60 Seconds: A short story by Divya Prakash Dubey, translated from Hindi by Aditi Yadav

Translator’s note: Divya Prakash Dubey’s short story, ‘60 Seconds’, is a gloomy tale of human condition, a grim reminder of the reality that all human beings are not alike, nor is their strength to withstand the wear and tear of body and spirit. The story draws attention to mental health and the relationship between endurance, the fragility of life and the vulnerability of mind. 

Apropos of suicide, I really can’t cherry pick just a single driving factor. Now, you too, have a closer look at yourself .There must be some reason or another for you to give up on life as well.  Do not lie! Everyone can be sure of finding one or another motive for it. The trouble is that one lies the most to oneself for one comprehends oneself the best. Actually, even when one is explaining something to someone else, one is sub-consciously explaining it to oneself. Anyway, I’ve decided that I won’t lie to myself today. I’m aware that it’s a difficult task. If it were that easy, I’d have done it on any of the countless occasions that I’d faced before this day.

I was twelve years old when I first thought of suicide. As the teacher had given me a zero on my test and slapped me in front of the whole class, I didn’t feel like going back home that day. I stepped out of the school in the direction of a bridge where trains crossed by. Every town has a story of a bridge where several people commit suicide, especially love-struck couples, who end their lives to avenge themselves against the whole town. Any place in the town where countless humans willfully abandoned their lives, was like a temple for me. It seemed as though the dead were congregating to invite me for playing game of Ludo with them. 

I’d grown quieter in school. I visited that bridge several times, but couldn’t convince myself completely. Whenever I was about to jump off, someone butted in. For instance, on one occasion, that mendicant came to me with a baby stuck to her chest. I was mad at that female beggar, but then it occurred to me that I was anyway about to die, so I emptied my pockets and gave all the money to her. She prayed out loud that I be blessed with a long life. The prayer hit me like an insult. I wished her away so that I could die in peace. While I was giving money to that wretched woman, my gaze fell upon her feet for the first time — there were three toes missing.

Time and again, we are reminded of stories we’ve never heard before. Time and again, we recall people whom we have never ever met. Right then it struck me that I’d once heard a story of a girl from my neighbourhood who had fled away to jump off a bridge. The train didn’t crush her to death. She survived with one leg chopped off.  Instead, her sister who had gone to rescue her, got hit by the train and died. I also happened to hear that the girl who’d attempted suicide was pregnant with a classmate’s child. I also heard people wishing that she were dead. I have no recollection of that girl’s face; I lost touch with that neighborhood later on.

My eyes then turned towards the little child the beggar woman was holding. He was chortling with unrestrained vigour. I had to defer my plans because of his laughter. Whenever I thought of dying that laughter came around to save me. 

After this incident, the thought of death did not cross my mind for several years. My next attempt at suicide happened when I was seventeen. Everything seemed well in place. I was regularly attending coaching classes to prepare for engineering. Whenever I was in that long queue to get inside the class, I felt as though I was perpetually stuck in the middle of a chockablocked road without any prospects of escaping it. 

One day, when I headed off to the coaching class after a filling breakfast, the weather outside caught my attention — it was splendid — one of those days, when it was neither too hot nor too cold. What day in November was it, I don’t exactly remember now. However, I found it quite suitable a day to die. A cool breeze swept over my face the moment I was about to take a plunge. This cool zephyr made me recall the days when happiness had caressed me in quite a similar manner, with absolute calmness. I was anyway about to die, so I thought that I might as well practice some deep breathing. I’d never before concentrated so intently on my breath. Each deep breath had me wishing to prolong my stay on earth for a few more days. And then, I also told myself that there was no point in dying so early.

After a year of coaching, I couldn’t secure admission in any place that was good enough for me to brag about loudly in the neighborhood. But I didn’t feel like dying back then. Of course, there’s humiliation that you ought to face when everyone sees you and judges every single thing you do. But I wanted to look straight at every single person who looked down upon me. There was an out worldly pleasure about it. The kind of pleasure that says, “Damn you bastard; I’m not gonna die, what you gonna do about it?”

I’ve met many people in life who’ve many a time reminded me that I’m absolutely worthless, that I deserve no space in the world, and that I’m a total misfit on this earth. But their remarks didn’t provoke me to die, instead they hit me with a defiance. I wanted to rattle them relentlessly and scream at them someday, “To hell with you saale, what you gonna do; I’ll stay alive.”

Well, I hadn’t told this stuff about dying to any of my girlfriends or friends, for I always felt as if those people wanted die too, but just weren’t confiding in me.

Meanwhile, the thought of death stopped visiting me. However, I did often give a thought to how’d I prefer to die on the day I really wanted to. Ever since childhood, I was fascinated with aquariums. I wished to swim with alongside those fish.

No, I never entertained the idea of hanging myself, because it seemed like an extremely obscene death. It’s obscene because no one wants to live in a house where someone had hung himself to death; later, no one wants to buy such a house either.  I didn’t want to be an inconvenience to those around me after I was gone from the world. I wanted to depart without a sound, just like a cat sneaking inside a house. I wanted the death of a mouse — where it all gets over before you even realize. I’m of the belief that that someone who shuffles off the mortal coil in the middle of slumbers is really fortunate.

Whenever I saw that beggar with his emaciated body on my way back home from the office, I wondered why he was even alive, why doesn’t he just die?! I once approached him on the pretext of offering some money and asked why he was alive. He replied, “Because death does not arrive. Instead, someone like you comes everyday and puts in little bit of life in front of me in my begging bowl.” 

Can life be put inside a bowl? May be all of us are somehow alive because of our respective bowls. The bowl seemed like a pocket to me that gets filled right before it gets emptied. The bowl seemed like that hope to me which one offers to oneself every day. The bowl seemed like hunger to me. The bowl seemed like a story to me that one narrates to one self. 

I devoured suicide stories in newspapers as if they were live cricket matches. I’d always seen death with eyes full of excitement. I couldn’t share these thoughts anyone — not even with my doctor or psychologist. The psychologist always told me that it would be therapeutic if I penned down the thoughts gnawing at me. It irritated me. I’d once written down all this stuff on paper. I felt unburdened. But then I don’t know what made me burn those pages. As the papers burst into flames, the heaviness sunk back in.

When I got really sick of my habit, I decided that I’d confide in my wife once I returned home that day. After all, there should be at least one person in the world who knows everything about us. Everything. And the day you lose that one person, you sort of die, too. There are 800 crore people on earth, and not a single person who knows everything about us. The thought of it often made me sad. For a selected few, I was that second person who knew it all. 

As I was driving through Mumbai’s Worli sea link, the sun was beautifully setting in front of me. It was so pretty that it felt like the sun was westering for the very first time on the earth’s maiden day. There are parking restrictions on the sea-link highway. So, I slowed down my car and made three round trips of along the route, until the sun had sunk. After that, I drove back home like every other day. My wife had also returned from her office. My kid had gone out to play downstairs. I turned on the gas, put the tea to brew on low flame, knocking sense into my head against my foolish thoughts. As I prepared the tea, I could hear my child playing, as his voice filtered through the window. The voice, despite being faint, was loud enough to hold me back on earth.

My wife was surprised to see me prepare tea, and asked if everything was okay. As usual, I lied, “Oh no, nothing much. Just felt like making some tea.” After this, we chatted about the regular everyday stuff, planned about buying a house and opening a fixed deposit account for our kid; thought of catching up on stuff we’d skipped on Netflix and Amazon.  Then we also discussed that we’d been missing out on visiting home Diwali every year, so we needed to book tour tickets well before time. It feels drab to stay in Mumbai during festive season. We ought to go home this time for sure. Sipping my tea, I checked out for flight tickets on travel app. I hugged my wife in a tight embrace. It had been long time since I’d held her so. As soon as I hugged her, everything about of all my previous lovers came flooding back vividly. I didn’t resist the memories. All of a sudden, some strange visions from my childhood hit me — the first time I fell off from my bicycle with a great thud; the football match in Sixth standard, where I had scored a goal; somewhere my mother was singing a lullaby for me. I was listening to it after ages. The lullaby brought along memories of my mom. The memories of my mom brought along memories of dad. I also remembered how my dad always splurged on me, more than he could afford, but never made it obvious except on a couple of occasions. I remembered my wedding function, the dancing troupe of my friends and the cold honeymoon night in Manali.

I recalled all my pending tasks as I still kept holding my wife. The tasks that had remained unaccomplished for several years and would probably stay so for years to come.

There’s very little tea left in the cup now. I hear my kid again. He’d rung the doorbell. I open the door. He rushes in to hug me. As I hold him tight, I feel a strange chill — as if one fish was hugging another. I could not make sense of what he was saying, but his voice kept receding.

My eyes were drooping as I held him. I made all efforts to keep them open, but nothing worked out.  I tried to take a deep breath, but felt choked. I could see an unknown number ringing on my phone, but all went foggy.

I told my wife that I was feeling under the weather ne and would like to rest for a while. Just when I was about to lie on my bed, my legs trembled in some kind of shock, and I collapsed inside my room. I wondered why my room was flooded with water. Before I could understand or do anything about it, the water rushed to engulf me. 

I had heard that a man dies within sixty seconds of drowning in water. I realized that it wasn’t true. I wanted to live in those 59 seconds, each second as if it were a year. 

The strength of being human is such that one doesn’t give up hope. If it weren’t for hope, people wouldn’t write suicide letters, instead they’d just die silently. 

An anonymous death is a luxury in our times. The following day, newspapers and TV news reported that safety measures would be escalated in view of the rising number of suicide cases on the sea-link.  It was the 11th instance of suicide in the past three months. A forty-year-old corporate executive had plunged to death. He was said to have possessed a cheerful disposition. The reason for suicide could not be confirmed.

As the fish turned to mice, my obscure life did not end in an anonymous death.