Pain

He sat there, all alone. The dank smell of ammonia in the cold, empty bathroom seemed to be drowning him, slowly and gradually choking out his air...after all, what else could explain the lump in his throat? The strange pain in his chest? The difficulty he was having breathing...he gritted his teeth, burying his face between his knees and struggling to keep the emotions inside, taking refuge in the cold of the floor and walls, trying to drive away the OTHER pain as he cowered in the dirty corner...trying to drive away the cruel reality that his life had become...dark, without hope...short-lived.

The door swung open suddenly, and he looked up blearily as a gang of teen punks walked in, long hair, over-sized clothes, no worries, laughing their heads off at some lame joke...their happiness made them look vaguely unreal to him, like he was seeing them through a screen...people that relaxed, that innocent...could they really exist? He smiled coldly and withdrew into his shell again as their laughter was suddenly cut off as they noticed him...somehow drawing them closer to his misery by ruining at least that moment...they looked at him, too..his pain so open, so clear, that it was obvious to them too. Most of them looked all freaked out and uncomfortable, the image before them really not fitting in with their image of the world..."Dude..." one whispered quietly. "Let's roll, maan..." the door opened and shut as they left, leaving him alone with his pain...he smiled again, feeling a perverse sense of enjoyment as he, again, relived his own, personal hell...feeling the knives digging into his heart again...

Alok Sharma, his name was...an ordinary name, that fit him like one of those designer gloves that he never even dreamed of wearing. A quiet software engineer in a big company, his identity lost among a sea of cubicles, part of that many-headed river of humanity, living his obscure, 9 to 5 life...quietly content...his education had passed that way too, always just good enough in class, working away quietly on his bench, decent performance but nothing too stand-out, well-behaved, unnoticed...college went by the same way...a decent Engineering degree. "First class," as his parents had declared proudly in the neighbourhood. Then, in a quiet ceremony with a few of his friends and some relatives, nothing too flashy, he had joint the strands of his fate with a sweet commerce graduate, his mother's friend's daughter. All arranged by the parents, of course. A quiet honeymoon in Goa, and life had settled back into its old, comfortable rhythm. His wife suited him too, fitting nicely into that rhythm...managing the affairs of their little house in Bangalore while he went out and worked, no struggles, no too many ambitions. He, too, never strove to rise high on the career ladder, testing software in a Bangalore company, a Boss's dream...one son had arrived, in the same quiet way, over the next few years...he began to attend school too, following in his father's foot-steps, giving the parents no trouble at all...and they, too, doted on him in their simple way, giving him every pleasure they could...and then, one quiet day, those simple, gently twined strands were ripped apart and destroyed so completely...

An ordinary day, just like all the others. The only slightly hurried morning routine as his son got ready for school, the relative peace as he, then, got ready for office...the dust, heat and bustle of the busy Bangalore rush hour...and then the peaceful, air-conditioned atmosphere of the office. He worked steadily all day, the break for lunch, also, like all the others, sitting quietly, unnoticed in his corner, away from the louder, chattier crowd of his younger co-workers...and then, in that ordinary break, had come the first tiny ripple of disturbance in his comfortable routine, the first, barely registered ripple of an immense wave of pain that would soon, too soon, sweep away his life...his cell phone beeped, flashing the low-battery sign. For the first time in his ordered life, he had forgotten to charge it the previous night. Five minutes more, and it shut itself down completely. He wasn't too bothered, though. Not too many world changing calls would be received by that tiny, insignificant instrument-at least, as he had thought then...the rest of the day had passed normally, no disturbances. At least until the end of the day. Just as he had been about to leave, the Boss had walked up to his cubicle, and given him one more thing to do...nothing much, but he had really wanted to get home that day, somehow. However, being the quiet, simple man that he was, he had taken the file without a word of protest and started to work on it, finally finishing a half hour later. That had been the second ripple...a strange sense of foreboding had begun to grow inside him, some instinct warning him that something wasn't quite right, a slowly but surely growing weight in his chest...

He had hurried out of the office and into the parking lot, kicked his little commuter motorcycle into gear and headed home. He drove faster than ever before that day, not paying attention to anything but the road...had even surprised himself by honking impatiently at the vehicles ahead when there was a slight hold-up...a car had stood at the side of the road, people screaming at the driver, an accident, maybe. He, not wanting any more disturbances, had hurried on. Someone else would handle it. The ripples were getting bigger, lapping at his feet...sending cold shivers of an unexplained fear up his spine...

He had reached home, the cold weight of fear in his chest almost unbearable. He had desperately wanted to reassure himself...to see that the fear was purely irrational...parking in his customary place, he had almost run to the door, controlling himself with difficulty...'Why is this happening to me?' he had thought. 'In two minutes you'll see nothing is wrong. They'll both be there at the door, and you can laugh and tell them about it. Stop hurrying. Nothing is wrong.'
Convincing himself, almost, he smiled as he reached the door, somehow still not being able to stop himself from pressing the doorbell before he registered what the lock on the door meant. Empty! The fear had come crashing back...the fury of the wave now distantly registered...he had fumbled for his key, hands trembling as he slid it into the lock and shoved it open, the door almost slamming into the wall in his hurry...he had rushed to the phone, wanting desperately to call his wife...to know that everything was fine...just as his hands reached the receiver, it rang. He had jerked back, shocked...then rushed forward to pick it up..."Hello?" His voice was shaky..."Gita?"
"Um...Sir? The lady who owns this phone..." "Yes! My wife! What happened? Is something wrong?" His throat was constricting, the panic shutting him down... "Sir...please calm down...your wife...I think you should get here and see for yourself. Please stay calm, Sir..." He had hurriedly noted down the address, not even bothering to thank the kind man on the phone as he slammed it down, rushing out of the house again...this time he had ridden like one of those maniacs he frequently came across, cutting and turning as he rushed through the evening traffic...then suddenly he had come upon it. The scene he would never, ever forget for the rest of his life... His wife, standing frozen on the side of the road...an ambulance...paramedics carrying a stretcher into the van...a tiny figure lying prostrate on it...he had known who it had been without even getting a step closer...the wave crashed into shore...sweeping him under with it...he was drowning, drowning...it couldn't be...it couldn't...

Tears streamed down his cheeks afresh, the memories crowding in upon him...he remembered the hellish ride to the hospital...the paramedics not even bothering to put an oxygen mask on...what was the point, after all? They could see it, he could see it...but he refused to accept it...talking feverishly to his wife as she sat right there next to him, still staring straight ahead...no longer alive, almost...her eyes only on the beloved son who would never smile again...never laugh again...

The whole story had been pieced together over the next few days...his son had had a bad day at school, too...his teacher had shouted at him for something and he had been upset as he had gotten out of school, missing the school-bus, his absence noticed only when the bus reached at home without him. The mother had panicked, trying to call her husband time and again but to no avail...she had waited at home, calling her son's few friends in the hope that he was at one of their places...then when even her husband had failed to come home at his usual time, she had panicked and gotten out, searching the roads for her son...on foot, almost losing her mind with worry...finally coming across the boy, their son, lying on the road, in a pool of blood...the car that had crashed him standing right there, people beating up the driver, ignoring the little boy as they satisfied their blood-lust, forgetting humanity as they unleashed their frustration and rage...and she had stayed like that, frozen, watching her son die right before her, the shock too much to take...even now she was in an asylum, still in shock, comatose, almost...

The biggest shock to him had come when he had realized that he had actually driven past his son...maybe in time to save him , even...'someone else would handle it', he had thought. But no one else had...his son, upset, sad, guilty, had tried to get to his father for comfort, walking in the direction of his office...an office he would never reach. And his father, his idol, had driven right past where he lay, dying, in the STREET...he had survived a week, attending office like a machine, living in his own shell...and then he couldn't take it any more. The decision had come to him already made, almost. He had walked out of the house, arriving at this place randomly, this place where he would end the pain...forever...

He smiled again and stood up, his legs carrying him, almost of their own accord, towards the wash-basin...the napkin blocking the drainage...the tap turned on, water filling up...the tiny pool sparkling so peacefully, so invitingly...

Far away, in a tiny room in an asylum across town, a woman's eyes flickered, recovering from her shock...she looked around for her husband, calling his name...so desperately wanting his support as she struggled to absorb her grief, to recover her life...

[Fate works in strange ways. Those who say they make their own destiny are only kidding themselves...think it's absurd, what happened at the accident scene? It's inspired from a true story. Please do not avoid helping accident victims...always remember that they, too, are real people, with lives, dreams, loved ones...]