Life has its own ways to reassure man that it totally lacks predictability and whatever it will bring his way will be totally unexpected.

Life has taught me much and keeps teaching its eager student more and more everyday. The student looks forward to the lessons. Everyday is an experience, every day brings something under my nose to observe and ponder over, every day gives me a dose of the unexpected. Life has taught me a lot.

Today I resolve to teach life a lesson. They call me a madman, and have brought me here into what they call a ‘caring home’. I never thought so before, but maybe I am crazy if I am challenging life itself today. But I again say. I resolve to teach life a lesson. Today I will show it how I, too, can be unexpected. I, too, can pull someone’s cheeks muscles towards the sparkle in the eyes, and I, too, can pull those muscles harshly, abruptly into a deep frown. I, too, can give and take happiness from where I choose.

Today I resolve. I’ll teach life a lesson.

Or maybe not. Maybe this itself is a lesson that life will teach me. “You may think you have the reins to control everything but alas! It is still clutched tightly in my hands! But let us see how your resolution goes. Let us see.”

Well then, life, if it is another trick of yours, then allow me to submit myself! Let me humble myself! But though you may have control over everything that has happened and everything that will happen but, struggle as you might, you can’t seize control over one thing I possess. One thing I can use to create my own worlds, my own people, my own emotions. You can’t seize control over my imagination, life.

My worlds-without any happiness, with flowers that bloom, spread joy and then cease to exist, with birds that produce immortal songs and then die a mortal death, with hearts which carry enormous soul-consuming love but which will not be guaranteed that love will be requited. No, my world will be much better than yours.

Ah, my world! Come, glimpse at the memories I cherish. Stare at the people I create, feel the emotions I allow you to feel. Truth is beauty, eh, so wonder at my truths and bask in the beauty they radiate.

But no. I won’t tell you everything of my world in case you run off. I won’t tell you the story of my latest victim, Aania. I won’t tell you the story of that young girl, at the peak of her life, maybe seventeen, eighteen. Tall, blooming and bonnie. One look at her and people said she radiated hope and optimism about life. A typical teenager, she loved Shah Rukh Khan, movies, Hot Spot’s Chocolate Kit-kat ice cream and the Hot Spot crowd. And then one day she fell in love with Him. That’s typical teenage behavior too. They keep falling in love every thirty-six seconds.

But I think I might as well tell you her ‘tragic’ little love story to illustrate the beauty of my world. I won’t tell you how she saw the guy at this videos shop where he worked as a salesman, I won’t go into details of how they fell in love, I’ll just tell you that stupid Cupid’s gold arrow raced straight for her heart and hit home. So it was Aany and Ali, and Ali and Aany. And happiness. Oh happiness and bliss in its entirety! Life was more wonderful than was told in the books. She began to appreciate the smaller things in life; the beauty of an effulgent daffodil, the creamy flutter of a bird’s wing, the song of the whistling winds as they took the leaves for a crazy wild ride, the carefully prepared red of the dusky sky. Life had a new meaning for her altogether.

Are we in a Bollywood movie? Where the hero will always be the perfect gentleman, the perfect lover; where the sight of the hero makes the heroine go weak in her knees; where in the deepest trouble imaginable, the smile of your lover takes you millions of miles away to the green meadows of Switzerland in a split second and it’s so easy to sing away your troubles to the gentle winds caressing your cheeks?

No,it was better than a Bollywood movie for her. He was more amazing than the flawless heroes of Bollywood, his comments funnier, and his looks more breath-taking than Jon Abraham’s. His “love you” at the end of the telephone calls made her happier than, say, eating the huge box of Ferero Rocher, and her imagination of his seeming impatience to shut the phone made her more depressed than if she gained thirty-five more pounds.

He was everything to her.

And then my world struck. Ah, how do I narrate to you the beauty of the moment when Aany’s father found out she was in love. In love? And with a mere salesman? Ignominious!

How I rejoiced when I saw Aany’s father glaring at her, in fury, in shock, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish, as she yelled back, demanding her parents bless her, demanding they marry her off to Ali because he loved her and took care of her and would do anything for her, demanded they marry her off immediately or else…

Such rebellion! Such disrespect! Ah, I shouldn’t tell you more, I know! I shouldn’t tell you of her father who beat the weeping, helpless mother violently, to take out the rage invoked by their child but who dared not raise a finger at the child lest there was a loss of dignity if the child openly revolted. But how can I resist making you imagine her mother crying, crying helplessly, crying her heart out, while her daughter stood there mocking contemptuously and promising further ‘happiness’ if she wasn’t married to Ali? How can I not tell you of the child who slanders the parents in front of them and then goes and self-inflicts pain for letting all that happen? Can you imagine the awe-inspiring inner conflict that the child is facing? And that the parents are facing?

The father wept openly. The mother pulled at her hair and poured out floods from her bloodshot eyes. What an ungrateful wretch we have for a child! We have given her all that one desires-money, mansion, good food, cars, education-and there she goes and falls in love with a good-for-nothing useless salesman who will make her miserable! She may be infatuated with him right now but they know in the long run she will suffer and lose everything. And they could not let that happen. The ingrate did not understand. She taunted, she tortured, she hurt them, she made them hate themselves. Such a curse from God she was, to be sure! That’s why you think they were crying, eh?

No. The emotional fools were crying because she was crying. They were hurt because she was hurt. They hated themselves because they thought she hated them.
And Aania could see their love spilling out with their tears and she tried to shut her eyes to it.
Should I tell you or should the terror of the child, the regret, the sorrow be unknown to you? Should I tell you the images flashing in the girl’s mind? Images of sheer joy; of Aany and Ali hiding up in a tree, whispering, muffling their laughter, kissing, smiling; of Aany and Ali eating an icecream under an umbrella, caught in a violent storm; of Aany and Ali just sitting together, looking at each other, holding hands.

But this was all history. The smile faded on her face-fresh memories. Screaming, crying, beating, fainting, shouting, pleading. Backing off in horror as a certain elder fell on the ground in desperate begging; steeling her arms as a certain man hit her with a bathroom wiper and broke off the steel handle, in rage. Talking to a certain someone and breaking off all bonds forever.

Can’t sleep. Can’t sleep. Mercy, life, mercy. ( my world provides no cheap gift of mercy.) Insomnia strikes. Pain strikes. Depression strikes. Pass on those tablets, please! Yes, yes those ones! The ones which are pale blue in colour. Please ignore the warning which says ‘To be taken on medical advice only. More than two can prove very harmful. Keep out of reach of children.’

What shrieking, what yelling, what sobbing, what crying! Poor mom and dad! Their only daughter, their only daughter!

I, too, had been there. A beautiful funeral it had been. I had stood there, laughing loudly. Everybody thought I had gone crazy. They looked at me. Talked in whispers. Pointed at me.
My friend, Ahmed, brought me here.

“Crazy, crazy!”

But obviously I had not gone crazy. I had just understood the lesson that, you, life, had taught me. It had been then, for the first time, when I had submitted to your power, your supremacy, your omnipotence.

You had taught me to question and you had given me the answers. I had gotten an insight into the human brain. What a beautiful mind man has! Even though my knowledge had come with a price. (Sometimes when I sit alone at night, in the darkness, remembering her smile, the sound of her laughter, her loving touch, I think, maybe I paid too big a price.)
Anyhow.

Why is it that people prefer worldly prosperity over moral goodness, financial security over emotional stability, money over love? Why is it that people prize their egos, their honour more than they prize their happiness? Why is it that people complicate their lives themselves and then abuse you, life? Why is it that after creating hurdles to their happiness themselves people wonder why sadness reigns supreme?

Why do people listen to depressing songs when they are unhappy? Allow me to reveal. People listen to depressing songs to reinforce their depression so as to prolong it. Why, may I ask?
After loving with all their hearts and then losing everything they ever got, how the moments with the beloved torture people and they writhe and squirm and scream silently, and yet, they can’t let go of them. They cling onto those moments as if for dear life.

Why, I ask?

Humans like being tortured. They love the pain. They adore the blade which calmly slits their inner being and makes them writhe and squirm and scream. People enjoy languishing in their depression. They find it disturbingly satisfying to remain with sighs and tears.
That’s the beauty of my world.

People love everything about it.

The torment it brings, the loneliness, the cruelty, the crushing irony. The pain.

People love my world.

It’s true. Even though it brings all the crap, even though we sigh and cry and wish hopelessly for happiness, somewhere we appreciate the beauty of it all…the wonders of life.

Humans are asses.

How else will they appreciate the fineries of life if they aren’t tortured a bit?

We are lucky to have lived once…”

Ali rubbed his bloodshot tired eyes. He had been reading his diary again. He wiped the tear resting on the tip of his nose. He always marveled at the fact that even today his eyes could shed tears over his diary.

“Patient number 24. Please get into bed, it is very late.” The two ward boys peeped into his room.
Ali smiled at them amiably and blew out his candle. The room was immediately swallowed by darkness.

Ali got into bed and sat thinking. He again wondered at the fact that even after ten years his eyes squeezed out tears when he read his sole diary entry. The diary entry he had written the day he had come here. It had been ten years since Aany’s suicide and ten years since he had challenged life anew everyday.