As I push the door, it opens with a creek, almost poetically. As I enter, I can distinctly smell the smoke of a freshly stubbed out cigarette. Strange, because it has been quite some time since anyone has been here. The tinge frolicks around with my nostrils for a few moments before they get used to it. Is it really the smell, I ponder, or my mind playing around with the memories I have of this room, his room.
The room is dark and gloomy, still I can make out the faint outlines of the furniture inside. There isn't much of what can be accommodated in a hostel room, but still, his room has quite a lot of stuff, all randomly placed inside. Because of the darkness, I cannot see it, but it is there, I can feel the obstacles. Almost like they have an aura around them, his aura.
As I flick up the button of the bulb, the room is immediately filled up with soft gloomy yellowness, pushing the darkness to the corners, making it hide in the shadows. There is a chair immediately in front of me, a cluttered workdesk to my right, a pile of unlaundered clothes on the bed, a couple of suitcases unwelcoming me into their owner's domain, a wheezy typewriter stashed away in a corner, tons and tons of paper everywhere: class notes, correspondence, his "idea" pages, the "festival material"; all strewn about. Everything looking back at me just like I am looking at them. Without passion or emotion, devoid of energy, just us gazing at each other. A feeling of statis grips me. It seems nothing has been touched since then.
A crunch beneath my feet. A used up matchstick. A box of matches on the desk. Depressing amounts of cigarette stubs in the waste bin. Stubbing-out marks on the desk drawer. An empty box of cigarettes.
Then I see it.
On a small bedside table I see a stubbed out cigarette. Perfectly left untouched. The ashes are there, the insignia of the brand intact, as he used to keep it. The filter a bit crooked with the pressure applied on the top and still standing in the little pile of ash. Beside it is a letter pad, with the impressions still there of the note written on the page that must have been above it, the page that must have been hastily torn apart by him. A page that he was carrying with him when he was found.
A suicide note. In my dead friend's pocket.
I can feel my eyes getting moist. I must go away now. I give one parting look at my friend's last smoke, and close the door behind me.
-Pratyush
The room is dark and gloomy, still I can make out the faint outlines of the furniture inside. There isn't much of what can be accommodated in a hostel room, but still, his room has quite a lot of stuff, all randomly placed inside. Because of the darkness, I cannot see it, but it is there, I can feel the obstacles. Almost like they have an aura around them, his aura.
As I flick up the button of the bulb, the room is immediately filled up with soft gloomy yellowness, pushing the darkness to the corners, making it hide in the shadows. There is a chair immediately in front of me, a cluttered workdesk to my right, a pile of unlaundered clothes on the bed, a couple of suitcases unwelcoming me into their owner's domain, a wheezy typewriter stashed away in a corner, tons and tons of paper everywhere: class notes, correspondence, his "idea" pages, the "festival material"; all strewn about. Everything looking back at me just like I am looking at them. Without passion or emotion, devoid of energy, just us gazing at each other. A feeling of statis grips me. It seems nothing has been touched since then.
A crunch beneath my feet. A used up matchstick. A box of matches on the desk. Depressing amounts of cigarette stubs in the waste bin. Stubbing-out marks on the desk drawer. An empty box of cigarettes.
Then I see it.
On a small bedside table I see a stubbed out cigarette. Perfectly left untouched. The ashes are there, the insignia of the brand intact, as he used to keep it. The filter a bit crooked with the pressure applied on the top and still standing in the little pile of ash. Beside it is a letter pad, with the impressions still there of the note written on the page that must have been above it, the page that must have been hastily torn apart by him. A page that he was carrying with him when he was found.
A suicide note. In my dead friend's pocket.
I can feel my eyes getting moist. I must go away now. I give one parting look at my friend's last smoke, and close the door behind me.
-Pratyush
Psst ... Pratyush doesn't know I wrote this story in his name. :)
