Repercussions

I am Smriti. Twenty-year-old, cancer patient. The illness has already spread through my digestive system and I have but a few more days of suffering to undergo before I bid adieu to dear life. I believe in god and I pray every day, never had any bad habits and always ate well. What a wasted life!

It was a particularly bad evening where I threw up my favorite curry, right in front of the entire household, locked myself up in my room contemplating suicide and held a staring match with the image of the lord till he blurred from my sight...

...Only to wake up in the middle of the night due to all the light flooding from his divine halo in my room.

I screamed, "Why? Why me?"

As always, he smiled.

"Because of your own actions." he replied.

"Me? How can you be so cruel?"

"I am not the one who designed your end my child." He said and placed a gentle palm on my head causing a flurry of images to flutter in it till they settled on a riverbank.

An old man stood by the riverside, a prayer on his lips, forehead decorated with a dot of sandalwood conveying he respected the intelligence of his species. But contradictory to the depiction, the next instant he threw a bag full of old flower garlands into the river. The flimsy bag floated for a while and drowned eventually as it reached the rapids.

We followed the bag which eventually ripped and decimated into smaller and smaller pieces, still afloat, still foreign to the water surrounding it until we reached the ocean floor.

The young fish flowed through the current. Swift, silver and happy. He was part of a gathering formation today, the energy of youth bursting through his lungs as he lunged to pick a shiny yellow spec which was floating in front of him.

Few days later...

"Smriti! I made your favorite fish curry." That call would bring a smile to my face always.

I took a morsel and it tasted like heaven.

"Yumm... You're the best mom."

Teenage me was kissing mom's hand sitting at the same table which I had messed up earlier that evening.

I turned, still clueless towards the lord while he observed the scene with me.

"Still didn't get it?"

I shook my head.

Once again, I stood facing the old man as he stood in the water. This time he stopped as if he noticed me. Our eyes met and I felt a connection.

A gentle palm on my shoulder made me look away from him.

"It wasn't me Smriti. It was always you. You did this in your previous life. You created the stage for your painful death in this life. It's easy to blame and point to others my child. But more than anyone else, every bad action by man, tends to harm him first."

Unfortunately, the most important lesson of my life came a week before my death.