Fatal freedom

Shambhavi Mishra

This is a non-fiction piece of writing that shows how much you can be in love with your freedom that you start inferring your demise as perfect freedom of your existence. Freedom can be the obsession to hold up your cravings. Freedom is not always free to eat, to dwell, to get educated..... sometimes it can be as malice as a drug addict. Here is a statement that I listened from someone I won't mention..... He began saying......
"I had been an epileptic sufferer since I was of five. My two elder brothers left everything for their sovereignty. I don't know if they were mad or addicted to freedom. My eldest brother Vansuman, was an officer at the forest conservation department and was married to an elegant girl of a very reputed family but unfortunately, they had no children. My father was a renowned 'zamindar' and we had so much land that the Bihar government filed a case against us for 8 acres (approx) of our land. My lawyer and I anyhow fought in the court and got those lands back. We were poor but rich with lands.
Vansuman was a very temperamental man. When he was at the age of 60s he got too sick to recognize anything. He was suffering from diplopia and we were to take him to AIIMS, Delhi for his treatment. We boarded a train at 11.00 a.m. in the morning from Patna. On the way to Benaras, he told me with bitterness in his voice, " Raja, we'll get out of the train at next station". I asked him the motive of getting out but he was adamant and only ordered me to get out without any objection. When we reached the station I peeped out from the door in search of a coolie when he suddenly shouted, " Raja, what are you doing? I told you to get down to the platform. We stepped out of the train and as soon as he breathed the air of the platform, he fainted. The railway doctor arrived and examined him carefully, gave some medicines and Vansuman revived. The doctor asked the history of the patient and where we were going for his treatment. The doctor asked me if Vansuman was addicted to alcohol. I told him he used to drink but now he don't and he advised us to visit his sanitarium so that he may prescribe him some medicine that will make Vansuman normal. The doctor went away and Vansuman got up started walking out of the station. I followed him for some distance and then I asked him, " Bhaiya, where are you going?". He didn't answered me. I came in front of him and stopped him. He pushed me by saying, " leave me, I'm going in Ganga and I'll walk until I disappear. I hold his hands and angrily shouted at him, " Bhaiya don't you remember what you said that "Raja, leave your studies. You don't need to study. I'll give you so much money that you'll sleep on bed of money. Cmon give me that money, give me my share and then I won't stop you". He silently came along with me to the sanitarium, had his medicines and slept for a few hours. Suddenly, he woke up and called me, " Raja, where are you? Are you listening to me? Just give me 300 rupees ". I told him I was left with no extra money, if I would be left with money after his treatment then I would surely give him. He was so cranky that he went on the terrace to jump down and suicide. I followed him and hold his collar from the back of his shirt. This time I yelled at him, " Bhaiya, I won't stop you from dying if you give me my share from the estate." He replied, " What do you want?". I told him, " You made me slept on the bundle of notes.... I am telling you just get your medicines and we will return and you will be liberated". But he was so adamant that this time I can't persuade him and at last, I had to give him 300 rupees. He was not ready to accept the circumstances, all he wanted was 300 rupees. He left us. After a while, his wife pleaded me to go and search for Vansuman. I was exhausted but then also I went in search of my brother and at last, I found him in the waiting room at the platform where he was smoking a cigarette. At once, I went to him asked him what he was doing. He didn't answered me. After a lot of persuasion he told me that he want to go home and I went to the hospital to bring his wife. When we came back, Vansuman was not there, he was freed. We never found him again. He got lost in the streets of Benaras.
My elder brother Durmil, who was good at football but aloof from family also ran away. We even got him married to a girl so that he might be engaged in his family and he had one son but nothing stopped him. Thirty years of his family life taught him to be a hermit and we could not found him too. They never returned.
My mother lost her two alive sons."

Tears rolled from his eyes. Now, you decide according to your perspective that was it the undaunting blue madness of life or the need for freedom. The only conclusion the story gives is that, " FREE WORLD NEVER EXISTS NEITHER IN REALITY NOR IN DREAMS". The idea of a free world is completely a mirage. Even if you are independent at one thing, you are confined at another. The life cycle of humans lacks freedom at every stage.