It was around twelve. Hesitation was a boiling pot within me but without much further thought, I split my lips to pitch my first word to him. He was about twelve, much diminutive than he looked but cannier than I imagined. His legs cut the air fast and the sun managed to vividly glaze his flickering eyes. I was sustaining my speed and believably I was beginning to admire him. It had been just a five-minute jaunt but I still felt so much of connect between us. I wished we had a conversation.

In a whack to kindle his mouth, I towered my voice “Am I casting myself like a bastard?” my tone vibrating with a heavy resonance. Withholding his movement, he bumped against air to stop and he turned.

“Do you have a doubt?” he opened up in a way that I wished he hadn't. He was dissecting my composure but I held my nerves as I was on the faulty side. Things seemed really bumbling. He over passed me just five minutes back. Now I was anticipating that he would forgive me. If someone could be so screwed then I was at the zenith of being so. Accoutring all the courage to get back to him, I started to mumble.

Before I could even start convincing he forced his tough voice, “I wish there was someone here. I was also obliged to what had happened”. He turned his face back and looked at things in the background. He settled down.

“Where do you reside?” I inquired with the sole reason of knowing him further.

“Anywhere.”

It seemed less surprising as I could spot that from the way he carried himself. His shorts had a big hole at the back. His shirt was oversized to make anyone guess that it was not his. I pitied his being. He looked like he hadn’t eaten for months. 

“We have a lot in common” I added.

“Do you beg?” he was puzzled at my allegation.

Confused over whether I could reveal my way of living, I responded to his question, “No. I don’t precisely.”

“Nothing could bring us an inch closer. I beg for my routine food. I wear dresses that I find in the bin and doze in a place that I find when my eyes dwell into the state of unconsciousness. I am a vague being who God forgot to reconsider. I neither know who my parents are nor do I know what starvation is. I have always been in it.”

I laughed meekly with a slight sarcasm. I understood the line of demarcation between us was narrow.

“Am I not making sense? Life has only two straightforward rules. One to live filthy rich and enjoy; the other to live moral myself and struggle”, he said, his words reflecting some foresight.

“Maybe,” I said.

Philosophy overshadowed a part of our conversation. I was a person who believed that blood was the ultimate, and I procured money by swirling knives on people’s neck. I was a hooligan whose ideologies relied on payments. I knew no work other than to be a gangster. I kill, I rape, and I sin. How could I tell him that?

“Do you mind telling your name?” I asked.

“I would not have minded if I had known.”

I adored his innocence. His ability to contemplate at things in a humorous yet veracious manner redefined a lot of things inside me. I was feeling fresh. I was beginning to cherish things. Before enlightenment crawled its way inside me, he jerked suddenly.

“Why did you pause?” 

“I find it very awkward to be walking with you. But I see you as my very own.”

“I should have the pleasure,” I said this as both of us turned our heads to turn back and look at the road that we had been walking through. It was straight. It looked like a long walk but the point where we initiated the walk was still in sight.

“Do you stab people for money?” his mouth re-flexed quickly. I didn't reckon this now. He is being a genius. Some can impress in a minutes time I thought. Contradictory to the words of my heart this time, I said yes.

He wasn't offended. He tittered mildly and said, “Now I trust the tremor in your eyes that I have been seeing right from the site where we met.”

The sun was extracting all my energy, surging the heat of the talk to a peak. Our interpretation depends on what we believe. His belief was right. Fear of being killed has always engaged my life. Death is not something I failed to believe, but the enforcement of death to me did always bring in a shake within.

“Tediously bending to all the questions you flip is now becoming an uphill task,” I said letting go of my ego. He effortlessly managed to bring the stony part of myself out. Till the moment, he questioned my fear.  

Befitting to the conversation that was through, things around began to clinch down. No vehicles were moving and it was dead silent. I began speaking my heart and things that occurred prior to the meeting.

His eyes looked into mine. He froze and listened to what my mouth said. Though our heights made a difference, the situation was extremely pleasing. I started.

“People generally refer to me as hooligan for the avocation  I do. If not, I would have been a beggar literally sleeping on roads and eating garbage. All things that happen in our lives are not necessarily explainable but experience-able and that’s how I was called to work under a very famous law maker. Though I have slashed a lot of heads, eyed tones of blood for him I have literally not seen him once. I work under my boss who assigns my work. I was a payable prostitute.”

“Do you prefer driving your bike fast?” he asked something that wasn't relevant to what I had been saying.

“Why do you ask that?” I questioned.

“You must know” he said.

“Yes I do. I betrayed my boss.”

“Now is that a reason.”

“I killed him.”

“I guessed. Your eyes said that way before. Your lips did that just now.”

“I believe now you must have the entire picture. Greediness when contemplated closely is not explainable.”

“So you say it’s experience-able?”

“Unless you fear death, it is”

“Death? There is no death. It’s an interpretation.”

I failed to understand his point. Walking slowly I was missing eye contact. I was looking around. An ambulance crossed me very fast. The sound irritated my senses.

“Death does not happen. It has never happened.” He said further.

“So you say that god doesn't exist. Isn't it?”

There was a wait. He told me to change the direction of our walk. We started to walk back to the place where we began. My senses obeyed his words without further quest.

“Our consciousness is different from our body. Our body is not ours. Our consciousness is. Death happens when we dwell into the identification of our body and not our senses. When we feel separated from our body, we feel death. When we identify our consciousness to body, death is a fool’s game-play.” He finished.

“Complicated” I said.

Divine intervention is not experienced by all. Those who do become saints and those who don’t become atheists, I thought. The seven positive and the seven negative planes of existence have some meaning and that is the reason we have been living in the world where love and compassion among individuals is a rarity. Melodramatic, yet I was amazed to see the change in myself.

“Do you mind telling your name?” he asked.

I could see that the ambulance that crossed us before few minutes stopped ahead of us. The few meters in between was evident. Being a voracious observer of women, I noticed a woman near the ambulance. She was in her thirties. She was beautiful and ethnic. She must have called the ambulance, I guessed.

Noticing her acts I forgot to answer him. “Everything in this world has a reason. Once a person starts to think beyond his individual level, there would be no poverty, no ego, no hunger and no religious wars,” he said.

“Everything has a reason.” I repeated.

I saw the girl once again. She bent and touched.

“Eh? What?” he asked as if he didn’t listen what I had said.

“I was named as Vyashti I remember,” I answered his question.

All of a sudden he stamped my legs while walking. The laces were misplaced. It felt strenuous to walk. Wind was blowing laboriously. Things eventuate when we least expect it. It’s a universal fact common to all the endeavours in this domain.

“You were right. If you had held on to the brakes of your bike at the right time and if you hadn't hit me hard, things would have been extremely difficult for me ahead,” he said.

 I saw the girl touching the boy lying there. The phrase “Everything has a reason” was ringing again and again, inside me.

“You don’t belong here”, I said to him. I bent down to tie my laces. “Why were you rushing and running hurriedly before I bumped on you. I too saw the fear. I knew that you were terrified to lose your life. Your eyes sketched what your heart wished. Isn’t it?”

 There was absolute silence.

I got up. He was not there. He has whooshed into the air. I heard a voice ahead. It was the girl’s.

“The boy is breathing. He has life!” she shouted to the men in the ambulance.

The situation there became strained. “What must be his name?” I thought.

“Samashti” maybe I interpreted.

All things that we experience are not necessarily explainable. When we don’t know ourselves and we are identified with our body death matters. Consciousness is what we should identify and the soul remains eternal. I understood that there is no death.

And so I moved.