The Indefinite Movie

Two to the power of some huge number of years ago, when there was nothing, not even emptiness, there was a voice.

“Let there be light!” said the voice, “And let there be reel!”

And so the film started playing. It was a beautiful film but had no audience. And so, at least to get rid of the irony, the voice thundered again.

“Let there be Adam and let there be Eve!”

So, for the trivia-crazy people, the very first box office was filled by just two. Out of pity that such a beautiful movie has only two viewers, Adam and Eve decided to co-operate. However, the new viewers that they created, preferred to wail rather than allow their parents to watch the movie peacefully. So they looked up to heaven for a solution.

“Let there be popcorn!” thundered the voice.

Popcorn machines sprouted up and the babies had their mouths stuffed. Attention turned back to the movie once again.

But, meanwhile the voice had not kept quiet. It had said a lot of other “Let there be…” as a result of which there arose lot of disturbances, while watching the movie. Rain, for example.

“Come on, kids! Let’s build a theatre!” said Adam and they made a small theatre with wood and straw, so that they could watch the movie peacefully within.

Years rolled by quickly. Both Adam and Eve now lay on their death-beds. Holding the hands of her eldest son, Eve spoke, “Remember my dear boy, no matter what happens, the movie must always have an audience.”

“Yes mom! We’ll co-operate”, said her son with a wink.

Hearing this, she breathed her last, taking Adam’s breath away as well. Her sons and daughters looked at their dead faces for some time, then pushed them out of the theatre and continued watching the film.

As time hobbled by, the audience grew in number, owing to an excess of co-operation among the descendants of Eve. The descendents, however, started quarrelling over the popcorn machines. It began as one-to-one quarrels, which later led to the children forming groups. Each group claimed a popcorn machine as its own and did not want another group to come anywhere near it.

To cut a long story short, within years, the theatre had assumed colossal proportions. However, it had several internal divisions due to the nasty popcorn quarrels. But, at least some kind of a sense prevailed. Historically, the Sugar-Salt treaty was the precursor for change. The sugar popcorn division realised that they were dependant on the salted popcorn division (salted popcorn was essential for proper bone development) and vice versa (sugar popcorn was essential for blood cell regeneration) Therefore, they discouraged quarrels and entered into friendly relations, encouraging other popcorn-flavoured divisions to foster similar ties.

Each division now needed to be properly organized. There were people trained to protect the popcorn supplies, while there were others who worked on maintaining popcorn production. Since the population was growing out of bounds, the production of popcorn needed to be speeded up. So there was now a new group of people, who started thinking of ways to tinker with existing popcorn machines to produce more popcorn.

The people who fought for the protection of popcorn were highly honoured and awarded the best seats inside their division of the theatre and also had other people polish their shoes. And then there were people who taught how to polish shoes, people who learnt how to polish shoes, people whose ambition was to polish shoes and kiss them, people who revolted against the polishing of shoes, people who subdued and beat up the revolutionaries etc.

There were also people who started thinking about who made the film and how was the film made. How did the popcorn come to exist? Different theories cropped up. Some believed the popcorn machines dropped from the skies while there were some who theorized that salted popcorn evolved from sugar popcorn, which in turn evolved from something else. And different theories definitely meant different grounds to fight over. In fact, several thousands of lives were lost once due to a fight over who was the screenplay writer of the film.

Adam and Eve watched all of this from heaven but Eve looked worried.

“What’s up Eve? Why sad?” asked Adam, putting his arm across Eve’s shoulder.

“Ah our dear children!” lamented Eve, with her head in her hands, “No one’s watching the movie anymore!”

“Big deal!” spoke Adam derisively, “That movie’s not worth anything!”

“What do you mean?” thundered the voice. (It was the same voice that had said ‘Let there be light!’)

“It’s worthless”, spoke Adam, a little unsure where to look, because the voice seemed to come from everywhere, “I mean the movie keeps playing and people come and go, in and out of the theatre. Insignificant things divert their attention from the movie. Does that not show how worthless the film is?” asked Adam.

“Does it?” asked the voice angrily, “Or does it show the stupidity of your sons who cannot appreciate good cinema?”

“Ah, come on! My sons are not stupid. They’ve almost created a popcorn machine artificially now. Do you know that?”

The voice sniggered. “So? I need to suck their balls and make films that lick their feet?”

“Well”, replied Adam, “Just take a look at their response to your film first.”

The voice fell silent. Adam waited patiently for its reply. With its all-seeing vision, would the voice have observed everything, he thought? Would it notice the people who killed themselves when tired of the movie? Would it see the people killing others to snatch their seats, then fighting more to safeguard the taken-over seats? Would it watch the people whose aim is purely to eat sweet popcorn? What would the voice’s reaction be? Guilt and shame for producing and directing such a flop movie, which no one cared to see?

And that is when Adam heard it - a colossal shriek from the voice. It was quivering with anger. It shattered everything to pieces. Adam, Eve, their sons and daughters, the popcorn machines – everyone and everything were completely destroyed in an instant. Everything became nothing once again.

But the voice was still crying itself hoarse. It screamed so much that its vocals went out suddenly – with a big bang.