Athar: a journey to Costa del crime
Gloomy and sombre sky, half torn up kurta, just a slipper in right foot, the cool breeze triggering his body an episode of chills, his puffy eyes looking up the sky,” Can someone up there fix this shattered heart and end this pain?”, he wondered. His bloody hands holding an Akoya pearl bracelet which he brought for his mother from Japan; in fact, it was robbed from the retailer’s. He was the only reason of his mother’s smile. Watching her on the hospital bed every day, experiencing the trauma of never ending suffering, getting tortured by the syringes but he was always there; for easing the pain. It was the never-ending disease, cancer.
Today, he was left with nothing but just a pearl bracelet and some pinching pain. Why are we created? Why are we sent on this planet? For His obedience or for tolerating pain? To watch our loved ones leave us? Or to watch them in affliction? These and many more questions tangled up in his mind. Athar spent his entire life earning money by unfair means; though the name itself means pure and pious.
Today, he was brutally beaten up by a shopkeeper for breaking into the pharmacy, he was inured to it as it happened many times before. Limping towards the oak tree, Athar saw a crow who was stuck in the prickly pear. “Poor soul.”, he murmured and quickly helped him get out of the mess. Lying under the oak tree along with the series of loud caws of the crow in his left out of pain; Athar recalled the watchman whose cycle he stole in the darkness of night. The watchman had 10 family members to feed and was fired accusing of making up a false story. “Where the watchman would be working now?”, he wondered. Athar closed his eyes and recalled further. “The pink purse contained $2000 and some change.”, he murmured. The Times wrote: “18-year-old girl, hit by a car, trying to chase the devil for stealing her pink purse.”. The only thing in his heart was regret, only regret.
“Will you ever forgive me My Creator? Will you even look upon me on the day of judgement?”. Tears rolling down his face, slipping from his ears, reached the grass and seemed to look like the morning dew. His heart palpitating the first second and missing beats the other. Pearls dropping out of the string one by one. Watching the sunset, sky changing color from blue to greyish-purple; Athar felt weightless, light and relieved. “I can’t wait to see you Maa.”, he said; as if he was talking to the crow. His vision blackened out as the sky’s color got darker. The crow’s caws reluctantly came to an end and so did Athar’s breaths. There he was, silent, patient, pale and dead. Free from all regrets and pain.
