The Naughty Boy Kills
Himself
I wept bitterly digging my face into her lap. I feel her fingers caressing my hair gently as she patted my forehead with the other hand.
There was a catharsis as I felt myself purged and washed of a lot of emotions
as I wept. The tears had the effect of restoring eggs stolen from a bird’s nest
by a naughty boy. They restored at least
some tranquility within me. The sweet scent of feminity wrapped in her clothes
also consoled me to some degree. Bad weather and brine had certainly done their
best to wreck havoc in my life.
I was overwhelmed by the sequence of events that has
unfolded in my life in the past few days. It was an endless and dense fog I’d
been struggling against. I wept like a naughty boy who was being spanked for
apparent and obvious fault. He had been merely looking down the deep and dark
well of his life wondering what mysteries it contained. Apparently, events in
his life did not rhyme quite as he thought they would.
She was also in tears. I tingled with selfish satisfaction
when the cool drops of her tears dripped from her eyes on my neck. Some found
themselves on her lap as well. Apparently, she was as much grieved as I was:
her stifled sobs were quite sonorous. We were on the same boat, and the boat
was sinking.
Our hearts were sinking too. There was the remorse of a
life-long separation. I felt like someone who had missed the last bus home. There
wasn’t going to be another bus for a long time to come, and I was to be left
stranded on the road. Situations and circumstances in life had forced me to
make several compromises with time, but this was one that hurt me the most. Considering
my inability to do many things my peers and contemporaries can, I was hardly
surprised when her parents vetoed her choice of a life-partner in me. I had
been left with a host of physical handicaps owing to a head-injury.
Several questions came to my mind as the initial deluge of
emotions subsided. I wanted to ask my fate why I had been introduced to her in
the face of so many problems hounding my existence. Why had she been made a
part of my life for a couple of years when she was not to be a part of it
forever? I wanted to ask my fate why I had been pushed into her company when
we were destined to part. I wanted to
ask my fate why I had been dealt with physical handicaps in the first place. I felt
like screaming out loud to vent at least some of my frustration. Why did Time
choose to destroy the beauty of the moments we spent in each other’s company? Why
were we exposed to these moments in the
first place? They were certainly some of the most beautiful moments we had
lived. We wanted to preserve their beauty for eternity, but my physical
inability to conquer the exigencies of time had brought all our dreams and
aspirations to a dead-end. There was simply no way out of the labyrinth. The dreams
were not to live beyond the dawn when I open my eyes.
We did consider the option of staging a rebellion, of
running away from our parents and setting up an independent establishment, but
the head-injury had left behind some ugly scars all over my life. My physical
handicaps had pushed me to depths where I found myself unemployed despite
excellent academic credentials. I was unable to earn a living for myself. I had
to bank on my parents for a living, but this didn’t deter me from falling in
love.
We were in love, but the realization that a union was not
possible pushed our grief to a fresh
nadir every single second. The naughty boy had removed the well-cover and was
lowering a bucket down the well when he paused for a while. To save himself
from tumbling into the well, he leant
against the framework of the well with his forehead and arms, but eventually
fell into the shining disk of quivering water located at infinity.
