wrong papa? Why are you behaving so queer?”
By now Zara sensed that something was wrong.
She signaled her mother asking what was wrong but her mother just lowered her head.
Zara obeyed her father. She had to. She sat on the sofa beside him.
“Okay. Go on. Don’t let me eat. Tell, what's the matter?”
Kapil hesitated. He was sweating. As if it was something very hard to tell her. He chose his words wisely
“Zara… you have been a very good daughter for all these years and I am proud of you. I feel honored when I take your name in front of others. But I will tell you something which will affect your life adversely.”
Zara sat there wide-eyed. She was by now hundred per cent sure that something was seriously wrong.
“Why are you telling all this to me? And do you realize you didn’t even ask me how my exam was?!” she said astonished.
What is happening?And how is it related to me?
“Yes, I do. But it is of no use now. Your giving the exam today was a mere formality.”
“What are you talking about??” Now even Zara’s voice rose.
“We are shifting. We will no longer be staying here” Kapil said it quickly.
Zara wasn't that astonished but she was surely surprised.
“Shifting? Where? And why? And that too at this time. Don’t you remember I have to give my exam? I need a whole silent and quiet month for it. Then why this shifting?”
It was hard for her father to tell all this to her. He was extremely reluctant. He was on crossroads. But he knew this was important. He had to tell this. Maybe it would be difficult for Zara to cope, but she had to know this.
“I didn’t mean we are moving from Mumbai. I mean… we are moving from… from…the Earth.”
“What?”
For once Zara thought this was a big joke. Going away from the earth? Was she dreaming?
“What the hell are you talking about? Going away from the earth? What does this mean? Is this a joke?”
“No its not. We are really moving away from earth. We would be living in some other planet.”
Other planet? Zara was absolutely shocked.
“Okay. So even if we are going away from the Earth why are we doing that?”
Kapil was silent now, hesitant to say anything.
“I am waiting for an answer.”
He was still silent.
“Are you going to tell me?”
He finally spoke.
“Zara, earth is no more a safe place to stay! There are lot of problems here and it’s better if we leave.”
Zara couldn’t believe what he was saying. Leaving the earth because of the problems here?
“But earth is our home. How can we just leave our home? Papa, you are not clearly telling me what the matter is.”
After long minutes of hesitation Kapil had to tell the truth.
“Zara, the earth… the earth… it’s… it’s going to get destroyed…it’s going to end!”
Zara looked at Kapil with surprise. Then at her mother. She was crying. She couldn’t believe her ears.
“What do you mean by destroyed? How do you know about this?”
Kapil explained.
“The NASA had discovered this three years ago. Since then it has been making arrangements for escorting people. I came to know about it a week ago. I decided to tell you today as your exams are over.”
Zara wished it was a dream. But it wasn’t, she knew that.
Suddenly Manisha’s words rang in her ears.
One shouldn’t always be so planned and predetermined about our future. I mean who knows what happens the next moment! Any unplanned thing happens and all our future plans go vain!
She couldn’t believe all this was happening!
“This isn’t possible! You are just kidding right?”
“I wish I was!”
Her eyes started getting clouded by tears. They then trickled down her cheeks.
“Papa, what about my future,” she said sniffing. You know I have been working so hard to become doctor. It is my dream! How can I just leave it?”
“I am afraid you have to do so!”
She couldn’t stop crying. What is all this happening to her? This can’t be real. She thought she’d pinch herself hard to see if it was a dream like her mother had once said. “Zara, you know before you were born and also long before that if people thought that something was happening to them that they couldn’t believe, they used to pinch themselves hard to ensure that it was not a dream. But now you all have dream controlling machines so you all can manipulate and even stop them whenever you want. Well that saying has gone old now!!” Zara realized that she couldn’t even pinch herself now.
Kapil changed his tone and now a stern voice broke her thoughts.
“And let me tell you this that you are not allowed to tell this to anyone. Not even Sarika. It’s a top secret. All the higher government officials and some important are only the ones who are been escorted from India. So we are not allowed to tell this to anyone.”
Zara was still in a shock but another one just struck her. Not allowed to tell others? That meant that Sarika and Zara’s other friends WON’T be escorted?
“What?! You mean Sarika and my other friends are not been escorted? We will let all the other innocent people die? What the hell is going on? This is insanity!! How can we do such a cruel thing papa?”
Zara suddenly thought about Sarika. Though in today’s school discussion Sarika didn’t mention what she was going to do, Zara knew very well that she wanted to become a fashion designer and Zara was certain that she would be successful. But now Zara could see Sarika’s dream smashing into million tiny pieces like broken glass.
The sudden change in Kapil’s tone had made Zara quite angry.
“We can’t do anything. We have orders from NASA that per country no more than five thousand people will be allowed.”
Zara was not ready to agree to his point. Can orders from a stupid space organisation bereft us of all the humanity?
“But don’t you realize our country is big with so much population? This is not fair papa.”
“We can’t do anything now. I have already registered our names for the boarding.”
“I am not going anywhere”
“Zara don’t do this. You have to come with us! Well, there will no more discussion on this now!!”
Zara was terribly hurt! She was heartbroken. Manisha’s words still rang in her ears. Can’t anything be done?
“Papa, please! At least escort Sarika and her family I won’t be able to forgive myself if I leave her here to die!”
Kapil stuck to his words.
“No. I can’t. If NASA or any other person finds this out. We too will be left here to die or may even be killed.”
Zara couldn’t take it anymore. She cried… cried bitterly. Her friends, her beautiful life was at stake and most importantly her future. She could feel all her dreams shattering. She too was shattered. So much that she shouted… literally shouted.
“I WILL BE GIVING THIS EXAM FOR NOTHING!”
Kapil’s reply accentuated her sadness.
“Sorry, but you also won’t be able to give your exam. We are leaving after two weeks!”
End of chapter
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140,110 Literary Works • 673,017 Reviews
Hi Shiksha!
was like an info dump. Basically, you're shoving this into the reader's face saying READ. But try to show their relationship more subtly. Build it along with scenes.So, what strikes me first is that there's this huge sense of 2012, the movie, ringing in my head. High officials being ushered into top secret shelter plan, the earth is destroyed etc. So, that's making me very skeptical with this review. Now, a couple of more comments.
The first lot of conversation with the classmates seemed very artifical. I think you should focus on making it sound more realistic. I'm assuming these are 12th standard students, so yeah, big bad, board exams. But, at the end of the exams, yeah people are happy, delighted etc., but I'm also pretty positive that there would be an initial flurry of 'how did you do? and 'this questions was too tough, na'. Also, the way the group closes in around her is odd. Oicture yourself after exams, you look for your friends, or they come towards you, you all group, discuss plans etc. Same thing with Nishanth. It would seem more natural to start with 'how were the exams' and then move to medical entrances etc.
And as Niebla said, your characters need a lot of work. Try to get under the skin of your character, and give them more depth. Show us, through description, quirks, mannerisms and all that that make a person.
Speaking of description, I thought
I'll take a look at CH 2 now.
Cheers!
I think that this is a great story with a great storyline, but it needs some editing. I noticed a lot of language that didn't flow very well or sounded sort of strange to me. I especially think that you need to work on punctuation. One thing I would suggest is that you mention why the Earth is going to be destroyed. I also think that your story would benefit from some more descriptive language. And one factual error is that NASA is a US government program that does not operate in India.
Hi Shiksha!
I see that pettybage has already covered most of the more particular details in this, so I’m going to focus on the chapter and the story as a whole. Firstly – wow, the things happening are quite intriguing. It starts a little slowly but speeds up very quickly and before I knew it I was reading about a family moving off the Earth—by the end, I was quite interested.
So this drew me in and I’d be interested to see where it goes next, but there are a lot of things here that I think could be improved, too.
In the dialogue, why are there so many exclamation marks? Almost everything the characters say seems to end with an exclamation mark, sometimes two (generally it’s best not to do that, it annoys the reader and just one should be enough.) I usually find it best in dialogue when exclamation marks are used only on occasion, to really emphasise a point. Most dialogue should end with a comma or a full stop. If each line ends with an exclamation mark it either loses its purpose or makes each sentence sound kind of annoying in the reader’s head – surely the characters don’t exclaim everything that they say?
Then there’s Zara’s character. It’s fine if she’s not a likeable character, but so far she’s lacking depth – though this may change in the next few chapters, hopefully. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of the idea of a Mary-Sue, but there are parts where she seems to lean in that direction: she’s pretty, ambitious, boys like her and she’s the most popular girl in the school – for no real reason? Surely there’s a reason that she’s popular? And where are her flaws, fears and insecurities: the things that make a character real and interesting?
What is an “I-don’t-know-why-we-are-friends look”, exactly? It doesn’t really bring any particular image to my mind. Describe it, or find a different way to say this.
I found that the most interesting parts of this for me where the ones which described the things that are different in the future: the technology, and the moving away from Earth. The dialogue about plans in the future failed to really draw me in or interest me. The beginning wasn’t the worst, but considering that this is on such an interesting subject it could be better. And, considering that things are obviously a lot more different in this future, maybe this could include more descriptions of some of them.
Near the end she starts crying about her dreams to become a doctor being shattered – isn’t she a little more worried about the Earth, literally, being shattered? The conversation at the end is vague; I want to know more. How is it getting destroyed, and why? I’d also liked to know more about her parents, and their reaction to all of this.
I think those are the main things which stood out to me as needing to be improved. You have a really interesting idea here – but the chapter is rough, and it needs work. Still, I’d be interested to see where it goes next. Keep writing.
~Niebla
Hi, this is what I did with my morning tea, as mechanical feedback; nice story, keep writing.
“THE EXAM IS OVER. STUDENTS, PLEASE PUT YOUR PENS DOWN,” said a voice of a woman from the speakers installed in every classroom. (THE voice of a woman, or a woman’s voice)
As the teachers collected the papers from the students, they left their places and started rushing out of the classes. (out of their classrooms)
The school was filled with shouts and laughter of joy (period after ‘laughter’, ‘joy’ is contained in ‘laughter’ already). Children scattered here and there (comma) chatting.
Zara was keeping (she isn’t taking something out? Or maybe she’s stuffing stuff there?) her stuff in her bag. She knew she had to rush. Her father had told her (details add realism: did he tell her on her phone during recess? Did a teacher convey the message?) to come home early because he wanted to talk something important to her.
(New paragraph)She wondered how her father would have got (found) time (for this meeting) from his busy job. Her father was a government officer – a quite respected one. His reputation was very important to him.
She had never liked him that much. Though he wasn't such a father who expected complete discipline but he wasn't also (but neither was he) a person who enjoyed having fun. But that wasn't the main reason why Zara didn't like him. Though she never had told this to anyone but she always had a feeling that Kapil (introduce his name much earlier) was selfish. Zara was his only child because he had got orders from his seniors who promised to double his salary. Zara had been alone all these nineteen years.
“Hey! Hi!”
Startled, Zara looked back. It was Nishant, her classmate. She resumed her work (what work? Where is she, anyway? You haven’t established the geography).
“Hi!” she replied back.
“So…what after this (comma) now?! What have you thought of doing next?”
By now a group of students had gathered around the two. They were all Zara’s classmates.
“Nothing so great. Just plan to give the medical entrance (a go) after a month and then…you know the rest of it.”
“Determined!! Huh?” exclaimed Ria, one of the girls standing in the crowd.
“Of course!! (said Zara and grinned)Today was the last exam and it was great. Just waiting for the results now and then all set for my goal. I have been dreaming of becoming a doctor from childhood! And now that seems to come true!” (she talks a bit like a propaganda poster here. You’ve conveyed the meaning, but better change the style so that she sounds more natural, more school-girl-like. *edit* I read farther down, and all the conversations are formal, so I guess it’s in keeping with the style. Still, tone down the formalism sometimes.)
“Haven’t you all planned anything for yourselves?” Zara asked. (careful, if it looks like she’s talking to a crowd of people at the same time, a) the reader’s attention will start to wander, and b) the reader will expect the whole crowd to participate. You’ll have to describe the lot. Better insert from time to time a few more people nodding, smiling, texting, and stuff, to make it realistic)
Ria smiled. (same paragraph, same line)“Well, not really. I think of going with the flow.”
Zara’s blue eyes widened with surprise. (same paragraph, same line)“ “You got to be kidding. You should plan something. I mean you should know what you’ll be doing in the future!”
Ria remained silent. Zara knew she wanted to say something. She sensed Ria chose to be quiet because (she - Zara - )was a good student.
It was Manisha who voiced Ria’s thoughts.(POV – Point Of View glitch; thus far everything has been through Zara’s eyes and thoughts, therefore she cannot know Ria’s thoughts, only guess at them, therefore Manisha didn’t ‘voice Ria’s thoughts’ – Zara can’t know if this is happening – Manisha simply replied instead of Ria)
(same paragraph, same line)“ “I think (one’s future) shouldn’t always be so planned and predetermined (period) about our future. I mean who knows what happens the next moment! Any unplanned thing happens and all our future plans go (turn out to have been in) vain! Then it’s difficult to compromise with something else. So rather than being so particular about making plans we should enjoy today and be ready for tomorrow!”
“Well said (comma) Manisha!” said Juhi. (when you introduce new characters, always add a word or two about how the look)
Nishant was the only one who opposed (disagreed). (same paragraph, same line)“I think making future plans is a more preferable choice. At least we are on the safe side. Isn’t it Zara?”
“It’s just people’s preferences and we shouldn’t interfere with them!” Zara replied.
Nishant was quiet. He was embarrassed. (same paragraph, same line)“ “Well…best of luck then!” Nishant (he) said.
“Thank you!”(said who?)
“Bye (comma) guys!”
Zara came out of the class(room) with Sarika. Sarika had been Zara's best friend for the past twelve years. They had been together from kindergarten and since then no force was able to break this bond between them. Sarika loved Zara’s sweet and patient nature (‘character’, or some other synonym, to avoid having too many ‘natures’ in one sentence) whereas Zara too liked Sarika’s fun-loving, humorous nature.
They were like the two different poles of magnets.
Different, but always attracting each other.
“Do you even know how irrevocably is Nishant (is) in love with you?!” Sarika suddenly said interrupting the silence.
Zara looked at her for a while giving her a I-don’t-know-why-we-are-friends look.