bits and pieces of different diaries...

Vampire’s Diary Day 2: How the soul died?-The unprecedented casualty:


The green coloured public transportation bus was overcrowded on that humid evening in April. April had at last meted out its cruelty on me, it was indeed the cruellest month of the year. I did not know where I was heading to, my feet weren’t tired of the consistent, clumsy walking. Nothing seemed to register through my senses, the world seemed to have suddenly stopped existing for me. The noisy, polluted roads glimmering with lights, the neon signboards, high buildings, small children playing in the park and a thousand other things that would catch my attention everyday on my trip to college were erased out of my audio-visual range. All I could perceive was the smell of the dead. I had inculcated this smell into my memory from my kaku’s dead body. The pungent, raw, morbid smell of the dead seeping into the small corridor perfumed with the smoke of incense sticks, into the dimly lit room that was occupied by a bunch of mourning relatives and the body of my friend’s father on which small rays of light fell through the ventilator.
The sweet shops on the street were exhuming this smell, the sea too and even the smoke expelled from ten’s and thousands of vehicles jostling on the street. But what was dead? Who died? These were the questions that disturbed me. The more I tried to wonder the less I could feel the smell. And by the time reached I my uncle’s house the essence completely deserted me.

I was in my 12th standard. I had turned down my dad’s suggestion to study in Calcutta and urged him permit me to stay away from home for my higher secondary. I was admitted in a residential college in Vizag but after couple of months I moved in with my uncle and his family as I was unable to survive on the food that the hostel provided. It was fun to stay in my uncle’s place apart from love and warmth from my uncle and aunt I had found siblings too in the guise of my three cousins. The youngest one and I were inseparable. She was in my college and the same class: a reason that further strengthened our bond. We bunked classes together, shared the same set of friends, saved each others ass in times of trouble and to top it all we were one another’s secret sharers. It was in this period of my life that I had fallen in love. I had met “the guy” only a couple of times, he had come home for a few months in the middle of his term. He was the son of the tenant of my cousin’s friend. Every evening we would religiously turn up in her house for our sacred ritual of bird watching. He too would come out and chit-chat with us. With each encounter my fascination for him would get further heightened and I would sing the songs of my love and longing to my cousin every night when the entire house would be sedated with the harmonious snorings. We would cover ourselves with the blanket: our security tent, and she would play the role of a patient listener who would reflect intelligently at the end of my woeful monologue with soothing suggestions. She volunteered to be the cupid and I breathed a sigh of relief when she whispered in my ear one late-afternoon on the dining table that he too was in love with me but was kind-off jittery to take the initiative. Reflecting back I wonder if I was or could be that joyful ever in my life. The words uttered from her oil smeared lips at that moment were as imperative as those voiced by a prophet to me. Every syllable carried forth the excitement. My angel, my sister had put an end to the ceaseless suffering; I was in for a good few months. From the next evening my life changed, I was dating him: meeting him in parks, food joints, cinema halls. My life, my being, my becoming all wavered around him. I could not think of a time when he wasn’t around or when he wouldn’t be around. But I guess if things would have continued like this than it wouldn’t have been real life. Life is all about surprises and u-turns. All cannot be fine at the end of the day because may be then it transcends the real and predictably stagnates.

One fine day, my college was over two hours prior to the scheduled time, I had to go back home alone since my sister was ill and she was absent. I got into the bus and instead of going home, I, in a whimsical mood decided to visit him. I bought a bagful of chocolates for him and half an hour later I was at his door step ringing the doorbell. It was his sister who opened the door. A hurried greeting; and I ran to his room. It was locked from inside, I knocked: once, twice, thrice. I heard a thud sound on the floor, perhaps it was his badminton racket that fell on the floor. He shouted back assuming that it was his sister who knocked the door: “I told u not to disturb, now what happened?”. I heard the door being unbolted and I see him peering out through the small gap that was made when he tried to look from the other side of the door. I could not read his expression in the first instance and forced myself in the room. It is better to be ignorant sometimes, knowing could also be a curse. My sister, my angel was swathing herself with a blanket that was cruelly trampled and carelessly tossed on the bed. I turned around and started walking, dazed, directionless, without a destination, too afraid to kill myself and too weak to start living again. Something died inside me… but I had to live. I was addicted to life, to live, to drag my living to the realm of undead yet not deserting the body, to cleanse my soul of innocence, to drag others from utoipas so that they donot confront the stark realities unarmed...