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A Chilly, long, never ending winter morning welcomed me as I stepped into the world outside the comforts of my home. Every inch of space around me was buried by a thick blanket of snow. Every lake in the area, frozen solid. Millions of snowflakes which reminded me of grated radish fell and eventually covered the face of mother Earth. Looks like a paradise for an artist or a poet doesn’t it? And it probably is. But it isn’t anywhere close to that for me, an everyday post man who delivers your letters no matter what.
Everyone around me was in their homes warming themselves by the fireside, sipping a cup of coffee, probably, while I treaded along the avenue nearly frozen to death. Warm clothing was a distant dream for me. My feet, having already treaded many miles, revolted, refusing to move an inch further. Yet, I dragged them on. I heard a voice in me screaming in pain, shouting, cursing me for my stupidity of walking around at this time of the year. Yet I knew, unless I did this, soon my family and I would starve to death.
So I walked on, ignoring the pain and the bitter truth that I was nearly dead. I walked on, ignoring the bone-piercing winds. What was I doing all this for? The truth, I knew was that creation of man that should have never happened. The strangest creation of man. The cruelest to those deprived of it and the gladdest to those who have too much of it. Money. The culprit behind all those millions of lives lost for the lust of getting it all. I of course didn’t have to debate too much to decide with category I fell in and also that I wasn’t falling into the other anytime soon. Also, I knew, was that the comforts of the hearth were not for me.
A loud honk from some distant place shook me back into my pained physical being I wanted to get rid of the soonest. In front of me loomed the large mansion where my final letters were to be dropped. In moments I was there dropping my final letter whilst another being dropped down as well. The world was lighter by a soul and ‘I’ lighter of a being with all its troubles with it. ‘I’, at long last, was a liberated soul.
Anuroop Behera
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