If I Were You... - Kalai Selvi Arivalagan (chrysanthemum read aloud .TXT) 📗

Evening started to set in. The bus terminus had an eerie look. Vel never got the opportunity to see the state of the place where he worked. All the time he travelled in the bus and even the traffic chaos in the roads seemed nothing to him.

Vel got so used to that and he felt, he would be depressed if he missed the chaotic bustle of the Chennai roads.

Even with the lights on, darkness started to engulf the place slowly. He looked around the place casually. He could see passengers restlessly waiting for their buses. Not even a single soul with a happy face. Moving around with people everyday had taught him to read people’s mind by looking at their faces.

Every day after duty hours, Vel always rushed to be with his family. But, to-day things were different. He felt heaviness in his heart and wanted to be alone. To avoid familiar faces in the terminus, Vel moved to a dark corner and sat down on an empty stone bench. With hundreds of thoughts going in his mind, he looked around.

Vel’s aimless look stopped suddenly. A shudder went through his spine when he heard the same tune from a mobile in the crowd. He walked briskly through the crowd searching for the person who had played that tune in the mobile. But, within seconds, the tune stopped.

“Vel, what happened?” One of his colleagues shouted at him.

But Vel did not hear anything. The tune disturbed him much and he went around the bus station again and again. After 10 minutes of frantic search, he once again came to the stone bench.

Reclining on the stone pillar, he closed his eyes for a while. Letting his breath to slow down, Vel tried to feel calm. Yet, his nerves throbbed with anxiety, and he could feel the fast beating of his heart.

For more than a week, the tune has been disturbing him and he desperately wanted to find out who had sent the watch to him.

 ‘Mind your business,’ Vel repeated the words once again.

Dora’s eyes looked into his eyes. Her gaze searched something deep in his eyes. Vel closed his eyes for a second.

‘What do you think about me?’ Vel looked at Dora.

‘You didn’t tell me about your suspension.’

‘I thought I will tell you later. Just leave me alone.’ Uttering the words loudly, Vel entered the bathroom. He splashed the cold water on his face to let his emotion down. Usually, Dora never contradicted with Vel when he is in a bad mood. Without uttering a word, she started to serve his food and called him to have his supper.

Around 11 p.m., someone started to bang the door. Without sleep Vel had been rolling on the bed. Awaken by the loud bang, he went and opened the door. Some of his colleagues were standing there and they looked agitated. Worried look on their faces told him that something was wrong.

‘Lock the door.’ Vel left the house along with the colleagues. Vel along with his colleagues reached the bus depot. A huge crowd gathered near the gate. Vel could hear heated arguments with filthy language that filled the night air.

‘What’s going on here?’ Vel pushed his way through and entered the centre of the crowd.

‘Vel, listen to this. This guy only picked up the quarrel. And now he’s blaming me.’

‘Tell me in detail what happened.’ Vel’s colleague started to narrate the whole incident once again. But before he finished narrating the story, someone grabbed Vel’s shirt collar and hit him badly on his face. This triggered Vel’s anger and as a natural instinct he started to hit back the person with all his strength.

It turned out to be a let out for his disturbed mind and so he pushed ahead with unknown strength of vengeance and landed endless hits on the people before him.

When the ambulance reached the place, Vel was already unconscious and one of his colleagues lifted him by his shoulder and helped him to lie down on the trolley. When the person who came along with the ambulance pushed the trolley into the van, all the others who were in the crowd were taken away by the police.

The next day Vel woke up from his sleep in the emergency room. Except some nurses no one was there in the room. Vel looked around to see who all were there. He could find two of his colleagues near his bed with oxygen masks. Vel looked at his stretched left hand connected to the IV tube and he felt a swelling on his lips.

Vel could not move his legs and he felt a shooting pain on the calve muscles of his left leg. Vel could see Dora peeping through the small glass window on the door of the emergency room. With a sigh he looked at her. But he could not call her as he once again became unconscious.

End Chapter

After ten days, Vel walked limping out of the GH. Dora wanted to shift him to the nearby nursing home. But, the police insisted that he stayed there as the case had turned out to be a violent one. Staying at the general hospital opened his eyes to the other side of life. He was shocked to see the dark side of the life that finally left many people as silent sufferers.

‘Mam,’ someone called Dora from the entrance.

Vel looked ahead to see who called Dora. To his shock, it was the same girl who enquired him about meeting Dora.

‘Meet Miss. Corina. She helped me a lot to get the blood for you.’ Vel looked at her without any expression. In his mind he felt she was the main reason for all his problems.

‘Excuse me, if I had disturbed you.’ Corina broke the silence. ‘I am sorry.’

‘She only sent you the watch to include you in their project’. Dora whispered to him.

‘What the hell do you think about me?’ Vel barked at her.

To cool down the situation, Corina smiled at him. ‘It happened so. I never thought it would turn into a big mess like this.’

‘So, now you are happy.’ Vel started walking toward the auto that was parked at the entrance. Somehow he managed to get inside and sat down on the seat.

‘If you really want to help people, be frank. Please, don’t play pranks like this.’

‘Mam’ Corina looked at Dora.

‘Ok. Cool down. We will look into this afterward. Now we will go home and take rest for a while.’ Dora tried to calm down Vel.

‘Thanks for all your help, Corina. I will meet you later.’ Dora waved as the auto moved down the road.

It took more than a month for Vel to return to his work. One afternoon when there was no crowd in the bus, Corina got into the bus on her way back home from the college.

‘Five rupee ticket please.’ With a smile she asked Vel.

Vel tried his best to keep his face grim and stern. He could be so only for a few seconds.

With his usual grin that brightened his face, he gave her the ticket and added jubilantly, ‘All the best.’

Text: Kalai Selvi Arivalagan
Publication Date: 10-05-2010

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To the hero of this story