Alex Chaturvedi was dying. Doctors in the United States had told him that he had only some months left. He should go home and spend his last days in peace, they told him. Alex was heartbroken. This was the only life he had ever known as his own. He used to tell each of his white girlfriends, “You’re mine.” However, it didn’t matter now. He wondered if it would have mattered had he truly believed in his heart what he said to the girlfriends. He wondered whether even wondering about anything mattered now. He quit his job, and with it the last girl who used to go out with him, Stella, also bade him good bye. He packed his important belongings from Stella’s small house and left for India. No one came to see him off at the airport. No one seemed to care if he was dying. He boarded the flight feeling strangely alone. The lady sitting beside him on the window seat seemed to him around the same age as his.
“Hi, there.”
“Hello,” the lady greeted back with a smile.
“Oh wow, such a beautiful face and such a relaxing smile,” he thought, continuing to look into her face. He smiled back, “My name is Alex.”
“Oh.. I am Martha. You don’t look like an Alex.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Oh, I mean.. no offence to you, I mean you are brown, I think you’re from India? And Alex is kind of an English name.. “
“Yes, you got it. There is an interesting story behind this. But you know what’s even more interesting? I am dying.”
Martha looked puzzled for Alex said it with such indifference and carelessness that it seemed as if he was trying to gather some sympathy from her in a strange attempt to woo her. She gave a deliberate fake smile and put on her headphones and turned her gaze out of the window into the bright hopeful blue sky and the playful foamy clouds.
Alex gave a sigh and fell back on his seat, looking at the small openings in the AC slot. He had no family back in India and so he had no hope of having a change in his feelings once he landed. He drifted to sleep and slept for too long and was woken up by the fair and blonde air-hostess who very politely asked him to straighten his seat as they were about to land very soon. Alex looked at her, confused. He turned his face towards the window seat. Martha was sitting with her eyes closed as if in a deep prayer.
“I wish I could kiss her,” he kept looking at her and wondered.
Martha opened her eyes at that very moment as if she had heard his thoughts. Alex felt embarrassed and gave a stupid smile to her and turned back his face to view the ground images being shown on the TV fixed on the back of the front seat.
He wished the flight would crash before touching down, but then he thought of Martha and in his mind quickly undid the wish. The flight landed safely and he once again got to see Martha at the taxi queue before she boarded the taxi and got away. Slightly disappointed, he remembered Stella and let out a long sigh. He stopped a taxi and gave the taxi driver an address printed on the slip.
It was winter now and it had been 3 months since he arrived in India. He had taken up a luxury room in an expensive private hospital, and had decided that he will die here in this room. He had sent emails to all his close friends first, and then after a few days, had forwarded the same email to the not so close friends also. He had told them about his imminent death and he had requested them all to send one book for him to read. Some of the friends who were in the same city came to visit him. They asked how he was doing and if he wanted anything.
“ Did you get a book for me, Raman?”
That was the only thing he seemed to care about. Doctors didn’t know what to do about it. Some of the close friends bring him books to read. Some sent it to him via post. He started collecting them in one wooden cupboard near his bed. He never read any of them. One fine day, a reporter friend of his came by and wrote about Alex in his blog. It caught the fancy of a lot of people who read the newspaper the next day. Books started flooding in then. People felt a strange selfish satisfaction in becoming a part of this dream of a dying man. They started sending in letters along with the books. Soon, pictures of young school children started coming in with the books. Alex was not reading any of them. He had got bored of the books now.
It was almost seven months now since he had last seen Martha. Books had now stopped flowing in. People got busy in their lives and forgot about the dying man. His bank balance was about to finish. The bank called him. He asked them to sell his fixed assets and liquidate his long terms bonds. The bank did so and told him that he was good to go for the next year or so.
One fine Sunday morning, when it was the beginning of spring, he began reading. He picked up one book at random and opened it and did not put it back till he had finished it. He finished two books that day. He was full of energy the next day he woke up. He picked more books at random and read them. He assigned a corner in his room where he threw the books he had finished. That pile began to grow up. It was about two weeks since he started reading and he had finished around twenty five books.
No one came to visit him now. He once got a phone call from Stella. She asked him to send her some money. He refused. Stella cursed at him and told him that he should die right then. He refused to that too.
That night, the doctor told him that there was a decreased blood supply to his brain. They would need to operate on him. He wanted to refuse but he forgot about the operation as he got busy in a book, and remembered about it only when the doctors put him on anesthesia. The operation lasted for more than fifteen hours and he was now in a state of coma. Doctors said that they would wait for some time before taking any further actions. He was put on life support and inside his deep sleep he had a dream of reading more. In that poor condition, his mind wrote books for him which he read. These were the books which were never written in the real world, and he was the only reader of those books. Those who saw him during those days told that many a times while sleeping, he would begin smiling, and at other times a couple of tears would roll down from his eyes.
One day a woman in her late thirties came to visit Alex. She told them all that his original name was Alok before he left India. She was his first wife, and they had not contacted each other since the last ten years. She sat in his room for around seven hours. Before leaving, she planted a soft kiss on his cheeks. At that time, Alex dreamed of Stella and Martha kissing him in turn.
The next morning, he was pronounced dead by the doctors. There were still some books that were not read by him. Some of his close friends came by to make the arrangements. One suggested that the remaining books should be read to him. A professional reader was hired for his strangest assignment yet. He read to him for 3 days until all the books were completed. All those books were then sent to a local public library. Unfortunately, the best books that were read by Alex could never gather more than one reader.