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Awake

Kamal Sodhi

By Kamal SodhiPublished 2 years ago 11 min read
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I wake up sweating. Whether it is because of the weather or the dream I do not know.

I look to my right and see my mother curled up on the side of the bed, where my dad sleeps. She does not wear the blanket but curls it into a ball and hugs it. Like a baby.

I wonder if she ever held me like that.

I wipe the sweat off my brow and rub my hand on my shirt. The sun is just barely out, the morning bringing a cool breeze through the windows and scattering sand everywhere. We do not have dust like other households. Dirt-like sand is what builds up in our home; on the bed we share, the three-legged chair my father balances on to take off his shoes, the rust colored rug my mother brought from her childhood home.

I sit up and slip my cracked feet into the sandals next to the bed. My mother will make chai for my father and I later, after he returns from the market. I exit the single door of our home to the plot of land in front of us. My family are rice farmers which means we live near water. That is, water we have diverted from the river to fertilize our crops.

Rice is a tricky plant to grow. You have to plant in the spring, cultivate during summer, and harvest in the fall. It takes all year to grow. And then winter comes and freezes the land over, so I go into town to work for our local mechanic.

Once upon a time I wanted to be an accountant. I would not say I am good with money, but I love to count. I have been like this since I was a child. I would count every stalk of rice on the plot and knew how many steps it took to get from our house to our neighbors.

Our neighbors are rich. Well, not really, but compared to us they are.

Before I was born my mother and family spoke to the neighbors and agreed that their children would be wed.

The neighbors welcomed a strong, healthy boy. But my mother lost her baby. They said she was never alive in her stomach anyways. Since the locals found out my mother carried a dead child in her womb for nine months, they treat her as a contagion. As if her losing her child would somehow spread to the other women of the village. As if she did not birth another kid.

When I was born my parents lamented. They wanted a girl, so that she could be married to the neighbor’s rich family. But as a boy, my wife would have to come live with us. And my family can barely afford to feed ourselves.

Actually, it was the neighbors who gave me the idea.

I overheard them whispering about us. About how they were surprised any of us were still alive given our socioeconomic standing and overall lack of luck.

Ever since then I cannot stop thinking about death.

I wonder what it will be like when I am gone.

I am not afraid of what comes after death, I am afraid of what will happen if I continue to live.

I can see it. My whole future ahead of me. I see myself age into my father, using the three-legged chair to take off my shoes; I see my future wife waiting for me by the door, a cup of chai in her hand. These same hands that have spent their entire lives planting and harvesting rice, will continue to spend their entire lives doing the same.

But I am not doing this for me. I am doing this for them.

For my parents. For a love that runs deeper than the word itself.

We never say I love you to one another. I do not think we ever have. Our love does not need such declarations. It is a love that bounds us to carry the same blood in our veins.

I would like to say I thought this through. This was not done out of self-hatred or to acquire pity. I have been thinking of this for a long time. I have sorted through every cost and every benefit. I even made a chart.

When I was in secondary school, I took an introductory economics course. I remember learning about the cost of living. My teacher said that the cost of administering every additional person in our classroom, could have been resources spent on something else like a new blackboard or better textbooks. Opportunity cost. You have to sacrifice something in order to gain something else.

That is what this is. A sacrifice.

This is not a tragedy or a desperate plea for help. This is a decision based on simple economics. To live is to deplete my parents of resources they can use to buy a new house or another plot of land. To die is to give them a chance.

Soldiers sacrifice themselves every day. This is no different than that.

I am not giving up on life. I want to live. I want more from this world. I want to marry a pretty girl and teach my children how to write. But I am not selfish. I will not sustain for another potential family when my current one is starving.

I will not let my father return to the streets for begging. Or have my mother sneak out at night to the local brothel. I will not rummage for food in the dumpster or resort to stealing at the market.

My parents have given me life, I owe them in return. This life is mine, it is dictated by me. Therefore, I will dictate how it ends.

I see my father’s rickshaw merge onto the dirt path to our house. My mother has already risen and is making chai. I close my eyes and count my steps back into the house.

This day will be like any other. I do not want a grandiose death day. I want to tend to the plot with my father and go to the market with my mother. I want to help make dinner and go for a drink with the boys later. I want to sneak into bed at night and wake up with my sandals next to the bed.

We sit on the floor as we drink the chai. My father has brought home newspaper, as he always does, and is leafing through the pages, the faint scent of the market lingering with every turn.

My mother is praying. She is always praying. She prays to the gods to help us. To bring us food and warmth and good harvest. We have a small shrine with plastic figures of the gods near the bed. She lights the incense and waves it around the room murmuring something underneath her breath.

I have seen my parents handle grief. They are resilient. When my father’s mother, who lived with us for twelve years passed away, we cremated her and drove two hours to a holy river. We took off our shoes and crossed a bridge before dumping her into rocky, clear water; her grey ashes dissipated in the oasis.

I cannot drive two hours to a holy river or get cremated, but I can do something similar.

My parents, like everyone I have ever known, had an arranged marriage. My mother’s dowry paid for our rice plot. But despite their differences the love they hold for one another is rare in our community. Most husbands waste their money on brothels or if they are strapped of cash, will grab a young girl from the street and rape her. Most wives are terrified of their husbands’ hands yet hit their own children with broomsticks and kitchen pans.

My parents are not like that. They have loved each other for over twenty years. It is not a love that comes from liking the same things or having similar goals in life. This is a love of the very being itself. Their love for one another has never wavered and remains strong to this day. It is a love I wish I had.

My father finishes reading his newspaper and my mother her praying. We head out without speaking to the plot and begin our work, the sweat staining our shirts and water washing our feet.

I look to my right and see my mother cuddling the blanket in her hand, my father’s snores rivaling the crickets outside the window. I take a deep breath, one of my last, and slowly get up. Neither of them stirs, I did not expect them to. I take a figure of the gods in my hand and wrap my jacket around myself. I slip my cracked feet into my sandals next to the bed. Every movement is slow and deliberate. I am trying to savor it all. I leave the house and walk to our plot.

It is cool outside, yet somehow, I am sweating. The night sky is scattered with stars and planets and galaxies.

I rub a rice plant in between my fingers and let the green newborn rice kernels fall into the water below. I make my way to the river path, the only light from the moon and the neighbor’s coals in their firepit. It does not matter anyways. I could walk this route blindfolded and I would know where I was going. I have taken this trek countless times.

Our river is clean, people used to use it for bathing and collecting water. Now they mainly use it to direct water into their rice plots. It is not large nor fast, in fact it is more like a pond than anything. I learned to swim in our river. The older neighborhood boys would teach us younger ones in the hot, summer days when we needed to cool down and our parents wanted us out of the house.

I walk past houses, all of which I have been in, and rake through my memories of their owners. The blue house has a TV, the peach house has five people living in it, the other blue house has eight people.

My hands are tucked into my pockets, my right one rubbing the figure of the god. I try to keep my mind blank. My heart it steady but my legs are shaking. My breathing comes out unevenly.

I make it to the river.

But I am now different.

I feel everything all at once.

Every sense of mine is heightened. I can smell everything. The rice plants, the neighbor’s dimming fire, the cows across the street owned by a young couple. I can smell the wildflowers I used to pick out for my mother near the dumpster and the faint scent of musty sand.

I can smell my parents. The sweat on their brows, the oil in their hair, the dirt underneath their fingernails. I can smell chai and newspapers on a regular morning, I can feel my mother’s rug underneath my toes.

I feel like I am falling, but I am perfectly still. Every muscle relaxed, every piece of hair twirling in the river breeze.

In the distance wild dogs are barking and the sounds my father’s snores masking crickets have followed me here.

I walk into the water fully clothed. I let my hands skim the top of the black waves. It is too dark to see the fish, but I pretend they are there. I pretend they are herding me, supporting my trembling legs to the middle of the river. I feel seaweed brush against my ankles and watch the moonlight ripple across the darkness ahead. If death is all darkness, I am ready.

Once in position I let myself go and float on the moonlight. I close my eyes and savor the massage of the waves across my body. When I was a boy my mother would wash me in this river. She would haul a bucket, a bar of soap, and a naked child in her hand here every day.

I open my eyes to stars and darkness. I think about God. It is only natural to think about him/her minutes from death. My mother believes is reincarnation, my father was mum on the topic. I am not sure what I believe in. I am not sure if there is a God or Gods. But I say a prayer nonetheless. For my mother.

I am not sure how long I float. I do not remember at what point my skin pruned.

I do not remember how it ended. If my body caved into the river or I simply stopped breathing.

I do not remember the transition between living and dying. But I remember everything else. Every memory I have ever had rushed through my head all at once. I see my first day at school and the looks of love exchanged between my parents. I see my first kiss with the girl I liked in primary school and late nights with the boys drinking beers.

I see everything. Feel everything. Hear everything.

I am awake.

For the first time in my life, I am awake.

Short Story
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