Not Supposed to Happen

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I never, never wanted it to be like this.  My fingers tightened their grip on the .45 Colt butt. I wanted to cry, I wanted to let the flood of tears lose and pour out of my eyes, but I could not. It would blur my vision and right now, that was the last thing I wanted. My eyes revolved wildly around in my socket. 

The gun barrel pressed against the temple. My hand was wrapped around her, the victim’s throat. I felt the reverberation of her sobbing. I never, never wanted it to be like this. 

There was a child’s voice crying and for a mili-second, my eyes glanced at the five year old child crying on the black tar road. My son, that was my son. Why was he crying? He had me... Me? I’ve been away more than half of his life, too busy fighting demons. I never, never wanted it to be this way.

His mother, my wife, she was the victim, I was clutching her, she was the person on whom the gun barrel was pressed against. How did this happen. It just did not make sense. I had come here to talk to her. To explain why I couldn’t sleep, why I had to have the gun in under my pillow, why I hit her, to answer all the reasons she kicked me out and all the reasons why she was getting a divorce against me. 

The demons, the bullet ridden bodies, the faces, they never left me. My nerves.... they were shot, they would never be the same.  They always twitched. A loud bang, a loud fire cracker, a brown coloured man... trigger... then I would lose it. 

It was a cool night, but sweat was pouring down my face. A powerful beam of light came down from the helicopter that hovered meters above us. A bright light was shinning on me. 

The police, they wanted me to put the gun down and... I wanted to. But I know the stories, they would shoot me, they would kill me. No one loved a shell shocked victim. 

My son... he was still crying, crying for his mother. I slackened my grip. This was not the right way to get them back. I was broken. They didn’t deserve me. 

***

The sniper on top of the helicopter had the criminal in his cross chairs. He was waiting for the order to go. He knew how these situations went. They went with victim’s brain splattered all over the place. “You have a go”, the Police Chief’s voice whispered in his radio ear piece. 

He took a deep breath and then held it in. The criminal had not moved. His finger pulled the trigger, but it was too late. 

The victim, she moved, the criminal, he let her go. She moved her head. He wished to God that he could change the trajectory of the bullet or stop her from moving her head, but it was already on its way. A mili-second after he pulled the trigger, the victim’s brain was splattered all over the place. 

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Chai Walla

He got up in the wee hours of the morning. In the darkness, he looked at the shadow of his wife sleeping beside him and the twisting petals of the fan that poured wind down on them. So as not to disturb her, he silently went to the bathroom and began the day. A brush of his teeth, a quick shower and then he was out to get dressed. 

The bed was empty and the creases on the bed told of the place where his wife was sleeping just moments ago. A step outside his small bed room and in the pale morning darkness, he saw the yellow flame of the stove. He stepped back into the bedroom. With his single hand, he picked out a shirt and pant to wear from a second-hand wooden cupboard he bought from a scrap dealer. As he undressed, his wife appeared at the doorway, “Tea is ready”. 

He nodded his head. She stood at the doorway, her eyes gazing at him and asking herself the same question that she asked everyday, should she help her husband get dressed? But, she knew the answer. Her husband was a proud man and he did not like help, it just reminded him what he was missing. Yet, he never failed in his husbandly duties, she could testify to that. 

He came out of the bedroom with trousers on and his shirt loosely hung on his shoulders. His right hand was busy as the fingers expertly buttoned his shirt. “You didn’t have to”, spoke the husband as he sipped the tea and ate the parata that his wife made. Silence was her reply. 

With breakfast done, he left for work. 

***

The key was shoved inside the lock. With a twist, the lock opened. Putting the key in his pocket, he pulled of the chain around the gate and tugged open the bars of his shop. Darkness had almost faded and morning was almost upon today. His eyes proudly glance up to his shop’s title – ‘Raj Tea Shop’. 

It was in the corner of a lane of shops. 

‘Rataka-rataka-rataka’ 

Ahead on the lane, he heard the sound an early morning local train charging through an empty track. That was the same place where he lost his left hand. Now, only a short stub remained at from his left shoulder. He brushed off the thought and got inside his shop. 

His right hand turned the tap open, put the kettle under the gushing water and then, placed it on to the stove. With a twist, the tap was shut and the tea box was open. He poured a sufficient amount of tea powder  inside the boiling water.

So his day began as he waited for customers to line up outside for his cutting chai. 

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Sore Eyes

In another planet, somewhere else apart from earth, possibly another universe… who knows, you’ll have to ask the scientist for their gibberish equations, there live humans. Same as the ones that you see around. Humans with hair, eyes, legs, hand, the whole picture, even the minute hair in the hidden places. The only difference is that they have red eyes. 

Once a long time ago, in an age forgotten by even the old, Hal looked up to the sky, stared into the star filled night and maybe… just maybe, he saw a glimpse of our earth and the most contagious illness passed through that hole he saw. And then his eyes became red! 

At first he did not notice it, but in the morning his eye lids were glued together, stuck with some thick paste that had obliviously secreted out of his eye pores. He washed his eyes and did not know what was happening to him. Though his eye throbbed a bit that was no reason to stop him from going to work. So to work he went. His eyes stared at papers, stared at his lunch and stared at people. And like the contiguous disease it was, it began spreading. 

However, unlike our earth, the human’s of this earth did not recover from this illness. Forever they were plagued with it. By the time they reached their senior years, their vision was blurred and their eyes had to be replaced by bionics. From the time a child is born, after every nap, their eyes had to washed of the goo that over laid the eye lids. They wailed even more than usual for the throbbing pain that it caused their eyes. 

On our earth we are lucky, not because the illness is any less painful, but our strong bodies are able to recover from it. Yet, even on our earth, all it takes is for one person in a house, in a room and that would be more than enough for everyone to go home and get up with goo gluing their eye lids together. 

We call it, conjunctivitis, sore eyes. In the far away neighboring earth of another universe, it is called forever illness since it stays with you forever once you get it. 

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