Chapter 29
Ajit was lying in the cab. He came back to Khar and found his shanty no more. There was all kind of debris littering the whole area. He went straight to Babaji’s shop, collected the few belongings and deposited in the trunk of the car.
He was frightened. After leaving Raju, he could not sit properly. There was something in his stomach that was hurting him. He tried to eat something, but as soon as he took two bites, his stomach was full. Towards the evening, he had trouble breathing. He decided to go to the doctor next day.
He bought another pint from the nearby bar, and sat in the car. He sat there for many hours, aware about the growing pain. He did not take any pain killers since it was of no use. As he drank the last drops from the bottle, he felt a little numbness in his brain.
Right in front of his eyes, he saw his entire life being played out as if in a film. The struggling, yet happy childhood, the days spend with Nisha, the cruelty of his father, the treason of Reji, the pain, the humiliation, everything was being played out. He laughed with the characters when they laughed, he cried when the boy cried, he felt his heart breaking when the boy and girl parted. Then he saw a cactus, growing out from the ground, and growing through the car’s floor, upward and it grew up to his chest, as he looked on. His whole body was scratched by its thorns, and he was bleeding. He felt the thousands of thorns pulling at his flesh. Then he saw a hand, a slender hand reaching out to wipe out the blood. It was precariously close to his face when something yanked him away from it. It was so powerful. He struggled to free from its clutches, but it dragged him further down. The final thing he saw was a fifteen year old girl smiling at him from a small, torn photograph. He reached up once more, kissed it and went down with the force that was pulling him down. He went into the smothering darkness, screaming her name.
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