Afterlife

I faintly hear something, again and again. I’m unable to discern if it is a sound or a voice and neither its whereabouts.

- Sowmya Reddy

All I do is shut my eyes tight and cover my blanket over my head. Though my eyes are shut, to keep myself from falling asleep I contemplate on various subjects in my fictional TedEx that is held in my mind. “So, Hey guys, welcome to TedEx with Sritya (basically I’m welcoming my neurons; my only audience) who lives in room number 20 at Shine Hospital. Our session starts in one, two, three and we are live. Death has become my favorite subject. I can debate on it for hours together. Life is where you are left behind and death is where you leave everyone behind. Those who die a natural death are the luckiest, for they don’t know when it occurs. The others know their every step by heart because they have scripted it. And I fall into the latter. It took me only few minutes to change my goal of becoming an artist to wishing death upon myself. From that moment onwards I have been waiting for death alike a widow waiting for the God of death at her doorstep to be reunited with her beloved husband. I was slashing my wrists or swallowing a handful of pills at a go. Alas; all my hard work went down the drain. To my dismay I was saved in every attempt. I glance at my caricatured wrists to acknowledge their presence in my life. I hit my forehead with my palm as I curse my stars. I was …. .” And I do which shouldn’t be done; drift into sleep.