The Birthday night
Birthday doesn't occurs everyday. He wanted to celebrate this day alone. He didn’t know the reason. He didn't even know that this day would come. Even he had planned that it wouldn’t. Sudhir had everything on impulses which happened to him like shocks from some inner-self. He didn’t have idea if he did all this for the comforts or fun. Or perhaps he wanted to break and to destroy his life completely by taking extreme decisions in the most critical of times. Or what else could be the reason for taking such drastic steps which no one would ever dream of taking.
Taking a long road from the highway that went from Delhi to Gurgaon he was trying hard to concentrate on the road ahead. Path was clear and not much traffic at this time of the day. Only a few other cars with fun craving people inside or some truck drivers with opium and other substances for making them work actively at sleeping hours to complete the round. If only they knew the value of sleep.
Sleep was most precious for Sudhir. Most important things are often the ones which people don’t have much. Sudhir used to forget his dreams but he still remembered that one which he saw at the night of lab accident. This dream was so colorful and bright. More real than the reality of nude eyes. He saw that he was dead and laying like a rag on the floor of an unknown room. This dream was so alive that it made him numb. Even when he woke up that night, he was feeling like a dead man walking. As if he got no life but still breathing. He got up from the bed. Room was extraordinary dark. There was no sound of anything. Even the clocks and bugs were silent. For a few second he thought that he was deaf. He snapped fingers near his ears to confirm. After a sigh of relief he went to bathroom.
Sudhir washed his face and hands and he could see the water but it had no temperature and weight. He made a tea and went to bed again. And since then he was watching this dream each time he slept.
In the beginning Sudhir was so scared that he tried to stop sleeping. But that wasn't possible because one has to sleep eventually.
He started looking like a dummy because that dream was killing the soul inside him. He was feeling like a zombie. Fun stopped making him happy and food stopped being delicious to him. Love seemed to him like a useless worthless feeling. There was no reason for him to do anything now because all the juices of life were tasteless to him.
For few weeks he tried to watch cartoons before sleeping to change his image of the world. As a result dreams got more violent. Full of crying and winters.
He tried to involve in fun and happy situations like hanging out with friends and parties. People avoided him usually because of the strange way he was acting.
His talking started scaring others because it normally revolves around sleeping, dreams and a few uncomfortable questions.
Questions he asked people were about their past life and its affect on their work and relationships.
His story started when he decided to end up his life. But he didn't want to die like a dog. He decided to make it possible in some special way. He would do what everyone was scared to death of and would wait for the disaster to grab and take him. He would go like a hero.
With this thought, he stole all the money from his home another day and bought lottery from twenty five thousand bucks.
He showed his father that investment and got punished with kicks and slaps.
Two lotteries actually won. Prize amount from the first lottery was 50 rupee and the second lottery prize amount was 130000000/- in Indian currency. He was a millionaire now at the age of 18.
His father apologized immediately but Sudhir despised that lottery which had failed all his plans.
He decided to get bankrupt and jailed. So, with a friend, he started a company taking loans from the big banks on the credit that he was a bumper lottery winner of the town.
And then a long trail of buying-selling everything and mad risks which made him the youngest billionaire of the town too.
It was unbelievable when Sudhir looked back at all the events that had happened in the past few years. He was still dreaming that night everyday. It was more horrible each time. Sometimes more than before. He had seen many reputed psychiatrists to cure this dream problem. To skip the dreaming phrase, he even tried soothing music and sleep-reduction drugs. None helped.
Though, he was getting habitual in all this and becoming risk addicted with time. This was the only entertainment that he was enjoying. He liked helping people so he opened NGOs too. Now that Sudhir was mature and intelligent so he could figure out the whys of his condition. He knew that somehow it was related to the accident that happened in the lab. It was just a gas and 20 students dropped never to regain their posture ever again. That wasn't a normal thing. He never heard from anyone of them later on. No one tried to establish any contact. They went without any further trace to track them. They went breaking all the ties of friendship.
He took the services of some detective agencies and now he knew that everyone from his class was suffering, many were missing and two were dead. That was quite a revelation. Though he didn't want to interfere in others life but he ran his men after some of the other classmates to keep an eye on those.
Sudhir didn't want to help. That wasn't in his mind. But he didn't even want to keep standing on one place either. He understood the value of information now and many other things which others consider unimportant. He wanted to get rid of that dream at any cost.
Sudhir was known to be a man of guts in business world. Even in his own company people had fear of him and his ruthless decisions. They knew that Sandeep could close the company if he would feel like that in a flick of eyelash. His competitors were scared of being in field with a suicidal businessman. Though, the business kept growing and growing. He got everything that he didn't want. But that opened his door for things where he could be busy whole day to save himself from creepy thoughts and could buy or do anything. That helped a little. But he wanted to overcome every obstacle now. He longed to sleep peacefully.
There had to be some way. There should have been something which could be done. It was just a dream; he used to tell himself before retiring to sleep everyday. But this wasn't changing anything. A dream empowering and dominating all his life and this fact was making him so angry.
Reading Freud to understand dreams made him more confused. Interpretation of dreams was more difficult than the text books he didn’t studied during school.
He put the flowers near the bed on advice of a close friend.
He used girls to dream of sex and lust or anything else except that oldie on the suggestion of a stranger he met in during flight.
Stranger told him that too much loneliness might be the cause of his disorder.
So loneliness got removed in next few days by going to dates and orgies. Sudhir did threesomes with the girls of his own company and club pick-ups before sleeping with coke and sleeping pills. Came the time when he wasn’t alone at all. Regular memberships of the most elegant clubs and page 3 parties made a place in his tight schedule.
Things remained same. Girls told him that he slept peacefully with mouth opened like a baby. He become angry on this fact and threw them out. They cursed him and that comforted his heart. He replied by cursing to get more of it. None came back. He called his loyal employee at night and cursed him too. Employee apologized for all the mistakes he had done. Sudhir laughed in the receiver and promised to the salary of that employee. Then he threw the phone out because there was nothing else to do right then and there. Birthdays should be fun.
Second page of the diary
Batch of 1999 Page 7