What Shall I Do?

It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I was sitting in front of the laptop. My dad was in the room, packing his bags to go to Kolkata. I was getting very bored, thinking of what to do. I went to a site in the internet where there were funny stories to read. But I still was getting very bored. So, I asked my father what I should do. He told me to write a story. The only problem was that I didn’t get any idea of what to write!

I kept on raking my brain for a theme to pop up. It didn’t. I was making loose conversation with my father, not knowing what else to do. I asked him to tell me some palindromes. ‘“Malayalam”, “Able was I ere I saw Elba”, “Madam, I’m Adam”, “Hannah”, “Level”.’ he said, smiling knowingly. I hated that smile. I also hated the fact that he was able to tell me so many palindromes. That was the moment when I thought to myself, ‘Why can’t palindrome be a palindrome?’ I left that thought and concentrated on what to write. I was keeping on pestering my dad on what to write. Suddenly, he went to the bookshelf in the hall, with me following him. He took a book of poems written by T.S. Elliot and took the page number of the poem “A Game of Chess”. In that, he showed me the fifty-third line of the poem, which said,

What shall I do now? What shall I do?