Everything was so blurry yet clear in front of her. For a second, Sarah thought she might have gone blind. Then it became clear to her, it was not her eyes, but her mind that had gone rogue.
She saw two people coming ahead, talking to each other, assuming she was insane, standing so close to the sea, falling in it any minute. It did not bother her, she presumed what they might have thought about her. A girl as thin as a skeleton, with puffy eyes staring blankly at them, with nothingness, as if she was challenging them to think what so ever they want.
Sarah was wearing just enough clothes to cover her body on this chilly morning. She had icicles for fingers, walked miles -barefooted- frozen up from head to toe. Breathing seemed the most strenuous task at that time.
In one hand, she had Vodka, her best friend for the last two years. In the other one, she was counting her breaths, thinking the moment it came to a two thousand, she would jump and go as far away from this unjust world as possible.
Despite her cold face and expressions, her eyes were filled with determination, to move to the Empty as soon as possible.
And the final moment came, it was her two thousandth breath.
Sarah put her first step down towards the sea. The water seemed as still as a dead person. The cold breeze was hitting her face as if it wanted to stop her from giving up so soon.
Suddenly she heard a cry from nearby, looked around and saw a little girl crying, just a few meters away. Ignoring her, she took the second step. Little girl was still crying. Sarah stopped, waited for a few seconds, took her third step, not towards the sea but the little girl, to her surprise.
‘Hello…'
Little girl did not respond.
Once again, Sarah tried, ‘May I know why are you crying?’
She seemed frightened and exhausted. Sarah wanted this to get over with, so that she could move ahead with her plan. She kept on looking at her. After a few seconds, little girl responded, ‘I am crying because I am lost.’
‘May I know your name?'
‘My name is Alisha.’ she responded, rubbing her eyes.
‘Okay Alisha, May I know where are your parents?’
‘They are no more.’
Sarah did not know how to respond. At that moment, she did not care about her plan. All she could think about was Alisha. She had a whole life ahead of her. What could she possibly do to help her out?
‘Are you alone then?’
‘Yes… No, actually. Police and Social workers, there are many people who are in search of me, as I ran away from…’
Alisha stopped speaking, thought for a second or two, and started crying again.
‘I am here with you, Alisha. But you need to tell me what is going on exactly. Why are they after you?’
‘Because I killed someone.’
The silence around them was thunderous.
Sarah fell short of words. She had so many questions now, dwindling in her mind that she even forgot that a few moments ago, she wanted to die. Her problems seemed like nothing in front of this little girl. She felt horrified yet curious at the same time. The best she could think in that moment was to change the topic.
‘Shall we go to my house? You can rest, eat noodles, and then we can talk in detail about what to do, alright?'
‘Are you sure you want to do that, as you were going to kill yourself a few minutes ago?’
Sarah felt like someone hit her with a sword. How did she know? Who was she? There were so many questions that she wanted to have answers to.
‘How…how did you know?’
‘Because I am you, Sarah.’
Everything around her stood still, as if time had stopped.
‘What? What did you say? You are me? Am I supposed to be laughing at this joke? Is this a movie or something? I mean I don’t know whether I should laugh or get scared, seriously…but what the hell are you talking about?’
Sarah continued her blabbering, ‘I am the one to blame. I shouldn’t have come here in the first place. Who am I to help someone when I can’t even help myself.’
‘Could you listen to me for a minute, Sarah?
Sarah stopped talking and looked at her. She was standing in front of her and she seemed annoyed.
‘You heard it right. I am you, and you know what, I can prove it to you. Do you want to hear everything about yourself? Everything that you have done so far, and why you want to die now?’
Sarah could not begin to understand or even feel what she was hearing. Could it be true? There was only one way to find out.
‘Yeah sure, tell me everything.’ she said, mockingly.
‘Well, I am here because of you. You killed our sister when you were 11 because you thought she wanted to hurt you. You ran away from home, lived on streets until a fine lady gave you a place to sleep when you were 14. She called social workers to help you out and you ran away again, to a new city, new people, worked and lived in a bar, until you were 21.
‘Stop.’
‘You fell in love with a man. You had the best moments of your life, but you ruined them as well. How could he love you so much when you don’t even love yourself, I don’t understand.’
‘I said, Stop.’
‘You ran away, again, started taking drugs. I mean I don’t understand Sarah. The one man who made you realize who you truly were, who taught you how to love yourself, how could you leave him?’
‘SHUT UPP, I SAID SHUT UP. STOP’
Sarah was furious. Her face was red, her heart beating at the speed of a bullet train, she could feel the Sun, within herself. She was right. Yes. Alisha was in fact, Sarah.
‘I know. You feel hurt, and scared. You have done many mistakes and you haven’t forgiven yourself. You don’t love yourself enough, and you feel guilty that you didn’t allow anybody else to love you as well.’
Sarah was flabbergasted. She was so determined, brave-hearted, intelligent and most importantly, right. There had only been one constant in her life, and that was when she ran, away from people, away from her feelings, away from everything, just to return to herself. She could not understand it till now that she could escape everything, except her own self.
All of her life, she felt misunderstood. Everybody wanted to save her, nobody wanted to know her. But Alisha knew. She knew her inside out, and that was scaring the hell out of her.
‘What do you want Alisha?’ she asked with a sigh.
‘I want answers. I want to know why did you ruin my life? I was doing good until you killed our sister. Why did you do it?’
‘I didn’t have any other option. She was hurting us. I needed to do something about it, and I did right.’
‘Did you? Are you telling me there was nothing that you could do, at that moment, except killing her?’
There was a short silence after that.
‘Please Sarah, I am hoping you will start telling the truth, if not to someone else, at least to yourself. You could run away, already you were good at it. That would have been far better. Why didn’t you?’
Sarah was having trouble seeing her. There was water in her eyes, she did not know where did it come from. She remembered the last time tears came in her eyes, when she was running away from the love of her life. It was just six months ago, but felt like ages.
‘You can cry, I won’t judge.’
Sarah heard exactly what she wanted. Rivers of tears came down her eyes. She was exhausted.
‘I believe you are tired.’
‘Yes Alisha, yes. I am tired and exhausted and I just want it to stop. I want this pain to go away. I want everything to just pause for a minute and let me breathe. Why life is so unbearable? Why I need to suffer so much just to live. It’s better to die than live such a miserable life. Yes Alisha, I am tired.’ she confessed,
‘Do you remember the time when our mother used to chumpy our hair, give a massage, the feeling that we used to get? The time when we came second in class, she hugged us and said, “you gave your best, that’s all that matters”. All the times when she cooked for us, our favorite foods, no matter how tired she was. She loved us unconditionally. What would you call it?’
‘It was heaven for me, yeah I remember.'
‘Do you remember our father, taking us to school? We used to get tired after walking just ten steps, he used to carry us on his shoulders for a kilometer and half, just so that we could have fun. During holidays, she used to treat us with ice cream, hiding it from mother, just to see our happy faces. What would you call it?’
‘Heaven’
‘When you did not trust yourself, love yourself enough, they were there for you. Your lover was there for you. You are living in the moments of the past, that’s the reason you have stopped living in the present. If you believe there’s heaven, why can’t you try and build it for yourself once again? What are you most afraid of?
Sarah had stopped crying. She was contemplating. All the things that Alisha said were true. It was as if she had put a mirror in front of her, and now she needed to face herself. She believed there was heaven at one point of time. She could believe it again, just did not know how.
‘I think what I am most afraid of is…’
Suddenly she heard sirens, lots of them. Sarah was not able to understand what was happening. So many cars were coming from far away, it seemed they were coming towards her.
‘Yes Sarah, tell me what are you most afraid of?’
‘No, Alisha they are coming. I need to hide you, far away from them. I don’t want to lose you. I think they are coming for you, for us. We need to run now.’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean, no? There’s not much time before they reach here, why are you doing this?’
‘This is heaven, Sarah.’
‘What?’ she could not believe what she just heard. ‘This is heaven? Going to jail is heaven? What are you even saying?’
‘Facing the truth, Sarah. Facing your biggest fear is heaven. Your heaven. Our heaven.’
The vehicles arrived in front of them. Sarah hid her behind a tree, and faced her biggest fear, just like she wanted.
The police arrested her and took her away. As the car left the beach, she recalled what they said to each other at last.
‘Where will you go?’
‘Wherever you will be, Sarah.’
‘Promise me Alisha. Promise me that you will never leave me alone.'
‘I promise Sarah. You will never be alone. We will never be alone.’
TWO YEARS LATER
‘I don’t want to discuss it. I mean I want to be an IAS officer, but my family isn’t allowing me to study. How pathetic is that? They want me to just sit idle and be happy. How is it possible? I mean, I have my own life, right?’
‘You are right Aman. We should work on ourselves everyday so that we become a better version of ourselves. There is no issue if you want to study, that is why we are helping you here, so that you can achieve all the greatness that you want. What about you Archit? How are you feeling today?’
‘Oh, I am feeling over the moon. You won’t believe if I tell you about all the things that I did since morning. I mean, I couldn’t sleep last night, so I started running in the ground and you know what? When everybody woke up at 7, I already had a run of…wait, let me check my watch, I’ll tell you the exact number… Yes, 5km. Can you believe it? Then after newspaper reading and all the group activities, I did Gardening for an hour. It was super fun, wasn’t it Tanay?’
‘Yeah, it was.’
‘Tell them no, how fast I was, how I completed the task of three hours in one.’
‘Yeah, you did.’
‘Oh, there’s no point talking to you, always such a moment breaker.’
‘Alright well Archit, let’s not say things like these. We are here to appreciate each other, remember? You did really well and we all should learn from you, but rest is equally important. Now, you will be resting for an hour after this activity, just like we discussed.’
‘But I don’t want to. Let’s go for Zumba classes after this activity.’
‘No Archit. We will go for the class in the evening, alright’
‘Huh alright.’
‘What about you Sarah? How are you feeling today?’
‘I am feeling fine.’
‘Great. So, as we all know, today is the last day of Sarah with all of us here. She is going home today. As per our tradition, let’s hear what she has to say and appreciate it. Go ahead Sarah.’
‘Okay, umm...yeah, so first of all, I want to thank all of you for supporting me, keeping me in check, especially Amy, for always listening to me. I don’t know how I would have survived here without you. Thank you Amy for your understanding and love. Also, big thanks to you for your patience ma'am. Hope I will never see you again. Thank you all.’
Everybody applauded her and said goodbye. It was her second year in rehabilitation center. Finally she was going home, if there was any.
Amy was her best friend since two years. They came on the same day and wanted to go together as well. But now, Sarah was going before her. She still had two months to go. They had so many plans. They wanted to travel, have fun, for as long as it was possible. They decided to stay with each other forever, as both of them had no families.
