Everyone says it’s better to forgive and forget what happened, then we can move on. Forgive –
maybe. But forget? I wish I could. Things won’t let me.
There is no life for me. What I feel is like existing in a bleak environment, devoid of everything
that gives a meaning to life. There is no house, no parents, no family, no money – nothing! There
never had been; ever since he had lost his parents, the first time. Yes, the first time had been his
biological parents. And the next time, it had been my foster parents.
Car accidents have become very frequent now-a-days. And these car accidents were the reason
why I lost my parents twice, though in two dramatically different situations. The parents I was
born to were extremely poor. We lived in the outskirts of Delhi, my father working as an
industrial labourer in the city. One evening mom and dad had been out. I forget the reason, but
that had been the last time I had seen them. I don’t know what exactly happened, but it amounted
to this that some drunken driver had hit them from behind, killed them both and escaped. Of
course he got caught later, but it had been too late then. I was a boy of seven and had slept
peacefully that night, to be taken to some tea stall by a neighbor the next morning, with the
shocking news that my parents would never return again. The neighbour was a good man, I had
liked him since I had met him as a child of two, but that day I hated him the most. He
wouldn’t answer my questions, he wouldn’t listen to me; all he told me was that it was my fate to
lead the life of a tea seller’s assistant from now on. And that’s what I did for three months, until I
was adopted by a wealthy couple, simply because they found my face sort of similar to their dead
child’s.
Again I had to learn surviving in a new environment, which flung at me a merciless array of new
manners, rules, etiquettes and painful of all – textbooks. Now, it is true that I had always thought
school would be fascinating, but the reality was far from that. I’ll skip over the details of
loneliness, taunts, comments behind the back, stares and gossip. But, I was a quick learner and
almost after a year, things seemed to straighten out and I began to be a bit at ease. Seven years
passed. Their love was enough to make me put aside my past, move on and feel at home. They
were my love, my family and probably the only human connections I had left, when another of
these wretched car accidents took them away from me. This time the car was my parents’ and
they crashed into a tree to avoid a drunken driver, and again the driver escaped, this time not to
get caught.
Their old will was made in the name of some relative. A new one hadn’t been furnished. So I
came back to the streets again, penniless and lonely. But this time I had my degree and ample education to land me a job. Not a very attractive one, no, but one that is enough to
allow me to lead a normal life, if not a luxurious one.
Now when I think back, I feel ashamed of myself for scoffing at education. Painful a process it
is, but the pain is worth it. But all the same, when I think of what I might have gained if I had my
parents left, I scoff at everything else – my life, fate and this unkind world. Sometimes I feel so
low, depressed, thinking about the past, the struggle, that I want to do myself in. Or do
somebody else in – murder somebody. But I don’t find anybody to murder. People have never
hurt me. Only their callousness has, their vices have. I am definitely going mad one day if I
continue thinking like this, but I can’t help it. Thoughts keep crossing my mind; I need a logical
explanation for every nasty thing that happens in the world, named as “the acts of God”. Yes,
situations have turned me into an atheist, because I can’t help wondering why people have to
suffer so much. Surely, if God is so mighty and omnipotent as he is portrayed to be, then
wouldn’t it be nice if he eradicates everything that is not nice? But that sort of a miracle doesn’t
happen. So, either God is absent or he too has got fed up with the vices and now ignores them. I
don’t know, and on second thoughts, I don’t even want to know.
Therefore, what I think needs to be done is this – men have to take their responsibilities
themselves and try to curb off the menaces. The idea of murder still allures me. Wouldn’t the
world become a better place if each person murders something evil everyday? For example, if I
murdered the greed within me today and tomorrow you murdered the lust within you and
similarly one by one, all the evil gets murdered, one day the world will be free of children who
embody none but corruption, theft, smuggling, rape and the lot. A world free of them would be
nothing less than heaven.
So, come let’s start working on this project right from today. Come, let’s murder somebody –
something not fit to live.
Abhipsa Mohanty
Meet the author:
Abhipsa Mohanty is from the city of Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She is a postgraduate in English Literature, and currently works as a freelance content writer. She has published her short stories and poetry in several anthologies. In the year 2021, she published her debut novel. Abhipsa explores the different shades of the human psyche in her works.
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