by Parth Pandya
The music crashed. The women slept. I died.
I would have raised an alarm about such a drastic outcome for an evening had this been unusual. I had however died many times by now. What was the point of being dead if you could never truly die? It took away all the excitement of having the heart stop beating.
You see, my problem was not that I couldn’t die. My problem was that I wasn’t allowed to stay dead. As per my contract with the Committee for the Restitution of Extraordinary Souls, I had to perform my duty as a duly deranged Rockstar until such a time as I turned 27. By a random circumstance, I had come to be among the chosen few who were considered extraordinary – malleable, durable, receptive, high quality souls. The contract allowed me to live the life I wanted to and die the way I wanted to as long as I committed myself to fulfilling the conditions of the contract.
I spent considerable time thinking of the way I wanted to die. There was always the overdosing on drugs, a traditional manner of passing away. Or the touch of martyrdom in being shot by a deranged fan. I was imagining something different though. A spectacle to mark the end of my days. With a crowd of mad cheering listeners holding on to every note that I played, I would pull the plug in the most unexpected manner. I wouldn’t consider that a success unless at least ten percent of the audience fainted with shock and at least a few would join me in the afterlife, their hearts having come to a complete halt.
How did I, Viral (the name I chose for my current life. Quite clever if I may say so myself), get to this stage, you may ask. Don’t trust all the stories you hear about the purgatory and the saving of souls. There is no one to do that. There is no God. Maybe yes, if you could call that organic network that spread its tendrils all over space, and by space, I don’t mean the atmosphere, but the area behind the curtain from which all of life on earth is being observed. In the beginning, there were a trillion souls, all at a time. No one knows where they came from or if there was ever a first soul. You can’t have a trillion souls and not have them do anything and so everyone existed in this charade of well, existence. You earned karma by being, by breathing, by killing and maiming and providing for others, whatever your deigned role may be. And based on how much karma you had earned, you got to select what you wanted to be. And so on and so forth the wheel would turn.
The chances of me meeting my fans in the afterlife were of course very faint. As soon as my soul would leave my newly deceased body, I would be whisked away into the changing rooms of the netherlands, what with my extraordinary soul needing to be nourished and rejuvenated for its next turn. Those ordinary souls would be staring at the board where the choices for the next life would be highlighted. all they will be able to do is sigh at the category that says homo sapiens. In fact, if their karma was exhausted, they would have to keep scrolling down that list. The tigers of the world, the blue whales, the elephants and the pandas would also be out of their range. No life as a dog or a cat such that they would be petted and taken care of, no existence as a beautiful flower (yes, yes, you could be reborn as those as well) or a coral settling into a life of relaxation at the bottom of the ocean. The choices for them would be none of these. They would be left to choose from the life of cretins.
I used my privilege of being an extraordinary soul to choose the life I wanted. Of all the things I could have been, I chose to be a Rockstar. Of all the human professions I could have chosen, I chose the one where dysfunction and by nature of that, excitement would be the name of the game. How hard could it be? And yet, by the time I was 23, I knew I was done. There however was no release. So, the music crashed, the women slept and I died and yet I was alive because I hadn’t fulfilled the contract.
There must be a way out, I thought to myself, even as the needle marks on the vein vanished magically. There must be a way to break this cycle. I had heard whispers of a way out, a dark deep secret hidden away in the vast recesses of ether. It wasn’t as if everyone was queuing up to break free. Most people were happy with this cycle of rebirth. Even biting a human being as a mosquito gave them a sense of purpose that they cherished. But I was done.
I decided to use the night for something better since I was now alive again. I suddenly remembered that within my drawers was a card with a symbol of a mandala that a man in a cloak had handed to me in one of my Wednesday night orgies. The text on it was “Mocksha – Follow the light within!”. For days, I scratched my head through my ecstasy-induced haze to figure out what it was. One day though I held it up against the light and there it was – an address to a third-rate pawn shop in the decrepit part of the city of Varanasi.
I journeyed up to the place and when I got there, I walked in gingerly, laid down my bag and said “hello” in a timid voice. Salvation was within reach. I could sense it. And then a white light came on. And a booming voice spoke, “Your participation in this program has been terminated for breach of contract. Please proceed to the gate.”
The promise of deliverance was a trap and I had fallen for it. It was when I was being led out the gate that I realised that the promise of release was but a ruse by the administrators to fool the masses. I walked out the door and felt my body wither away. And suddenly, wings appeared out of nowhere. I found myself right outside my house. My former house. I flew in unnoticed. There was a condolence meeting going on for the deceased Rockstar. Everyone was sad. No one noticed the fly on the wall.
