Waiting For Release

Waiting For Release            

 

Someone has rightly said, in this life, whether you want to give love, whether you want to receive so, trying times, is what, love has to always undergo...                

The night was lovely, dark and deep, but still, as I had certain promises to keep, I went on one place, then to the next, to feed the orphans, the needy, and the wanderers wherever I found them. This was my habit. Every night I would move out with enough food, stuffed in the backseat of my car, to feed these children of God. I had promised, my parents and grandparents in my childhood days that in their presence or absence whenever I grow rich enough for my sustenance, I would donate the much more than required, as they used to do in their respective lives.

Having finished my nightly duties, I entered an outlet of the cafe coffee day. My love for coffee, made me do that every night. Drizzles accompanied me until I entered the coffee shop. There was a couple sitting in the cafe when I walked in. As the light was low, I did not know who they were until the woman turned around, and I identified her. It was my wife. She had turned around to order two cappuccinos. The shock was heavy for my heart to bear.   

Even though at a distance, I believed my eyes, I got a heart attack and immediately fell to the ground. I died. Yes, I died, just for an unfaithful lady who was probably never mine. My foolish heart thought her as my own, loved her not knowing, not even estimating, the bitter truth, that the love of my life was the one-sided love portrayed on the silver screen by multiple actors several times. This was my life. My most beautiful, attractive, and poised wife, Ratna, had betrayed me….      

 

The light was not only low in the café, but also in my afterlife. Unaware, about my death, she had sipped coffee in the cafe, thereafter dined with her man, at a restaurant nearby. I could smell her with the man of her dreams, her life. I remembered the description she always used to give me whenever I asked her, what sort of a man, do you like? The guy, beside her, matched cent per cent to the one she had told me. I followed them, as long as destiny permitted me to do so without my mortal body. My emotions, my feelings for Ratna, were quite too difficult to change even in my afterlife. Even after knowing the harshest thing that a man least expects to happen in his life has had happened with me, I was not ready to give up on Ratna. I still loved her.  

I sensed the back seat of a Rolls Royce car, where that night, Ratna and the man of her dreams, her prince charm, had a great merry-go-round after a light dinner! There was an upsurge in the happiness of Ratna! The car was likely black to me, smelled as if in showroom condition. The shut glasses of the car were not enough to stop a soul. I was within the car during their make-out session. I need not close my eyes as I didn't have a pair to do so. Sensed everything and moved out, felt as if utterly humiliated. Criminals had massive disdain for the law. Ratna was no less than a criminal. She had never thought of her husband. How could her conscience permit her to do such a dastardly act? Closed doors, closed windows, are often used to earn a livelihood. Fortunately, by the immense grace of God, Ratna was not in such a condition where she had to sell her body to obtain her bread and butter.

Ratna was educated enough to understand the difference between sin and virtue.

 

Morning broke. The light of the sun peeped through the windows of my room. I woke after what I saw in my unfinished dream and saw the time on my wristwatch. It was six. I was late for the office. 

So, without sleeping further, I decided to leave the story as it is, to finish later, whenever time. Every day, I had to move by five-thirty in the morning, catch the morning's first local to my office area. Thereafter, take public transport to my office building. Today, if I had to reach without much delay, the cab was the only option left. I booked an Uber to my intended destination. I reached my office at a quarter to eight. Still, late by almost an hour. Traffic has always remained a problem in metropolitan cities. I entered my chamber. The chamber was already open. Generally, the head office of a publishing house needs to open-up on time. Hence, there was a duplicate key to my chamber for all the employees at the office of Vijaydheera Publishing Services. I trusted my employees. Whosoever came first would open the same. 

Thereafter, show Mangaldhuup and agarbatti to the small idol of Lord Ganesha, the God of beginnings and the remover of all obstacles. This was a must for me and I never compromised on showing camphor to the Lord at six-thirty be it by myself or other employees.

My newly appointed secretary in the publishing house came up with a set of files to wish me good morning and get my signatures on them. I was astonished to see her. She was a carbon copy of my previous secretary. I asked her, where do you come from? In reply to my question, I got the same house address from where my previous secretary arrived. In utter confusion, I asked her further, does she know Sakshi, the previous secretary who worked for me? She gave an affirmative response. I got to know, she not only knew her but was her younger sister. They were identical twins.   

 

I giggled to myself unmindful of her presence. She asked me, why was I giggling? I answered the reason behind me giggle. 

I said, if you both identical twins worked here simultaneously and not successively, it would have been quite difficult for me and the other employees of the organization, to be certain of who's who? She too giggled at this, and I was glad that she took the joke in a sporty spirit, unlike her elder sister who left the job due to assumed insults. She left my cabin, and I pondered to myself, faces can be deceptive...         

After I returned home in the evening, I took a shower to relax from the stress of the day. It is often said, bathing rejuvenates us, at least for a couple of hours. I did follow that daily. Having taken my dinner for the night, I moved out for the fulfilment of my nightly duties.  

That night itself, I dreamt again. This time, I completed my incomplete dream. The one, I saw, was the sister of my wife. Although I had known her for long, the replica of my wife, in such a circumstance had stopped my brain from functioning properly and, had made me think immediately on the unjust lines. I became a victim of cardiac arrest and died simply because of not knowing the truth that I had a faithful wife, who was still at home, awaiting her husband's return that night, reading such self-created verses to herself, now which have been lost in the sands of time…       

O life-saver Madhusudan

Protect my vermillion

Let it not get washed away by

Drizzles of my fate

 

Let it remain, untouched by the evils

Make it rest in this eternal heaven,

Which has become much more than the heavens above for me.

 

I know, with your blessings

I have obtained, the vermillion on my forehead

Kindly let it stay

I would keep fasts and pray

O Madhusudan, just one small request

Kindly let it stay

Stay, till I leave the mortal misery

Rather mortal happiness, I would prefer to say

O Madhusudhan

He is a good man

He distributes sweets

To your men

He brings a smile, even if for once

On faces.

 

Once, out of the mental asylum

He has changed a lot

He still giggles to himself

But, can justify the giggles now, with some solid reasons

O Madhusudhan, everyone is mad

Mad at various things, mad for a single glimpse, mad for love

Mad in sickness, in the absence of love

Many say rivers merge in the oceans

Few comprehend; ocean merges in a single drop of river…

 

(Lunchtime…..) The bell rang, and the patients were given lunch. Seeing lunch in front of them, most stopped conversing with each other, leaving all the other stuff behind, jumped on food, as if not eaten for days. 

The mental asylum, filled with lunatics, abnormal of different sorts, witnessed this sort of a scenario daily. Every mad was mad at something, or the other. Some kept playing chess moves on an invisible chessboard, while some paid attention in seeing, the invisible game of chess being played. Some due to unfulfilled innate desires to become a poet and a writer, made another mad contemporaries hear some self-created fictions, while some conversed on Utopian world politics, others musing to themselves.                                                                        

          

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