Simple Calculations

Blood relation does not necessarily mean kinship of the heart. This world is wonderfully strange. Here, someone else's child can become closer than your own flesh and blood, while your own child may remain a stranger for life, even an enemy. Blood ties do not guarantee bonds of the soul.

I tell you these things because you seem like such a kindred spirit to me. No one else wants to listen to what I have to say. My wishes rarely come true, but I want you to read these words of mine. Let this one desire of mine be fulfilled. That you will read what I have written—this would be my good fortune.
I was a good student from childhood. I grew up as an utterly obedient son to my parents. I would lose myself in books. I loved reading so much. It felt as if the world was a book, and books were the world. There was no life beyond this. Seeing such dedication, my parents began to dream about me. And I, as if with strokes of a paintbrush, made their dreams even more vivid. With eyes closed, I would imagine that one day I would grow up, touch the sky, study hard and become someone great. My parents too filled me with grand dreams.
From first grade onward, I always came first in school. This pattern continued unbroken. It was as if the first position was reserved exclusively for me. Being a good student, my confidence level was very high. This way, my academic life progressed in friendship with success.
A+ in PSC and JSC. I came first in our district in both. Everyone took it for granted that it was absolutely impossible to dislodge me from that first position. I thought so too, deep down.
When I moved from ninth to tenth grade, I slipped from first to second place. All my pride was shattered. For the first time in my life, I came second. I couldn't accept it. That there was someone ahead of me, that there was someone more talented than me in my class—I simply couldn't accept this. One who has never seen anyone go ahead of him finds it painful even to stand behind someone.
Meanwhile, those who had secretly envied me were beside themselves with joy! The happiness scattered across their faces was plunging me into darkness. I couldn't bear their joy. I began to feel that now everything was over for me! Depression started setting in. Everyone in the family was stunned, relatives couldn't understand anything. Everyone said the same thing—a student like me simply couldn't come second instead of first!
Being known as a good student from childhood is a terrible thing—you can never think of yourself as small again. You can climb from bottom to top, but descending from top to bottom is agonizing, terribly agonizing. Everyone in the world only wants to go up. Even after rising and rising, piercing the sky and going beyond, people still want to rise higher—they can't even think of looking down, let alone descending! Anyway, I had to come down one step. I simply couldn't accept this. Yet it was nothing much really—just a difference of one digit in the roll number!
I began to lose the sense of life's and time's importance. I started losing confidence in myself. Day by day, indifference grew. I started hanging out with friends. Mixing with them, I gradually took up cigarettes. Smoking this way for a day or two, I slowly became habituated to it. At some point, I began feeling restless without smoking. To calm this restlessness, I would regularly go back to those friends for company and smoke in secret.
I would slip away from home with elaborate lies and excuses. When my parents asked, I'd say I was going to study with friends. Since I had never done anything untrustworthy before, my parents believed everything I told them.

Very quickly, to ease my frustration, I became addicted to smoking and turned into a chain smoker. My parents had no idea about any of this. I constantly took money from my parents with various reasons and excuses to fund my smoking habit. Sometimes I'd say I needed this or that for school. I'd attend private tutoring sessions, then pocket the money and waste it. Other times I'd inflate my actual needs and extort double the amount.

Since I had been such an obedient child, my parents didn't really distrust what I said. I exploited their trust as capital to carry on with all my misdeeds.

I became so deeply immersed in friends, hanging out, and smoking that I could no longer focus on my studies. I—who used to spend entire days with my face buried in books—became entangled in endless chatting and smoking at a very young age. I thought that eventually I would overcome the frustration, return to normal, and focus on my studies again, but exactly the opposite happened. I no longer enjoyed studying the way I used to.

Days passed this way, and my test exams arrived. I performed quite poorly. My parents were completely stunned. Forcing myself to buckle down, I began preparing for the SSC exams. But somehow I just couldn't concentrate. Meanwhile, the SSC exams drew closer. I couldn't extract myself from my smoking circle, nor could I fully focus on my studies. What a state to be in! The poor results of the test exams made me even more despondent. My parents tried to convince me in various ways to focus on my studies. Though I reassured them, I couldn't reassure myself. I kept thinking over and over that if my SSC results turned out badly, my parents would be deeply hurt. Still, I couldn't focus on my studies no matter what. In this wavering state, I continued both smoking and studying.

This is how I took my SSC exams from the science track. The exams went somehow. Even though I hadn't studied much, I had a very sharp memory—once I read something, it would stick in my head. I took the exam based solely on that. After the exams, I saw that my parents, relatives, everyone was quite optimistic about me. But my mind kept calling out to other things.

The results came out. The result was 4.84. My parents were crushed at missing the A+. I too began losing respect for myself. I sank into despair. I didn't want to show my face to my parents. Seeing my dejection, my parents constantly tried to encourage me. But deep inside, I couldn't accept any of this.

I didn't get a chance at any government college in the district. I enrolled in a private college. My heart grew even heavier. I began smoking more than before. Promising to study well, I took more money from my parents. I enrolled in several coaching centers. I started studying with different teachers for different subjects. Wherever and whenever I said I would study with whichever teacher, my parents never said no. Whatever money I asked for, they gave. Though I enrolled in all the coaching centers and with all the teachers, I didn't attend classes. I spent the coaching and tutoring money on my own hanging out and smoking. Eventually, to fund this addiction, I quit the coaching centers. But my parents didn't know. I told them nothing.
Yet I did take hefty sums of money, claiming I needed it for coaching classes and tutoring fees.
I would take money from my parents, sometimes give it to the tutors, attend coaching classes quite irregularly, but never study anything once I returned home. I had no relationship with books whatsoever. I carried on with my life naturally, mingling with friends. But I know what went on inside my head. I couldn't sleep peacefully even for a single night. When I tried to sleep, as the night deepened, my chest would begin to tremble. I would toss and turn restlessly. Despite trying hard to fall asleep, sleep simply wouldn't come. A strange kind of guilt was slowly consuming me from within.
Continuing this deception, I suddenly found the HSC exams upon me. I suffered tremendous remorse then—for wasting my parents' money and for deceiving myself.
One day. I had sat down to study in the evening. Mother came into the room, stroked my head, kissed my eyes and face tenderly, and left with affection. In Mother's serene face, the shadows of grand dreams about me seemed to hang. Her eyes were filled not so much with tenderness as they were—a hundred times over—with dreams about me.
Meanwhile, though I sat with books before me, my mind wasn't on them. I sat at the table, buried my face in the books, but my heart wasn't truly in the books. My mind was like a dead river.
After Mother left having showered me with affection, I found my chest was being torn apart by intense anguish. I felt I deserved none of Mother's love and tenderness. I had no right even to exist. I pressed my head against the open book and wept profusely. So that Mother wouldn't hear, I pressed my face into the pillow and cried my heart out, howling as much as I wanted. For some reason, the entire world began to seem upside down to me. I began to feel like a criminal more terrible than a seven-time murderer. I started thinking that I wanted liberation from this unbearable torment. To find release from the remorse of all the sins I had committed over these years, I could see no path before me other than suicide. Everything else was just darkness. Life held no pull for me.
That day, to escape the tremendous mental anguish and remorse, I made a terrible decision. To escape this unbearable torment, I decided to commit suicide. Two paths lay open before me. One: good results. Two: suicide.
The second seemed easier to me. Because I couldn't sit down to study. The moment I sat with books, I would think: so many books, so much to study, and I haven't read anything at all! I truly hadn't read anything. But while alive, I couldn't show my parents another poor result. What hadn't they done for me! Day after day they had trusted me, given me whatever I asked for. They had never let me sense even the slightest problem or trouble. Those who loved me so much—what had I done to them!
Suicidal depression was working within me. Perhaps there was nothing left for me to do. It seemed to me that suicide was the only atonement for sin. I made my decision final. I would indeed commit suicide.
One afternoon when my parents had gone out for some errand. I was alone in the house. When I was alone at home, my parents would lock the door from outside before leaving. After they left, I thoroughly examined every nook and cranny of the house. I opened the window and looked at the sky as well. I kissed the pages of the books one last time. I went to my parents' room and lay on their bed for a while.
I lay quietly with my hands over my eyes. Many, many memories began to surface.
That childhood, father's discipline, mother's affection. How many dreams they wove around me. How much they imagined about me, that heavenly smile on my parents' faces at my past glorious results. Everything floated before my eyes, one by one.

The next moment I began to remember, slowly, my gradual ruin, becoming a smoker, poor results in studies, countless wrongs done to my parents, squandering their money. Now the intensity of my thoughts began to increase. Tears started streaming down the corners of my eyes.

Getting up from where I lay, I went to my room and untied the clothesline, tying it to the fan. Standing on a stool directly beneath the fan, I took the other end of the rope tied firmly to the fan and bound it around my neck like a noose. Just as I was about to kick away the stool beneath my feet, right then I saw my parents entering the house through the main door, laughing about something. I began to tremble violently. In my trembling, the stool beneath my feet suddenly slipped away! The rope tightened around my neck like a vise. My breath was choking, my tongue wanted to protrude, I was coughing, my eyes rolled back. In tremendous agony I could not speak. The fierce pull of the rope seemed to want to separate my neck from my body! That tension reached past the flesh of my throat to grip the bone. Breath refused to come through my throat. It felt as if someone was pulling my throat with both hands, tearing the flesh, breaking the neck bone, separating my head from my body. The heart inside my chest began beating a hundred times, a thousand times, millions of times faster. In the terrible pain throughout my body, my eyes wanted to burst from their sockets. What horrific agony! I who writhe in pain when even the slightest touch of teeth grazes my tongue—that same I was biting my tongue so hard with the opposing rows of teeth that it seemed it would be cut in two and fall to the floor this very moment. My whole body was shaking with unbearable pain, and in the torment of being unable to breathe, I felt impossible aches twisting through my chest.

From the veins of my throat to every vein in my body, a terrible agony was spreading. Every pore of my body was becoming numb with suffering. Before this intense pain, studies, dreams, guilt, or remorse meant absolutely nothing. It seemed to me that if I could just escape this agony at this very moment, I would need nothing else. Forget good results—I didn't even need to study. I just needed to live. I needed freedom from this torment. Nothing else, truly nothing else. Living was the important thing—no, not important, the only thing; everything else in the world was worthless ash!

I was trying to gather all the strength in my body to scream in agony, trying to call out loudly "Ma," but I could not speak at all, could not make a single sound from my throat. I hung like this for nearly a minute. My consciousness was turned toward my parents. Gripping the rope tightly with my hands, I kept trying to turn my head tied to the rope to look toward my parents through the room door, but meanwhile the fan was swaying and spinning terribly under the weight of my body. I could not look in that direction at all. Frantically kicking my legs and thrashing about, I searched for some foothold beneath my feet, but found nothing. Foam began to emerge from my mouth in some unbearable agony.

The world began to seem pitch dark. At this moment I had forgotten why I had put the rope around my neck.
Even in exchange for everything in this world, even in exchange for everything life has to offer, I want only to escape this acute agony, to live even with absolutely nothing. I want only to live. I need nothing at all, I want nothing. I want only freedom from this pain. I want escape from here in exchange for anything at all.
I am desperately wishing for my parents to come quickly to my room and save me. I am praying fervently to the Creator, asking forgiveness for all my mistakes, seeking His help.
I saw my parents enter my room, opening the door with something in their hands, laughing. Seeing me hanging from the fan, they cried out in terror and both of them grabbed my legs, pushing my body upward, trying to hold my neck loose from the rope above. With all the strength in his body, Father held my body as tightly as he could wrap it, pushing me upward so that the rope's tension wouldn't fall on my neck. Mother ran crying and trembling to the kitchen and brought back a chopper. Mother was trying to make me stand by bringing a stool under my feet, but I had lost all strength to stand. Now Mother held me loosely while Father, trembling, stood on the stool and cut the rope hanging from the fan around my neck with great difficulty. I don't know how my frail mother managed to bear my body weight and stand there!
Anyway, I was brought down and laid out. After all this time, my agony seemed to lessen! I could breathe a little. A groaning sound was emerging from my throat. I was holding Mother's hand tightly. It felt as though being alive was the only truth in this world, everything else was false!
From gripping the rope so tightly while trying to save myself, deep rope marks had formed on my palms, turning them blue. My parents were holding me and crying uncontrollably, while applying ointment to the torn skin and flesh where the rope had left deep marks on my neck.
I could see my parents frantically stroking my entire body. A little later, I was taken to the hospital by car. Fortunately, I survived that ordeal. There is no greater fortune than returning from certain death.
I am lying on a hospital bed. My parents are trying to understand exactly why I had attempted suicide. Both of them, with tearful voices and helpless expressions, are looking at me while stroking my head, eyes, and face, repeatedly asking what had happened. This time, not from pain but from shame, I couldn't quite look at them properly. Somehow Father had understood that I was actually suffering from severe depression about my studies. Kissing my forehead, Father said, "My child, you just need to stay alive. We don't need any of that studying, results, any of it. Just stay alive. You don't have to do anything else. If you don't want to, you don't have to study. Don't study, but still, stay alive. You are everything to us. Studies mean nothing to us. If you're not here, my child, what would we do with studies?"...saying this, both my parents burst into uncontrollable tears. I too am crying with them, trying to hide my tears, and thinking, how selfish I had become! I had tried to die thinking only of my own ego!
I am looking into their eyes.
The desire to preserve myself within me is growing more intense. It feels as though my life belongs not only to me, but to my parents as well. I cannot simply destroy this life of mine at will. I do not have that right. That would be sin, that would be injustice, that would be selfishness.
It was then that I decided I would study again. I would take care of myself. As long as I live, I will never cause my parents any pain. I will not step even one foot beyond their wishes. I will study diligently, follow every rule and regulation to the letter. I will live not for myself, but for my parents. I will only study, achieve good results. Whether the results are good or not, whatever happens, I will be content with that. A person doesn't end when they don't get good results. Good results are nothing more than a kind of eyewash. You don't necessarily need good results to accomplish anything in life. How many people in this world have gone far with good results? Simply staying alive is what matters most; everything else is false, deceptive, fake.
After a while, wiping her eyes, my mother pressed a pizza into my hands and said, "I brought this for you, my child. You love pizza so much. Have some, dear. It's been so long since you've eaten anything! And don't think such thoughts anymore—we don't need your results, we need you. Do whatever you wish. If you don't feel like studying, then don't. None of us will say anything to you."
Embracing both my parents, I cried out, "I made a mistake. Please forgive me. I wasted your money smoking cigarettes, wasted time in various places instead of studying. That's why I fell into depression. Day after day, I wronged you both. All in all, I was suffering from a kind of terrible remorse. I thought, what's the point of living! I'm your worthless son! I'll never accomplish anything in life, I'm only deceiving you. That's why I made such a decision."
Both my parents held me with infinite tenderness and tried to make me understand that time would heal everything one day. Everything they had was for me alone. Without me, they had no one else! My staying alive was what mattered most, not results.
After bringing me back from the hospital, my parents took me to the village. There we visited my grandparents' graves, spent four days with relatives. My father had taken leave from the office for these days. It seemed to me that one could give one's life for these two people! And to think I had told them so many lies, wanted selfishly to satisfy my own ego! If I ever have to give my life, it won't be for anything else—only for my parents' happiness.
Yes, sometimes even now I suffer from depression again. Then I close my eyes and think of those earlier thoughts, imagine my parents' faces. I close both eyes and gaze toward theirs. I keep thinking, if I were gone, these two people simply wouldn't survive! I haven't studied a little—there's really no meaning in giving up life for that.
I have very little time in hand. My HSC exam is ahead. In this time, I'm preparing myself. My body is a bit weak. I've been given several vitamin tablets to take. I'm recovering quickly. I'm studying without putting any extra pressure on my head. Whatever will be, will be. Even if I fail, I'll take the exam again. What else can happen? My parents are beside me—what do I have to fear?
Within the brief time available, whatever preparation I can manage, I will accept whatever result comes from that effort. I have quit smoking. Since leaving the hospital, I haven't touched a single cigarette. As long as I live, I will never even touch a cigarette again.
I am slowly returning to a healthy, normal life. Whenever depression tries to swallow me whole, I go and embrace my mother, sit beside my father, talk with my parents. Oh, I never truly conversed with these two wonderful people before! How wonderful it feels to talk with them! My spirit grows so much stronger! Seeing their faces makes my depression lift. I begin to feel that I too can do this. I didn't come into this world to lose. I wanted to leave, but I stayed because I meant to win! I think to myself, these two people love me so much! They wage war against the entire world to keep me alive and well, yet here I am, not even loving myself! What kind of sense does that make!
Studies aren't everything in life. Doing poorly on one exam doesn't end everything. There are many more opportunities ahead. Simply being alive in a healthy body is itself so much. If I stay alive, how many wonderful opportunities will come into my life. If I leave, then everything truly ends! Just to see when, where, and how life will surprise me—that alone is reason enough to stay alive!
When I feel utterly helpless, when my mindset shifts, I search on Google to bring myself back. I hunt down and read various motivational blogs, gather resources for living from YouTube and TED Talks. I read some books on self-help. It feels good, makes me want to live, makes me want to transform myself. I now have such deep affection for life! Truly, a good result can never be more valuable, more urgent than a life itself. Never, absolutely never! The great people of this world didn't all achieve brilliant results. Their lives held sorrow, failure, unfulfillment. Yet they never gave up. Even when the entire world told them, "You're finished!", they kept telling themselves, "Yes, my journey begins today!"
Perhaps I'll never become as great as they were. Even if I can't become anything else, I can remain my parents' son! Truly, after returning from death's edge, I want nothing more than this. Life is more beautiful than a good result!
My smoking 'friends' don't check on me anymore. I quit cigarettes, and they quit me. I understand many of life's difficult equations now, and this is such simple arithmetic!