My blood is red
In the dim haze of the streetlight I checked my syringe. The blue liquid glazed in the yellow glare of distant light. With a hard learned accuracy I stuck it in my veins. I pulled the piston back with a jerk. The red blood slowly diffused as if conquering the blue bliss. And then it turned purple. I pushed it back in one go!
My blood is purple
The comforting numbness took over the control. I lay there reclining by the lamp post, in the darkness of the broken bulb. Slowly it all turned bright with a new aura. Distant voices rose and faded by my side. Words that I could not decipher, meanings I could not understand.
As I lay there in the darkest alley of the posh Park Street of Calcutta, I heard the distant laughter of enjoyment, glamour of riches, whispers of scandals, sighs of lust and occasional squeals of pain and hunger that goes unheard.
In distance I saw him slumped over the sidewalk. The legs floating lifelessly on the overflowing drain of filth and lies.
A closer look at his silhouette revealed that he was a she. Her slender legs and lean arms betraying her feminity. Her hands in a strange melancholy seemed like a call for help.
I pushed pulled and ultimately jerked my left-of-self and staggered towards her.
Around me people lay in their own darkness escaping pain and reality, maybe even waiting on Armageddon.
But she seemed to call me somehow.
I turned her slumped shoulders towards the light. In the yellow glare, her face seemed to lose its colour to desperation. I reached out for her pulse.
They say drug peddlers can find your veins and pulse faster than a surgeon. I smirked at the thought.
Her pulse confirmed my fears. The lub dub of her blood was losing its existence every minute.
The sudden panic overflowed my senses. The haziness cleared up and reality was pouring in on me.
I slapped her hard in desperation. She faintly opened her eyes and looked at me. She tried hard but words failed her.
But that look placed all her trust with me as if she gave her responsibility to me from then on. Then she slowly lost consciousness losing herself to deep sleep.
Suddenly I needed to do something, maybe its long time since anyone trusted me, and anyone believed me.
She gave me the importance that my world and my parents always failed to acknowledge. I was always the one who lost his way and hence could not be trusted.
Her trust on me gave me that lost reason.
I scooped her and lifted her in my arms. For a moment I was amazed by the fragility, the lightness of her as if the burdens of life were slowly dropping off her, letting her go.
I clutched her hard, in a way to stop her from flying away.
In the blurred glitter I ran out of the alley. Suddenly the darkness pulled its blanket of me and like a rabbit of a magician's hat I was out; I was out naked in the world of mute audience.
I stood with her on the crossing of Park Street and shouted for a cab. In the glare of the man made sun, I felt naked, I felt open and scared. People passing sneered and some showed fake detachment. We are a generation of voyeurs, who enjoy misery as their daily evening show when it is on the other side of television. Death is a good entertainment.
The cabs getting hint of my evident poverty stayed away. I was the clown and she was my prop. We had to perform.
I shouted and frantically waved for a cab. One stopped. I looked at him; he motioned me to get in.
I carefully laid her and climbed inside. Her head rested on my lap. The irregular pulse on the back of her neck passed current of hope through my thigh.
I looked at her face for the first time in clear light. A small round face of middle class dreams that somewhere in the sin city lost its way. Now under the dab of cheap Chandni Chowk makeup it hid in the dark alleys. The paleness suggested her fondness or maybe her need of the veil of darkness.
But still under that flashy brown-red lip gloss and double layer of kajal, there were those large Bengali eyes, a faded rosy lips and a dusky beauty.
She was an evening sky covered in clouds of south-west monsoon. She was Meghna. At least for me she was.
And in a moment I wanted to hold her hands when she woke up, and never leave them again.
In the thinning traffic of late night diners and half drunk truck drivers we approached Medical College Hospital. The smell of swabs, antiseptic, pus and death engulfed me.
I dragged her out in my arms. The driver gave an understanding nod that he will wait. I looked around for help.
The porters in stained uniforms turned their gazes and got themselves busy. I walked inside the emergency with her in my arms.
The sadness and blood were strewn aplenty. Diseases were overflowing everywhere. Doctors stayed in their AC cooled cabins and in the cover of darkness the attendants played their little game of doctor-doctor to the winding queue of injured patients.
I went in and put her in the sofa of the emergency room. The attendant with look of anger and self importance came and looked at her. He checked at the pulse and saw the numerous punch holes of self injected syringes.
He rushed for the doctor. The doctor came up and gave a look of pity and disgust to her. We were the lower creatures of the society who are loser by the social standard to those hypocrites of the high rises.
She was for cheap pleasures maybe; she was not for treatment and caring.
He looked up to me and said in a monotonous tone, "So shall I call the cops?"
I said, "But wouldn't that mean decrease in your share of income!"
He gave me the look of hatred and said, "You people ruin the youth"
I smirked, "Sorry!! But it’s you who ruin the youth, we just provide a cushion for their fallback when u shun them with your high ambitions and frivolous dreams"
With a hopeless sigh, he said, "It’s a lot of risk to treat without police consent, 5000 would suffice"
I took out whatever was left in my wallet, I laid it in his hands, and a mere 2000 rupees did suffice his need.
After all we all bargained for our skills, we all are a pimp of our art.
I sat beside her and touched her cold cheeks; I whispered in her ears that I will be by her side.
They asked me her name, I said, "Meghna, it’s always Meghna"
I sat outside till the morning, the darkness was diminishing.
Stream of people flowed in and out, some dead some alive, and few like me stuck between the two.
In the morning I went inside and enquired about her, the nurse went through the file and replied nonchalantly, "Meghna, Expired, before admission" and got herself busy with other files.
I don’t remember how long I stood there. And when my legs got tired I took the bus to esplanade.
I dint cried, but all I remembered was the fainting warmth of her cheek when I bid her goodbye.
They say unclaimed bodies are burnt after 14 days in morgue. So they say!
But in the rising sun, I promised Meghna that I will climb my way out of darkness, I will give myself a second chance.
My blood is purple
My blood will again be red! Someday.
P.S: Am in Hyderabad babey!!! And slowly but surely getting into the tune of dis place....again a crappy fiction for u ppl to deal with....well actually i dint myself liked the flow of the story much...but the whole fiction was a result of discharge of anger on the mismanagement of hospitals which i personally faced a hell lot of times!!
Damn I am one of those once in a blue moon bloggers now!!! Hope to get back on track soon!!!
