CHOICES

I remember one day back in the 6^th grade, while exploring the library shacks, I came across the ‘Give Yourself Goosebumps’ series. I had read ‘Goosebumps’ previously, but this series was a tad bit different. Each book had a branching storyline which led to multiple endings. The readers could steer their own path throughout the course of the story. At least two choices were given regarding which page to turn to, depending on what the reader wants the main character to do.  

Let’s say if the protagonist is running away from a monster and there are two escape routes, one through the front door, the other involving a secret staircase.  (Or whatever. Let’s not get into details, it’s all hypothetical). So, we could essentially make the choice about how our story progresses. We were required to take our pick at the split-off point and on the bottom of the page was written something like this:
If you choose the front door, turn to page 48.

If you want to escape through the secret staircase, turn to page 75.

Whenever in school we had our weekly library period, I kept digging for more books in this special series. I loved the freedom it offered to choose our very own ending, vis-a-vis a taut and rigid storyline which we honestly have no option but to accept (either happily or grudgingly).

Yes, I used the word grudgingly. Well that's mainly because, personally, I do tend to get a bit sloppy and mawkish sometimes about certain characters of a novel. For starters, in the Harry Potter series, I felt betrayed to a certain extent by Ms. J. K. Rowling. Why did she have to kill Dobby? I mean, WHY? She could have killed Harry for all I care.

(FYI, I’m not the only one who mourned Dobby’s death. Apparently, there are Facebook pages and quite a few groups regarding the very same thing-https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dear-JK-Rowling-You-Crossed-the-LINE-BY-Killing-Dobby/207189572632967?sk=timeline)

Anyway, let’s come back to my (eccentric) liking for branched storylines. After I was usually done reading the book and reached a particular ending (out of the many possible ones), I always liked to wonder how the story would have turned out if I had made a different choice.  So I often re-read my Goosebumps book from a fresh perspective, by choosing a new path in comparison to the one I had previously selected.

 

Recently it struck me that our lives are just like that. Every once in a while we find ourselves staring at a fork in the road. It could be a crucial, yet highly complicated decision, which might just change the direction of the rudder of our lives.  Or a simple one for that matter. (refer to the picture)

(Pun intended.)

But the moment definitely comes for all of us, sooner or later. Life is all about the choices that we make. It offers us diverging roads (like branching storylines in Goosebumps) and how our life pans out is dependent on the road we choose.

And there might be times when we may want to go back on the choice that we made, that seemed so right at that point of time. After traversing a long stretch down that path, we might want to retrace our steps and instead just choose the other road and start afresh. But unlike the book wherein we need to flip just a couple of pages to get an alternative ending, life does not work that ways. It's much more complex and we cannot go back without causing some irreparable damage back on the way.

 

“The choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

- Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts