(WikiPedia defines Banshee as a spirit which according to the Irish Mythology is a omen of death and a messenger from the Other World)
Anshu was going mad, and to make it worse he knew of it. He kept staring at the bottle of sleeping pills lying so casually on the nearby table. The look of the bottle was inviting for Anshu and he emptied them all on his bed and started making obscure pictures with those pills. He kept on arranging and rearranging those to make figures on the bed, some of which looked like a knife, some a rope and some still a well lit candle. He kept smiling at the pills, a smile of a maniac, a smile which betrayed pain and loss of reason at the same time. He stared at his palm, the right one.. frowned, and then at the left. He searched for a line on it but it was as blank as the blank paper placed near him. He took up the pen and started drawing a line where his supposed life line was ought to be.. and laughed aloud while he drew.
He remembered some 15 years back when a friend and a budding palmist had looked at his palm and was dumbstruck by the absence of lines. He asked him how he was alive with a hand like that and had thrown his hand in disgust. Anshu had smiled then and had cared a zilch abt what he had said. He had gone home that day and had told his granny about the incident. His granny was the only one person he was close to... the only person he actually had in the world. His mom, a very pious lady, had it seems, died at childbirth from some complications. His Grandpa had died a year before his birth and his father had followed his mom some decades after. Anshu today could smile about the deaths in his family. Death had lost its impact on him... the first loss may have been a painful experience but the periodic losses had him immune. He was in a waiting for his own death.. praying each day shelfishly that he die before his granny or atleast on the day she died. He used to look at his friends and their parents and felt betrayed. A parent's loss is tragedy, but as wilde had said, loosing both of them was carelessness. He couldnot laugh.. he was their only child and born to them long after their marriage, maybe after his parent's pleased some million of goddesses and bribed them with flowers, incense, gold, silver and a life too, his mothers. Anshu had kept praying for his granny ... but inspite of those his granny had died.. some years after.
Anshu had been shattered then. He had turned religious, visiting saints.. some godly, some not.. some interested in the offerings he had to make, some not. He had travelled across India searching for answers to a question he didnt even know, trying to find a solution to an unmentioned but ubiquitos problem. One of the saints?, he met, was lying naked on the banks of ganges with ash all over, some half eaten dead animal lying near him, his hair was matted, his eyes red and a stench was coming from him. Anshu was disgusted and wanted to move away from there as quick as possible but the hermit had hold his gaze, the hermit had laughed a maddening laugh and had bellowed,"Who was it who died that You are standing still.". Anshu couldnt comprehend what he had said and ran away from there. He had left his wanderings then and had joined back his college.
He tried forgetting his past, he took care of himself and was quite presentable. He was a picture of his granny now.. far from the days when he had looked like his dad, today he had his granny's upright posture.. the sad eyes, the acquiline nose and a pale complexion. He made friends.. was difficult but he did. Ritu had taken the same courses as he and they used to sit togather chatting philosophy, discussing religion, quoting poems and sharing a moment of peace in the crowded canteen. Days had passed.. Anshu happened to smile a lot then, the rising tempereture that ceased to go down and the headaches that used to parody his blissful sleep had no impact on the smile on his lips. Love does add a different shade to the color of life, some more minutes to to your existance, some fragnance to the smell of happiness. He had missed college for long.. he longed to see Ritu again.. he missed her auburn hair.. the blue eyes, the way she used to jump around when excited ,the tilted head accompanied by the dancing feets which she always did when discussing something. he missed her .. He had got better in a sudden.. a night of pain which he thought would obliterate his existance had actually made his pain vanish. He had got ready wearing the maroon shirt that Ritu so liked, combed his hair to the right very unlike what he used to do before.. but the excitemnt of seeing ritu maybe had made him more like the way she admired. He jumped his way to college. He saw students coming out of college with an air of unexpected joy around.. some were talking abt an "bitch who died" making classes suspended. Anshu was happier that he now had ritu to himself. Looking around for ritu, he saw the notice board with ritu's picture smacked across with a "Sad Demise" Label on it. Anshu's face was tilted while reading the notice.. a tear had escaped his eyes... He didnt try to find out things which would pain him more and he caught the first train that night for mumbai.
Anshu lived a dead man' life now. He hovered around in the city like a dead man. Dead he was, a man with his brains living, heart beating but not soul. He wandered around, getting down the mumbai local at obscure stations, visiting pubs.. bars resturants.. rave parties trying to forget his existance. He kept on repeating what the saint had told him once. He had started blaming himself for Ritu's untimely death. His hands were begining to have cuts.. he had a perenial blood mark on his shirts.. his hands were bruised and he wandered around now like a mad man. That day He was sitting and staring ahead at the open sea, the crows were flying above him, some lovers to his left and some tourist to his right. The vendors were rying selling their wares and a lone dog, loafing around waiting for some kindly soul to tickle its belly. The vultures were flying a long distance away maybe waiting for the priests to leave so that they could carry on with their work. He realized with a start that the tourist to the right had started talking to him. He nodded at him.. unlike asking him to shut up as he normally did. He talked after a long time with someone, He chatted about mumbai, abt the history of the gateway of India, about the sprawling Taj hotel infront of it.. abt the cosmopolitan nature of the place .. abt nothing.. but he talked.. kept on talking. The tourist was listening in content and after sometime left to catch the local. Anshu's eyes followed him.. he saw him crossing the road.. he saw him look back at him.. he saw him wave at him.. he saw the bus approaching and hitting him .. he saw the blood oozing from his face.. he saw him vomit blood.. he saw the soul swishing around he saw the crowd gather.. saw the police approach and remove the body... Anshu remained rooted his seat looking at the non existant life line.
The sleeping pills still lay on the bed... the light had dimmed.. Anshu was still playing with those white round pills, sonorel someone called them. He had put his ears to the window.. trying to hear some wail.. hear maybe a dead man's wife.. maybe a dead kid's mother.. whose son had relinquished his breath for Anshu to live, whose husband's pyre had used the wood on which Anshu was to lie. He kept on looking blankly at the palm, waiting for someone else to die for him to live.
