Angel of Death

The wind that blew around her was different. Not like that back home (laced ever so slightly with dust and a pinch of familiarity). This breeze was foreign. It played with her hair hesitantly, like a new lover, unsure of its limits.

As the breeze gently introduced itself to her, she contemplated the view in front of her. The evening cast shadows beneath everything thing. Shadows speaking of hope, hinting at opportunity and comforting her with their depths.

Closing her eyes, she tried to remember the view from the balcony back home. With considerable effort (and a smidgen of pain), she managed to change the vague shapes in her head into the crummy apartment buildings that clotted her area. Her building, along with the rest, was only 5 stories high, with paint curling down the sides and a wide-open sewer along the entrance that welcomed visitors. Needless to say, the view afforded wasn’t the best. But Azra didn’t bother much with that view anyway. That view was for people whose feet were firmly planted in their world. Sometimes planted in other peoples’ worlds’ too. These people were perfectly aware of the number of male (and sometimes female) visitors the woman on the 4th floor had. They also knew vegetables were cheaper from the sabzi-wallah on Saturday evenings rather than the rest of the days. Their minds were so jammed with such information that finally, they had a very small space left in their brains from which they peered out into the world.

That said, Azra didn’t quite live in that very world. Her heart, her mind and her soul were twisted together into a shape that didn’t fit in her body all too well. When she stepped out on the balcony of her pink-tiled, dustily-familiar smelling balcony, a bubble of (un)Reality would envelope her and take her far away. She’d sit (or float if you prefer) for hours, looking at the sky. Mesmerized she’d speak the language of birds, bats and stars, of clouds and wind. And the Sky would answer. It told her everything, the things going on in nooks and crannies of places far away from where she sat. Other peoples realities were made into her unrealities and she took it all in, nourished on this enchantment, unable to see how anyone could ignore it.

However, back down in her immediate vicinity, there remained a reason for her to care about this ‘other’ world. A living, breathing reason to her to continue living and breathing. The molded shape of her mind-heart-soul had to make concessions and fit into her physical being, for someone needed her. And this someone’s need was what she needed to continue Project Self. It gurgled for her to continue and melted her with a half-toothed smile. At 15 months, she was Azra’s only connection to life but proved to be a strong one.
*
Today, as she stood on cool black tiles instead, at least the view on the ground seemed much changed. Gone was the gluttonous sewer, the litter dumps. Other apartment blocks still stood but they were all painted a neat beige with flowers (actual flowers!) growing in flower beds lining the boundaries. It seemed a bit evil to her that flowers were being used to divide further this already fragmented world. Pretty flowers saying ‘this is mine and this, my dear, is yours’. Hmm…they were hypocrites too. So colorful and sweet on the surface yet struggling away to divide, differentiate underneath.

The breeze had gotten a bit stronger by now. As if more confident, it twirled its fingers around her, pressing her pajamas to her body.

Her mind wandered back to the night when she’d stopped living. That was the night her connection to the ‘other’ world had broken, quite cruelly too. The night her being, her essence had stepped out of her body and resigned itself to watch, rather than live, her so called life. Project Self was voluntarily abandoned, terminated, ended essentially, perhaps before it was supposed to.
*

She’d been on the balcony as usual. All around lights glimmered from the town and beyond. Streetlights, store lights, house lights and just lights. The sky above was a murky black, not quite dark enough for the stars to shine through yet still dark. She watched contently, quietly, lying flat out with her chin resting on her hands.

Her smell, the smell of Romance mixed with milky-ness, wafted around her as though an invisible sentry, keeping guard. Her hair loosely tumbled over her shoulders reflecting a certain light that wasn’t quite there. The kohl lining her eyes seemed to be singing a tune, something about the darkness beneath the night. It was a soft tune, haunting almost.

The yellowing quilt beneath her wasn’t doing too good of a job of muting the feeling of sharp gravel underneath her elbows.

She looked down at the book nestled between her propped elbows. It was poetry of course; its pages still a mystery though. Gingerly, she turned over on her back and held the book up to the street light. Where is he? She wondered. He’s never this late. And then he came. The same inky blackness covered her momentarily and next second, he was next to her
‘Why are you so late?’ she inquired softly.
‘I have things to do’ he replied.
‘Well, I have a new book’ she said, wanting to press on but not doing so.
Pause.
‘Well, read something to me then’ almost coldly.
Confused, she opened the book randomly and read:
horizon
‘The sky melts into the sea
and the sea into the sky,
just like you and I,
for when is it that you
stop
and I,
begin?

Her voice lingered in the air. Each word hung tenuously, before fading away in the shadows to allow the next to be heard.

She turned her eyes to him. He looked more troubled than before. She wished she could reach out and touch him.

‘What’s wrong?’
No answer. She put the book down and hugged her knees, gently rocking back and forth. A jagged piece of stone poked into her hip through the quilt. She rocked her self over it again and again till the pain had numbed into a profound nothing.

Sounds were traveling up from the five floors of life below. A TV. A whirring fan. The lungs of a smoker blackening a bit more. The sighs of a hurting heart. The cries of a quiet, obedient wife. But nothing was really registering in Azra’s mind. Something was wrong that night. She tilted her head upwards and searched the ebony sky for a twinkle, a sign of hope. She looked and looked till the inner corner of her eyes burned and the kohl began to seep out into the little lines below her lashes. Disappointed, she lowered her head.

‘ I took something from you tonight’ his voice broke the hefty silence.
She turned to look at him. His gaze was fixed on something far away, something that perhaps wasn’t really there.
‘What?’
As the word escaped her mouth, she realized the absurdity in it.
She had only one thing in the world. One thing that kept her going, which she believed in and cared for. The one thing that put meaning and assured the continuity of Project Self.
And he took only one thing. Gurgling and half-toothed.
Life.
*

The black tiles were not that cool under her feet anymore. In fact they felt like they were burning. She shifted her feet slightly to diffuse the heat under them.

Indeed the view had much changed. Gazing upwards she realized it wasn’t only the view on earth, but that from the skies above too.