Skip to main content

Before I Die

 


Fiction

Sangeeta is selling the last bit of her gold – a couple of bangles, a small necklace and our wedding ring – for the money to pay my hospital bill. One microbial virus has eaten up all that we saved so far. The hospital gave us more bills than medicines. “There’s no medicine,” the nurse said sullenly when I dared to give voice to my apprehensions. “You need oxygen,” she added mercifully.

And the oxygen cost us all our savings.

A few kilometres away from where I’m lying on a hospital bed waiting for Sangeeta to come with the money for my oxygen stands the tallest statue in the world, the Statue of Unity. There are no hospitals anywhere near that statue. My home lay there in Kevadia before the statue came like a monster swallowing our homes. Crunch, crunch, crunch! The statue ate up our homes. Where our village stood, today stands Sardar Patel’s foot. In fact, our village stood just where one of his big toes stands.

We are proud of course. Proud of that toe for which we sacrificed our village. Proud of an ancient civilisation for which our Prime Minister is sacrificing himself.

“It was predicted that India would be the most affected country from corona all over the world,” Prime Minister told us sometime back. “But we are exporting vaccines to developed countries.” Patriotism surged in my veins like a furious drug. I raised my fist in the air with a violent energy and hailed my country’s greatness which was upheld by my Prime Minister.

Oxygen is killing us. One lakh rupees for breath is beyond us even if Sangeeta manages to sell even our hut.

Am I worth it?

When was it that I shouted for Shamshan? “If a kabristan is built in a village, a shamshan should also be constructed there,” Prime Minister said and we all shouted like mad furies, “Shamshan! Shamshan!”

There is shamshan all over the country today. Prime Minister’s dream is fulfilled. Parking lots and gardens have become shamshans. We are a nation of shamshans.

Don’t sell yourself, Sangeeta. I’m liberating you from me. I’m disconnecting my oxygen.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Chhattisgarh Story

Deforestation in Chhattisgarh Kerala’s Catholic Church is teeming with rage these days because of the arrest of two nuns in Chhattisgarh on false charges. No one seems to understand the real politics behind the Modi government’s enmity towards Christian missionaries in Chhattisgarh as well as other backward states in its neighbourhood. Modi is selling the tribal areas and forestlands to the corporate sector part by part, his friend Adani being the chief benefactor. The Christian missionaries are a severe hindrance in that commerce. Let us get some facts right, at least. The Adivasi villagers allege that Gram Sabhas (local governing bodies) were forged or manipulated under pressure from Adani and the BJP government officials in order to take away their lands. In Hasdeo Aranya, minutes of the local body meetings were altered to show the villagers’ consent for land transfers. Also, the Chhattisgarh Scheduled Tribes Commission found that Panchayat secretaries were detained and coerc...
10 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Ironies of Power: Modi at Gangaikonda-Cholapuram

When Narendra Modi posed for one of his infinite photo-ops framed against the gopuram of the ancient Gangaikonda-Cholapuram Temple on 27 July 2025, one of the biggest ironies of history was created. Gangaikonda-Cholapuram was the capital of Rajendra Chola (r 1014-1044) who was much different from Modi upon whom the BJP leader H Raja conferred the title of the “Living Gangai Kondan”. Rajendra Chola’s empire was marked by pluralism. He built temples but was not a religious bigot. The differences don’t end there. They just begin. Rajendra Chola was a Tamil ruler and a symbol of Dravidian pride. A man like Modi, who is using every means at his disposal to impose Aryan-centric ideology and suppress India’s diverse cultures, religions, and languages, can never truly wear the mantle once borne by Rajendra Chola. Modi’s very presence in the ancient Chola capital looks like a grotesque appropriation of a legacy that resists his political agenda.   The Chola Empire patronised multipl...
4 comments
Read more