Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
There was a woman in Room No. 368, she looked just like a Chinese doll. Bangalore Mental Health Institute housed many unkempt people, but not Selva. Neatly groomed hair, with streaks of wisdom in them, clipped in a bun... There was something that scared your soul about the way she looked into your eyes. Like they were capable of spilling something dangerous. I could only bear to stay in the same room with her for five minutes, but today something different happened.
"You know what my mother in law used to tell me?" She whispered. "That I killed my husband." At this point, I smiled nervously, glancing towards the nearest exit. "But that's not true. He accidentally overdosed on those amphetamines. I told her, it wasn't my fault. And you know what she said?"
"Crazy lady." Selva cackled. "She almost had me believing it was true! Everybody knew it wasn't suicide, but the blame fell on me anyway. This world offered me silence, justice became a personal issue. I could recognise everyone around me had a disease in their heart, their minds wrapped in veils of selfishness. It's so rare that people help us without getting benefits out of it, don't you think?"
"You should've seen how angry they were at me, like I deserved it in exchange for their sadness. Sometimes I wondered how many people truly loved my husband. All I saw around me was mislabelled love. And apparently I became the crazy one, I mean, so what if I still talk to my husband? Is this world so self-righteous that it won't let me grieve in peace?"
"Ya maalik ad-dunya, what have we done to ourselves?" I thought of the dangerous societal standards.
But then she said, "I can't remember if he had a pulse after taking the pill though, so I put him out of his misery."
