The Blessings Of Paradise

The Blessings Of Paradise

The light again began to come back to her eyes. She could see and hear again. She stretched her almost numb hands and felt the sheets upon which she was lying. It was wet. She brought her hands in front of her and was startled for a moment. It was blood. Slowly she swept her eyes around her. The sheets were drenched in blood, so was her clothing. 

She felt no pain, no sickness, nothing. Rather she felt more relaxed and energetic than ever. So where did all this blood come from? Suddenly her fingers brushed her chest. She realised her chest was covered with several deep, horribly deep wounds. They should have hurt severely, but surprisingly there was no pain at all. She seemed to have crossed the realm of pain and sorrow.

All of a sudden her fingers closed upon something cold and metallic. She held it in front of her eyes and immediately recognised the black mass of metal that was lying beside her. Everything began to surface in her memory at a horrible speed. The recollection hit her hard, still the feeling was something beyond fear, pain and shock that is known on Earth. 

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

She had just returned with the exam report card. It was the last straw on the camel’s back. She threw that on the table and sat with her face in her hands. She didn’t remember what happened earlier that day, neither did she want to. 

She felt lost, utterly lost. The entire universe seemed to conspire against her. There was nothing that could make her helpful on Earth. There was nothing for her to stay on Earth. She felt like a burden that should better be thrown away. 

She held the black, shiny mass of metal and gazed intently at it. It felt so right in her hands, as if it was made for resting between her fingers. She put the foremost part of it on her chest. Again it felt so comfortable. The metal felt cold and hard against her skin, yet it was not so cold and hard as the cruel world. 

Then very slowly, very calmly, very patiently, she pulled the trigger. 

There was no sound, as it was a special one with a silencer. The first bullet tore off her flesh at a blink. She didn’t feel any pain. As blood filled her dress, she emptied every barrel in her chest.

At first there was no pain at all, for she was almost numbed with blasted flesh and splattered blood. Then it hit her at full strength: the severe, intense, excruciating pain threw her over the last wall of consciousness. Before collapsing on the bed, she murmured something to herself, though she didn’t remember what it exactly was just then.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

She blinked at the revolver again. Yes, she fired all the bullets, for she well remembered that it was fully loaded and now it was empty. And still she was alive, after receiving all the six bullets in her body. 

How was it possible? Could it be such that she had no aim at all and each one was misfired? She looked at her chest; it was an sheer destruction of exposed flesh and blood. Still she could identify six bullet-holes. Every bullet had entered her body.

So, she had fainted and was awake again. Was she alive or dead now? If alive, why didn’t she feel any pain or anything? She remembered the pulse-oximeter that she had fixed at her toe before firing. She turned it on again. Everything seemed normal. Her pulse was a little weak, her blood oxygen level and blood pressure were a little low, but still they were normal. 

Then she stared at it in utter disbelief. 

She fixed the device to watch her heartbeat cease to zero. She collapsed before that, but the device could record all data. As she watched the previous records, she was simply flabbergasted. 

The last record showed: Pulse can’t be detected. BP too low to detect. Blood oxygen level too low to detect. 

Which had not more than one explanation: she had died and came alive again. 

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

What exactly had happened? What sheer miraculous thing had taken place on the Earth which has been revolving in space from a time too ancient for human recollection?

She passed her hand over the bullet- wounds without any pain. They were as true as the record on the pulse-oximeter. The writings of the record were shining as bright as the bloody sheets. The pulse-oximeter itself was as real as the empty, previously loaded revolver.

As she sat up, something fell from the folds of her dress. She picked it up and stared at it for some time. 

It was her school ID card, which proudly bore her school’s name and its picture and emblem in water-mark. It was the thing she held to her heart before collapsing. 

With it she remembered what she had spoken before death (?) found her:

“My dear, dear, dearest school, my dreamland, my paradise on Earth, please forgive me! Believe me, I had no other choice than this! I have loved you from the deepest of my heart, I had so many dreams with you, but they didn’t want me to stay with you. As long as I was under your shade, you protected me from every evil with your arms, but now the evils don’t want to let me escape from them! I want to stay beneath your shadow forever. Please, give me a small place in your arms. Please, don’t let me go! I loved you before, I love you now, and I’ll love you forever in future with all my heart, my dear, dear, dearest school!”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

The sky got lighter and lighter. The dawn was approaching slowly. She got off the bed and tried to find the facts.

Could the pulse-oximeter have malfunctioned? Or its battery had run out? No, that was next to impossible, for it worked well even after that.

Or was it still malfunctioning? She felt her wrist and windpipe with her fingers to check. Her pulse was quite normal, though a little feeble. Just like what the device had shown. 

The sun was coming up. Its first golden rays shone over the town. She came to the window and watched keenly. 

Her school campus was visible from her window. It looked heavenly in the first light. The dew-drops on the trees glimmered in sunshine, giving it a dreamy appearance. A few birds were chirping sweetly, some car-horns sounded from the road afar. 

But she wasn’t noticing these. She could now remember more. She could remember what had happened after she had slumped in the pool of blood.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

She had no weight at all. She was floating inside the room, lighter than a feather. An unearthly atmosphere surrounded her. Everything felt past and left behind, still nothing seemed to exist afore. It was a strange yet extremely pleasant feeling, to be above all mortal rules. She felt free, more free than ever.

She seemed to cross vast amounts of space— and time too, perhaps. Nothing, no past or future mattered too much to her. She didn’t feel like lacking anything, yet she felt strangely insatiate.

All of a sudden she felt something phosphorescent with what should have been eyes. It was brightly gleaming with a light which didn’t seem to belong to this Earth, yet strangely pleasant, calm and soothing. 

As she came nearer, she could see it more clearly. It was a magnificent mansion. She couldn’t realise what colour it was, because it was completely enveloped with that ethereal glow. The glow was sometimes so strong that it seemed almost like a mist. 

She couldn’t let go off a strange familiar feeling with the place. Yet the feeling was nothing like fear. The place seemed to warmly welcome her, and she too wanted to go there.

She glided nearer to the place. And then a wave of recollection washed over her. The place was her school, in exactly the form she dreamt of it in every night of agony. It was in the purest form of heaven, waiting for her, calling her silently in its invisibly extended arms.

She felt ecstatic. Her last prayer had come true. She prepared to rest in her paradise forever. The phosphorescent mist engulfed her slowly. She felt herself getting dissolved in the glow. She was becoming one with her dreamland. 

Then came the dreamy voice. She would have heard it if she still had something that’s called ear in other life. But now the words penetrated her, filling her with their melodious notes which no mortal ear could ever hear.

“Welcome, dear girl. You had a long and painful journey, now you can rest here.”

“Forever?” She spoke, if speaking it was.

“Why not?” The voice resounded in her soul.

“You were with me even before you came here. I’m never away from you, because I’m in your heart. You think you have to leave me, but why? Wouldn’t I be in your past? Won’t your present be built on and with the materials of your past? Why feel yourself away from me, while you’ll bear my imprint in your existence?

You never had to come here to stay with me. l’m always with you, dear girl.”

The elysian phosphorescence laved her, gently stroking every misery off her. It surrounded her like a corslet, as if protecting her like she had always dreamt. She replied with her heart, “I wanted to do something for you. Anything. But— but I couldn’t, I’m so sorry.”

The empyrean entity of her school spoke again, “Why think you haven’t been able to do anything for me? Dear girl, you have this celestial strength in yourself — the love. The love you have devoted to me, as long as that flames in your soul, you’re invincible to evil. It’ll protect you, it’ll be your strength against them. 

You’ve fled to me, so you think you’re defeated? No, dear girl, it’s just temporary. You have a vast field in front of you, where you’ll win over them, with the blessings of me enliven in you with your love. 

Dear girl, it’s still not your time to be here. When that time comes, I myself will receive you. Till then you’ll live upright and radiant, defying all evils in your way.

Bye now, dear girl. My blessings will be with you forever, ignited in your soul and sustained and cherished with your love.”

She was floating away, every atom of her existence charged with that heavenly light. She didn’t feel insatiate anymore, rather felt even more free than before. She was intensely happy, because now she was the one who knew oneself in and out.

The fairyland vision had faded off gradually, and she had woken up in her room.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

She could realise everything now. 

Her paradise had sent her back. It still wasn’t her time to die, and she had a lot of things to do. She stood mesmerised, staring at her dreamland beaming in first light of one of the brightest gems of the universe. 

Suddenly her head felt light. As she sat down slowly, she could feel a sharp pain spreading throughout her chest. It was the blessings of her paradise that had protected her from mortal pains for so long. Now the bullet-wounds were making themselves known to them slowly. 

She picked up her phone. She needed to seek help. She had to get well soon. She still had a lot of work left to do for her school.

By Bidisha Maity

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