Manan FF: The Sketch Artist

Nineteenth

Manik

Since the day I've reached this eight by seven meagre space, they call a cell, I've been going through an array of emotions, all of them having causal connections with the state of anxiety, uneasiness, stress and what not. 

It's not as if earlier life was tickling me every other day and providing me with people to feel joyous, but at least I was satisfied with my own self. 

However, now I've landed myself in a situation where I'm far away from being satisfied, in fact I've myself made the situation abysmal. That too for a person who perhaps couldn't care less about me. A person who didn't even think twice before letting me rot in jail. And now, I don't even know if she knows that I'm going to be hanged soon or is she celebrating her own freedom. 

Still, here I'm, I can't even bring myself to say the truth on everyone's faces. I can't even let a lawyer fight for me. And, sinking myself in the jaws of death still appears to be a fair option to me. This is where I lost the battle. I lost the battle where I was asked to stand against people for whom I have a heart to care for. 

Though I've started to care for someone else these days. As soon as I stepped the doors of prison, I knew I was never going to make it alive. I'd closed the doors of my heart because the people this heart actually cared for led it to death. What more was actually left?

But then out of nowhere, there came Nandini. The day I had a conversation with her for the second time, I wished I had met her in normal circumstances. But then, I thanked god, it didn't happen, because in that case, I wouldn't have been fine seeing that woman already with someone else. And she must love him a lot, owing to the fact, she reached a prison for just a birthday present. So, the wish to meet her under normal circumstances outside this prison went as soon as it came. 

However, yesterday when she was sitting in this cell again without any predefined reason. I knew that she also feels that same connection between us. But, when she came up with this reason of getting me out of this jail as the reason for being here. I knew she is not consciously aware of any such connections between us. Or perhaps, I'm just assuming a lot. Either this mental turmoil I'm in is making me think of all such scenarios. 

And these scenarios are coming across as so blissful to my brain cells that I want to live in this imagination for this moment when I know death is just a day away from me. It might be a crime to think about a woman who belongs to someone else. But it's better to commit a crime and then die rather than dying plain. 

I know what all I'm thinking is plain stupid but the situation has made me this way. At times I've been so mature whereas at other times I might behave like a man child. 

Next Day,

Author's POV:

The sweat box was waiting for Manik in the parking lot before the crack of dawn. At exact 3:27 AM, Manik was asked to step out of the cell after being chained from head to toe considering it takes exact three minutes to reach the parking lot in a chained prisoner's pace. As he saw the sweatbox, he knew what was coming next. An unpleasant journey. 

A sweatbox consists of fourteen small compartments, seven on each side with highly tinted windows and you can imagine blood or dirt here or there in such compartments. Manik had been having his to & fro court journeys in these vans ever since he's here and is completely disgusted by the unhygienic and tiny space he gets to sit. Being a doctor, he has always kept his surroundings more than clean and hygienic and sitting in that Sweatbox just makes him think of how many diseases and infections he can catch.

But today, it wasn't about infections, it was just pure discomfort, not having a seatbelt and swaying around on breakers. There was a time when he would be super patient whatsoever maybe the situation but today annoyance made its way to his face forming the frown lines. 

The sweat box started for the capital town at its scheduled time. In the span of two hours that it took to reach the Pentville Prison, Manik's brain went through an array of thoughts. He was not able to connect the dots to reach the purpose for the life he had lived or why would God give one  more human being on earth without any reason. In his twenty nine years of life, he hasn't really done anything except studying medicines and holding scalpels. 

But that's professional. His personal life has been as dull as ditchwater. He wished for having a chance at life again. However, it was too late now. 

Once reaching, Siddharth who was apparently the officer incharge for closing Manik's case met the warder from Pentville prison and did the paperwork for entering sweatbox into the execution parking. 

As Manik was taken to the special enclosure by the warder, Siddharth went inside the office to see the chief and knocked on the cabin door. 

He unlocked the knob as he heard a faint, Come in, from inside. 

'Chief' He addressed and kept the death warrant on the table. 

Chief nodded and passed on the death warrant to the superintendent sitting in front of him who started reading the same and filling for the required information on his laptop, but his expressions changed as soon as he filled the prisoner's number. 

Author's Note

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