If you ask me if it is the essay 'A Hanging' or the malayalam movie 'Sadayam' that gave me the nightmare, I will draw a blank. I chanced upon the Orwell essay while the imprints made by 'Sadayam' were still fresh. I am set to ring up the curtain on the nightmare.
Protagonist : Myself
Location : Death cell, Central Jail (It has to be the Poojappura Central jail. The watch tower and the cells there are so familiar to the Malayalees)
Scene : The night before hanging
Genre : Tragedy (Terrible)
Running time : One full wretched night
Intervals : 4 (the worst part)
The camera zooms out to of my dilated, fear-filled and hopeless eyes, through the prison bars to incorporate my complete profile with both hands clenched to the iron rods. Slowly. Gradually. Now, don't ask me trivial questions like what crime did I commit to end up in that hell? Or was there thunder, lightening and torrential rains outside? What moon was it? I did not care to notice anything in the background. It was all immaterial.Just the big picture (Was doing it in an Ed Wood-ian style). I was to be hanged the next morning. All I could hear was the grandpa clock ticking and the footstep of the jailor who never came in front of the virtual camera. The fear, the helplessness, the loneliness, the shivers. How I wished I had not forgotten to offer the bed time prayers to Anjaneeyar Swamy! I don't know whether it was Maruthi's tail or the ever nearing foot steps of the jailor that woke me up, but I was happy to be awake.
I felt it normal to feel the urge to micturate, partly from the dreadful nightmare and partly because it was well into the night. Things did not change even after that. I was unusually tired that day. The night mare extended itself as it was the continuation of the reel being played before the interval. Woke up again with a gaped mouth, confused if I sobbed or was it just in the dream. I decided to take a leak, partly due to fear, and partly to cut myself loose. This taking a whizz business continued even when I was left with no more penny to spend on. Now, back to the dream. In the condemned cell I was praying sincerely and with full submission, how sorry I was to squander this grandiloquent life; how I would have made the things right if... only if... I had a chance to make it simple and plain again; how much I missed my family; helpless of letting them know how much I loved them... All of a sudden I seemed to realize what I needed out of this life. I felt I understood myself well. I could feel the tears drying up in my cheeks at that instant.
I slept well after that, though it was early morning. If you expected me to follow a sincere and pious life from all the 'awakening' I had, I am sorry to disappoint you. It was just the excitation I had from realizing and feeling what Sathyanathan of 'Sadayam' would have - on a first person account. Even that excitation attenuated after dialing a good friend of mine, who felt so much for that character and even inspired me to watch it over again. "Buddy! I feel I understand that character better than you now". It is time to ring the curtain down with this egoistic, nescient and incongruous close.
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