Breath of the African violet

I looked at the African violet on my window sill, slowly withering in the rays of the morning sun. I hadn’t watered them for five days. But where was the tap, I thought as I lay motionless and disabled on my stinking bed. I tried hard to remember again, “Where is the tap?”, I failed. I smiled wryly as I felt my the  strands of my tattered memory seeping out of my body, the body which nobody cared for and which nobody wished to see.

I didn’t know what had happened in the last few days, I didn’t remember. Nobody called because I faintly remember cutting the wires of my telephone and I had dismissed the maid from her services because I didn’t like the way she looked at my film posters. My friends? I couldn’t   recall their names as they had slipped quietly from my withering mind in the last five days.

 I looked at the pot of African violet, the sun rays were growing stronger, I knew that by today they would die out as I couldn’t remember where the tap was. I tried to move my limbs but I only managed to move my shoulder blades. I tried again and this time I felt one of the pus-filled bed sores on my back burst open. As the pus oozed out I imagined what they would write in the newspapers, ‘Ageing sex siren rots to death’ or they would be kind, ‘Ageing film star starves to death’. I smiled ,it was odd that I couldn’t remember the colour of my eyes or the shape of my nose,I couldn’t remember how I looked. I think I looked like those decaying African violets. I don’t know why they are called African violets because I remember the ones on my window sill were white five days back. “Violet even if they were white, just because people like to call them so.”

Suddenly I remembered where the tap was. I decided to get up and give the violet its last drink. I brought back a mug of water and poured it on the pot. They looked the same, only a bit wet. “What is my name?”

 I lay down on the stained bed and stared at the window sill. After some time I tried to answer the question I had asked myself before, I was worried   because I didn’t know what the answer could be. But surely I know my name, I wasn’t that wasted because I could remember where the tap was. I looked at the afternoon sun rays caressing the leaves of the plant. I smiled, may be it would live. I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I threw one last look at the African violet on my window sill; I remembered my name. And I remembered how death feels.