Kiss of Death

Taking the walk down the memory lane has always been easy for me than to plan for the future. Be it pain or happiness, it was always good to look back as I don’t have to be there and go through it again physically to feel it.


It was one fine summer morning and I was happily in the train watching the beautiful picturesque scenery that painted both sides of the rail road. It made me think that life moves like this very train and we are like the standing trees waiting to be uprooted.
I was 13 years then and was going to my grandma’s for the summer holidays. I always loved the country side. I remember my parents telling me that even as a toddler, I spent hours sitting in the barn that houses the cows and keep talking to them and to me they are great listeners even today.

I especially loved the pond that floated the lilies and lotuses and twenty years after, even today, I could not reach its bottom. People in the village say that the pond has been dug deep some twenty five years ago and is their only source of irrigation for all seasons and the good old wise men told me that they hadn’t seen any man dive down to feel the land beneath.

The kids of the village were great swimmers and they always play catch me if you can in the pond. I asked my cousin to get me the biggest lotus that lay in the middle of the pond. He is a great swimmer and was at it instantly. These country kids seriously had nothing to hide. They play and jump around in the water naked. They did not have anything to cover them. The pond had timings for everyone. The men always bathe in the evening after their day’s toil in their farm land.

Delightfully, everyone owned a piece of land in this village. Not that they are well off by birth but they were once led by a great soul who owned the entire village. Eventually, he shared his wealth with the people who toiled long and hard for many years in his land.

The women were early risers and they came before the sun and washed the linen and bathed and left. The pond was almost unvisited in the noon. Only on weekends, when the children don’t have to go to school, the pond had company all afternoon.

I was wearing a long waist cloth from waist to toe (We call it LUNGI) and was standing on the banks of the pond. I always wanted to jump in but was a bad swimmer. I felt compelled and seeing even the little ones do summersaults hurt my ego. I just jumped and was not bad at all. I was an athlete and had a great physique and stamina at least on the land. I was floating and moving my arms and limbs haphazardly and was moving inwards and staying afloat. I found strength and targeted the lotus in the middle of the pond.



By the time I reached the middle, I was exhausted and tired and I screamed at my brother. He saw me sinking in to the water and coming out frantically gasping for air. The long cloth that I wore felt very heavy inside the water and I was being dragged down. I was using my arms to come out of the water for air and was kicking hard to let go of the waist cloth. The cloth did loosen up at the waist, but only to tangle below the knees. I felt the end of the world. When I went inside the water, my eyes were wide open all the time. In the first few dips, the water was green. When I started drinking more water and was suffocating the same water appeared blue and then black.



I was too tired to move my legs and they let go of their ambition to kick the cloth out. I thought I kicked the bucket instead. The moment my legs stopped moving, the cloth fell off and almost involuntarily I started kicking my legs again and was on the surface once more and was fighting for my life not willing to visit the other side of the world.



My cousin was a couple of years older than I and reached out to me attempting to help. I, out of fear, held on to him, choking him and sending him under the water. It looked like, I would not die alone.



He sensed the danger of dying with me and kicked my torso hard and left me sinking. The next time, I came up for a breather, I faintly saw him on the banks. He was screaming for help. Next to the pond was a bamboo grove, where an old man was selectively cutting the full grown bamboos, to be used for a hut.



The man sensed the danger and ran across and nosedived in to the pond. He was in his sixties and was very wise. When he came near, he started talking to me “Now boy, listen to me. I am going to get you out. If you try to catch me, I will leave you and go. Do not attempt to swim. Do not move a muscle.” He kept repeating the same thing myriad times before he caught hold of my hair. He lifted me high enough to let me have continuous breath. He kept repeating the same thing over and over again till we reached the banks. I got out of water and sat on the nearby stone motionless and it was not good to feel the water in my lungs. It was horrible.



The country side has its ups and downs. My visit was approved by my father as my ailing grandma wanted to see me and everyone thought that it was her last wish. But she was the one who was badly devastated by my drowning. Everyone openly verbally abused her on her face stating that she was the cause of my accident. They told that she could not die alone and wanted to take me along with her. As a kid, I did not want to kiss her because she had wrinkles all over her face. She was in her late eighties. When she cried asking me to leave the village immediately, I too cried with her and hugged and kissed her.



I never came out of the house a couple of days, for I feared that the water in the pond would come and take my life away again. The grip of fear made me unwise.



During my entire struggle for life in the water, I did not think of God even once. Over the next few days, I felt ashamed and there was no dearth of guilt pounding my conscious self. I wanted to be forgiven. I keep asking even today.



Twenty years went by and I still did not find God’s plan for me. I am still searching. I take life as it comes. I don’t complain much. I am preparing to hold God in my thoughts when I kick the frame. I struggle every day. In my moments of adversity and joy I remember him. I thank him in the morning for giving me another day and I thank him when I go to bed and pray that he be in my thoughts in the very moments if I don’t wake up to see the sun.



I wish and pray that he be a permanent resident of my heart.