The Last Puff

“No way, she did not do that!” gasped Akul.

“Oh yes, my friend, she did,” laughed Sumath, taking a deep puff from the little device he held in his hand.

“Tell me the story, right from the beginning,” begged Akul as he settled back on his seat and took a puff from the metal grey and gold device that he held between his forefinger and thumb.

“She was my new neighbor,” began Akul, “beautiful and gracious. I fell for her charms and thought she was the one I was destined to live my life with. But like a typical movie, our parents objected and she convinced me that eloping was the only way ahead. But obviously being financially smarter than me, said that we would have to steal the jewelry from home to help us out when we stepped out into the big bad world…”

“And then,” prompted Akul when he saw that Sumath was lost in his own thoughts.

“And then, I stole my mom’s jewelry and we ran off, changed two buses and landed in a remote area, and took a room for the night in a run down hotel. She had a bath, my sweet scented princess and then asked me to take one. And when I was in the bathroom, the she-demon took my bag, my wallet, all my jewelry and ran away with her boyfriend who had followed us the whole way.”

   

Akul burst into laughter looking at Sumanth’s disgruntled face. He was glad to see that some colour had returned to his companion’s face, but he was still uncomfortable when he saw Sumanth furtively glancing at his expensive metal device. He knew he had to be very careful. So when Sumanth asked him to relate a funny experience, Akul had to search in the deep recesses of his mind. Dark and morbid thoughts had been his companions for the few hours that he had been on the train and when Sumanth had got in, he had provided a welcome reprieve.

   But he now knew that Sumanth would do anything to get his hands on his expensive puff and he wanted to delay the imminent confrontation for as long as possible. So he began an inane story from his college life.

   “A boy had once bought a deodorant which had the worst stink ever. The boys would take great pleasure in spraying it on the girls and soon the class stank as badly as a garbage truck passing by….”

He was interrupted by Sumanth coughing. The wracking coughs were eased by a deep puff from his device.

“Our college, being one of the old tiled ones with rafters, always had pigeons flying over our heads. One day when an English professor was extolling the virtues of a great poet, he was unfortunate to have a pigeon poop on him. As he was cursing his bad luck and wondering how he could step out with the stink, the boy with the deodorant stood up and sprayed him with the notorious scent. The poor hapless teacher who had no idea that it stank, stood still and thanked the boy for helping him out.”

Sumanth laughed but it soon dissolved into a paroxym of cough and puffing on his device did not seem to help him much. 

“And then,” he said between coughs.

Akul tightened his grip on his own device and putting on a smile, said,

“Nothing much. The lecturer left and the class burst into gales of laughter. It was really funny when on the next day he came to class and asked what the boy had sprayed on him, that he had to go home and have a bath to get rid of the stink.”

Sumath held his stomach and laughed, but now it sounded more like a gasp and a cough. Akul could see him struggle to breathe when he could not draw more puffs from his device. In a second Sumanth jumped on him, trying to grab the puff that he held, but Akul was ready. He held him away with a hand to his throat as Sumnath gasped and wheezed. Akul was stronger and soon the already weak Sumanth fell down with a last dying gasp. Black blood trickled from his nose with the telltale sign that the toxic fumes had destroyed his lungs.

As he saw the blood, Akul sat on his seat with a thud. Then an image of his young daughter with the black blood dripping from her nose superimposed itself on Sumant’s dead body. His wife, his parents, his siblings, everyone had succumbed to the toxic fumes that had engulfed the land. As a doctor he had tried his best to save all who came to him, but he had failed. The only reason why he was here was because he was physically stronger and he had managed to get hold of one of the most expensive inhalers which only a few people had.

The landscape outside the train was dark and dreary. He did not know if it was night or the fumes had completely obliterated the sunlight. There was no life left. The trees and plants lay drooping and dead. He had seen dead bodies lying on the few stations that the train had passed through. And now, he himself had become a monster. He had denied Sumanth the life saving puff when he had reached for it. He, a doctor, who had promised to save lives at any cost had just killed a man.

Thoughts, wishes, desires, regrets, grief ran in riotous circles through his mind. He could hear voices begging him, pleading with him, cursing with him and they would not stop. He wished Sumanth was alive to tell him some more jokes to take away the pain, but he had denied him life. As Akul watched one more station go by, he realized to his shock that the train had not stopped for the past two stations. The driver had died and the train was hurtling towards a certain collision. 

Panic gnawing at his throat, he yanked at the top buttons of his shirt. Which one? Which one? his mind screamed. Death due to the suffocation when the inhaler ran out or death due to trauma when the train crashed? Depressed, distraught and desperate, he put his hand out of the train window and threw the inhaler as far as he could. And then he lay back on his seat and closed his eyes.