Whispers of Hate

by Sanchit Garg

  I made a quick plan. I would go home, take my mother to Purnima’s house, request her to take care of her and then I would kill myself. It was a flawless plan.

  I drove back home, it was utterly dark, and I was no longer in any hurry. The car’s speed dwindled between 30 to 40 kilometres per hour. I reached back at around 4 am. Sometimes in between the drive, I would just get engrossed in my thoughts and then, I would stop the car for a few minutes and drive again. Don’t know what I wanted to do in those moments, maybe I wanted to cry or something else.

  I reached home and parked the car. After grabbing Nandana and lifting her back in my arms, I walked inside through the main gate. While walking towards the front gate, my foot hit on a rock, I didn’t fall or hurt her, but this time, unfortunately, I saw her face. I hallucinated while looking at her pale, lifeless face. I started to get flashbacks of our good times, while still holding her in my arms.

  Nandana was a perfectionist, and it was not that she worked only on materialistic things, she worked a lot on herself too. She was the missing piece to my life's puzzle. We were so different, like polar opposites, but there were these small details that made us feel so similar. We had a whole lifetime to better ourselves and be complete, but now nothing felt right. I knew that it would never be the same again.

  Time just passed with me standing in the path, lifting her in my arms and it was in this moment when I couldn’t even realise if I even had hands or not. They were cold as ice and already felt dead. They were about to drop her again when I tried hard not to and somehow walked towards the front gate and into our home. It no longer felt like the home it once was. There was no one waiting for me inside. I took her into our room and slowly lowered her on the bed. I sat on the bed too, by her side.

  I was the only one left alive. There was no one else, no ghost, nothing except me and my loneliness. Just me, who killed all of them, maybe I have a demon inside me, or perhaps I am a devil who awakened his true self after I went to that accursed house and all this time, I did all those dreadful things without me knowing anything.

  Yet still, I am the one guilty. I should just kill myself and connect with my family. But, I don’t know if they would accept me now knowing what I did to them, I don’t even know if I would go to heaven or hell if such a thing exists.

  I laid myself down on the bed too, took a right turn and just kept on looking at her. I hoped that all this was a dream and I would wake up the next day as if nothing happened. I didn’t know when I fell asleep, but just like that, morning came and I woke up to remember about my mother. I had forgotten about her again. There was nothing more in the world that could make my mother happy. My father didn’t come to take her away, and I could see her fading away into the abyss every day. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come out, they just couldn’t. It felt like they even had left me alone, to my deplorable self.

  I wanted to rush to my mother’s room, but I just slow-walked to her room. There was no more motivation or energy left within me. My mother was in the same corner of the room, still sleeping. I reached close to her, sat down, touching my knees on the ground, and touched her face. It was cold. I checked her pulse, and it was long gone. This time, I didn’t even cry seeing her dead. It was like she was already dead before. It was to make our family complete that she was alive. But I already knew she was just living for her kids. Life, as she knew it was already over when my father died and then being paralysed, left her, both an emotional and a physical pain. There was nothing more in the world that could make her happy again. Father didn’t come to take her away, and I could see her getting miserable.

  Everyone I knew, those that mattered, had walked away from me. I had killed them all. Two helpless bodies were lying in my house, two were already cremated by me, and two were never found. I didn’t even feel the need to take my mother to the hospital, because this way was much better. Now finally, my father had come to take her away, and she would be dancing in heaven with him. So, it ended well for her. Also, because I had turned selfish now. With my mother out of the picture, I could easily die soon.

  But for me, no pain in the universe was worse than this, and I kept asking God if there was one, why pick me? What did I do to deserve this fate?

  Leaving my mother as she was, I walked back to my room. I was about to sit on the bed when I saw that Nandana's eyes were open.

  Happiness rushed inside me, thinking that she had finally woken up and maybe it really was just a dream.

  I shouted, “Nandana! Nandana! How could you do this to me? You even conspired with the doctors to fool me. This is not good. You have finally made me hate you.”

  But, she didn’t speak up anything.

  I brought my face close to her’s, and she was not here. Her eyes may have opened up on their own.

  Why is it always the case that my happiness is so short-lived?

  I sat on the bed, looking deep into her open eyes and ran my hand on her head.

  I sang something to her with tears finally falling down from my eyes as I continued.

  “Nan..., I know you have left me, but don’t be scared. I will be with you forever. You are in a good place now, away from all the suffering, and know that I would come to you soon…I would never leave you alone.

  Do not be afraid of the void. You are where you are meant to be and me here, waiting for life to make me follow you back…I promised to hold your hand for the rest of my seven lives, and I would get back to you every time, in every life… Know that I love you, that I still love you and will keep on loving you till the end of the cosmos. So, please hate me a bit, so I can love you more and more and more…You have finally reached out to our two cute loves, love them more now, so they never dread life.

  All my life, I hated people that said vacuous shit, now and then. But at this moment, I am speaking of love, I am finally speaking out my heart. I know I never spoke enough, and I know that I am not a good person. But, know that I am happy here, that you have nothing to worry about. This time will pass, and I will live for you, with you. I have already broken my promise with myself, the promise to die at the same moment you died. I believed in a fairy tale ending, knowing well that it was not possible. With you, I have known what it was to love someone, to know that not everyone wants to only hurt you, not everyone expects something out of you, not everyone has demands and that some only know how to love and love back. You are rare and sweet like a butterfly.

  You are a beauty in art, in nature, so sleep my love, for your time has come, and mine is about to come. Sleep my precious, sleep now.

  I want you to smile, if you aren’t, please smile, for I am smiling here. I am not sad. These tears, they are due to happiness. I am smiling for you; I am smiling for myself. This is my apology for all the sorries I never said to you, but you already knew it. Didn’t you. My face was like an open book and your eyes, they told me all the stories. It’s okay love, if I never knew why it all happened. It may be that everything that happened was not a reality, perhaps it was all a dream, a lovely dream, however short it lasted, but a lovely one at that, the one where you were there with me. Maybe this was your dream, and I was a figment of your imagination or you of mine. I just hope that we both are real and that we find ourselves in real life; a hope at that, a wonderful hope.

  So, sleep love, sleep for your time has come to transcend this imaginary world, transcend into the beautiful unknown, into the place which people call Heaven or Shangri-La, the abode of the gods.

  When I meet you again, I think I need to do this one thing- to say sorry for all the things I did and not cry at all in front of you. I don’t want my tears to manipulate you into thinking that I am sorry. This one time, I want my words to mean more to you, with my emotionless face. A face which has seen both good and bad days, a face full of sorrow and regret, a face which has lost the zeal to live anymore. A face, a human being who has lost the meaning to his life, who has lost whatever good there was to attach himself to.

  Maybe I was darkness,
and you being pure as light, I just sucked away whatever good you had in you, and now with no more spark left, you just left to get recharged again, like a rose petal. So, was it painful, getting your life sucked away by me?

  I know I have upset you deeply. All I wanted was a chance to make you happy for eternity, but I gave you sleep. I don’t know what happened; as if it matters now. Nothing does. These scars, they will not heal anymore. The loss that lingers deep inside me, the tears that no longer fall. I can feel all your pain and more, but how do I take it away, when you’re no longer here, no more with me anymore.”

  I'm sorry that I can’t write any more now. This is too much for me. Writing this has made me relive every moment again. So, I would go back into hiding and come back again, to share our story, hoping it doesn’t happen with anyone else.

  A story that never happened as I wanted it to. A secret, a revelation, a mystery still left to be unlocked till now. I hope that someone can find the truth one day. I don’t want any revenge. I don’t want anything. I don’t want to be with her even. How can I destroy the life of a person whom I loved more than myself?

  A special thanks to my laptop for not giving up on me in my crucial days.

  To my parents for bringing me out from an alien crater and taking care of me as their own child and giving me a human identity. Most other people would have sent me to Area 51.

  To my sister- Prachi Gupta for not bugging me while writing the book and letting me keep it a secret.

  To Nandana Ram Kishore, Neha Joshi Sharma, Rhea Bali, Sana Raoof, Pushkal Singh, Nirmitii, Minu Sharma, Padmaja, Madhumithaa Rajaram, Purnima Kumari, Pushpanjali Behera, Srushti Bhokrikar and others for suggesting the character names and keeping me motivated, without you people, for the mess I am, the book would have taken decades to be written.

  To my social media friends, for always encouraging me by liking my posts, commenting on them, taking part in my stories and messaging me. It means a lot.

  To my buddy Lucifer for letting me know there's more to the world, not everyone is what it seems and that, it's hard to do your part, but never be afraid, no matter how much the world hates you.

  To end the acknowledgement, there is always a particular time for certain things. No matter how fast you want to rush it and progress quickly, it won't happen. That's how the world is. But the moment you stop working is the moment you miss out on things.

  Writing to him is something that he hated since he was born. Even writing a paragraph was a great challenge. It came as a fluke when he had messed up his life. Fate had something different for him. So, everything that happened and is happening is bound to take him somewhere and honestly speaking, he never had and still don’t know what he is bound to do and what he should do.

  A secret: There is something scary going on. Everything that happens around us is written in our souls or somewhere else. So, people who say you spent time-wasting, yes we did, but that was a lesson which was meant to be learned, and no experience is a waste. Never!

  If you question everything around you, feel that you are not of this world and maybe, want to make or break your life, reach out to him on his social media handles.