The Last Day Of a Life

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

Write Over the Weekend inspiration for this time

So, what would you do if you are told that today is the last day of your life? Will you hurriedly attempt to do everything in your bucket list or would you retrospect about life up till now, instead? Your blog post should start with the line, “It is 6 in the morning…”

                                                                

It is 6 in the morning and precisely I have 18 more hours to live. Hi, I’m Siddharth Khanna and at the stroke of midnight I’m going to attain independence from my body. I am going to die. Period.

May be the gravity of the situation is yet to be ascertained by me. Curiously enough, I’m very calm and composed. Shouldn’t I be paranoid by now?? Its 7 o clock and I finally get up from my arm chair. I take a clean purifying bath and for the first time in eons I go to a temple. Dressed in a white kurta pyjama, I wonder when I had last worn anything other than suits or formal shirts. I’m rich enough to buy a decent-sized wardrobe filled with a variety of clothing, but somehow I have ended up having mostly formal wear in my wardrobe. May be that’s because even on Sundays when I hit pubs and clubs, it’s mostly for casual meetings with prosperous and probable clients.

Anyways, after I reached the temple, strangely the place seemed very unfamiliar to me. I have always had the notion that Hindu temples have always been crowded and not peaceful. But somehow, today the temple is very serene. It is as if there is divine light glowing from the little Durga Maa idol in there. I simply sit there. I take a quick glance at my wrist watch and it’s 10 30am!!! My first instinct was to go home and get ready for office!!! I almost started getting up when I thought how stupid have I been?? It’s the freaking last day of my life and all I can think about is my office?? That god damn office which just throws on me a shitload of money in lieu of my precious life? I’m 32, unmarried, with no parents, with no relatives and with several friends with whom I had stopped talking ages ago because I was busy.

My parents died when I was 20 years old and still in my college. I had 1 year of study left and somehow I managed to complete it and later fulfilled my dream of becoming an investment banker at the age of 24. Since then all I have done is mint money. That’s my life.

Enough!! I have had it enough!! I called all my friends and talked to them. They were all very surprised when they got my call and I ended up talking for 3 hours in conference with my best friends from college. It’s 2 pm. 10 hours more to live. I am back on the streets and I don’t know what I’ll do next. I keep walking, pondering how to live the last hours of my life and just then I notice a signboard-“St. Thomas orphanage”. Few years back, I had been here with my college mates on a human science project. There was a child named Maria of about 6-7 years of age. While I was leaving, she held my hand and asked-“you will come back na??” “I promise” I had said and I had forgotten about it, until now. In the next few minutes I found myself in the orphanage surrounded by children of various age groups, each trying to grab a chocolate from my hand. I stayed there till 9 30 pm, it was bed time for the kids. As I bade adieu to the kids, the young care-taker girl stood by my side and she was thanking me for all I had done. I said “a few years back I had promised little Maria that I would come back here. It’s a pity that she’s not here, but I fulfilled my promise. I feel happy.” When I turn towards her, I see her looking at me with eyes having a strange mix of emotions, the emotions of bewilderment and ecstasy. I couldn’t quite decipher the reason behind the reaction. I had to hurry as the orphanage gates were about to be locked for security purposes. The girl insisted on walking me till the gate. We are standing on the opposite sides of the gate and as I about to head back to my home she calls out and says-“Thanks Siddharth bhaiya, I knew you would never break your promise to me”……..she quickly turns back and vanishes in the dark.

It is 11 pm and I have 1 more hour to live. I am on the roof sitting on my arm chair and I can’t stop thinking of Maria. Was she really Maria? She still remembered my promise?? It was the happiest day of my life. I fulfilled a promise I had made to a little orphan child some 10 years ago.

The night sky is beautiful. I could not remember when I had witnessed such a beautiful sky in my life. It is midnight and I hear the sound of a clock gong striking. That was the last thing I remember.

COLLEGE DIARIES-1

COLLEGE DIARIES-1

It was 1970, just a year after man had set his small foot on moon and mankind had had the giant leap. Aliens had invaded the earth, threatening to destroy it. And from the ardent scenes of destruction rose the “JUSTICE LEAGUE”!!! Slowly but steadily, they won the earth back. But during the last leg of the attack the Wonder-woman was captured. I particularly don’t know why but Batman turned to me and said in his trademark slit-throat voice-“PSR, only you can save the Wonder-woman now. Please.” Needless to say how heroic I felt, I flew to the sky and somehow reached her. Just I was about to grab the beautiful hands of the even beautiful warrior princess, there was a loud thud!!!! The Princess’ voice turned manly and she was shouting something, I couldn’t exactly decipher what she was saying.

I opened my eyes and I was back to normal, the princess had vanished and I was no longer a superhero. Just an ordinary man I was. My friends were shouting at the top of their voices and banging my door at 3 am on a cold, chilly December night. The reason?? They wanted to have tea!!! I woke up, hurled abuses, blabbered shit, called them names, swore in the names of their families and what not. They stood there patiently, knowing very well that since I was outnumbered I would never even try to get physical. They stood there and they started giggling, chattering, whispering and ultimately someone flashed the keys of the bike and said-“Chal na!!Nind nahi aa rai”(come on please, let’s go, I’m not getting any sleep). Ultimately, after 5 minutes of drama, I was on road riding a bike with 2 and a half men sitting at the pillion and we all singing the filthiest song in the most non-melodious tone. It was a 5-km drive from the hostel on NH-23 to the tea-stall serving the best tea in the area. Just 4 hours before that we had been back from a dhaba because the hostel food tasted like foot. We walked around the college for another 3 hours discussing stuff. And a few hours before the dhaba plan was hatched, after our classes got over, we all were sitting in the canteen for an hour or so. That was my college life.

It’s not that we were a bunch of rich brats who spend a lot of money or a bunch who just wasted all their time in hangouts and parties. We were a bunch of bright students, stealing the moments from the routine life to make them worth remembering. All of us either had a more-than-decent CGPA or were heavily involved in the college activities or both!!!

We would walk around the tiny college campus for hours when all it took was 20-30 minutes to cover the whole campus (excluding the academic campus), we would barge into each other’s rooms and spend hours there and we would sit on a bench sipping a 10 rupees cold drink bottle for an hour!! What we did?? We talked. We shared. We solved. We bonded. And we became friends for life. We not only had food together like a family, we were there for each other. Be it money, girlfriend, family or anything. We even had our share of differences. But there was a glue which held us together. Now some of us are together and few are miles apart, but that glue still holds us strong together. I’ve seen many friends drift apart after they left college. But with us, there’s a silent promise that we would stay in touch.

Long live our friendship.