kaisi halat kar di meri tune sakhi re,

socha ek pal mein basa longa teri surat,

intejar mein tere khada raha din bhar ban ke ek murat,

par na aayi tu,

na hi teri koi khabar,

ab saaya mera andhkar mein poora samane laga tha,

aankhon ke sagar mein ek toofan sa uth khada tha,

madira ki nadi se aankhon ke sagar sukh gaye,

do inchi pipe se saare gum dhueen mein ud gaye,

teri yaadon ke pul sayad ab toot gaye the,

aasman ke sitare mujhe sone bula rahe the,

par kaise samjhao un sitaro ko un becharo ko,

maut ke baad neend na aayi kabhi re,

neend mohe ab na aaye sakhi re,

neend mohe ab na aaye sakhi re,

dhund ye badi ajeeeb si,

na dekha aisa roop na koi  aisi  gandh hi,

hawa mein charo aur lehrati si,

dhund mein chupi khusiyaan kahi aur kahi udaasi si

dhund se nikal ke dikhi mujhe uski maya,

dhund se nikalne lagi hai ab meri kaya,

dhund ye bani thi armaaon ki,

zindagi se do do haath karte insaano ki,

kuch nirashon ke darr se idhar udhar mandra rahe the,

kuch paiso ki gaadi se sabko kuchalte ja rahe the

mann mein ek nayi umang thi toh magar,

manzil ke pass aur dosto se dur thi ye nayi dagar,

dhund se nikalne lagi hai meri kaya

Initially my enemy was a pleasure for me and i used it as a stress buster in the form of small naps in the afternoons. It was harmless, quite relaxing and i could never have predicted that one day i will become its pleasure or slave.  For two year the wear and tear between me and my laziness went on. Many times i missed class due to it and many times i didn’t took a bath for weeks. I used to walk away from my responsibilities, started blaming others for anything wrong. And many other small things which i suffered but can’t remember anymore. I fought back at many times, i started taking more responsibilities even more than what i could bear. I started taking long walks alone just to keep me fresh. Sometimes i even asked God for help. But all of it never ended. Some days my laziness enjoyed and some days i.

But yesterday it ended, i think in a draw, but after i fell so down that i can’t distinguish now between a draw, a loss or a win.

The day before yesterday was a normal day, i went to lab, came back, ate dinner, played some games and then went to sleep. Next morning i woke up, i opened my eyes and saw my white ceiling and fan. I kept looking for 5 minutes and then thought to get up and have a cigarette but i was not able to move my legs. I again tried but the result was same. A little tingling started deep into my stomach, i tried to raise my hand but it was also jammed. In fact my whole body except eyes was not responding, not the shoulder, not the mouth, not the neck, nothing at all. I filled with fear and was highly puzzled what has happened, i ate normally last night, didn’t drank anything fishy. So why its happening. I tried for half an hour to move anything in my body but all in vain and finally i gave up and closed my eyes. It was like you can see your death sitting next to you waiting for my will power to give away. I opened my eyes again and all i can see was WHITE. The white ceiling, the white walls, the white fan and the white clouds outside the windows. Suddenly the God of death changed his robes from black to white in my mind. But i started distracting my mind from death to something else. Some positive thing matching with the white color i was seeing. I thought that after some days someone will come searching for me may be my parents or my brother and they will break open this door and will save me. But what about the beer bottles, what about the infinite cigarette butts, what about the porn downloaded in the laptop. Will they believe that i am their son that they sent to IIT after seeing all this stuff, it was a horrifying thought. The darkness was still prevailing in that white room propelling me towards death by invading my thoughts. I was completely broken from inside filled with regret and i wanted to cry aloud but my tears had also dried up. It was like that they are evaporating as soon as they are coming out leaving no stain on body, a complete clean and White DEatH.

I kept looking on the white surrounding around me for one whole day. First time in my life i saw all the shades of my life in that white color. I saw my struggling days, i saw my happy days, i saw my simple days, everything like someone is taking xerox of my memory on that white surrounding day by day. I was not feeling hungry, not feeling tired, in short not feeling anything, my memory was clean like the white paper after one day.

Finally i gave up and closed my eyes. And when i opened them again it was next day and i was lying on the floor, my head resting in cigarette ash and butts and my body resting on the dusty floor. I didn’t moved my body for around half an hour and then suddenly gave a violent jerk to it and i was sitting on the floor next moment. My eyes filled with tears, i was crying like a baby who has just fallen from bed, but my fall was very deper than that. I finally stood up on my legs and started moving my hands to check everything is ok adn then i saw a white smiling face on my right hand. I gazed it with curiosity, it was like the WHitE Death had left me this time with a warning. I kept on looking at it and it started fading with its smile widening each second and finally it disappeared and i took a cigarette and started smoking it lying on the bed seeing the White ceiling again but this time i was moving my leg continously..

There were around 20 other passengers in the bus all sitting like someone had given them some kind of sedatives which is making them sit idle until their stop comes. No one was looking neither worried nor in joy. I looked at all of them in my little walk down the aisle to a vacant seat, they all look different but were carrying the same expression. The expression of a Dummy used in showrooms. All this made me a little puzzled and worried. As i occupied the third seat on the right i saw a very old aged man sitting on the seat in front of me. He was sitting with fully straight back and hands on his knees giving an impression of a retired Army man. For first fifteen minutes i also sat quietly in the bus waiting for my stop to come but the silence in the bus was somehow giving rise to a fear in my mind. I tried to break it by asking the army man sitting next to me “What’s The time?”. He looked towards me like i just killed her mother and ran away to the back of the bus. He was gazing at me from there for next 10 minutes like i was going to be changed in a Werewolf. I was totally out of my mind and took my Mp3 player and put it in my ears for the remaining of my journey.

Finally my stop came and i got out of the bus at my stop, took a long breath and i was completely relaxed. Then suddenly that army man approached me and told me to take care while going back to your room. I asked him whats the problem with you. He said the problem is not with him its with the BUS.

He told me the story of bus:

In 1999, a horrible accident took place on this route. 23 people died and 30 injured in that accident. The bus directly entered the divider and then crossing the opposite road entered the 5 ft thick wall. The exact reason for the accident is still unknown. But the local people say that that day two people were talking about some spicy kollywood news on the seat just beside driver. Driver got interested in their talk and lost his concentration from the road, and after that it was all blood mixed with steel and concrete lying all around the road. After that incident whoever talked in the bus either died or got severely ill. So, after some 4-5 such cases a poster was put up in the bus requesting passengers not to talk in the bus.

I felt the sudden coldness in my body raising from the my feet to my head, what would happen to me now. But my wait ended very soon on the next turn of the road…

to be continued….

All my hope shattered, the day was as usaul as it used to be. Same project, same professor, same lab, same chit chat with friends on gmail, same album viewing of friends in europe, same commenting, everything same and finally same gate back to IITM.

As soon as i entered i noticed three monkeys sitting on the cabin of guard room. It was not some unusual thing here in IITM, yu can see twenties of monkey wandering from one roof to another, various kinds of deers eating in parks, different kind of birds and many other small wildlife creatures. So i passed them waving a hand towards them. I barely have moved 20 feets i turned back and saw those three monkeys following me. A little muscle pull or something happened in my stomach, but i ignored it as mere coincidnce. I walked to the next turn and then again looked back they were still there maintaining a safe distance from me. I paced up my walk and walked as fast as i can and reached the central mess of IITM named as Himalaya. Before entering the mess i looked back slowly, a little worridly and scanned the whole area with my eyes to find their location. But they were not there anymore, i thanked God, washed my face and entered the mess to have my dinner( They serve dinner in IITM from 6:45 to 9:00 PM). While entering the mess i noticed a photo of 3 monkeys of Gandhi Ji on a news paper lying on nearby table. While eating that picture kept on revolving in my head and i thought that might these monkeys want to convey some Gandhian meesage to me, might be possible that i had done soemthing wrong to someone unknowingly and they want to tell me, or i would be able to help some deprived one and they want to tell me the path or something. I know that was a silly thought but what could you expect from a lonely person living in hell of boredom. I finished my dinner with that thought and convinced me that now they are gone and there is nothing to think about that.

As soon as i left the mess, i took out a benson and lighted it. It had become a necessary thing for me after dinner. On my way back i enjoyed the slow brezze flowing through the trees and sang the song ” Main jindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya, har fikar ko..cigarette ‘s smoke…udata chala gaya”. After 5 minutes i heard a call for me as i turned i found one of my new IITM friends Abodh was standing in the shadow of trees near bushes. I waved him and turned my direction towards him, as i was approaching him i saw some moments in the tree above him and there they were those three monkeys. My blood froze and filled with fear, they were still following me. I stopped in the midway and without meeting my friend i started running from that place, i sprinted for about hundred metres upto the next turn and stopped. My hostel was still at a walk of 10 minutes, but i decided to take most populated paths instead of the lonely paths that lead straight to my hostel. It took me around half an hour to reach in 100 metre radius of my hostel. I was full of sweat, my heart beating at full speed. The last 100 metre i had to do a sprint also as i was too scared upto that time.

As i reached the hostel i took a long sigh of relief, sat near the guard for a while and drunk about 1 litre of water. I took lift upto third floor. As soon as i left the lift i noticed tha some has called it from the ground floor, i swallowed a little saliva and waited for the lift to come up while hiding behind a wall. After 2 minutes it came, i kept my eyes focussed on the lift door wothout any blink. I was preparing my body to make a sprint again upto my room, the lift door opened and…ufff…there were only some of my neighbours. I rested on the back wall and sat down on floor thinking why was that happening to me. Suddenly i noticed that the next lift was being called on the ground floor. This time i didn’t wait i gathered some courage and went stratight to the opprsite side of the corrider, to see from the glass wall who was coming. As soon i reached in the viewing range, i remebered God, my parents, my friends and every beloved one. They were them, those little bastatrd monlkeys coming in the lift with the guard. I was puzzled why guard was with them. But that was not the time to loose your mind, i ran straight to my room and i can bet that that run was faster than an average national level athelete. I locked the door behind me and landed straight on my bed fully tired. I woke up around 12 in night. I tried to convince me that that was a bad dream and lighted a cigarette. I took out my tshirt and trouser and opened the door slowly looking both ways in the corriders like a thief. I got out quickly put my tshirt and trouser on the stell railing in front of my door and went back to sleep.

The next morning was as usual as previous one, but todat the answer to my easiest question was Yes. I took a long bath and decided to complaint about that monkey mishap to the security section. I came back to my room on the way i noticed that my tshirt that i left on the railing outside last night was not there. I looked down to see whether it had fallen down by wind. But no it was not there. I considered some cleaner might have stolen it. I left for my lab again and near the guard room on gate i found a monkey was lying dead. It was one of those three monkeys that were following me last night, i went near to him and found torn pieces of my tshirt lying near him. I asked the guard what had happern to him. He said according to the locals there was a brute fight between 3 monkeys this early morning which lasted for about 2 hours and this monkey died in that fight. I was completely puzzled then i tried to remember something about my tshirt. On my tshirt, bananas were printed on the back side of it. And only two bananas, so they first followed me for the printed bananas and then to distribute two bananas among three of them they fought and one of them died…

I said” ….the F**k ??” and left that place.

Then after some time i put my glass on the tea stall and relaxed my body a little bit. The whole process took around 10 seconds. But that was all, she has acheived her destiny she was floating upward down in my tea completely motionless, completely dead. I dipped my finger in the tea and dropped her dead body on the ground near the stall.

I thought why she jumped in the hot tea, she must have felt the high temp of it just before touching, she must have knew the result of this foolosh thing, then why? At first i thought she must be starving, starving like hell to do anything to fill her stomach. But there were many other thing on which she could have fed like half eaten apples, left out food form the near by food vendor and so many others like that, then Why? This why kept on revolving in my head fo quite sometime and the i thought she must have committed suicide, to free herself from this world of dirt and filth. She might have fed up with her short life of eating rubbish and living in smelly environment and all that stuff. And that would have been the best way to commit suicide in their world, dying in a sugary syrup, sweet like heaven which a very superior lifeform consume each and everyday on such a large scale, she must have felt the eternal pleasure just before dying and got rid of all the dirty germs deposited on her legs and wings in her short life. It was just like living in a castle made of cake and filled with all kinds of liquor, all kinds of cigarettes, all kinds of women (if that is a pleasure for you), and all worldly pleasure and then one day dying in a bath tub due to super hot water.

And finally i concluded that she made a wise decision in the end if suicide was the only option left to her. I appreciated her decision making and drank the left out tea of death with the final drag of my ciggarate and went back to my lab.