Nishit!

Love,

I’m hoping you would read this letter. I’m not writing to seek forgiveness, because I don’t deserve it one bit. But you surely do deserve an explanation.

They say he is the victim, don’t you see it is me who is that.

You should have watched my face intently that night, when the wilderness was hideously beautiful; I was contorted, fazed and turbulent! He was silent, serene and smiling. And yes of course, he was dead.

I’d killed him.

The night when I left home I was drunken, exhausted and frustrated to the core. There was nowhere to go to; you wouldn’t want me to be with you. He too probably had nowhere to go, why else would he…?

Funny coincidences, he is also called Nishit?! It is all he has left....and he is all that I have left.

My hands have become my downfall, I abhor them. Shaped like the wings of angels their touch whispers to me words of death, not beauty. Feels terrible to imagine that I will never know the bliss in your touch; never feel the magic of caressing your face. Never see the world.

I will not be there the next time around, when you cry tears of sorrow. Will you feel sorrowful in the first place, do you hate me enough to get over the pain of my impending death? Can I request you to cry? Shed a few tears at separation?

Whenever I open my palms; I see his innocent face in their creases. Enigmatic, hypnotic, and bleeding. And I cannot sleep; demons live inside my skull. I cannot forget them and because of the memories, I cannot forgive myself. Until forgiveness comes I doubt very much whether sleep ever will. The loop is ironic. Poetic and unbreakable. That reminds me, do you write those “deep” verses I adore, and do you now write melancholic ones? Can I request you to keep me alive in one of those verses of yours?

Iam sure you remember that night my world fell apart, vividly. Or should I say “our” world.
It happened there. On that bridge, the one which we have traveled through the years, enjoying fervently the late night drives. Not quite 2 am and I already had Saturday chalked up as one more in a long line of miserable experiences eager to come my way. You know how some days have their own smells? And that Saturday didn’t smell well.

Outside, it was raining hard. Keeping my eyes open was struggle enough but yet I was driving at the top speed. I switched off the music, I though that would therapeutic, listening to the silences outside. Did you later get to know that i was fired that morning, would you have expected me to confess earlier?!

I wanted to be at home that night, in the bed curling up to you or sitting beside the fireplace listening to some rock. Life of course had a different agenda for me, a death. I was cramped behind the wheel, driving through the haunting dark alleys, parks and bridges.

The lights on the signal ahead were changing to red. I thought about running them for as long as it took me to yawn and my foot to ease down on the brake. There were no cars coming either way, so I let the lights run through their cycle again while I groped around on the backseat for the pockets of my shirt for the cigarette.

There's something extremely soothing about the whole process of holding that smoke in between the fingers, lighting it with a certain style, letting it leak out in a veil that rafts up in front of your eyes. It's still the cheapest and best form of therapy I have ever known. The lights changed again. This time I went with them.

Indicating left, I swung out onto the fated Gandhi street.

The road curled around into the onset of the local labyrinth; It must have been the absence of other cars on the road, or the repetitious regularity of the twisting road where it followed the familiar contours of the houses, the built-up monotony of the cityscape all around. I started to drift. The car was drifting, too.

Faster than was safe in the rain. Yawning, I corrected for my lapsing concentration. Knuckled the sleep out of my eyes.

That is when I saw him. His coat tattered in the wind like black rags. He seemed to be waving a bottle of something, I couldn’t quite fathom what that fellow was trying to do.

'Do you want to kill yourself,' I shouted, confused whether I should stop the car. His face was split by a grim parody of a smile, the distance between was getting narrowed by the minute. The rain blurred the sight, as if he were losing some shape. His eyes seemed to be pleading with me to put my foot down on the accelerator and plough straight through him. I couldn't do it. I’d started praying by then, to whom?!

My prayer had fallen on deaf ears; not that I should have expected anything more. The brake failed, failed me. The speedometer was arresting; a hideously graceful fall from sixty down to zero. The car wasn't slowing.

'Why me?' I was screaming, but I couldn't lay claim to any particular sounds that might have been deciphered by sharper ears than mine. And then it happened. I had hit him.

I was sure I had killed him. I couldn't move; not even to find out. I sat there, in stunned agony after the battering, waiting for the sirens, the police and the ambulances to come and pick up the pieces.

I wiped the blood from my eyes. The tears too.

The seatbelt probably saved my life, my forehead slammed down into the steering wheel. I was thrown back into the bucket seat and suddenly I was seeing the world through a red filter. Blood in my eyes. But the psychical pain almost did not exist. Not then, not now.

Out of the driver's seat, I collapsed. I forced myself to my feet, sagged, needing the car to lean on. Blood guttered in my eyes.I couldn’t see his face, it was smeared with mud and blood, he was carrying some sort of a book in his hand. The streetlight caught half of his body and threw the remainder into shadowy relief.

He had died in a whorish sprawl, his legs and hands……I couldn't stand to look. Thank God he was faceless, shadows negated the dead set of his features. He owned nothing; no eyes, no nose, no mouth to breath through the thickening clot of blackness. Forcing my legs into motion I went to where he had fallen. It was one of those forever sensations, walking, walking. Each step I took was tiring, tiring is under statement. I sat on the muddy road next to him, numb.

Hesitantly, I rested my palms against the dead man's cheek. Felt coldness so deeply entrenched it couldn't possibly have been less than two minutes old. I flinched; I didn't want to, but at the same time I did.

He seemed young, probably younger to me. He probably had a very important meeting the next morning; or he could’ve been getting married to his lady love the next evening, or anything....anything special he had looked forward to. But now all was dead.

I wanted to apologize. I wanted to wake him up and tell him “Iam sorry, I didn’t intend to” and expected him to reply “It was all right. It was an accident” “Iam done with all that I’d to do in this life time, so it is fine”.

It is not funny,darling………it is pathetic.

I called the police. I told someone on the other side, where I was. Then I dropped the phone closed my eyes and waited for the sirens or suffocation, whichever won the race to be with me.

I sound like an emotional fool, don’t I? Can I request you to not read this letter more than once? Or may be you should.

Will you forgive me? Actually, don’t.

Me.


(Nishit - Wilderness)