A Kinetic, he rides;
The wind engulfs his sides.Pillion, a friend of his,
This, his last journey is.In the traffic, he rummages for a crevice,
The need for speed, his ultimate vice.Bangs into a rick,
The ground, he now can lick.For he toppled onto earth,
As if, for life, he was in dearth.Burnt rubber's scent permeates the air,
A deafening roar, like that of a lion, in his lair.Light, it seems, fades away,
As the tyre makes its way.Shattering his cranium, he feels no pain,
For what sense can he make, without a brain?This gruesome tale,
Leaves us all ail.Tomorrow it could be a bus,
And the victims, us.
D: Beeshma passd away
T: What?
D: Yup.
T: You said, "Bheeshma passed away" and then, "Yup".. You okay?
D: He jus got run over by a tempo.
T: What the hell? Dude?
D: Dude i ws wid him...im gona cry
T: What if this is one of those pranks of yours?
D: Thomas shut it.
D: Tom i wudn kid bt dis.
D: He fell unda da tempo afta hitn a ric
T: On a bike?
D: Yup.
T: How were you with him? You were on the same bike?
D: No i was near lcd.
T: And you're so okay with it.. I mean.. You're stable enough to message about it?
D: Dude.. im frikn shakn here.
T: You've told everyone else?
D: Yup..nainita cld
That was an excerpt of the conversation between Deepak and me yesterday afternoon.
Death is such an incidental thing:
- If he had woken up earlier that day, maybe he'd have never met the rickshaw or the tempo.
- If his sister had taken the bike to college, maybe he would've been in the tempo, and not under it.
- If he overcame his laziness and returned upstairs to get his helmet, maybe he'd have lived.
- If he didn't rip to get past that red signal earlier, ...
- If he had decided to take another less congested route, ...
- If he had not taken the trouble to close the gate before leaving, ...
This is one of the main reasons I don't think it's worth living.
After all, that second hand smoke you got exposed to because your hostelmate smoked is going to kill you, innit? Shouldn't the hostel manager be arrested for making him share a room with you? Shouldn't his father be arrested for smoking in front of him and getting him into the vice?
Maybe if you'd woken up late that day and reached school late, the bomb those goddamn terrorists planted in your classroom would've exploded without you.
The pail of milk you could have volunteered to deliver would've made you conscious of the speed you were to ride at and thus avoid the skid that lead you to your eternal rest under the tyre of a double-decker tourist bus.
And I thought good people went far in life. Well, that person whose hostelmate smoked was a valedictorian. He was a good kid. So was the kid who reached school in time. The latecomers didn't die that day, even though they were "bad" kids.
Life, studies and relationships all fade to gray when a friend ceases to sense the light of day.
Bheesh. I'm downloading those South Park episodes you wanted. I'll drop them off tomorrow at your place.
I'll never forget the times you "borrowed" my whitener to vandalize class desks with your creative, satiric lyrics.
Or the discussions we had about internet connections.. and how badly you wanted a faster one.
Or the times I jeered on about Monisha, likening her to another Monisha. You didn't like her being likened to someone else. I'm sorry.
Nor the times in 9th grade, when I sat diagonally and directly behind you while you lightened up the darkest of situations.
May your rest be as peaceful as your death was lurid.
As a tribute, I call upon you all to listen to "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton. It's a wonderful song from the genre of Blues and the lyrics fit the painful context of this post.
I'm just back from his funeral. His family's lost its father in a landslide in 2000 and now him in 2007. It's just 2 girls, a mother and a grandmother. It's a three-legged table that has just lost another leg. And a table can't stand without a couple of its legs, can it? Pessimism aside, he's got a very potent pair of sisters and an extremely resilient mom. They don't need our sympathy, just maybe our support.
As a memorial, we're pooling up some cash to buy either the bheeshma.com or bheeshmafutnani.com domain and designing a website that'll include testimonials, photographs and some of his works.
