Illusion

Sound of the dove fells surreal to his ears. He gains consciousness with mixed feelings. One, saying thanks to God, for blessing him with the gift of life, for giving him this nice moment. And the other, cries viciously inside him for the curse of life. Indeed, he thinks. Thinking was once his best companion. And thinking is now his worst enemy. He tries to get up. Legs trembling, hands shaking, feels a creepy itching all over his body. He smiles inside. He laughs at god, he laughs at religion, and he laughs at society, inside. Laughing inside is not new to him. He sighs. Now-a-days he sighs a lot. At that very moment his mind takes him 18 years before. It was a rainy night. He remembers lying on the bed in a light yellow beam of light. His grandmother seated beside bed. She was supposed to put him bed, but instead she fell asleep. He remembers watching her old but kind wrinkled face, grey hair, and white dress. All of her existence carried the sign of hunger, poor women was hungry for three days. But as he recalls, he was fascinated by the look of her sleeping face. In that face, there was no hunger, no poorness, no misery, no sadness, and no life. He was looking and trying, trying to name that feeling on her face. First he thought she was dead, and then he looked closer, and found out that she was breathing, slowly, slowly. Then he discovered that feeling. It was happiness. Happiness that comes only from freedom, from independence. He realized why she was happy in that very moment, despite of being hungry for three days. She was happy because may be just for a while, but she was able to escape the pain of hunger. She was free from hunger, she was free from the thought that what will happen tomorrow, and she was free from the sorrow that she wasn’t able to feed her inheritance. She owed it all to the sleeping. Then it hit him. How a small childish silly fraction of illusion can deny the monstrous existence of reality. Then he found out he was a victim of it too. Because he felt happy for her. He was happy for her for being happy. Then he sighed. That simple breeze woke up his grandmother. But even then, the happiness wasn’t gone from her face. She looked at him, and said, “never sigh my child, with every sigh it takes away two minutes of your life.” Then she went to sleep again. He kept looking at her face and soon after surrenders himself to the illusion. His grandmother never woke up again.



He thinks of that day time to time. He sighs again. And then he smiles. This time for real. He tells to himself, “If that poor lady was right, I should be dead for at least 100 years”.