Help Me.

Thank you.

For answering my cry for help. There are a hundred things going wrong in my life right now, and I am hanging from a precipice, waiting for someone… anyone, say Mr. Goyal, or Trooplijaah, or even Mom to pull me up and save me…or not.

But Mr. Goyal, as I noticed this morning, is busy with matters that are more important than helping a neighbor in need. Mrs. Goyal has still not learned to prepare tea per the taste of Mr. Goyal, and according to what half the block heard, Mrs. Goyal has been practicing the craft of tea-making and trying to poison Mr. Goyal for the last 35 years!

I cannot expect help from a man who’s being poisoned by his own wife now, can I?

Trooplijaah has developed a hatred for us earthlings, and we all have a certain Peeeyoookkkhaaa to thank for it. As I hang from this cliff, clinging to dear life; he watches me from the shadows, smirking and grinning. “When I needed your help, you sided with Peeeyoookkkhaaa, and now you want me to pull you up? When I wanted to meet her, you shut me in that carton with a copy of Bhagwad Gita! Isn’t it written in Bhagwad Gita – the soul is immortal – water cannot soak it, wind cannot dry it, fire cannot burn it – the soul doesn’t die, only the body does. Recall from your book of infinite wisdom that this body is just a fashionable piece of clothing for your soul; when the fashion changes, your soul too removes the old out-of-fashion dress and dons the new one!”

Tell me, how can I expect a uni-eyed man I wronged just a few months ago, to help me?

Mom comes right to the edge of the precipice, asks the maid to pull her a chair of gold, and perches herself upon it. Then she looks down at me and my bloodied fingers that about to slip on the stone slick and slippery with my blood, then waits for me to cry for help. “Mom, help. Pull me up,” I swallow my pride and cry for help. Her eyes drill deep into mine, then she snickers. “Lodh padi to aagaya maangne, (when a need has arisen, he comes requesting help,)” she says, chewing then spitting each word at me.

Her words, more than the sharp nudge of her stick on my fingers, throw me off – not just off the cliff, but off the desire to fight and to live. My fingers slip and I find my self falling into the gorge below – I feel the air scrape against my skin; I hear its roar through my reverberating eardrums; I see the ground rush up to meet me – and I close my eyes. Knowing that my life as I knew it was over – Knowing that even if I survived the fall, I’ll be maimed for life, in those few seconds, I pray that I die.

When I survive with my limbs gnarled and twisted from the fall, Mom looks at me, repelled by the sight of me, then tells anyone who’d listen, “I could’ve saved him, but he didn’t ask for help. I even had a rope with me, and I’d have held it for him, had he asked me properly. It’s his fault that he’s in this shape, you see.”

 

I shall be operational soon. I think my heart is beginning to beat again – the beat is slow and out of rhythm, but wifey believes that with her love and support, I shall soon be back in action again. Anandhotep to has sent me a get-well-soon card. (Who could’ve guessed that the man still has a heart under those rotting, stinking bandages?)