HEAVEN ON EARTH

50TH STORY...................

I inhaled it once again, closed my eyes, felt the air and exhaled the cloud of white dense heaven. It went up, and up and then disappeared like it never existed.

 

I looked down and thought, ‘This is heaven, between my fingers, slowly burning its own soul to give pleasure to its owner, sacrifice. Heaven in just 10 bugs!’ I smiled and took in the air through it again.

They call it poison, they call it death, but they don’t know that to reach heaven, death is the ticket. 

Once more I took in the breath of this magic stick, enjoyed it and let it enjoyed by my every organ inside and then let it out. That cloud of mine was inhaled by the air nearby as fast as I could through it from my mouth. Air enjoyed the pleasure which I was enjoying. Air was thirsty for more but I let it to wait for it. I know why air was doing so because it also wanted to forget. Forget the bad memories; forget the loved ones……

My parents feels that I have wasted my life, my time, my grades and more importantly their money, their ‘hard’ earned money in these cigarettes. My girlfriend left me alone with my cigarettes because she felt I love them more than her. Bitch. My parents arranged my marriage with someone whom I even don’t know. They wanted to just release the load off their shoulders. They won.

  

I don’t know from where, my life again flourished. I smiled! After a long period I sensed my lips straightened. My angel came, my little sweet daughter. I was so busy with her that I even forget my heaven.

I puffed again to hide my tears behind my red eyes. As I told you earlier that heaven can’t be reached without being dead. I was dead again because my angel died. Doctors, the savior, say that her lungs got swallowed because of the foul smell of cigarettes.

I threw back the air of heaven, no, this can’t be a heaven, this is hell but I am used to of this hell and I deserve this hell. My cloud disappears in the air like it never existed. Oh god! Why these memories disappear just like it never existed.

All I could do was to cry and finish the packets of cigarettes……………..

  

DARKNESS

I came out of the hell and looked the world, the world in which I live but still have no place to live.

There were dozens of cars parked in a row waiting for their owners to drive them. I never understood that if they don’t want to drive, then why they bought such expensive thing. Just to block the roads?

There were shops selling different food items and crowd just gathering over the shops like there’s no tomorrow. I sometime wonder that whether the shopkeepers give away the food items for free to them and charges a big amount to poor like me.

There were children playing on the road with a cycle tire, just rolling and rolling it with a stick. I never tried that stuff but I think that would be fun.

“Ashok!!!!!” My master yelled from inside the hell. I tried to gather all the happiness of outside world in a big long breath and then again I was in.

I opened the gate of the factory where I worked. On the gate it was written ‘No one below 18 years is allowed’, I always laughed on that as I was only 12. I ran towards the man with a fat belly, my master.

“Kaha gaya tha saale? Kaam tera baap karega?” He knew that my father passed away but still that line was his favorite line.

He took me inside the factory. When the door closed behind me, the orangey darkness covered me with the warmth of heat. My sweat begun to fall as if someone has just opened the doors of dam of sweat inside me. Heat and sweat was all around. Many like me were working there in the glass factory.

The happiness I took in with breath came out with the choking of lungs.

They say we, the children, are the future of this country. I want to say, ‘Your future is working in the darkness and is going to perish in that darkness soon.’

A Night....

 Slowly the silence started to grow on dog’s howling. Don’t know where to go and why, he started walking through the darkness like a thief.

With just a blanket on his skinny body, the old man started the fight with increasing chilling of the night. His hopeless night has ignited one last hope for him, that today he will get what he wanted.
 Light glared from some lamp post at a distance, he didn’t know how far it was. He had lost his fairly good powers of sight and calculation. But he always believed his instincts and turned left from the junction. That must be south. Yes, SOUTH! That’s what she had told him. Yes, south was the direction.

He started walking with more energy. Chilling weather was unable to stop this old man. A joy of a child was filled in his body. He was shivering, his teeth were chattering but the feeling of meeting her erased every trouble of the journey.  He was ready to face everything now.

His loneliness has taken over his life. She made her lonely. She was her life, she was her wife. She has told her in day dream that she will meet her.

Last night she asked him to get out of the care home and walk to the south. She said she would be waiting under a cherry tree. Though reasonable thinking was alien for his age, he asked her how to know south and how to locate cherry tree in the dark night.

And all what she told was this – “You will see, however dark be the night, a big cherry tree full of pink blossoms; I will be waiting there for you, in a white gown!..” She then paused.

“Take whatever direction you like, but ultimately you move to the south! Be calm, this time it will work! See you there…”

That was too much for this man. He gained what he wanted, a hope.

Running away from the care home was not that tough as he had imagined. The cold night and the drinks made the guards forget the world. That bloody bottle of poison really worked this time.

He walked, and then he ran. But he didn’t find any cherry tree. He doubted that he took the wrong path.

He became mad, he walked to all sides; which was south? Which was north? Which was east? Which was west?

He felt the world around him spinning.

“Dear…!”
A call from the back frightened him but he turned and looked.

He saw her in the white gown, standing under the pink cherry tree, with both arms stretched towards him. Tears were now ready to flow down her cheeks.

He sighed in great relief, for he has reached his final destination.

He looked at her, she looked beautiful as always.

He hugged her and cried like a baby. With every drop of tear he tried to flow down the worries and trouble and loneliness he felt in these years without her………………

*****************

The night patrol team found an old man lying dead under the cherry tree.
His hands were tightly clasping a stone.

__END__

STRANGE LOVE

 My dear,

I am writing after a very long time. Who writes these days; and to whom? I am afraid you may not read it; it is not even one of the love letters I thought we would be writing each other.

Time has changed, and am I (I thought). I don’t know what to do. It was so easy earlier to say that ‘hey girl I love you’ and now it’s so difficult that now you have to appoint specialist for this. 

Story lines were simpler those days. There was a girl, simply beautifully and vice-versa; and two boys, one innocent and other distinctly bad. It was his ‘innocence’ that won the heart. Now I know it was all wrong; innocents are foolish.

I love u. I know I never said this before. My ma never said it to my pa, or even to me; otherwise I would have learnt.

I don’t know why my voice gets drowned when I want to say, “No, u be superior, but don’t leave me alone”. I have a heart inside me. I never showed that to you. Now I am pouring my heartbeat in this letter. I was angry because you have helped me to hate my mother; but now I am grateful to you for taking out a 'man out of a boy’, and for the pain that lingers.

You took it ‘all’ from me, but love me, as I am. I understand it is too much to ask, but it would be easier than loving a robot, who kisses you ‘good morning’ every day, before he even brushes his teeth.

I love You, I always had (I still don’t know why?)

Yours........................