Slowly she opened the door and crept out of the house. The door was not bothered to be shut. The December rain was cold. It has been pouring from the evening, and the sky was still hanging in gloom. The big drops of rain pounded the earth like the deep beats of a heavy heart. It was dark, but the red mellow glow of the clouds rendered the surroundings an extraterrestrial mystical halo. The black trees stood abruptly covering the distance. The drops of rain passed from leaf to leaf joyously until it hit the soft grass down below. The murmur of the rain and the chirping of the crickets raised a melancholy symphony in the air.
Step by step she advanced into the darkness that lay ahead of her. She had been sitting in her room, thinking. What she thought about, even she was not aware of. It all seemed like a dream. She spent hours on the chair in that dark room before her feet was drawn onto the soft muddy soil of the outside world. With every step her fair soft feet sank into the softer earth. It rose up to her ankle. Her white flowing skirt dragged along the brown waters. It looked nice. White and brown, with little blue flowers on it. The drops of rain approached the earth as swarms of bullets. She felt like being pierced with countless needles as the drops hit her smooth skin.
Up ahead in the distance lay the highway. Nothing much was visible other than the small moving dots of light as the trucks beamed their headlight through the veil of darkness. Her hands were folded across her breast and she walked with her head drooped down low. The water seeped through her hair and flowed down her forehead. Some of the drops would decide to flow down her nose and hang on the tip of it for a moment before plunging down on the ground.
The highway was few hundred yards from where she was currently positioned. Why she was walking in that direction, she knew not. This path stretched from her house to the highway, and on many evenings she would take a lonely walk down this path upto the highway. The summer months blew calm cool breezes on such evenings and many a times her body and soul has been refreshed from such a walk. But today there was no such opportunity.
After walking some distance there was a cover of trees on the side of the path. Distracting from her aimed direction she strolled under one of the trees and kneeled down. The rain here showered differently. The leaves of the trees slowed down the pace of the rain drops. It didn’t prevent her from getting wet, but atleast the needles were drawn back now. Not a single part of her body was left dry. It was a chilly night and the rain made it deadlier.
Was she on a mission to commit suicide?
We can be sure that she did not harbour any such strong desire. But some unknown force had drawn her out of her house and thrown her towards the highway. Her thoughts were not clear anymore.
“Maybe hypothermia was setting in”, she thought for a moment. Soon it was washed away down the drain of the overflowing thoughts. She shivered with the count of every second. The rush of warm that comes after every shiver made her feel strong. Then they became intoxicating. She felt high.
The small dots of light from the highway now started to scatter all over the horizon. The sound of the rain became regular blending in a rhythm and suddenly she found herself in a chamber of her memory. She looked down. Her drink lay half finished on the table. The dj was playing some unbearable music and some couple danced merrily to it, all drunk. She herself started feeling light headed.
“Or was it the cold that had begun to numb her?”
Before she knew anything she was pulled into the lips of another male and was held there for quite some time. When she was released every part of her was revolting. She looked up. It was someone from some part back in her life. It was one of those who had claimed to love her. There were some like them all through her life. They came and went. Maybe she was the one who sent them away every time. But did she really care for them? But this loneliness was unbearable. Sitting alone under the trees she had cried on many days on the course of her walk. It made her feel light. The tears somehow always bring down a part of the burden. Unlucky are those who are unable to shed tears even on the onset of harshest tragedies.
Every time, she had hoped for the best. She wished maybe this would be the last time she has to put herself up for sale. She had given herself away mindlessly many times. But nobody took her. She returned every time bruised and burnt. She always woke up alone on one side of the bed.
It was a few months that she moved away from the city and had taken shelter here. She had searched for an escape for a long time. Now that she did accomplish it, things looked pitch dark. Here there was nobody between her and the black thoughts. They flowed unrestricted, on any part of the day she was alone with herself. Last time she was back in the city, she had met someone. It was some common friend and she was carried into an engaging conversation with him. She became oblivious of her surroundings and jumped up when she finally looked at her cell phone to realize how late it was. Then it was a nice ride, sitting beside him on the front seat. The car paced through the shiny glittering city streets .The midnight haze lowered down the visibility. It felt nice. After a long time, she was getting back those old feelings once again. The reckless youth, the intoxicated eyes, and spontaneous decisions mostly ending in regret. But something was there in those days. No matter how much you were in trouble, your heart was always flying. You cared for nothing in the world. You were always with people who loved you. But now you have to lead your life with people whom you hate from the core of your heart.
At the doorstep of her house they exchanged numbers and like always he had called her up the next day only. From there it has been some hours on the phone and a few meetings before she received a call from him this evening. It was what she had feared.
He proposed her. Every time the words were the same “ I love you so much”, “I cannot live without you”, “I cannot say what you mean to me”, etc. She wondered, “Did they really mean anything?”
This one seemed nice. He was gentle in the way he spoke, apparently had a kind heart and didn’t seem like a fraud. She had listened to what he had to say. Then she slowly replied, “Please give me some time. I really need to think and check out what I have for you.” He disconnected the phone agreeing to wait for her call. After that she had taken her position in that chair and now she was almost growing unconscious under the trees.
Hope was her biggest fear. She had hoped and hoped and waited always to be disappointed in the end. She faced it so many times that being hurt has become normal for her. But she cannot hope anymore. It kills to hope. It kills to try to look for something in someone and then coming to know that you were searching at the wrong place from the beginning. She will not face it again. No.
The walls that she had built around her were shattered, but anybody trying to come in through them would cut their feet on the broken window glasses lying on the ground. She had cut herself too.
The cold seeped through her skull and spread both across the right and the left hemispheres. Slowly the nerves and veins would begin to freeze. The vision in front of her eyes was growing white with each passing moment. The dots of lights were now all white and they rose up into the sky. She looked up. She saw the moon even if everybody else was unable to. The moon glowed across the clear skies sending her soothing rays to the thirsty souls waiting down on the earth. A moon lit night always made her feel good. She would sit for hours looking out of her window across the horizon covered with a white blanket. To her, this became one of those nights. A faint smile appeared on the white end of her lips.
Eventually dawn showed itself at the end of the dreadful night. With the ascent of light the rain also decided to hold their bounty. But the clouds were too arrogant to move away. They still were up in their mission of making it a dark, gloomy day. As the day advanced there was a growing excitement in the local area. People sometimes walk to the highway to catch buses using the path she used to take her strolls on. One such person discovered someone sleeping under the shade of the trees beside the path. When he went close enough to realize that it was a woman and not from their society, he ran off to call the others. A crowd gathered in some time, and as everyone kept looking at her, they made no mistake in realizing that what lay there was a lifeless, cold, and wet dead body of an urban woman. But there was something which they have not witnessed on the face of any person dying under such conditions.
There was a hint of a smile that was stuck to the lips. The violet face was washed with an expression that results from the deepest inner feelings of peace and serenity, which is no less than self realization. Her face provided the light for the sufferers on the face of this earth on a dark day like today!
