You are surrounded by people for a moment of silence...
Suddenly out of nowhere this thought comes into your head: the worst thing I could possibly do during a minute's silence is laugh. And as soon as you think that you almost do laugh -- automatic reaction. But you don't, you control yourself, you're fine. Whew.
But then you think how terrible it would have been if you laughed out loud in the middle of a minutes silence. And so you nearly do again, only this time it's a bigger laugh. And then you think how awful this bigger laugh would have been. And so you nearly laugh again, only this time it's a very big laugh, it is an enormous laugh. Let this bastard out, and you get whiplash. And suddenly you are in the middle of this completely silent room and your shoulders are going like you are drilling the road.
Sometimes in life you know what’s happening is wrong… you know it’s not right… but you can’t pinpoint what it is. And if you want to escape it you’re tagged stupid, incapable of handling truth… if you let out your apprehensions you’ll be considered insane… so finally you yield into the pressure and start accepting the lies…
“You nearly killed yourself…” he said
“That was the idea” I replied
“To kill yourself???” he was shocked
“To nearly kill myself” I said mockingly
Have you ever been to a funeral? The way people seem silent, acknowledging the loss and pain the near dear go through. But you can never stop the ghosts of the dead ones. They keep on cracking one joke and other... and you find it extremely difficult to control the laughter…
I initially thought everyone used to see the ghosts since it was the normal thing to happen (that’s what I thought). And since my giggle loop during the one minute silence would be followed usually by group of others, I never felt myself to be out of usual. Only little later people started noticing I was the one who usually started the laughter, and to be on the safer side I started avoiding attending any of the funerals.
“Where will the ghosts go after the funerals mom?” I asked
“They are called as souls. They’d go to God, so that they can find peace” she replied
“Why don’t we get to see them after the funeral?”
“You can never see them” she said. May be she did not want to talk about it, or she did not have the ability to see like others, something like a ghost-blind
But my uncle Raj would play along with me. “Why would the ghosts appear only to certain people” I asked
“May be they don’t want to frighten people who do not have the courage to see the dead” he replied
“Why does the ghost of Param uncle has a beard? I always remember him as bald” I asked him
“Don’t take it too far.” He said little concerned. Param uncle had lost his entire hair in chemo which he had years before I was born. I had never seen him with hair, at least when alive.
But after that day, couple of concerned discussions with mom and uncle, I understood that seeing ghosts wasn’t normal, and I was probably imagining things.
So one day when I had reached a point of boredom and frustration, I thought I should experience the event of dying myself. So I texted Ajith, my doctor friend, for emergency, and electrocuted myself.
In the hindsight it was foolish. But it gave me a perspective. It was funny getting outside your body and seeing yourself in third person. You realize how big your tummy is than you actually think it is.
And learn how concerned your friends are about you. Ajith, having exposed to frequent movie climaxes, resorted to electric jolts to recover me. Funny thing that he used the same pretty often later in career to try get people back from life... and adversely affected his reputation
Life was good, going smooth and fun. And an unexpected thing happened.
There are two ways one might fall… when blood stops flowing to brain, and you fall… or when you see someone, get hyper, blood flows more into your brain, you fall again…
In the first fall you wake up a while later… it’s called fainting. The next one’s much more difficult to recover from… it’s called falling in love
Life, they call is what happens when you start planning for something else. They say that if you don’t have to beg for it, if it’s your destiny. But what if it’s your destiny to get it by begging?
What if you could make your life like a movie script… you put in the good scenes… some breathtaking visuals… and finally run your life plot around it so that you get your money’s worth. And my movie needed a good female lead.
I didn’t know whether she’d fit in my life. Whether I’d fit in her already beautiful life. But that’s how mind works when the brain stops thinking, thinking with the other organ, I meant heart.
I started creating my own plot. I first met her in Ajith’s hostel day. So I started visiting him more often, and stop by at their canteen where I knew she would be hanging out with her friends. And it’s a bit easy to get the medic chicks, the guys over there were hell bent in antibiotics and cadaver, a whiff of something else would feel like a mix of all the good Yardley flavours.
And I could easily impress her, especially when she was at the hospital premises. The ghosts from mortuary were pretty helpful in giving scoops to floor her.
And in one of the tests she was performing on the cadavers, I gave her much better observation on the cause of death than the expert chief doctor she was working with. In the hind sight it’s very difficult to tell the brand of ant poison the person has used to kill himself, unless told by the person’s ghost.
“I am impressed with your judgment” she said
“Who wouldn’t be?” I mocked
She was the hottest chic in their college. So when a non-medico was flirting with her, the entire college was on envy. They would try to mock me, or make hoots as they pass by. But it didn’t matter to us, it’s obvious I wouldn’’t care, but it was so flattering to know that she had little concern for others.
“Why should I care when the person who needs to care is in the right place, beside me” she’d say
And just to impress her I’d sometime yell at the guys who hoot with little known secrets only they and their dead uncle or cousin know.
“You aren’t frightened?” I asked her
“About what?”
“How I could know his secrets…”
“You don’t need explanations for what you already know” she replied
That evening Ajith caught me off guard about my endeavours in the canteen. “Tell me who’s the girl?”
“Don’t be pissed. Think you might know her, she’s the hottest girl in your college” I said
“Anitha?” he asked
“NO stupid, she can’t be even the second best; that should be Aarthi. Am speaking about Kanika”
“Who’s that?”
Do I have to say that she was their senior who lost her life in an accident a year ago ?
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