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.
