A Beautiful Dawn: The Life of a Hallucination

By Anusha Garg

He stood still, a ray of sunlight made of shimmering particles. He wasnt an organism, but the organism was him. He didnt make the particles, but the particles made him.
He was just a manifestation of dust and dreams, both revolving in an elliptical battle of wills.
The dust won
A world of malice is all that Arjun has ever known. In an attempt to escape this unjust myriad of swarming reality, he is pushed into paranoia by his Muslim step brother, Omair. With his parents impending divorce, Arjun and Omair set off a frenzy of events as they both run away from their homes, their swirling destinies mingling to become one. While gliding through the trough and flexing inside the rigidity of the society, Arjun finds his calling in sway of the motion and the solitude of his mind, a place he retreats to everytime his feet touch the dance floor. A master in the art but a novice in the path of life, he unknowingly hangs onto Omair, as his brother sabotages every obstacle into oblivion, furthering his debt on Arjun, the icy hands of death tightening around his neck.
Now having finally been introduced to the concept of reality; his bubble of fantasy is burst with a single pinprick of a doubt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Nov 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482858273

Anusha Garg

Anusha Garg is a 17-year-old High School student born and brought up in New Delhi, India. Writing is her passion and abode of peace. The words flow from the rotation of her wrist to the tips of her fingers. A senior editor of the school magazine, she also dabbles in poetry and have written and published several articles. She is a frequent contributor at the thestageoflife.com and writerscafe.org. She also has a blog: ObscurityInked.Blogspot.com and ‘A Beautiful Dawn’ is her debut novel. To know more about her please visit the website of my book www.ABeautifulDawn.com In addition to writing she is also passionate about dancing, and is also the President and Cofounder of the Western dance society in Modern School, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi. She is a trained jazz dancer and has been dancing for the past 11 years. She can be contacted at [e-mail] or through facebook.

Book preview

A

Beautiful

DAWN

THE LIFE OF A HALLUCINATION

ANUSHA GARG

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Copyright © 2015 by Anusha Garg.

ISBN:      Softcover   978-1-4828-5828-0

                 eBook         978-1-4828-5827-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/india

Contents

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

About the Author

Prologue

Rumbling down the hill, I heard myself whimper, my whole body shaking to become amorphous, my periphery shimmering as I barely restrained from crying out loud.

The voices increased in decibels, the shrieks drowning under the growls, as the wind howled its contribution to the roar of the fight brewing in front of my eyes.

The car jerked along as it pushed through the storm, the night barely visible, the trees swaying in tandem with the dust, swirling in an elliptical apocalypse that neared its doom.

Plummeting further amidst the trees, I heard them bicker till they reached their breaking point, for they started to shout at each other, nasty words spewing from their mouths at the speed of sound. The competition grew to heights unknown to either of them, and yet as I sat in the back quivering with fear, I knew that this day won’t be overturned, for time hadn’t stopped to breathe and rest.

The man and woman blazed fire from their nostrils and steam from their ears, their teeth clacking and clenching shut with the onslaught of abuses and drawls of hatred.

I could sniff the alcohol lounging in the air, homogeneously mixing, torturing the fresh into stale and the alive into lifeless.

The woman screeched to her heart’s content, pouring out her misery to deaf and dumb senses, for the man combing through his mustache was drunk with his own consent, living in an obsolete bubble, impenetrable and transparent just the same. He saw everything but disdainfully turned a blind eye to the pleadings of his beggared wife, her misery complete in its helplessness.

She cried to the Gods above, an inaudible murmur escaping her lungs. She lived on a desolate island, for existence had left her barren long ago, the day she had tied the knot in union, only to be faced by a sorrowful tomorrow.

I was with him at the moment, for I too felt light headed, a high collapsing on me without warning, for the alarms had been turned off the minute the first syllable hung in the air. His hands trembled as they grabbed around for something solid, never realizing that in this moment, they were already attached to the steering wheel, the muscles in his fingers flexing as they wandered the cloud that seemed to engulf the man’s sobriety.

He swayed as if the laws of inertia never held him down, his head lolling from one side to the other, only to be smacked back into place as the woman whined her misfortune.

The drunkard couldn’t control the car, for he never tried to in the first place. He was just going through the motions, because for him, God was him as was he his faith. If anything were to happen to this man, God would save him, just because he wanted to be saved. From himself or the world, I couldn’t even fathom to contemplate, but what I can say surely is, that it wasn’t death he was moving toward, but the afterlife, for life hadn’t abandoned him yet.

Swerving off the road and into the woods, I had predicted my demise long ago. I had planned out how I wanted to live my last movement, words and even the blink of my eyes. I had known for some time that this moment had been long overdue, and what better way to dim the lights than crashing into a crossfire between my creators.

The car smashed into the defenseless tree with a loud bang, flinging my reverie out the broken window and dashed my head into the back of the driver’s seat. I heard the loud thud and crack of broken ribs as the steering hit my father’s chest with full force.

Several shards of glass buried themselves in his tired face and jutted out obscenely with their macabre red feet. I tried not to look into his eyes as his face crept into my vision, but the ashen eyes stared blankly into mine, and I stared back, willing for time to turn back and for this moment to never be.

Pain shot through my spine and up into the head leaving a dull ache in its wake. I looked away, sickened by the reality, icy fingers of dread cradling me in their embrace, beckoning me to a dark place I did not yet want to enter.

My mother had been flung out the front, right through the windscreen and in the tumescent light I could barely make out her crumpled form as it lay on the cold floor. I scrambled out the mangled door and ignoring the pain in my broken leg crawled to where she lay.

Smiling away my last semblance of happiness to death, I was awakened just a few minutes later to my awaited dawn, only to see through the slits of my eyes, a lone boy standing with his head cocked to the side, a question radiating off him as he walked forward, a halo marring his perfection as he glided towards me.

I stared back at me, a ripple of life surging through me just as my mother took her last breath.

One

The sun had barely finished yawning as its soft rays filtered through the crevasses of the windows in my room and my mind, gently caressing my face. My sleep fuddled brain faintly registered it was 6.15 in the a.m., late for school. Lazily I brought my arm up to pluck the morning brightness out of my eyes, trying to muster up an excuse to skip the daily chore, but the sun was not the enemy, not the main one at least.

Get up Arjun! The shrill voice of my hyperactive mother shattered my sweet reverie, the curtains blasting open with its ferocity. Usually, she was on her feet at 6:00 on weekdays, bustling about in her ten year old nightie, which clung precariously to her, for its days were numbered and had been for last many years. Her mornings began with a few seconds of utter incoherence that quickly graduated to steely determination to push her unwilling child off to school, her frenzy of activity lauded by crazed hair following in tandem with the nightie. At 41, she was pretty, with plump pinkish cheeks, long eyelashes and a proud pert nose. Her ankle length nightie hampered her movement a bit, but not as much as her weight.

The obnoxious smell of boiling milk ran ahead of her and punched me right on the nose, slamming my unwilling body deeper into bed. Even with a thousand spoons of Bournvita, I don’t think my taste buds would ever want to concede. I was still in my room, thinking about switching on an imaginary exhaust fan, when mother poked her head through the slit of the door, and seeing me still in bed, I’m sure this sight was witnessed each morning in our house, but every time it makes me want to hide myself in a hollow pit where she will never be able to find me.

Arjun Gupta, if you’ve not brushed your teeth, taken a bath and are dressed in ten minutes, you will wish you were never born.

Her cheeks had turned a brilliant shade of crimson, nostrils flaring as if she weren’t getting enough oxygen, cheeks blowing in and out as she huffed from the exertion of making a simple statement sound threatening. It was a magnificent sight, seeing the pupils enlarge and blaze with fire as she tried to unsuccessfully calm herself down.

Ma, chill, plenty of time before my bus comes. I feigned an uncaring tone. This was the second time in my entire life that she walked away without saying anything more. It had happened once before when she had fought with dad and released her anger on me just like today. They had been fighting a lot these days and it scared me. It wasn’t as if they didn’t fight, just, it wasn’t to this degree. I glanced around the room looking for the clothes laid out the night before and that’s when my gaze fell on the antique, dusty and rusty clock hanging above the modern abstract art painting. Its hands were currently pointing to my doom. I had less than 10 minutes to do everything that mother had listed. A whiff of panic was the magic potion that summoned my super powers, just as my arms became treadmills and my legs hit the floor, propelled by mini tornadoes.

Arjun, you have 5 minutes. If you miss the bus, you will have to walk to school. No one will drop you. Your father is sleeping; out on the couch if I might add, and being the turtle that he is, I’m sure even if he does drop you, you won’t reach school before sunset! Came the shrill high-pitched thunderous voice, not of the devil, but of my mother’s. Even if she was irrationally angry in the morning, she was right. If it finally came to father dropping me to school, I won’t see the building by night.

First, he would stretch his non-exercised muscles, his lanky limbs shooting in the air while he precariously stumbled on his pointed toes. He did not look graceful like a ballerina, but actually, seemed to resemble a gorilla on a diet with his now whitening moustache that rested above his crinkled lips. He would then yawn, making sounds like a baby dinosaur. Afterwards, the mirror which adorned the suffering walls would beckon its master to do the daily ritual; my father would waddle over, rubbing the bags under his eyes, before glancing over at himself, seeing a rumpled and grumbling young man of 45. His greying wisps of hair would be sticking out as if electrocuted, while father would scrunch his brows together and frown at his hair, which unabashedly misbehaved. He would grab a fat hair brush off the dresser, and putting his two hands to work, one holding some part of his hair down while the other made substantial use of the brush. This whole routine would most likely last for 15 minutes, and those 15 minutes were as important to me as immortalizing water could be. So as far as getting father to drop me to school, I would literally be putting the seal to my own death stamp.

Thus after a rushed and hustled wake up call, I, Arjun Gupta, with my yellow shirt tucked in my faded red shorts, the blue and bronze belt sitting right under my belly button, ran over to the kitchen where mother had just finished shoving the apron in the drawer.

Ma, Omair! My Bhai will take me to school. He can pick me up in his chauffeured car. We are brothers, mom! No hassle. During my little speech, my face had taken on the look of an angel. No halo crowned my head nor did I have all white clothes. My eyelashes batted up and down on their own, not needing my consent.

Oh God, that look again. Those eyes are spitting fire in my direction. I can see the devil’s horns begin to grow out of her hair. And the tirade comes in three…two…one…

Over my dead body. I had forbidden you from talking to him, hadn’t I Arjun? Omair is the devil. You are 18 years old now. Have some wisdom. I know that not everything I say flies into your wooden head. To us, Omair is no one. He will not and cannot drop you to school. Now stop wasting time and get those feet of yours running. Your bus will come anytime now. Run along. Bye! As she finished speaking, my head felt drowsier than ever. I got up and stumbled about a bit, forgetting the existence of a natural coordination between hands and legs. Grabbing my bag after several attempts, I looked up at Ma to bid her good bye.

Had I expected to see concern on her face, maybe pity for the poor lad who had to wake up so early? Well, yes I had. But unfortunately her face was set in stone as if carved by a drunk sculptor, her forehead littered with billions of lines created by the scrunching of loose skin and the depth formed by it. By this age and years of experience, I could decipher what was going on in her mind right now. The plump old lady thought I was pretending. Okay, maybe she was right in that, but wasn’t she supposed to be my mother? Have some concern or extend some sympathies along your son’s way? Guess I will never have that fortune.

Bye Ma. Omair could have easily picked me up. Anyways… I ran out of the door with my parting words before Ma screamed at me for arguing. As I got out of gate C-6 the dusty fog engulfed me making it difficult to stand without my knees clinking together and my toes curling as I uselessly brought my arms about myself, trying to conserve as much heat as I could with my puny arms. I never knew my eyes to be so well trained to spot Omair from this distance through this thick a blanket of fog, to the bus stop which stood bang in front of Mr. Gulmohar Singh’s chai shop.

Waving at him, I begin to notice his features. The hair sewn into his head look dull, the brown locks lying limp against his similarly fatigued face, his eyelids apparently refused to stay open as they sneakily slid shut on him. Omair’s ever so curious eyes were barely visible and even his hook like nose seemed sleepy today.

Because of his tired demeanor, I doubt he saw me wave at him as when I reached him, he jumped as if startled by my presence.

Hi! Bhai, is everything alright? I asked, as seemingly Omair wasn’t too interested in honoring me with a response.

Yeah, just trouble at home. What about you? I heard him sigh with each and every word. It astonished me how similar