Eternity Starts With ‘I’

My dear Jeev,

I’m emailing you because he said I could. I don’t know why he’s letting me, but he wanted me to make a choice and maybe it’s because of that?

I know you don’t believe I’m me and you must be freaking out, so let me prove it first. Remember our hike to Seer’s Green? I ate the last three biscuits and that was the first time you called me Greedo. You gave me your energy bar after that and your orange juice. I’ve been your Greedo ever since, haven’t I?

I can give you another example if you need it. The day before the accident, I put my red kurta in the wash and some of your office shirts turned pink. You thought I did it on purpose because I was upset about our argument earlier. You said you understood my frustration but ruining your shirts didn’t help anyone. And you hugged me because I was angry at you for not being angry at me. But I didn’t do it on purpose this time, Jeev. I really didn’t. I thought it was colour-safe, I swear by you.

I’m in hell right now, Jeev. It’s all real - Yama, naraka, everything. Yama wasn’t at all like the Amar Chitra Katha illustrations. He looked like you, actually, when he judged my life and sentenced me to hell.

I wasn’t a terrible person, he said. Just a run-of-the-mill self-centred one - prone to focusing on myself and my wants, my needs, my desires, my life. That qualified me for hell. He said heaven is for altruists and empathetic people who give of themselves. I didn't belong with them, he told me. I should have felt remorse, I suppose, but what was I to do? It’s not like I asked to be selfish. Life made me the way I was. You can’t change who you are.

I’ve been put in this infinite land, Jeev. My own private hellscape, only for me. No contact with anyone, no one to talk to or look at. Ever. I’m free to roam around as I will but it’s just… nothing. Everywhere. Grey earth, grey sky... featureless, bland nothing. I’ve walked around for what feels like years, but the landscape never changes. It could be years, it could be seconds, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know how long it’s been, Jeev. It’s just me, my thoughts, my memories, and grey grey grey nothing forever and ever and ever…

I loved myself a lot in life, he said, so I shouldn’t mind an eternity spent with myself. Being caught up in your own life shouldn’t be that bad a sin, should it? I didn’t hurt anyone on purpose, I didn’t rob anyone of their life savings, I didn’t cheat on you, I didn’t do anything except live my life for me. But that wasn’t good enough. He said apathy perpetuates the pain caused by malice and should be held equally to account. So I’m here now. It’s just grey no matter how long I walk, Jeev. It’s hell. I hate it hate it hate it!

I think about everything we did. I try to remember the good times. The first time I ate vada pav at Juhu beach, ragging the freshers in college, my promotion last year. But the grey is beginning to seep into everything, Jeev. The memories don’t make me happy like they did. They don’t make me feel anything. They’re beginning to feel flat and featureless like everthing else here.

I can hear screams sometimes. Other people being tortured? They must have been much worse than me in life. I don’t know why he lets me hear them, Jeev. Some sort of lesson for me? I don’t know but it’s horrible. They scream and scream and scream and the sound bores through my brain. It’s the only thing that pierces my grey and I don’t want it. I don’t want it! I wish they would stop screaming! Maybe he thinks I’ll reach a point where I’ll want to scream like them -  at least they feel something, at least someone else exists in their reality to torture them. I’m just so alone here.

I need to tell you something else, Jeev. He came to me again, looking just like you. He had your laugh lines, he sounded like you - he was you, Jeev. He held me and it felt like you. And he gave me a choice. 

I could be alone for eternity in this grey.

I don’t think you can understand what eternity means, Jeev. My mind is still me, but time? It just goes on and on and on and on. This same landscape, the same colourless memories, the same screams, the same nothing. Forever. No hellfire, only damnation. He won’t let the grey nothing drown me, he won’t let me go mad. I just walk, Jeev. Forever and ever and ever. I didn’t deserve this, Jeev. I didn't! But he said I would be alone here like this, or...

I could bring someone into my reality to accompany me, he said. To walk through eternity with. He said it didn’t matter if they were bound for heaven, he would save them for me. I wouldn’t be alone anymore, you understand?

I know this is a test of some sort. He is testing me, watching to see what I choose. I know this, Jeev. Please understand.

I love you,

Indira