Resting in Peace.....

I opened my eyes to find heavy air enveloped all around me. My heart was pounding like anything. I could feel my young blood gushing through the arteries as if carrying some secret message from the heart to the ever working busy mind. The message was clear but still I couldn’t comprehend it. Its meaning was there, right inside me, I could feel it, sense it but couldn’t understand it. I was running away from someone or maybe something. Sweat on the smeared forehead was conspicuous enough to raise the brows. I was panting hard, and was about to collapse at any moment. The air was feeling a lot damper and was making me uneasy. Breathing was becoming much harder and painful. But I was helpless, unable to find my hands as if they didn’t exist. There were dense clouds of smoke everywhere around me, crushing my lungs with full force, squeezing out whatever little air was still present inside them. The pain was becoming unbearable. May be I lived to deserve this punishment throughout my meaningless life. I could hear voices, hundreds of them around me. They were telling me something or may be giving some sort of advice I didn’t wish to listen to. The voices were present everywhere, cursing me for ruining their lives. Suddenly everything had started making a bit of sense. Although I was still struggling to fathom the sad scene around me, but some part of my brain knew that this day could not be averted. It was always coming. It had to come.

It all started when I had taken that first puff boasting of the fake sense of pride it had given me. That comforting moment in the stairs of college had given way to this excruciating pain on the hospital bed. Deafening beeps of the ventilator were echoing from the infirmary’s blank walls, and were piercing through my ears like a needle pricking my flesh without any noticeable resistance being offered by the body. I was just lying there burdened beneath the remorse for those innocent people in the car parks and bus stops, that I had unknowingly snatched a part of their healthy life away from them, just for the sake of satiating my addiction. Now it became all clear to me. I had no right to interfere in their lives in the manner I did. Why didn’t I stop? How could I allow myself to carry on like this for years? A sense of sorrow filled my heart and tears ran down my cheeks past the closing eyes. I let them close and let myself die, repenting for the deeds I had done. And then the final words somehow made their way through my dry lips craving for water. ‘I AM SORRY’ is all I could say to all those voices and breathed my last.

Harpreet Singh