Ironic as it is, Asha(the word itself means "hope" in Hindi) had no hope. She felt completely hopeless. No, don’t get me wrong, she had faith in the world, it was herself she’s lost all hope in. She felt that her life was too good for her, that she didn’t deserve it, which is why she wanted to end it.
She saw herself as an extraordinarily lucky girl- one whose parents were excellent people, whose idols were unbelievably amazing, who had almost everything that she wanted. Everything in her life, she felt, was better than what she deserved. But then again, there was another side to things, –there always is- and the same girl, who considered her luck too good, had absolutely plain looks, short height, utter lack of social skills (and friends), horrible grades, and a slight physical disability caused by an automobile accident a year ago.
“A lucky, but ugly cripple,” was the phrase she used to describe herself, in her innermost thoughts. Also, she felt like a drastic failure. She felt that she had put her parents and her idols –whom she respected more than the world- down. She felt that she was a disappointment.
She wanted to die, but she didn’t have the courage to kill herself. So, she wished. She wished that she were adopted, so that her parents would get disgusted with her and abandon her someday, which would make dying so much easier. She wished that she would have a terrible accident, which would kill her immediately. She couldn’t kill herself, because she was afraid of the act, and she was terrified of the pain. So, she prayed.
Every day on her way to school, she would pass a temple of Lord Shiva, the Destroyer, and pray to him to kill her, painlessly. “One of these days,” she would think on the way to school, “I will have a terrible accident and die.”
Dying had become something akin to a passion for her. She wanted to die; she actually liked the idea of dying. She thought of death as an escape from the big, bad world where nothing was right, and she would imagine dying, with a bright smile etched on to her lips.
She didn’t have any real goal in life. All she wanted was to die, painlessly. It’s not that she’s never had a goal, though. She was crazy about her idols, and had dedicated her life to them. So, naturally, there was a time when meeting them was her goal. But she had resigned herself to her fate and realised that she of all people would never get to meet them. She didn’t deserve to, anyway.
One day, when she was going to school in an auto, the auto skidded due to rain and veered off path. Thankfully, the driver managed to control the auto in time to prevent it from going off the road, and turned off the engine for a while, inspecting the damage. He was behind the auto, inspecting the damage to the rear wheel, which was grazed a tree, when they heard a truck hurtling towards them with a deafening cacophony of screeching tyres and blaring horns. The last thing the truck driver saw was the girl sitting in the auto, arms folded in front of her chest, eyes wide opened. It appeared to him that she might have been praying, before she heard the truck coming towards her, skidding because of the dangerous turn.
The next day, a small article on the fifth page of the newspaper read, “In an accident yesterday, a truck collided with an auto, due to the rain. All five occupants of the auto, including the driver were killed on the spot. The driver of the truck, too, was found dead some distance away from the truck. The accident took place five kilometres out of town, close to a temple of Lord Shiva...”
She had died, at last...painlessly.