Mortality

The thermometer read 104 degrees Fahrenheit. A touch of concern, for a twenty year old. But to his mother it was a state of panic. She had always protected her son from every turmoil, every problem. She had shielded him from the world outside, and his slightest sneeze would be enough to have her running around for medicines and doctors. Mrityunjay had never for once lived without his mother. He had never gone to hostel, and in fact he had never set foot outside Calcutta in all his twenty years. He was born and brought up in his quaint north Calcutta house, studied in the school just 10 feet away, and ran to college at the other end of the lake behind his house. A 4-square kilometre of under-privileged urban Calcutta was what he knew as the big bad world. Mrityunjay was a man with a rare talent - he could read minds. He could look into the eyes of any man and tell what the man had in his mind. He didn’t really practice it on men, though - the effect seemed to be better if the subject was a woman, and even better still if she was young and pretty. Of course, he did pick up the odd bet with his friends and confront an arbitrary man on a dull Sunday afternoon by the lake, and bewilder him by announcing the man was contemplating suicide as he recently lost his job and had a family of 7 to support. Well, this incident actually happened to be the last time he tried the trick, and this revelation had led him into almost 7 years of depression. On coming out of it, he merely kept his talent as a hobby to attract and woo pretty ladies. He had once fallen in love with the prettiest girl in all college - after he had looked in her eyes and revealed the girl was thinking of slapping him! The girl obviously got very embarrassed, but nevertheless she reserved a small awe for his amazing talent. To the class he was known as ‘Mental’, as many thought his was clearly a case of mental instability rather than a gift. His mother, ironically, knew nothing about it. She would have known, had he told her he had seen the extra-marital affair in his father’s eyes - and his intentions of dumping them and going off to Delhi with another woman. Maybe his father did leave them after all because he was too afraid to tell this to anybody. He had thought about this all his life; two incidents, both truth, but one when told caused agony while the other, when not told, caused the same. He was in a dilemma as to which path to take. His seven years of depression was a battleground of thoughts for him, the fight between what to and what not to, the realisation of whether what he possessed was a gift or a curse. He had, for a while, decided to say only pleasant things that he saw, while keep the bad things to himself. But that did not hold out to be a good argument - his father’s motive was unpleasant, but had to be told, and he hadn’t. He remembered what Death had said to Nachiketa - “The good is one thing, the pleasant another; these two, having different objects, chain a man. It is well with him who clings to the good; he who chooses the pleasant, misses the end”Soaking with sweat, his body burning and head splitting, he was pondering over the same thought. Was it good, or the pleasant? Did mother need to know? He had fumbled with his decision on many occasions, and he was fumbling rather bad on this one. Mother was trying to put damp swabs on his forehead to reduce the temperature. “Mother,” he started mumbling, “I saw it in the doctor’s eyes today”...