Social Issue Short Story – Happy Birthday to You
Photo credit: schmitee from morguefile.com
Happy Birthday to You!!!!
“So Twenty first birthday haan, must be very special for you. No more restrictions and no more age limit. I hope you had a blast”.
The cab stopped at the station. She got down, said thank you for the lift and left. She forgot her card in the cab. It was a birthday card. The passenger in that cab opened the card with Happy Birthday to you written on it and the moment it was opened, there was fire, screaming and bloodshed all-around.
Breaking News: – A major Bomb blast at Andheri Station. 149 killed and around 400 injured.
Q-What is life?
A-Life is a Journey.
It is a Journey towards the death. Full of thick and thins, joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, but eventually it comes to an end and that end is death. We come to this world alone and go alone. People cry and later forget you. Nobody waits for you. New people takes your place and life goes on….
These are not my thoughts or my words. It was written in a diary. A random dairy with a heart touching story. The person who wrote it already completed his journey that day. I was at the station, waiting for my family to come back. I heard something very weird and unusual. Like thousand crackers bursting together. It was not a normal blast. It was a huge one. People were running here and there, few with half cut hands and few with clothes full of blood. It was a very disturbing scene. People were crying in pain. So many innocents lost their life. I was lucky that my family and I were safe. I started looking around if somebody needs help. There were people who lost their hands, legs, nose, and ears. There were few bodies with no heads and no other body organs. One second had changed everybody’s life.
While getting out of the station I noticed a diary lying on the road. Everything around it was finished. It seemed that the place was centre of the blast. Few parts of a taxi were lying around. I was amused to see a diary, lying on the floor intact with hardly any damage. Strange isn’t it?
May be it was just a coincidence or maybe it was my destiny. Deep plan and conspiracy by the universe. I picked up the diary and kept it in my bag. It took us almost 3 hours to reach home. Reaching home mom started crying. She thanked god for saving her family, was cursing the heartless people who destroyed lives of the thousands. I went into my room, took shower and changed my clothes. Everybody in my family were busy watching news, relatives were calling continuously. I locked my room from inside. I wanted to be alone for some time.
I removed the diary from my bag. It seemed to be a new diary. The thoughts that I shared were written on the first page, rest all the pages were empty. There was a bookmark that took me to the page with the date 16th April 2014 written on it. It was the day when the blast took place. That person had written something on that page. It was a long note of around 2-3 pages.
“Finally all is well now. Life back to normal. Friendship is such a sweet relationship. We have our whole family our own siblings, people with same blood yet we find somebody who is more close to our hearts, who knows us better than anybody else. Thanks a lot god for sending Nihal into my life.
My brother from another mother. People just know me but Nihal understands me. Under peer pressure I have taken up many wrong routes, disrespected the people who cared for me. But they say naa when darkness is at its peak, just a ray of light is enough to finish it. Nihal was that ray of light in my life. I am a whole new person after meeting Nihal. He is so full of positivity.
Vineeta another awesome person in my life, my best friend. If Nihal is my Eye, Vineeta is the vision. I can have an eye to eye contact with Nihal but Vineeta and I look into the same direction. As we both have been through same dark circumstances, we both feel each other. Nihal gave me beats and I gave Vineeta heart. We three are stuck in a loop, incomplete without each other.
From past few days, things were not going well. Earlier it was only we three but later people came in. Our attention was now distributed. We started hanging out less, we started talking less. We were drifting apart. This situation of our led to a massive fight and now we three started ignoring each other. The irony of the situation was that we three were away from each other because we cared for each other. People came, took advantage of the situation and spoke bad about others on my face but deep down I knew that’s not true. All the time I was away, I respected them and after drifting away I started loving them even more.
Today is my birthday, everybody wished me and showered their love except these two. People tried to make my day by surprise gifts and cakes but my mood was still off. I thought the day is now over when I got a call from an unknown number. The person told me to reach Quench Café as soon as possible. I thought Hoga koi normal surprise and went. When I reached there I was shocked to see my two besties sitting in front with my favourite pineapple cake. I didn’t know how to react. I went ahead and hugged them. I got my friends back. After ages we sat for hours. We were laughing our ass out discussing all the back bitching people did when we were drifted apart. I got many gifts that day but these two sweethearts of mine gave me the best gift- A diary and a pen. While gifting the diary they told me it’s not a diary, we are gifting you the time. Capture all our memories in this diary.
I took this advice of them and see sitting in the cab am finally writing. Life really is incredible. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. I just want to pause this time. I just don’t want to go back home. People come, people go but very few people touch your life. Am waiting for tomorrow morning. Am eagerly waiting to go college back with my besties and show people that even today we are awesome threesome.”
A very sweet time that person had locked in that diary. Maybe that person was now no more or maybe survived. I don’t know the name, I don’t know the gender of that person. I just hope the person survived that blast, I just hope the last wish was fulfilled. Even today am trying to find Nihal and Vineeta but Mumbai is a huge city and it’s very difficult to find people.
Life really is very unpredictable. We always say tomorrow I will do this and that but what if there is no tomorrow? What if we don’t see the next sun?
“For everything wrong I’ve ever done. I am Sorry…I’m writing this because what if tomorrow never comes? What if I never get to say good-bye, what if I never get to say I’m sorry because what if tomorrow never comes?”
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