An Untitled Story...

…and then there was light.  Ten long hours of struggle later when he finally opened his eyes, the horizon was hazy, the landscape blood-smeared. Dead-bodies laying all around him, desperate wail of a baby girl silenced by the flowing stream…He realized he had become a total mess. His torn & tattered clothes battling against the cold wind were not much of a help against the sheer chill. He slowly started gathering up the courage to stand up; to stand up to this atrocity, to stand up to his conscience, to fight for keeping those morals alive which cascaded into his memory as he remembered the dying faces of hi mother, a miracle of nature which brought him up single-handed, and his younger brother, the family’s pride for being the best at almost everything. Battling with his own fears, as he stood up , he found the Earth below him trembling and almost instantly, his face was smeared was drowned in a flurry of mud. Panting heavily, he decided to sit up, maybe try crawling. Walking seemed out of question as the airplane crash that caused the tragedy had noticeably impaired his thighs, the blood oozing out was the foolproof.

Concluding that his best bet would be to sit up, he pulled himself up from the mud and perched on a wood after slithering to get there. He faced up towards the cloudy sky; as if to ask the heavens as to what did he owes this terrible fate! As several such thoughts buzzed his mind, something fell on his lips… Water…. Delicious water! But what seemed like the silver lining, turned out to be the real grey cloud. Before he was could dive into the momentary pleasure, it started raining heavily. It would make it difficult for them to find the dead-bodies, if they ever come to look for it, he thought and considering the fateful sight of the crash, bang in the middle of the Amazon forest, it was not feasible to conduct a rescue operation, which meant, who were gone were gone. Unable to bear the wrath of the moment doubled with the cruelty of his own thought, he broke down. All the times that they had spent together ever since their father decided to leave them, flashed before his eyes. There he was standing at the wide-open door of his parents’ room, the night his father left…and then that day in his school when Shiri joined. Se was the loveliest girl he had ever seen. He remembered the joy he felt when he found out they were going to be next-door neighbors and  the euphoria of the moment when they secretly met on the rooftop and confessed of their love for each other. The blush on her cheeks, the toss of the hair, the wild wind blowing and sending her scent to fill his senses and then almost instinctively, she came closer and gently touched her lips with his. Unable to let go of the passion, he held her closely and pressed his lips tightly against hers. His first kiss!  The whimsical irony of the present brought him back with a start. Wiping his eyes with his dirty, mud-laden sleeves, he saw something moving in the water. All of a sudden all his senses diverted and alerted and what looked like a human hand from a distance popped out of the water. Forgetting all his pains, he jumped into the water. Tireless swimming caused him even more pain as the “thing” was no where to be found, as if it had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Thinking it could be a fellow passenger and he could use some company, he lingered on in the water. If struggling with the cold and strong stream was heroic, the fight to free oneself from the tangled under-water flora would be called epic! After keeping up the masochistic war for  two tireless hours, he gave up, struggled to get himself back on the shore and collapsed. It was night when he re-opened his eyes. Fire-flies surrounded him all over. The buzzing sound of the mosquitoes could only be drowned in the roaring thunder. Lightening struck and he noticed a lifeless, human-like figure lying next to him. Shocked, he turned it over… And prayed. Prayed for the next strike of lightening. He tried to feel his pulse, but realized his fingers were too numb to do that. After much struggle, he placed his ear on it’s chest and waited for a sign of life. All he was greeted with was silence, utter stillness and the definitiveness of death. Realizing whoever it was, was dead, he thought of  the man’s family, how and where would they be? For all he knew, they might be celebrating the return of their son from a far-off land after a long long time. Little they knew, here he was lying on an unknown land in this pitiable state. Lightening struck. And the man came face to face…with himself.

And the curtain of life fell.