The mental connection

CAUTION : Not for kids appearing for exams, and for teens who were once passionately involved.

There was no pain now. Peace consumed him.He did not move, head skywards.His eyes were shining.The end was near he knew.This end was beautiful.He was not dying alone.He was dying in his sweet home with the only person he loved.Death did not part us he thought, almost grinning.

All this had started 15 years ago.Raj Roy was a sentimental creature.He has sharp features and athletic body. In mind, he was not that stable.One day while returning from work, he sighted a shadowy figure crouched on his porch.Curious, he slowly edged towards the silhouette.

Alarmed, the figure raised her head.She was beautiful.EYes like moonlit pearls twinkling with love.Lips full and sensuous and an angular face.She was crying.

"Hey what happened miss?"

"I am Aditi and i want a place to stay tonight"

Roy was unsure but the senses inside men and women talk for themselves.
"come in and tell me whats wrong"
The girl told her woeful tale.Poverty has forced her father to force her into prostitution.She ran away and reached Bangalore and awaiting the same fate that had dawned on her before.

Roy was sad.He loved a girl named Aditi too.And this girl looked so much like her.He could give the small room to her. He had money enough to feed her.His Aditi has left him, and this one would leave him too whenever she wanted.But a woman made a house warm and so it was done.

Each morning before going to work he had breakfast alone and stacked the rest in the kitchen.When he came back he found food laden in his table.At 12 he first checked if she was sleeping ,then had his dinner and went to sleep. In the weekends she would go to visit her sister.He was happy and he loved her as she was.They talked sometimes, snuggled under warm sheets ,watching TV.But, he never made love to her lest it made her think that her eternal fate had dawned yet again.

Things went wrong when Jay, his office buddy came to visit him. "Where is Aditi?" he asked. "to her sister's as usual"-Raj replied.Jay went into the kitchen to fix himself a sandwich.He almost puked at the stench.There, before him was stacked rotting food,piled in a corner of the kitchen.He knew that this was the end of Raj's stable life.

For a week Jay and a psychiatrist cajoled him to get rest under medication.Schizophrenia was incurable but his earlier imaginary friends have eventually vanished with a month of rest under medication, after torment and willful abstinence.

Raj did not want her to go.He had fallen in love with her and he wanted her to be there till his death.Indeed, a difficult situation.Jay reminded him that this way he would end up contaminating his home with rotten food and his work would be affected too.He took a stand and forced him to go to the asylum which he believed to be for Roy's own good.

He came back after he stopped seeing Aditi.He reasoned she was real and so she could not come to the asylum.That was also sound logic.

As soon as he reached his home he got a call from her. "where did you go?"
"I went on a official tour"
"Oh, I'll come i don't like my sister's place too much"
And they were together again and Roy made love to her.

Jay was furious now.He demanded Roy be fully cured, and he must go back to the asylum.He forced him.This went on for 15years,and slowly the medication crept on his mind.And he was dazed into absurdity.He screamed in his cell,the name of his love,inflicted wounds but that made it more difficult to get a release from the asylum.

Two years later Roy escaped the asylum after long and meticulous planning. He headed straight home.He had given the key to Aditi and asked her to wait for him.Aditi was waiting for him at the door.

"you bitch!!"
"you are the reason i lost 10 years of my life in an asylum"
she looked blankly.He clasped her throat and started choking her."I'll kill you now, coz i can't take it no more" he yelled.She slouched and lay on the floor.He was confused now,How did one get rid of an imaginary girl who was dead.He ran around wildly, the world was spinning around him.The images became blurry, and he ran in circles.His mind was giving up at last.This was his limit off endurance.He couldn't call Jay coz he had escaped from the asylum.Then he took to the streets, brought some cyanide and lay beside his love and closed his eyes to bliss.

Next morning Jay looked mournfully at his friend lying dead ,his left arm stretched out and head tilted towards that direction.'If it was dark I would think that Aditi was there lying beside him'-Jay couldn't help but ponder.