Sign Out

Too long and too silently have I suffered,

from this punishment that the world calls life.

The only thing that can bring my battered soul solace,

is the glistening, but sharp, blade of the knife.

Why did they invite me to enjoy the world's spoils,

when they knew that each bit of it was poisoned and cursed?

Why did they pretend to embellish my wretched destiny,

while secretly it was only their fortunes they nursed?

Why was I even shown luring mirages of success,

when all that was intended for me was ruin and wreckage?

Why was it that I never got to write my own story,

and the one they had written opened directly at the last page?

They answered my blind loyalty with shameless betrayal,

and dissolved my faith in a steaming cauldron of deceit.

At my slightest slip, they came swooping down upon me,

like eerie vultures descending on a piece of leftover meat.

Too long I stayed illusioned by their Machiavellian tactics,

and consorted in their brazen acts of transgression.

But, now I can play the masochistic puppet no longer -

too famished am I now to battle this depression.

The world is always free to hate and despise me,

for the road I am to take is laid with a defeatist's tar.

But let those chance few who loved me, know

that but for them I wouldn't even have made it this far.

The world hasn't been completely unkind to me,

and I do have some sweet memories to carry yonder.

There were indeed a few alleys of unraided happiness,

and in them will my surrendered soul seek to wander.

And now, this paper will patiently wait on the side-table,

to announce my decision to take the long journey back.

And the last line this unfortunate hand will ever write,

will be a thin crimson one across my neck...

- NISHANK MEHTA

14.08.2009

NOTE : While writing this poem, I suddenly realized what a wide scope the theme of a suicide's last words provided. I could easily lend the poem an emotional hue, or paint the picture of a martyr to some lost cause, or evoke pity for a man whom the world failed to understand. Eventually, I refuted each of these ideas and chose to represent the victim as a freak and a loser that most suicides actually are. I featured it as an act of weakness, a tame submission to the demanding world, an act that smelt of disregard for the sanctity of life and a complete disbelief in divine intervention in the form of what Gandhiji called 'Nirbal ke Balraam'. There are suicides which could be justified in an extended stretch of imagination and social logic - but, usually they only deserve to be condemned. I will be happier if the reader is repulsed by this poem than if he actually likes it.