The End

I'm sheathed in a shower of gulmohur petals that have fallen on me from the tree above. They remind me of marriage sindoor. Vermillion, blazing blood-red like fire in her parting. Of Durga Pooja and wedding sarees. Of Ma and Baba. Of my life; permanently stained with streaks of red.

Red, the colour of passion. Of our love. 

Of our unfulfilled love. 

    

A huge marble mansion looms in front of me. I can only make out a lone figure in the distance, running wildly towards the gate. My vacant eyes stare at her beseechingly, like she's the only one I want to see before I go. I cannot decipher her words, but I can sense the urgency in her fragmented cries.


My life is coming to an end. Yes, it's painful, because all my bad karma is pressing down upon me now like a boulder. I almost destroyed her life. Fate is punishing me by destroying mine now.


I've experienced death before. Death is watching your only love become another's. Death is the pain you feel when you have no one by your side. Death is when every little thing reminds you of all your unfulfilled desires. When you hurtle through the alleyways of Calcutta at midnight in a drunken stupor, clutching a bottle in your hand, calling out her name, in the vain hope that she will come running into your arms.


I've experienced life too. For me, another name for life is Paro. Without her, there is no life. Then how have I been living for so long? 

Death is what will come to me now. Not Life. Not Paro, whose unadulterated love doesn't deserve a wastrel like me.

Paro, whose memories have kept me alive in this place where I have none to call my own.

A landowner's son, once cavorting around in brothels, now reduced to a beggar with not a penny on his person. Ah, Love! Is this how you choose to punish me?

If you choose to take me away like this, then so be it. But I want to see her one last time before I go. To tell her that she will always be in my heart.

"Dev-da, I belong to no one else but you". Yes, Paro, me too. I love you more than I have loved anyone else.

I can feel the flame dying out. How does she know I'm on the verge of breathing my last? Maybe she wants to see her Dev-da for the last time.

The doorkeepers get ready to shut the huge gates of the mansion. I raggedly breathe her name, as tears stream down her beautiful face which resembles stone now. I can see her disappearing behind the gates as my own life simultaneously leaves me in bits and pieces.

With a final clang, the gates shut on her. On me and my cursed life. She fades away.

Red. Her colour.