Page 13 - Till the Last Breath . . .

The hands of the watch on his cell phone touched. It was twelve—

fourteen hours since he had been admitted. Last night, like many before,
had been a night of debauchery, porn, poker, alcohol and smoke. Six of his
friends in his cramped one-room apartment—a five-minute walk from

college—and a few bottles of alcohol, some weed, nail-polish remover and
just about everything which could get them fucked up.

The evening had started with casual banter about college professors, the
new kids who had joined the college, girls and pornography. A few cell

phone videos of girls bathing naked were transferred over Bluetooth
amongst them. A little later the bottles had been popped open. Dushyant—

who had graduated just a few months back—was mentor to these kids. He
knew the exact proportions for deathly cocktails and the people who would
have a steady supply of highly potent weed even during a nuclear holocaust.

He knew how to get out of trouble. But more than that, he knew how to get
into trouble. Like he had the night before, when he passed out only to wake

up in a hospital bed. He remembered a seizure; he remembered feeling as if
he was dying, but nothing more than that. He waited restlessly for the nurse

to come in and tell him what the hell was going on. I need to get the fuck
out of here, he thought.

On other occasions, he would just jerk off the needles that punctured his
hand and walk right out of the ward, but there were too many of them this
time and he wanted to know what was wrong, if anything. He was not

scared, just concerned if it was serious enough for his mother to start crying
and his father to start shouting at him for being irresponsible, disgraceful

and a blot on the family name. What family name? He is a bloody head-
clerk at the MCD, he said to himself. He never got the flawed definitions of

honour and family name. He didn’t give a fuck, and frankly, he knew they
wouldn’t come this time. His head hurt and he thought he could do without

the nonsense his parents always put him through.
While he wallowed in self-pity and cursed the hospital, the door opened
and a girl—short and fair—entered the room. She had big eyes—like the

schoolgirls in Japanese cartoons—and looked like a confused kid in a candy
shop with gold coins in both her palms, not knowing what to buy. But