A Lot Like Moon & Stars | ✓

03 | sirius

iii.

S I R I U S » the companion

It's like Euthanasia.

Seeing your loved one dying in front of you is like Euthanasia. You're silently killing yourself in a battle which has already been lost. It's exactly like suffering from something which is incurable.

When my dad died, I didn't cry at how everything could end in a split-second. I didn't cry; not because I was some Punjabi guy who wasn't allowed to cry, but somewhere deep inside my heart, I knew that he wouldn't like seeing me cry.

Dealing with his death made me brave and coward at the same time. Brave enough to face this ruthless world all alone, but so coward that I couldn't see anyone close to my heart dying. So when I got the news that my best friend had died in a car accident, I didn't even attend his funeral. Just because I was scared. To see the eyes which always lit up would be closed forever. To see how the body I would playfully smack would be burnt to ashes. To be not able to hear the sound of his cackle at my jokes which would make my bones crack and leave me in a ravenous shell.

And on the night, when my mom was hospitalized for high blood pressure, I had to beg in front of God - in literal sense - that I had no intention of becoming acquainted with the habit of counting the number of people leaving me in this world, and shifting to another world. That I wanted the people around me to be happy and most importantly... alive.

But my emotions curling into a ball with only the facade of being rude and aggressive on the exterior made people call me heartless. They started saying that my heart was made from solid granite and not flesh.

But granite cracks, breaks, shatters after a huge blow.

While flesh doesn't.

Whatever my heart is made of, I always know that if this would happen again, it would constrict in my chest. So much that I would experience every single ounce of pain and feel numb at the same time.

I am glad that I hadn't visited hospitals - the bloodiest buildings of all - for over two years.

The feeling of 'one moment here, the other moment gone' was chasing behind me at an incredibly rapid pace when Tara was about to die in front of me. The coward side of me - so strong and insistent on the matter to not see another death made me strong enough to become capable of protecting her. The logic is simple and strikes me like a thunderclap.

Before I could drown to the bottom of my gut wrenching thoughts, I hear screams from the forest side at the side of the road. Screams which were so agonizingly painful that it could slice your heart. It doesn't matter if it is made of granite, those screams could cut deep down into your skin right to your heart.

I halt my car on the side of the road, and hop outside it to check who the scream belonged to. But before I could find out, they stop abruptly making me retreat back to my car.

Mulling over the thought of the source of the noise, I drive away not knowing that the cause of the scream is deeply connected to my very own thoughts.

•••

"Sorry Sir, but there's a landslide ahead. This road has been blocked." The officer says, and my eyes snap to his sharply.

"But my hotel is on the other side of the city... how am I suppose to go there?" I ask sharply.

"Well, there is accommodation available in this part of the city if that's only what you want." he says, turning back to halt another car which was coming in his direction. "And I would advise you to not drive because the roads are too slippery and unsafe."