The Final Trance

The sixth second of the sixth minute. The digital watch showed 06:06:06 p.m. He laughedsilently at himself as he checked out his watch which clearly reflected the cynical mirth of God.An inauspicious speck in such an auspicious moment…… Subconsciously, his mind raced back toa poem that a very beautiful teacher had taught him in his tenth standard:

Life is a prism of His Light, and

Death is a shadow of His Face.

What was her name? He could not remember. He couldn’t remember many other things. Things that he should have kept in mind. Every memory was a blurred panorama of indistinct images fading in and out and everything around him seemed like an indecipherable code that could never be unravelled. Ishaan experienced another tremendous bout of cough. This was the third time he had coughed blood that day. He felt weak and exhausted. Deceived by a cruel joke life had played on him; defeated, because he had succumbed to it.

They say that during the very last instants of one’s life, one moves down the echelons of incidents down the memory lane. Incidents and memories of the long since forgotten childhood, of youth, all the laughter and tears, all the infatuations and heartbreaks, times of détente and tension , the sunny and the cloudy moments of life and many other loom out of the dark caverns of the subconscious…..

Somewhere, from very far, he could hear the drums. The unmistakable, musical thud of the drumstick by the “Dhaki” or the drum-player. It was Dashami of Dusshera and the Goddess was being carried to be immersed in Ganges. Leafing down the pages of nostalgia, Ishaan travelled a decade back…….

The sky looked as if it was smeared with vermillion. The twelve-year old Ishaan looked up and saw a flock of birds fly back to their nests. And as the sunset ardoured rest and peace, the silent ambiance was shattered merrily by the same queer music of the drums. The sound that always made the adrenaline pump inside him. Abandoning his blue, air-borne kite, he ran out of the house to the Durga Temple, a few steps from his home. From outside the temple, he could see his mother, a fair, petite woman clad in a white saree with a crimson border, a circle of vermillion on her forehead akin to the setting sun in the western horizon. A young girl about his age, he recognized to be his new next door neighbor, dressed in a yellow salwar kameez, walked past him and as their eyes met, she turned crimson, hung her head and walked away smiling silently……..

Thoughts faded out and faded in into new reveries…….

He waited anxiously in the Internet Café after typing his serial number, his parents by his side. Slowly and slowly, the webpage unfurled……..the seconds seems like eternity…… when finally it appeared…… His matriculation results… “Ma! “, He exclaimed,” I got 94 in English!” —

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The drawing room had a heavy atmosphere about it. He sat and eyed the torn pieces of his first ever love letter to his first ever crush….. Were they mere pieces of paper? No! They were scraps of his heart which she had mercilessly torn and walked away. A tear trickled down the fifteen year-old’s eyes….

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Ishaan felt something gnawing at his insides as if he were a log of wood attacked by termites. No pain in this world is greater than the constant feeling of getting self-consumed, when all the vitality metamorphoses into a venomous potion that streak throughout the body and mind. He looked at his blood-stained handkerchief which had his initials beautifully sewn in blue and pink thread on one corner. A name flashed in his tranced, preoccupied mind, like a distinguished voice above chaotic noise----- Rohini…….

Ishaan’s mind was zooming in and out. Terms like “Aldol”, “Ketones”, Cannizarro Reaction” buzzed from one cerebral hemisphere to the other. Nitesh, his friend, slapped him on the shoulder exclaiming exhausted, “Man! That was the longest class ever! Vijay Sir taught us for about two and a half hours today!”

“Looked like he was immersed in Organic Chemistry today”, piped in Sharad.

“Well said, man”, Ishaan said, sharing their exhaustion, “But I’d better hurry now. Got to study for the Integration test ahead.”

“You sure you’ll miss all the fun pouring over stupid calculations while we hog on popcorn watching PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD’S END, and do “bird-watching” in the intervals?” lured Vineet, the handsomest of the lot.

“I’ve already watched it along with my cousins at the Inox”, he lied.

“The movie or the birds?”, teased Sharad, “By the way, what’s the hurry, dude? Nature’s call??”

“Whatever!” , Ishaan grimaced and left the scene.

The Haldiram’s Food plaza was exclusively bright and exceptionally crowded that day. He spinned a full 360 degrees and scanned all around…..no positive signs…. “Could she have left?” he shuddered, even to think about it….when he felt a soft tap on his shoulders. There she was! The Snow White of his Life! His angel……Rohini.

“You’re late”. She said, furrowing her recently plucked eyebrows. He loved it when she looked at him that way. He could not suppress a grin. She wore a red top that contrasted spectacularly with her milky-white complexion, and her favorite pair of light blue jeans. She had a usual hint of kohl in her intelligent, almond-shaped eyes. He simply couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“I know, he said sheepishly, “My Prof’s in love with Aldehydes”

“At least he is concerned about his love life, whatever that may be, and works overtime with it”, she said, trying really hard to maintain a straight face.

“Come on now, this is our first anniversary. Lets not fight and make the most of the one hour we have”

“Don’t you think this place is a bit crowded?”

“It is, but do we have an option?”

“Yes, we do, Ishaan. Follow me.”

“Sigh! When do I not, angel?”

The taxi ride lasted about ten minutes. Ishaan gave up his futile attempts to ask Rohini where they were headed to, as she was adamant not to answer. They reached an apartment. The guard at the gate eyed Rohini as if X-raying her. Ishaan gave one grim, forbidding look to the ogler, who cautiously averted his gaze elsewhere. Rohini’s cellphone buzzed.

“Hello, Sneha? — Oh thank you so much! — Yes, we are here — where? — Oh all right—thanks once again!

Smiling charmingly at him, she said, “Come, we’re almost there.”

“Can I know now, where we are going?”, he asked her in the escalator.

“Here we are”, she whispered….and he saw that they had reached the terrace of the

apartment……the full moon seemed to have washed the terrace by its luminosity….there were rose bushes of perhaps every colour planted in every corner of the small terrace diffusing their mesmerising fragrance around. And from the terrace, they could see a panoramic view of the entire city…. It was as if, the stars had travelled down and placed themselves all around them….. Rohini took out a beautiful handkerchief with Ishaan’s initials on them, sewn by her.” Happy 1st Anniversary, Ishu”, she whispered, coyly.

And the sky and the earth united, as did their souls as they locked lips in a close embrace, witnessed by the pearly orb in the sky, the fragrant rose bushes and the stars that had travelled down, just for that moment, along John Denver’s Annie’s song, on Ishaan’s cellphone…….

The Jukebox of his life was still playing one memory after the other, in his mind 

He was standing outside the living room hearing the heated conversation between his parents. “You pampered and spoilt this worthless boy!”, yelled his father, “A firm hand is all he needs”.

“But it’s all about what our Ishaan wants to do. If he’ll not be comfortable in an engineering institute, would he be able to study?”, His mother tried explaining.

“This comfort-discomfort, satisfaction et cetera are all bullshit. Your good-for-nothing son is nothing, but an escapist!”

“What’s wrong with journalism?” asked his mother

“Everything! Walking about from here to there, gathering nonsense and toiling on it like donkeys! But of course, sissy as he is, he is bound to go for such a profession!”

He could not hear anymore. As he stormed out of the house, he could hear his father’s screams drowning his mother’s pleas….

The scene changed.

 

He was in a hostel room of his college, surrounded by a gang of boys holding hockey sticks and belts. “Help us cheat in the exams, or you won’t even be alive to go for it”, said one burly fellow with swollen biceps, massaging his hockey stick in his formidable-sized palms….

The scene changed again….

The Disciplinary Committee of the engineering college eyed him with contempt and malice as if he were a loathsome insect fit to be crushed.

“We believe that you were the mastermind behind all the ‘adventures’ that your gang had been up to. Though such an activity was never expected from you, but we can’t be partial and turn a blind eye. You were given a chance to avail the glorious prospect of educating yourself, which you didn’t. The Disciplinary Committee has come to the conclusion that such an activity is unforgivable and you are hereby rusticated from this college. Go, pack up…..

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“Get out of this house… and never come back again. You are no son of mine”, said his father coldly, ignoring the agonized sobs of his mother…..

The teary-eyed face faded out and a new scene loomed into view…..

The alley next to a seemingly existing nightclub seemed so placid, cool and tranquilizing at that moment. Something scurried past him….. He looked up --- A black cat. His cellphone vibrated…..Irritated at being interrupted when he was just one step away from attaining the ultimate pleasure, he looked at his cellphone. “HOME”, it flashed. He rejected the call and switched off his cellphone. 

Then he unpacked the syringe and felt its pointed tip against his index finger. A ray of light fell on the metal and it glinted in the light. “This is the shine my life has lacked all along. I’m going to bring it back. Every photon of it”, he thought grimly. Carefully, he prepared a bolus of the white powder. The needle penetrated his skin and the euphoric substance was shot into his vein after having been propelled by the plunger of the syringe. Chemical alarms of a invasion sounded immediately. The vital ingredients of his body, viz, the plasma enzymes made a vain attempt to attack the intruder. But the dose was so overwhelming that it undermined all his bodily defences. Within seconds, it spread throughout his body, first through the right side of his heart, then the lungs and then suddenly, it was everywhere. He felt constrictions all throughout his body as the blood supply was reduced to the heart. Slowly and slowly, the intruder began to interrupt the beating of his heart, eventually paving his way, like a knife through butter, into his brain. There, the intruder began to exert its most perverse effects. It became an impersonator. He could feel a self-fulfilling excitation spiraling up his body. Circuits of nerve cells divinely wired to ensure the survival of the species rang with excitement and filled the afferent pathways with ecstatic messages. He looked up…. In the pitch black pavilion, he could see fireworks, he could see stars. 

“The spark is back”, he said to himself still under the delirium of inexplicable pleasure after the first ever administration of cocaine into his body.

But the darker side of the moon had not yet revealed its ominous face. He was yet to realize the true deceitful self of cocaine: a minion of death disguised in an aura of beguiling pleasure.

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It started to rain. Ishaan contemplated another ironic twist of fate in his life played by God. He had been an atheist throughout his life. And now, when the last paragraph of his life’s epilogue was being written by the Almighty, there he was, protectively shielded from the rain under the Durga Temple.

He took out his wallet. There was a photo of his parents, of Rohini and a carefully folded piece of paper. He opened it. It was Rohini’s last letter to him in her impeccable, neat, slanted handwriting

Dear Ishaan,

It’s really sad to realize that I’m falling short of words to start this letter when earlier on, we could go on talking to each other for hours. My parents arranged for me to complete my grads at UK. I’ll be leaving next week. Just wanted to say goodbye (Even though, I never wanted everything to end like this).You’ve changed completely, Ishu.I can’t recognize you anymore. Can’t see the spark in your eyes which I cherished before. In these years, you seldom consumed drugs…..It was the drugs that consumed you more often. All my attempts were futile. How cruelly you pushed me away from your life! I just want you to know that I’m still in love with the Ishaan I knew and I shall continue to do so.

It pains me to think that you killed him.

Goodbye Ishaan,

Love,

Rohini.

The Dhakis seemed determined to dissipate the last vestiges of silence in a good few kilometers around. The Idol was being carried to the Ganges to be submerged. Through the haze of the rain, and his misty eyes, he saw a very familiar outline……. Ma!

She was walking towards him. He could not believe it. He was surely dreaming. He spurted out blood through another deadly bout of cough. His mother sat beside him, placed his head upon her lap and began caressing his hair…..He saw another outline of someone getting clear — the twelve-year-old girl in a yellow salwar kameez, his neighbour, smiling shyly. The lucid outline of Rohini cleared within no time. She came near him, kneeled down and took his hand in hers.

A deep, heavy somnolent ambiance began to be created….. He felt as if he were feather light….. He was flying….Yes! He was!

The place was flooded with an unknown radiance, as if the night had become day. Exactly before being engulfed by a blinding flash of while light that opened in from of him, where he felt an inexplicable coolness and relief, he remembered the sweet voice of that most beautiful teacher……

Swing low, sweet chariot,

Comin’ for, to carry me home

I looked over, and what did I see?

A band of Angels coming after me

Comin’ for, to carry me home……… 

Arunima Gupta