The Cycle of Life

Chapter - 1

He was accustomed to the condescension because he begged on the streets of Hangu. He would wake up in the morning from the slums and would start his toil -begging. That was his life.

He did have the conception of time, but different from the rest of humanity. He only knew sunrise and sunset. Hours, minutes and seconds have no utility for him and it seemed that it didn't exist to him.

It can't be implied that he was lonely, but for sure he was alone. He neither had friends nor enemies. If Aristotle was alive, he would have termed his beast.

He was skinny - very skinny. He had a long beard and long hair. He wore longboats and a piece of cloth that had covered him from head to toe.

His appearance intrigued me and I approached him. I asked him, what are you doing?

He looked at me and started walking away.

Chapter - 2

I thought about the incident at night and tried to make sense of it. As usual, since always evades humans and I'm no exception to it.

After three months, I saw him again at the same place. I offered him to sit in the vehicle. He looked at me and started walking away.

I followed him and asked him what's your name. He looked at me and didn't respond. That made me sad because I sensed the struggle in his mind and soul. The fight inside him made me confused and I stopped following him.

He was all over my mind. I desperately wanted to see the world through his eyes. But he shut his doors for everyone. That was the time when my constant companion also shut his doors on me. So, I couldn't take it anymore.

I went there and asked about his whereabouts. No one knew him and I also didn't know him. Someone directed me that the bagger goes in the direction of the sunset. I started walking in the same direction.

The light was hiding, darkness was rising. It is a rule that everyone has his time even if it's short-lived. My heart was thumping as if it would come out of the chest. Darkness makes me nervous but not as much as the darkness within humans. Perhaps I do understand it more or don't understand it at all.

Walking in the direction for a mile and I started to doubt the decision of coming after him. I stopped for a while and closed my eyes. What a self-inflicted misery is this, I said to myself. Search is never easy, I tried to calm myself down.

I started to walk again. I reached a thick forest. There, I spotted him. He was sitting as If he is a bridge between the so-called humane and beastly world.

I sat about ten meters away from him. He was staring at the glittering lights far away in the village. He looked at me and got himself busy staring at the lights. We were sitting quietly. I looked towards him and he was looking at me. I smiled and stood, moved towards him so that I could sit close to him. But he moved away and the distance between us remained the same. I sighed.

After a while, I got impatient. We inherited impatience from our father - Adam, and he was constituted as such. I coughed and started to move in his direction. But he moved away. The more I tried to get close to him, the more he moved away.

I've always been through feelings of uneasiness, but the silence between us introduced me to a new kind of emotion. I had thoughts but no words and at the same time no courage to express them. The nameless feelings started to intensify with each passing moment and a drop of water rolled through my cheek and fell into my lap. He looked at me as if he heard the sound of it.

He smiled and said, "There was a frog. He would sing songs whenever sadness or happiness overpowered him. In the same pond, there was an alligator. He used to listen to the 'noise'. One day, the frog was sad and he started to sing a 'song'. The alligator got so much irritated that he attacked the frog. The frog died".

I listened to him and said, who are you?

I'm a frog and an alligator.

What, I said.

But he didn't respond.

Chapter - 3

He was nothing, yet I was hoping to find everything within him. Hope he has none and I had hopes from him. The world is a strange place, to begin with, and humans are the most complicated beings inhabiting it. I was thinking about it; meanwhile, felt raindrops. The magnitude and intensity started to increase and I started to look around for refuge. I stood up and looked at him. He was unmoved and fixed to his place as if he is a rock that braves the adversity of nature. Perhaps the battles we fight within are more intense than the battles without.

He was staring at the glittering lights in the village. Suddenly, the lights disappeared and there was darkness.

What are you thinking, I asked.

He said, ''Comparison and contrast is the essence of the universe. Why blame darkness when the existence of light depends on it".

Something is dependent on you, I asked.

I'm giving meaning to all the good things in the world - Love, beauty, intellect, plenitude. Without me, these all wouldn't have existed, he said.

Nothing is dependent on anything. Don't we give too much importance to ourselves, I said.

He said, evil ....

And the thunder fell somewhere on earth. Don't know whether it caused damage or not, but I didn't hear the words which had to fall on my eardrums.

I said, what.

But he stood up and walked away.

Chapter - 4

He went deep into the forest and I was following him. He sat and I looked around and said, isn't it dangerous here?

Wish for death and the desire for immortality can do miracles, he said.

You think miracles happen, I said.

Every human takes birth and rebirth happens to a few and I'm not among them - I mean the few, he said.

Is it a choice, I said?

The sun was about to rise and the light was running after the darkness. He stood up and started running away. He left me alone deep in the forest but I wasn't lonely and had the company of my constant companion after a long time. I wanted to spend some time with my constant companion instead of going after him.

You came back, I said to my constant companion.

"Starting the journey from a point and destined to reach the same point is the dark comedy of our lives. Now does it matter whether we have travelled around a circle or a rectangle, he said.

"It does matter", I said.

"How", he asked.

"I don't know, but it matters", I replied.

We exchanged glances, but we quickly looked sideways and started laughing for a while. Eventually, we got tired of laughing and silence prevailed.

I went back to the life that I thought at that time I had chosen. Days and nights passed and I didn't have the idea that I forgot about something important. Until one morning, I saw grey hairs in the mirror and I plucked one hair, held it in my right hand and turned the tap on my left hand and put my right hand before the running water. The grey hair ran down the drain. I thought the meaning of life is as evasive as water in our hands. The more we try to hold and grasp it, the more it evades.

Chapter - 6

Meanwhile, the nameless beggar came to my mind. I started the vehicle and went after him.

He was not in the Hangu bazaar. I went to the forest where we shared our moments. There I found him. He was laying on the ground. I was happy and thought about waking him up. I went nearby and sat beside him.

I was sitting for a while, but suddenly I felt as if something was wrong. I touched him, but he didn't move.

I turned him and checked him, but he wasn't breathing. He was dead. I called for help.

He was to be buried the same day. The grave was dug and he was buried in it. The tombstone didn't have the deceased's name and date of birth. I saw a pointed stone, I picked it up and looked upward to the sky and started writing on the tombstone. I wrote,

"The Beggar played his assigned role".

I threw the stone in the air and it fell somewhere. I heard the sound of it touching the ground and silence prevailed.