Two deaths – A love story

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we’re afraid. We fear we will not find love, and when we find it we fear we’ll lose it. We fear that if we do not have love we will be unhappy. — Richard Bach

Once it rained real hard. A river swelled and washed over its banks. Entire villages and towns were submerged and their people fled.

Many were stranded on rooftops and waited for help. Days passed. One day at around noon, a young woman atop an old school building saw a man swimming by. He wasn’t doing too well though. He looked exhausted and on the verge of giving up.

The woman called to him but he didn’t seem to be able to hear her.

Just as the man was about to lose to the water, the woman jumped in for him.

The woman put her arm around the unconscious man’s neck and started swimming back towards the school building.

But the old school building collapsed on them when they got near it. It was the death of them both.

Some time later, the man woke up on an almost unreal beach to find a sad and beautiful young woman sitting next to him. Her chin rested on her palms and her elbows rested on her knees. Her legs were crossed and she was staring at the setting sun.

“Who are you?” he asked her when she didn’t react to his waking up.

She turned to look at him. She sighed and said, “My name is Kavita.”

He realised he was speechless. So he extended his hand, “I am Mohit.”

“Where are we?” he asked, to either her or to no one in particular.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But we are dead.” They were both silent for a while before she spoke again, “I wanted to be an IAS officer.”

He was sorry. But he didn’t know what to say. He could have said that he was sorry but it wouldn’t really have conveyed how sorry he was. To be frank, he wasn’t even sure why he was so sorry.

He got up dusting his clothes and looked around. The beach was beautiful. He realised what a torture it would have been to be alone in a place like this.

“I will go have a look around,” he said uncertainly.

“Wait,” she said, getting up. “I will come with you. No point me sitting here alone.”

His heart swelled with joy. He tried to keep it from showing.

They walked the length of the beach looking for they knew not what.

“So,” he tried to strike up a conversation, “How did you die?”

She wasn’t speaking. But she managed to grow even more silent.

“You don’t know?” she asked, without looking at him. “Do you know how you died?

“I drowned I think,” he said, rather apologetically.

“I tried to save you,” she said. “Did a lousy job. I am sorry.”

“It’s alright,” he said after a moment’s silence. He wasn’t angry or sorry. Far from it in fact. He considered laughing but decided against it in the end.

“Who are you?” she asked him. “As in, what do you… did… you do?”

“I was a political activist. I organised campaign rallies and stuff.”

“Sounds interesting,” she said sounding uninterested. He sighed inwardly.

“Actually…” he said, “No. I wasn’t an activist… or anything. I was a… people hired me to… beat people up and… kill people.”

She stopped walking and stared at him. He felt his defences falling away.

“Well…” she said, “We are dead now. So it probably doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Ok,” he said. He was ashamed.

“Are you ashamed?” she asked. “Of killing people… for money.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think I am.”

They had reached what appeared to be the end of the unreal beach. The sun still hung in the evening sky, unwilling to set.

There were people waiting for them.

A group of people gestured to her and she went in their direction. He thought she could at least have said goodbye. Then he decided he wouldn’t have liked the sound of that.

Then he felt an unbearable tug of loneliness. As if he had spent centuries alone on the beach. He tried following her but found he couldn’t.

So he went to the other group – the one waiting for him. An old man he vaguely recognised from a dream or some past life stood smiling at him.

“What do you want?” the old man asked him.

“Punish me,” he said and almost choked on the words. “I deserve punishment for the things I have done.”

“Perhaps,” said the old man, “But that is not for me to say. One punishes himself. One rewards himself. One gets what one wants. Your punishment has probably already begun.”

He didn’t ask for an explanation. The old man didn’t offer any. All the man was thinking of was her stare.

The old man said, “She is entering a life of extreme hardships. It won’t be easy to watch her.”

“I deserve to be with her then. I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”

The old man nodded, and the beach melted away. A day later, the two were born again, nearly a world apart, but already on their ways to what they wanted most.