A scorching Saturday morning found me staring into the faces of two men whom I presumed to be on the brink of absolute death! It’s not like I haven’t seen the dying before, for I was there by her side when my maternal grandmother departed from this world. But the living dead lying inches away from me on a street near Urdu Bazaar made a chill run down my spine.
I was walking through the streets of Urdu Bazaar with my mother when my gaze fell upon the sorry figures of men huddled together and dressed in rags. I was sure they were already dead — or at least near death — for swarms of restless flies were settling down on their skull-like, unshaven faces and various insects swarmed over their pallid and dirt-parched bodies.
For a few seconds — which seemed like eternity to me — my stare locked on to the nearest and most clearly visible man’s bulging eyes. I can never forget the look I saw in those lifeless grey pupils and the filthy black eyelids. To add to this, I saw dangling between two scrawny and blackened fingers, a squalid, half-full syringe.
Just behind this pathetic sight was another similar mass — a second person gradually rotting away from addiction. His disfigured face with its unruly beard nauseated me. Although I could not see very clearly, his toes appeared to be moulded together by an amateur artisan and his distorted teeth were a sickening shade of grey.
Just a few feet from these motionless and pitiful creatures was another semi-alive being, desperately trying to move towards the syringe. His face was contorted into a grin and the skin on his six forelimbs appeared punctured at several spots and reddish black clots populated all three men’s bodies. With the butt of a mutilated cigarette held aimlessly between blackened lips, the semi-alive man made one last ditch effort to obtain the prized syringe, but failed miserably. He slumped to the ground lifelessly, obviously worn out by the effort.
Suddenly, I felt someone impatiently tugging at my shoulder and I turned away from the horrendous scene to face my mother. Nevertheless, my mind can never forget the unpleasantness of it all.
Thousands of us come across such pathetic sights every day and walk away from it all. However, the lasting bitterness never abandons our minds. There was once a time when I used to wonder for hours why unworthy tortoises should outlive the sixty to seventy year life-span of ‘intelligent’ man.
Now, I do not waste even a minute to find the answer to this question.
A scorching Saturday morning found me staring into the faces of two men whom I presumed to be on the brink of absolute death! It’s not like I haven’t seen the dying before, for I was there by her side when my maternal grandmother departed from this world. But the living dead lying inches away from me on a street near Urdu Bazaar made a chill run down my spine.
