Utopian Myth

The last vestiges of daylight are disappearing fast into the twilight and with the dim dank world closing in on me I gradually feel myself being pulled into the darkness, heavy lidded and slipping away. As the memories begin to fade away there is a moment of absolute clarity, the kind most people attribute true awakening and attainment of inner peace to. At this moment I feel a deep sense of contentment with my life and an accompaniment of heightened senses, and though I was skeptical my life is indeed flashing through my mind.

The cosy feeling of being nestled in a cocoon of love and tenderness was my first memory of this world, the place where I was most cherished and protected, I remember wishing to be forever a part of this oh so welcoming home of mine. They would talk about nothing but me, with so many hopes and dreams already in their eyes, it was as though through me they would get to relive their lives in the most magnificent ways and realize all their unfulfilled dreams. I felt like a princess in a fairy tale, there wasn't much left for me to wish for in life, but being human I succumbed to the temptations and asked for my people to love me just the same, exactly the way I was eternally. My juvenile mind had not yet learned the ways of this world and hence could never have wrapped my head around what was to come next.

After this pampered phase of my life I was jolted out of my comfort zone, I didn't know why but there was pandemonium around me and all the fights, screaming matches were getting to me, even as I remained clueless as to what it was all about. For days on end my mom’s crying would pierce through the grey clouds of my deep slumber, leave me deeply disturbed without any inkling of how to comfort her. Gradually I picked up on the gist of the arguments and a picture began to shape up slowly out of the swirling mass of confused thoughts that had been wrecking havoc in my head over the past few days. A doctor’s appointment and something about a boy had been at the center of it all. Gradually my panic began to ebb but I was worried for my mom and her health as I had heard time and again of how she needed to take care of herself, eat healthy etc. My knowledge of doctors had been very limited as they popped up infrequently in family conversations, as far as I knew they were magicians who could fix any problem and hence I relaxed back into the creature comforts of my existence.

The visit to the hospital was a jarring experience imprinted in my memory forever, what had started off as a routine check up quickly morphed into a never ending nightmare that continues to haunt me till date. When we entered into the pristine compound of the hospital I was assailed by the all too familiar yet still overpowering smell of clinical disinfectants. Around us people were bustling about taking care of patients, listening to grievances and administering both advice as well as treatments. We left behind the chaos and moved to a cooler dimly lit corridor with a slight draft where a nurse ushered us in with a hushed command. Once inside the doctor’s chambers there was a frenzied discussion with the doctor and a quiver of questions shot at him by my family, but I missed most of it as my attention had drifted to the occupants of the ward who had been moaning and complaining continually, I guess that was my first brush with human suffering. I came back to where my family now sat quiet and resolute as though a grave verdict had been passed looking expectantly, even as my grandma handed over a fat wad of notes over to the nurse, who drew us away and began preparing for something in earnest.

I had been so engrossed in the sad state of affairs and the painful stories of the varied occupants of the ward that it took me a while to realize that we were now at an operation theatre and then there was a sharp stinging pain, the feeling of being disembodied and then a disconnect from my reality as I had known it when I was brutally ripped away with some sort of metal tongs and discarded along with medical waste. I was already unnerved by the experience when it dawned on me that my family was no longer around me; I had become truly and hopelessly lost. I remember waking up to pungent smells and an assortment of scattered rotten objects around me, I who had had a plush and cushioned luxurious lifestyle so far was now lying near a garbage dump. I started feeling dizzy and disoriented as though I was slowly losing all sense of who I was, when rallying all the strength I had left in me I brought the world back into focus. There were loud sirens of police vans as they sped away to prevent some crime from happening I reckoned, recalling the bedtime stories, but some time later I saw money exchanging hands and the supposed guardians of society brutalize a minor in a shady corner. The world of goodness that had been introduced to me was slowly coming apart in front of my horrified eyes.

My mind was still numb from processing the reigning chaos I had been abandoned in, but there were more horrors in store. It was as though life had decided to burden me with all of its truths and reveal its true colours in such a short span. Then the world around me vibrated and I tumbled down to the moist earth, and all at once I found kindred spirits there lying in the soiled earth, in the so called dregs of our society. The ground was home to others who had been attacked, their spirits crushed, they had all been subjected to grave injustices at the hands of this society; like me they too had been abandoned, all illusions about humanity lost in the face of tragedy.

As I lay there now fully aware of the fate that lay ahead of me, I resented my family for ripping my chance at life from me just because I had made the mistake of being a girl. All those hopes and dreams that they had led me to believe I was entitled to, had been destroyed within moments of finding out what I would grow up to be. I had never asked them for anything but their betrayal had still come as a shock, because in the months that I was growing up, I had been showered with such love and care and their eager anticipation for my arrival had lulled me into a false sense of security. When I was ripped out from my home with extreme force and left to die in a dustbin at the side of a road my world had come shattering down, left me with a bitter taste.

But as the waves of resentment and anger receded, another idea germinated, one that was far more dark and twisted than would have been expected from someone who had not yet even been born into the society I had heard so much about. I thought back to all the undesirable elements I had encountered and the pain and suffering I had witnessed this society inflict on its members, and realized with a weird sense of exhilaration that I did not want to be a part of it anyway. That maybe what I had considered as backstabbing on the part of my family might actually have been the best thing to happen to me. Because I now knew beyond a trace of doubt that the utopia that had been heard so much about and looked forward to being a part of from the sweet confines of my mother’s womb was just a myth … real society was a horror that I no longer possessed a desire to be a part of. And with this conviction came that rare moment of clarity, when your entire life flashes in front of you. But what for most people was joy at having lived a full life, came to me as relief that I had escaped the tumultuous journey that would have been life in this often barbaric and unjust society. That is the last discernible thought that I am conscious of as I slip into the bright lights and welcoming warmth of what I suppose is the afterlife, and I leave behind this bit of me to rot and become one with the world I am leaving behind.