He looked quite cheerful on the outside, so much so that no one, not even his near and dear ones could have sensed the storm brewing inside him. He had just learnt that his far away relative had succumbed to a long term illness. Near death experiences or even the news of death can make people do funny things. And so it was with him as well, he started questioning his very existence. Maybe it wasn’t just the news but a chain of events that had led him to where he was right now, but the news of a death served as the trigger point for him to recount his last few months and take stock. He had thought he would walk it off, however it kept coming back to him. He walked back to his apartment and started thinking where exactly things started going wrong for him. Things seemed so rosy when he was a child, and he recalled with a smile that he was even hailed as the prodigal son. But as the world saw more of him, the more everyone was convinced he was just another rat in the never ending rat race of one-upmanship. He was suddenly filled with disgust for the world he inhabited. As he had grown older, he had sensed the amount of pressure his family placed on him, expecting great things from him. And when he thought he couldn’t take it any longer, he started shying away from all responsibilities. His reasoning being if he lowered the bar, the expectations would naturally come down. Unknow to him, those were his first steps towards mediocrity and before he knew it, he was neck deep in it with no possible way out.
He thought about how he had barely scraped through his degree program and how lucky he was to have got a job in a reputed firm straight out of college. Although he was still not able to rise above the mediocrity, he had learned to mask it with heavy duty words thanks to his corporate training. He had made sure that the powers that be, misconstrued his ineptness to be commitment and hard work. Now that he thought about it, he was as manipulative as the guy who was being paid to manage him. All the corporate teachings had turned him into manipulative old ba***rd. Wait a minute, he thought, things weren’t all that gloomy .There was a silver lining as well. He had a brief fling with excellence which was perhaps the happiest few moments of his life. Alas it was not to last, when he finally had the courage to ask excellence to marry him, he was told that he could never have her, as they could never be together. And thus ended his tryst with excellence and he swore he would never leave mediocrity’s side. The one thing he had learnt during his fling was that although he was a little slow, his powers of understanding and perception were indeed pretty good, a thought which made him wonder, “What could have been”.
He was shaken out of his reverie by the sound of the clock chiming 11. The alcohol, he realized, hadn’t yet gone out of his system. He remembered the first time he had drank himself stupid. It was the day the girl he loved had got married. His love life although not much to speak of, had been quite satisfying, he thought. He had a few crushes through school and college and a couple of one sided relationships since he turned pro. Why one sided? Because there was no other way he could fathom himself with them. He was satisfied and wasn’t at all bitter about it. As the clock struck 12, he wished he could stop thinking, however his memories were coming back to him like there was no tomorrow. He had read somewhere that your whole life flashes across your eyes before you die. “Was this the end?” , he thought. He got tired of brooding, and got himself a stool and a rope. He put one side of the rope through a hook in the ceiling and secured it. He got up onto the stool and tied the other end of the rope. He somehow felt at peace with himself, all the thoughts would finally come to an end. And then without warning, his thoughts moved to the movie Rocky where the protagonist never gave up. He was inspired by the thought of the character and suddenly he was filled with hope. He could probably fight all his demons away. He felt like he had been given a new lease of life. With renewed vigour he got down from the stool.
The next day the building superintendent found his body hanging from the ceiling. The medical examiner declared that the time of death was around midnight.
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