❝Loving you scares me to bones, but I shall rather love you to pieces, than let you go and be in pieces.❞
Viraj, an emerging sensation among photographers, and Kashi, the beauty and brain of the oldest city of India - 'Kashi', are not meant to be to...
❝Who is even more sadistic than a human being hurting their own self?❞
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
1st April 2009
I was drunk for the last time when I first saw Kashi.
Kashi, the place which was the epitome of spiritual abode. A place that every soul sought to emerge from, as well as disperse into. There was a different kind of electrified buzz in the air, which we could undeniably feel ever since I and Siddhant stepped down from the train. That too after a forceful nudge from the train catering staff.
It was a dangerous thread that we were binding around our necks.
Roaming around the busy streets of old Kashi with glossed-over eyes, empty pockets, and snuffed cigarette smell that engulfed us both constantly. I was aware of the judgements that were being passed on us; and why wouldn't they be judging? We were outsiders, without any aim, wandering on the streets in a scorching afternoon in a lightly drunk state.
For a moment I almost felt sobered up too, out of the sheer guilt. Only I was responsible for how I had come to be. I was merely a man who had just entered a year more than the mid-twenties, and I had a family behind to support. I should've completed my college with rigorous attention and then should've gone for a job in medical field. After all, my widowed mother had refused to acknowledge day and night and worked continuously to back me while I--a twenty-year-old youngster back then--continued to fail in all the exams that strolled my way.
Three years after finishing my schooling, I kept on working hard to have myself enrolled in medical college. Maa made sure I had my ears covered all the time, all the brunts and taunts that were thrown at me, she took them fiercely on her back. But for how long was I to be shied from their words?
Even when I got into the prestigious medical college, and completed my MBBS degree, for the next five years it was the addiction that I shook hands with, not the hard work and ambition. My downfall began when I entered my twenties, and I never got up again.
At least, until I found myself facing Kashi.
I didn't realize where we were walking, or how far we both were from the station. The sane step would've been buying two tickets to Dumraon, where we were supposed to be, and wait for the next train. We had no business here, our setup had been made in Dumraon only. The photography agency that we worked for had invested the minimum possible amount for this namely the last adventure of ours, and here we were in an entirely different city with not enough money to buy a decent living, or even afford a proper meal.
Money, again, was a mischievous game. We made some scarce, scraped amount from still-life and portrait photography, but all would always be rolled into getting ourselves plunge deeper within the dark, addictive abyss. I didn't know what was stopping us from going back home or travelling to Dumraon, but I simply knew we couldn't leave yet. I wanted to be there, anywhere, for a while longer.
