I don’t know if this can be called a story. Eager to see how this piece is received. I feel that this is weird. The narration style might be similar to “The Catcher in the Rye”. Nevertheless, Feel free to bash me.
I have vague memories of my biology teacher explaining the human digestive system. They say three important processes are necessary for survival, i.e. ingestion, digestion and assimilation. We need to supply the food to the stomach, where some acids, bacteria and peptic juices attack the food and suck out the nutrients. My biology might be bad, but pardon me, gentlemen. Then, the blood carries away all the nutrients in the form of some compound and delivers it to the cell. Then, I have vague memories about a compound called ADP and another component of the cell called _______. Chuck that.
I am feeling a bit giddy right now, and I can’t recall, but all that I want to imagine right now is about how poison reacts with my body. When does it kill me? Does it get me in the first stage, or does it give me a chance to rethink until it goes to the second? Or is it a sadistic process devised by nature to suck out every last shred of memories as a person dies? Hey, what kind of death does a sleeping pill give me? I’ve always wanted to answer that question. Does it make me sleep too much? Is it just like that short circuit phenomenon?
I wish I had patiently sat on my desktop and googled everything. Again, don’t you think I’ve done enough of it? I’ve Googled about those college rankings, entrance tests, cut-offs, latest cinema flicks, train tickets, the price of the latest Samsung Galaxy, the hottest babe in Bollywood and the nearest place to see an ENT doctor.
Google answers you right away. That’s the problem. It doesn’t give you an opportunity to think about what will come two steps after the one you are going to take that very moment. Similarly, Google won’t tell me how it feels to have poison in your stomach. It just tells you about the names of compounds. It’s just bloody names and labels that never have any meaning.
I am done with all the fancy stuff that happens on the internet. Like asking, “What should I do when I feel sad?” “What should I do when somebody sticks a knife in my back?” etc on sites like Quora or Yahoo Answers. People generally don’t want to help unless they have the upvotes and badges bestowed upon them if you know what I mean. It might be too metaphorical to say we are ingesting information that is corrupting us daily. It might even be labelled as pessimistic or even psychopathic.
I would encourage you to go ahead with your judgement because even I am feeding you with information, an opinion that you will ingest, digest and assimilate. It might sound obtuse or derogatory if I say that voicing your opinion is akin to excretion. You may have an innate “yuck” emoticon for the word “excretion” and a rather intellectual connotation to the act of “voicing” an opinion.
But they are all the same at the molecular level. One thing I like about stuff that happens at the molecular level is it’s fair. It does not discriminate. The hierarchy is blatant and devoid of any “compassion” or other logic to justify the merciless attitude of nature. I like Bohr’s energy levels, the periodic table and all that shit where big, more, better, etc., have no emotions, dignity, and human concepts are not an issue at all. What I want to say is- fuck equality.
There is nothing called equality or fraternity. What’s the third one? You see, I can’t remember. All that I can remember is just the French Revolution and the guillotine that they used. People often quote Mary Antoinette asking people to go and eat cake if bread was unavailable. But never do they mention people dipping their hankies in the blood of her husband after that guy was beheaded. All our historians are bigots who distort the complete picture for whatever gains they seek to take home.
All the storytellers, news reporters, politicians, company spokespersons, ad makers, actors, and religious gurus are here to create extra divisions in our already divided mindsets. They do it with an intention, and we don’t even know we have ingested it. Worse still, we have assimilated these tales and excreted them to the next generation without fully digesting them. And this has shaped the world in which we live.
It has bestowed our rulers with the power to rule over us. This attitude has made us open our wallets and throw bundles of cash for a piece of glittering stone but hesitate to pick up a slightly costly book. We are ready to take a bullet to save an idea not worth a sacrifice. We are willing to fall in ditches for a better tomorrow. All these ditches are indexed; you can locate them anytime on google.com.
Again, you might be involuntarily excreting your opinions about the way I am quoting these events and imagining what kind of a sicko I might be. For one thing is true. I am just going to excrete the shit out of my brain, and as disgusting as it may seem, you are ingesting the shit that I am excreting. The bad thing is that neither of us is getting anywhere this time, or we might be going to too many places simultaneously. If you don’t mind travelling with me on this train of thought, you can stay with me. Otherwise, you know better.
If you have survived my rant till now, I am sure you wouldn’t mind reading a few more lines; you know I don’t feel like stopping. I have consumed a considerable dose of poison that could kill me in a few minutes, and I might die at any moment. Pardon me if I stop abruptly. I am feeling some burps, and my legs are shaking a bit. These might not be the general or normal symptoms that are experienced when somebody ingests poison because this doesn’t seem to be a normal body. Even poison has issues with my rebellious digestive system.
I love oranges. I have some oranges in front of me. I used to eat oranges every day. Do oranges grow on trees or bushes? I fucking don’t care. But I did, long back. I wanted to pluck one directly from a tree and eat it fresh. But I’ve never seen an orange tree. I asked my dad to take me to a place with orange trees.
He took me to a fruit stall and bought me oranges. I didn’t want these oranges, so I rebelled and threw them on the road. All that I got next was a tight slap. Did he ever understand what a fresh orange meant to me? Did he understand the importance of a fresh orange, an orange that had turned into a fruit in the tree, naturally? This is what they do. They slap us when we ask for some fresh stuff. Everything is just adulterated. It’s fucking artificial.
We are just those chemically ripened mangoes and oranges. We were all plucked before we ripened, hidden in boxes when we were supposed to see the fresh leaves of the spring and the chirping of birds. We were all ripened in chemically controlled spaces with chalk powder in classrooms. We fucking don’t know how it is out there. We never come out of those boxes.
We are tasteless because we didn’t ripen the natural way. We are fucking boring because we were ripened with chalk powder in front of boards. But I still ate oranges. I had no other choice. But I had an alternative. I am fed up with fucking artificial oranges, toned milk, fatless ice cream, eggless chocolate cake, sugarless sweet coffee, and seedless grapes. If I don’t have a choice, I must refuse to stay here. I must go. I would have preferred to tickle a king cobra, get a cobra bite and die naturally. But King cobras are also rare these days. Whatever the snake charmers carry is a toothless cobra. Damn, these retards. I am just going to say goodbye, and I refuse to ingest all that you they are shoving into my throat. I want to leave.
It’s about twenty-five minutes since I emptied this bottle. I am not dying. Am I that strong? For fuck sake, I have never had an opportunity to know. I never had the chance to fight an angry man because we were all supposed to be civilised men. We are civilised men who negotiate in Queen’s English and never resort to violence even when there is a dying urge to decimate the rival. We wear safety helmets everywhere and have airbags to save us, just in case.
Dads drop kids in SUVs these days, and kids don’t know what to do when they face a bleeding knee. There is too much protection. I am a standing example. At twenty-eight, I don’t know what a stitch is. I’ve never suffered a fracture or an accident. Why don’t we break this thin layer called civilisation and explore the world?
We hesitate to kill terrorists; we buy big guns but never use them on the battlefield. We have laws, and police force, and courts, but those people don’t feel angry when an innocent woman is raped and murdered. We are shy to see a nude scene in theatres, but we are ok with a 1.2 billion population.
This is TOO MUCH HYPOCRISY. If people do treat this as a suicide note, let them understand that all the hypocrites of this nation are responsible for this. Will all of you stop and vomit that shit that you have struck up your throats and explain how we got here? WILL YOU?
No, you will write me off as an antisocial retard that had a bad childhood and nobody to love. If you know me, you will write obituaries on your Facebook walls and “pray” for my soul. You will ask god to make sure that I rest in peace. The truth is I will rest in discontent and won’t stop spitting at this fake world that you’ve all built.
I am now fucking impatient. I had paid for my death at the druggists. Why am I am I not dying? I called that guy and yelled, “Why am I not dying even after forty minutes?”That was a mild poison, sir. Boss would’ve been suspicious if I had given you a stronger or higher dose. I had to get rid of you at that moment. You can come back and take your cash. I don’t want to be responsible for your death.”
The guy cut the phone call. I have heard of sickos who run around with guns and kill school kids. I have heard of people who plant bombs to fight holy wars. This was the first time I had seen an honest thief who sold poison but still cared for his job and my dead body. The price of my body was just 10 thousand rupees minus the risk involved.
People are afraid to help people live. They puke out when they are asked to pull a trigger. Hey, robots, what’s the minimum height I have to fall to die? Tell me. I don’t want to suffer from a fracture. Even I am looking for easy death, aren’t I? If that be the case, even I don’t deserve to die, lest I will be one of those paradoxical psychopaths. Ironically, I had digested the ingested poison. That was the catch point. The poison mocked me, proving my credentials in a rather subtle way.