A Game of Gods: The End is Only the Beginning (The Anunnaki Chronicles Book 1) (14 page)

Epilogue

A feeling of suffocating emptiness filled everything around him. He could only see pitch black everywhere and a long ringing sound filled his ears with a traumatizing agony of claustrophobia. It felt as if the whole state of existence did not exist and that he was aware of the non-existence of existence.

Is this it? The End? Something that they called The Judgement Day?

The emptiness prevailed weakly.

He heard the tinkling of metal on glass, and whispers of people. Yes, there were people, or were they fragments of his memories of people. The ringing in his ear faded into a collection of whispers in addition to an electronic beep that repeated periodically.

And then he felt his breath, it was there which gave him the confidence to make an effort to open what might have been closed- his eyes. The first effort failed, while the second one marginally kept his lids from falling and then with a deep breath he made a third effort and this time he was able to keep the lids from falling.

And then there was light… bright light that entered his eyes filling up the emptiness with blurred images. He could find certain things moving hither tither and gathering around him, but could not make out lines from circles, for everything was blurred and bright.

He heard someone saying something loudly, maybe it was a shout, he could not deduce. He blinked his eye twice, and slowly moved his shoulder. He felt the blur settling down to a sharper image.

He saw living things moving around.

Maybe they were angels. Maybe he was in heaven.

He wanted to ask, but his throat felt too dry to produce any sound, and mouth too tattered to move. However, he struggled and finally asked in hushed voice, ‘Are you my angel?’

Breach Candy Hospital, Mumbai

The nurse had called for the doctor the moment she saw the celebrity patient moving on his bed few minutes ago.

‘I wish I were.’ said the woman whom Manav had asked the question.

Manav in a state of low consciousness felt a little confused for he had heard that voice before. He could never forget that voice. His eyes blinked as quickly as possible and focused on the woman’s face who was now sitting beside him.

‘Pa… Pakhi?’ He asked, ‘Am I dead? Is this where we go after death? Is this heaven?’

Pakhi put her left hand over Manav’s forehead and gently rubbed it. In the sweetest of tones she informed him, ‘You are not dead, and you were just unconscious. You are here at the Breach Candy Hosptial.’

‘No… I …’ he struggled to speak, ‘saw you breathe… la… in Egypt… you were there.’

‘Arey! I have never been to Egypt. However, I will be leaving tonight.’ She corrected him as she wondered how he had guessed about Egypt.

‘Do… don’t go. Please…’ He begged as he strolled down his left eye.

‘Hello, Mr. Manav Gandhi. How are you feeling?’ said a baritone that came from behind Pakhi. It belonged to a veteran doctor who was attending Manav at the Breach Candy. The Thick strips of white hair parted proportionately on either side of his head were glowing under the room’s illumination.

‘I… I don’t understand anything!’ Manav stammered.

‘Well, you were brought here by this young lady who claims to be an acquaintance of you. You were not in good shape when you were brought here. An overdose of barbiturates in your blood stream while your body was subjected to compressional asphyxia. I am not sure if this attempt was recreational or suicidal. But whatever the case, she brought you here well in time. You have been coma since then.’

‘How long doctor?’

‘Around 48 hours.’ The doctor said as he checked Manav’s pulse.

Just when he could ask the next question, the door banged open and an over excited man entered the room and screamed in joy, ‘You are back! I am so relieved now. How is he doing, doc?’

‘Mr. Khalid, you should at least try to be as silent as possible when you are in a hospital, if you can’t knock and enter. Your carelessness could result in the loss of life, do you understand that?’ The doctor warned like a wiseman.

‘Cut the crap, I can own this place, you know.’ He remarked arrogantly and then noticed the presence of Pakhi. His face quickly threw a frown and he complained, ‘What is this bitch doing here? She sent me on a crack chase to Matheran!’

‘Don’t call her that.’ Manav said sternly.

‘What? A bitch is a bitch is a bitch, that’s what she is, and that’s what I will call her.’

‘Shut up Khalid, don’t call her that again!’ Manav warned.

Khalid’s face turned red, ‘What happened to you suddenly? Who is she to you, anyway?’ he asked between clenched teeth.

‘She is,’ Manav paused to look at the woman who was looking at him in a state of confusion. He declared, ‘the girl I love.’

Pakhi’s eyes filled with tears, and her heart slipped a beat.

‘Are you out of your mind? Don’t waste your life on this pest. I made you what you are and I can break you down anytime, you know that?’

‘No, you won’t.’ Manav said with a smirk on his face, as if he now understood a deep secret.

While the doctor wound the Blood Pressure monitor’s strap around his triceps, the arrogant Bollywood producer walked out of the room in disgust.

‘The Blood Pressure is way too high,’ the doctor said, ‘your producer’s… I mean. Yours is normal. I will send for the nurse to conduct with the routine tests.’

The doctor left the room.

Pakhi looked at Manav, their eyes were equally filled with tears. She had never seen him smile at her in a long time, neither had he been caressed by her as she was doing now.

‘Why did you do this?’ Pakhi asked.

‘Because I realized something that I should have done long back.’

‘And what is that?’

‘That I love you…’

The ace journalist blushed and floral smile bloomed on her graceful face that would leave any bee at her feet, ‘The journalist in me wants to ask a lot of questions, but I do not want to ruin this moment that we are having.’

‘Perhaps you should come closer to me.’ Manav winked.

Her voice cracked, her breath trembled, her heart shivered as she made a move. She inched closer to the face of the man she had always loved. The scent of his breath had not changed; neither did the feeling of lightness in her abdomen when his breath gently rubbed by her cheek. She closed her eyes and then her lips smoothly touched his.

The soul has three states of being, the first one is the state of wakefulness when you are aware of the body and consider it as the ultimate reality.

‘Excuse me miss…’ a nurse called out from the door.

Pakhi and Manav were embarrassed and she quickly pulled her face away from Manav.

‘Oh, do not worry I did not see anything.’ The nurse commented.

‘What happened?’ Pakhi asked, still trying to hide her embarrassment.

‘Dr. Kapoor has asked you to get these medicines from downstairs.’

Pakhi rose from the bed and walked towards the door. She received the prescription from the nurse and gestured her to leave. After the nurse left, Pakhi turned towards Manav and asked, ‘Do you need anything else?’

‘I need…’ he tried to think and then said, ‘You…’

‘Ok, it is too much ok? Do not be so cheesy now. I will be right back.’ She opened the door and was about to leave when Manav called her.

‘Pakhi…’

‘Yeah?’

‘Could you please open that window? It is suffocating here.’

‘Of course dear.’ She smiled and trudged towards the other side of the room and opened the glass window for Manav. While walking back to the door she looked at Manav and smiled.

‘Come back soon.’ Manav requested.

Pakhi nodded and exited the room.

When the door closed, Manav slowly turned his head and looked straight up at the ceiling. He recollected the events he had witnessed and he thanked that it was all a dream that he saw when he was in a state of unconsciousness.

The second one is the state of dream, this happens when you are asleep and you see an alternate reality, which is dismissed, as an illusion when you re-enter the state of wakefulness.
It is this state that the soul creates infinite entities in the human mind.

‘A talking cat! Hahaha….’ Manav chuckled, ‘why not?’

He heard a sound from the window that was followed by the knocking down of a glass tumbler from the table on the floor. He quickly turned his view towards the table near the window. For a moment, his eyes froze.

A cat, white as milk, stood there on the table, with its paw on the television’s remote, looking at him, eye to eye.

‘You don’t talk right?’ He asked doubtfully.

The cat meowed in a thinly pitched voice. Manav was relieved to hear that particular sound from the cat, for he would have fainted again had it spoken. It jumped from the table on to the bed, and while doing so it accidentally switched on the television since it was standing on the remote controller.

Manorma 24 x 7, not that crap!

He deduced that Pakhi must have been watching her favorite news channel before switching it off. He tried to get up to switch off the television, but he could not. He felt a weird numbness in his feet. He decided that he would wait for Pakhi to arrive and get it switched off.

While deliberately trying to ignore the television, his eyes actually fell on the screen and saw something that caught his attention.

There was a woman on the screen, she was unconscious and was being taken in a stretcher. He felt as if he had seen the woman somewhere. Immediately, Manav read the news headlines below.

World-renowned Flamenco dancer saved by a Spanish Captain

And then the video clip of a man played on the screen. He read the name that appeared on the bottom right of the screen.

Capt Christian Hernandez, Reina Del Agua

‘One of my boys noticed something in the Mediterranean water. It was a woman, and we did not know who she was, but it was our duty to save her. I am glad that God kept her alive.
Gracias A Dios
!’ he spoke on the camera and left with a twinkle in his eye.

The third state is the state of dreamlessness, when the soul realizes it is in a body, which is trapped in a void.

Manav recognized him too. But maybe it was all a coincidence, maybe his dream gave him a glimpse of what is known as
deja-vu
. There was no other explanation.

Just when he consoled his suspicious mind, he heard someone speak.

‘Maybe it is not coincidence…’ the voice said.

The hair on his body rose with fear, and his heart ran a beat extra per second. He turned to the right, from where he heard the voice. He saw the cat’s back, as it was walking on the table towards the window.

Manav tried to recollect while scanning the cat’s limbs. He thought, ‘Maybe it is…’ he saw it, a black mark on its left hind limb-
the beauty spot
…

The cat turned around and winked, ‘Destiny!’

Then there is a fourth state… Tu-Riya or Chaturya, where in the soul is aware that it exists in all the three states, when existence becomes non-existence and non-existence is the reality of existence. When the soul realizes that it is always in the state of Tu-Riya, it can go into any of the three states and alter its reality, or engage itself in an alternate reality of dreams to prepare for what might have to be done in the reality of wakefulness.

When reality and illusion become one with the Soul, and the Universe manifests itself in You and You manifest in the Universe, then there is no end to this reality, as there is no beginning to that illusion. And trust me…

‘The End is Only the Beginning’

To Be Continued in Book # 2

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K. Hari Kumar