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Audio Theme : Shaam Ke Saaye  | Talvar |

https://youtu.be/9MLasBHVbYQ

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38 | Dear Diary (30/05/2015)

May 30, 2015

Saturday,

11:30 p.m.

Dear Diary,

When I entered 11th standard, this transfer student from Sikkim called Indrani Vishwakarma joined our batch in the second month of the academic year. She was a year younger to all of us, but her intellect said otherwise, thereby placing her in a herd of 11th grade students when she should have actually been in 10th grade.

Eventually, I saw her being subjected to bullying by my own brother and his good-for-nothing group of friends. My sister didn't like it, though. Rebellious definitely was her exterior, but soft was her core.

Moving on, I thought Indrani would succumb to fear and tears from her very first bullying encounter at the hands of my brother, but that girl fought back hard. Like a sharp knife cutting through the depths of Corundum.

As luck would have it, through out the last two years of high school, I was paired with her for many oratory and science-related events by our mentor. Come and go no matter how many turncoat events. There was this one phrase I would always hear her reiterate from time to time: 'Death and destruction, both start from the same alphabet, and both go hand in hand.'

That phrase didn't intrigue me then, but today, I would beg to differ.

I wonder what it is that hurts the most. What is it that destructs you the most?

The death of your reality or what you always thought was your reality? The fact that the very base of your life was hollow all along?

The death of someone who took you under his shadow, cared for you, and nurtured you into someone the world feared, respected, and loved at the same time?

Or the death of someone who had slowly transformed into that last piece of thread your life hung onto?

His body had turned bluish and blotchy, while the skin appeared flaky and waxy. The eyelids were partly open, and the pupils remained fixed, which was pretty normal considering the fact that what laid in front of me at that time was a dead body.

The dead body of my grandfather.

To my hands, his skin felt frail and cold—very cold. Like those dark winter nights in Kashmir back in my childhood, where I would take rounds around Zorawar Mahal all alone. And then he would appear in front of me out of nowhere, hands on his waist, a well-masked mixture of worry and anger on his face.

One session of scolding later, he would clasp his large fingers around my then tiny and toddlerish wrist. And then, as time passed, I would slowly feel the chilly feeling dissipating from my hands. What remained behind was the warmth of his fingers holding onto mine.

My grandmother would then come out of the Mahal, followed by Didaa and Daman. I would see both the ladies shaking their heads and chuckling their hearts out. Grandma would pet my head, scoop me and Daman in her arms, and off to their bedroom we would be, lost in the tales of Mahabharat and Ramayana.

In the middle of the night, I would feel a gentle kiss on my forehead and a rough yet warm hand slowly caressing the crown of my head.

Around two decades later, when my twenty-four-year-old self felt that same rough yet warm hand transformed into something completely cold and frail, I thought if I would touch him with my warm ones; he wouldn't be cold any more either.

So, I clasped his cold hands in my own. Waiting for them to turn warm.

Nothing happened.

Albeit, I wanted him to feel warm; instead of that, two hours later, I saw him lying on the funeral pyre, turning into hot ash.

His last phone call to me was hazy and unclear, just like my own thoughts witnessing him being surrounded by wild flames of the pyre.

I sensed Didaa beside me, holding on to my upper arm stealthily. It was confusing because I wasn't able to understand what that gesture of hers meant. Was she trying to support me, or was it her holding on to me for support?

Six hours later, when I tried to search for the last and only thread of my sanity under that Gulmohar tree, I found no one.

At last, I finally knew her name, but she was no more around.

But how will she even be around? The dead aren't supposed to live, are they?

In the early years of my adolescence, I saw a girl, a girl with pigtails. She would sit under that Gulmohar tree, slowing transforming into the air that I breathed. I would watch her from afar, from under a maple tree meters away from her.

And I kept on watching her for years.

Days metamorphosed into months and months metamorphosed into years, and I finally got to know her name.

Her name was Kadambini Purohit.

And Kadambini Purohit was dead.

My name is Mahadevan Dogra.

And here it begins... the story of my destruction.

The story of my death.

Signing off,

M.D.

P.S. : Indrani was right after all. Death and destruction definitely go hand in hand.

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