The Beautiful Smile

Previous - 'Meaning of Life'

Sireesh was able to perceive the changes around him in that room but could not control even his eyelids. To assert that he was not in a brain dead state, doctors would occasionally hook his head to MRI and scan while asking questions to watch the response of his brain cells. They would also try to monitor his brain's activity by opening his eyelids and placing an object infront of his eyes and make him track it.

As a kid, being born to a doctor couple, he always thought he would never have to go to hospital as his parents can take care of any health issue he would encounter at home itself. But, fate took a fatal turn for him. In the early days after his hospitalization, Sireesh used to have frequent visitors. His friends and well wishers. They used to talk endlessly with occasional breaks waiting for a response from him. But it was like a bad cellphone conversation where you would hear the person on the other side and realize they could not hear you. As days passed by, there were no visitors except his mother.

"Ma! The most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Strong, graceful and selfless as ever. The smile on her face when I asked her about their love story! The pride in her eyes when I became the topped my class. The tears on her cheeks when dad left the world. The fear in her look when I was hospitalized." If it were not for her, he would just have been a subject of experiment in the hospital and nothing else. Everyday she would read for him in the night even though she didn't have a clue if Sireesh was listening or not. "She never knew that was how I differentiated between day and night. Ma! Do you hear me?"

There was not even a single day he haven't thought of being normal. Of being able to take care of his mother rather than his mother taking care of him. He was bound in invisible shackles, which he could not break free from. Even a prisoner on life sentence would get a cell for himself, but all Sireesh could get was a 6.5x3 ft bed. "Can I just not break free from the darkness that surrounds me?" Sireesh let out a loud roar only he could hear, for all he could do was cry in his heart.