the mist enveloped the village. the dark wind was bellowing through the streets. a lone dark figure stared at the starless sky as he stood frozen. suddenly he ran. dahaka, the god of death, had finally caught up with the prince. the alleys were empty apart from the street dogs. he was running through a dead village.

the prince ran through the dark alleys like a wounded wolf and the wind followed him. then a dead end. dahaka was now right behind him. the prince banged the door furiously once again but it stayed closed. finally he took out his swords and turned slowly towards the devil. then he raced towards the charging dahaka. i took a deep breath and held the PS2 joystick tightly. the fight had begun.

there were two games i always wanted to play. one was 'prince of persia: part 2'. and the other - 'need for speed: most wanted'. and now i own them both. and not to mention the PS2 which i recently bought. the obvious question is: why now? that was the question asked by a nine year old kid who stood shortest among his friends. he was there with his friends to buy games too. i was there with mandi, my colleague, now a best friend. the question nevertheless: why now when PS3 is coming out this november?

frankly, i don't know. i never wanted to buy one. just thinking of the number of buttons on the joystick was enough to psyche me out. so many buttons. i knew i would never be able to mug them up. i always found it safer to play games on the computer even though it has more 'buttons', until the computer didn't even meet the minimum requirements of the latest games. and that was two years ago..

anyway, now all of a sudden, it seems i have a goal in life. no matter how short it may be. the goal is to finish both the games then play 'prince of persia 3', then play 'god of war'. after playing the whole of friday night, i was woken up by a phone call on saturday. it was my mother who had called in to ask how i was doing. i was quite eager to tell her how happy i was because i'd just bought a PS2 but then she was too busy explaining how most of the girls they had choosen for me are getting married one after the other and how time was running out.

i continued with the game for the rest of the day and the night helping the prince fight monsters of all kinds, solving puzzles and reaching places i have never been before. then on sunday morning, the phone rang again. it was prem. he was coming over to my place with his girlfriend, sitara. and it seems i had missed to pick up a life upgrade somewhere at the beginning of the game. which meant all that i had achieved so far was a complete waste.

as prem talked to zack over the phone to find out the exact location of the first life upgrade, sitara looked innocently at the tv screen, then the room and wondered why she had even bothered to come that too braving the heat. prem was asking zack because both of them have played the game before though they never finished it (somewhere they forgot to collect the sword which has the ultimate power to kill the main devil, dahaka, which they figured out at the end of the game) and another reason was because prem had saved the 'walk-through' in zack's computer. anyway, now i was sceptical about showing off the car i was driving in NFS to prem for he might say that whatever i was driving was the worst of the lot.

as we re-started the game, we let sitara play the game too. she did fine because we were now playing the game in 'easy' mode and also because it was the first level. all she had to do was press a button few times. we finally found the first life upgrade which i had missed. the path that led to it was hidden under a tomb. i thanked them for helping me out as they left and continued with the game until i fell asleep with little knowledge of how all that intense gaming was going to affect my life and my dreams.

a lone dark figure stared at the starless sky as he stood frozen in the street of a dark misty village. suddenly he ran. the devil had finally caught up with the prince. he ran through the dark alleys like a wounded wolf as the wind bellowed around him. then a dead end. the devil was now right behind him. the prince banged the door furiously once again but it stayed closed. finally he took out the swords and turned slowly towards the devil. then he realised it was his mother. it was telling him, "son, it's your fate. you cannot escape it. you must get married."