The End

Day 1

I enter the Bengaluru airport, walk up to the ticket counters and ask for a seat in the plane flying to Chennai. The petite girl with the perfectly coiffed hair in the counter stares at me for a moment before nodding and issuing me the ticket. The ticket doesn’t cost me anything; Silly things like money, passports, identity cards have lost their meaning from 8 PM, yesterday.

The flight attendants’ smiles are not wide enough to mask their fear. Understandable! I do my civic duty and thank them for their service before taking my seat next to an old man, who is smoking inside the plane. His mien dares me to challenge him. I smile, and ask for a cigarette instead. He starts laughing, smoke and snot coming out in hissy spurts from his nostrils.

‘Nothing matters anymore, eh?’ He says, offering me a cigarette. I light it up and savour the nauseating tobacco infused smoke.

‘I guess not, Sir.’ I blow the smoke out. A petite air-hostess frowns at us, I wink at her and she gives up, and walks away with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. The old man is right, nothing matters anymore. After all, we’ll all be dead in ninety days.  

‘Nothing matters anymore.’ He repeats and blows out smoke. ‘Well, how do you feel?’

‘Still processing,’ I reply and I’m being honest. The bombshell landed yesterday. A 28 km wide asteroid is on its way towards our planet and as the President of USA mentioned towards the end of his tear-filled speech, the impact will cause an Extinction Level Event. To put things into perspective, this asteroid is much bigger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. When the announcement was made worldwide, I think I reacted like how everyone might have – with disbelief giving way to anger, anger breaking down with helpless tears, and the helplessness being swept over by a strange acceptance. End was always inevitable, wasn’t it? Ninety days, and it’ll all be over. The second I accepted our collective fate, I decided to live my life to the fullest. I made a plan to travel every single day available and experience as much as this life could offer.

The old man looks at me, clearly not satisfied with my reply. I shrug and say, ‘It certainly feels good to travel without paying. That’s all I’m feeling right now.’

‘Scared?’

‘Too soon to say.’

A shadow falls over me and I look up. A pregnant woman is standing in the aisle, next to my seat. Her nose is wrinkled with disgust at the cigarette smoke.

‘May I have the aisle seat, please?’ She points to her belly and asks. I nod, stub my cigarette, and scoot over to the middle seat. The old man is still smoking.

‘Uncle!’ the woman calls out. The old man looks at her, smirks and stubs his cigarette. ‘Happy?’ He asks.

‘I just wanted a barf-bag,’ She smiles. ‘Seems like my seat doesn’t have one.’

He passes the barf-bag to her and grumbles, ‘Wasted a perfectly good cigarette. Doesn’t matter, nothing matters anyway.’

‘Not for me uncle,’ She says and points to her belly. ‘I still have something to look forward to.’

Tears start dripping from her eyes. ‘Anything wrong?’ I ask.

She sniffs and says, ‘I just hope that I get to meet her. I want to hold her, even if it is only for a second.’

‘You will.’ I say with fake confidence. Guess the doctors cared enough to go against the rules in divulging the gender of the baby.

‘It’s not fair,’ She is weeping now.

The old man passes her a hand-kerchief. ‘No point crying, girl. Just be happy that the few moments you have with your child will be ones of pure joy. It’s only when they grow up and treat you like shit, these moments start fading away and all the happiness will be clouded over with bitterness and regret.’

Sadness is etched between the lines in his face. Is he going to meet his children? I don’t ask him; I choose to think that he is. We pass the rest of the journey in silence. Someone tries to crack a joke, but it flies like a lead balloon amidst the shell-shocked passengers.

Day 2

Chennai looks the same, feels the same; yet, nothing remains same. People are still shuffling around towards their workplaces, but I see the temples, churches, and mosques overflowing with people. I can understand their sentiments, even though I don’t agree with them.

I have no relatives in this city anymore. The city is my long-lost relative. I spend the day wandering along and talking to random people on the streets. There is a sort of resignation permeating through the air, and I don’t like it one bit. A vast majority have given up and are just going through their motions. This banality doesn’t suit me. A city is dying well before its time. I need to get out of this place.

Day 7

The narrow lane leading up to the Manikarnika Ghat is overflowing with people. There are mourners, there are pundits who perform pujas, there are vendors who sell anything and everything needed to perform a funeral, and then there are the dead bodies that are either burning or waiting to be burned. I dodge a bunch of clever Sadhus who offer to perform a special puja for my safe passage to the heavens, and reach the Ghat. It’s been a week since the news about the asteroid was made public, and wherever I have been I’ve seen two emotions that were dominant – fear and anger; Fear of impending death, and an anger born out of helplessness.  

‘I find all this overflow of emotions pointless.’ A raspy voice susurrates in my ear. I turn around and come face to face with an Aghori. His peat-black skin is weathered, resembling tough leather, and is covered with sacred ash. Multiple rudraksha malas surround his neck giving the impression of a clew of worms feasting on his flesh. A chillum is nestled in his palms, the smoke emanating from it reeks of weed.

‘Why do you say that?’ I ask. I’m fascinated by the Aghori.

‘Well, death is inevitable, isn’t it? Then why fight it? Why fear it? Why the tears?’ He takes a deep drag from the chillum.

‘Then?’

‘Don’t fight it. Embrace death when it is your time to go. Let go of your fears, and once you do that, you’ll get the courage to step up towards death.’

He makes sense, yet I don’t think anyone can let the fear of death go that easily. Can I do it now? I have my doubts.

Day 18

My heart beats in a frenzy as I cross the Wagah border and step into Pakistan. I look up, down, front, and back, and find nothing different. The earth and the air looks and feels the same. Lines drawn by the humans doesn’t matter when the ones who drew it don’t.

The Pakistani Soldiers, with their uniforms still immaculate, wave at me. They offer tea and I gladly accept. Over cups of karak chai and piping hot samosas, we share stories. The impending doom doesn’t seem to faze them much, I guess soldiers belong to a different breed of men. I mean, they wake up every day prepared to die.

Fazal Khan, the soldier who offered me tea, is thirty-three. He is from a place called Battal in the Khyber-Pakhtunwala province. I ask him about his place and the story starts flowing.

‘Bhaijaan, Battal is a beautiful place. It is close to Afghanistan, you know? The place is surrounded by lush-green mountains, and sparkling springs. My abbu and ammijaan still live there. Abbujaan has a small provision store. I grew up on the mountains, bhaijaan.’

There is a longing in his voice.

‘Do you miss your place?’

Fazal laughs, ‘Of course, bhaijaan. Your soil is in your blood. I’m hoping to get a leave to visit my parents soon. Hopefully, before the asteroid blows us into space.’

He laughs without mirth. I thank him for the tea.

‘I joined the army when I turned eighteen,’ Fazal says. ‘Fifteen years, I have spent fighting against your country. I have seen my fellow soldiers being blown away by bombs, or riddled with bullets. I have held the hands of my wounded comrades as they begged for salvation, before succumbing to their injuries. I have killed my share of your countrymen as well.’

‘Yet, here we are.’

‘Indeed, here we are. Sipping tea and chatting away like friends. All these things I fought for have lost meaning now, hasn’t it? Abbujaan used to say that people get wiser when death is in sight.’

I nod, shake hands with him, and prepare to depart. My mobile beeps and I get a news alert of St. Paul’s Cathedral being demolished by an angry mob. I walk into Pakistan ruminating about the meaninglessness of it all. 

Day 36

‘Normally, I’d have tut-tutted at your smoking, but who fears cancer when an asteroid is hurtling towards us, eh?’

Sannie laughs and takes a deep drag of her cigarette. ‘The way I see it, I’ve been given life’s biggest cheat card. I can drink anything I want; I can smoke how much ever I want, and, I can sleep with whomever I want.’

She discards her bathrobe and crawls on the bed towards me like a panther in hunt of its prey. A seductress on top of her game. I reach over, remove the cigarette from her lips, and kiss her. Time trickles away bringing us closer to our end, but thank goodness for small mercies.

Sannie van Zyl is a South African journalist who was covering the middle east conflict, when I met her in Ramallah ten days ago. We struck a conversation while watching Syrians and Israelis crossed the armistice line and realised that they weren’t much different from each other. She bought into my idea of going around the world till the D-day, and we’ve been traveling together since then. We saw riots in Paris, drank beer with confused neo-nazis in Hannover, experienced free-love with a bunch of gypsies outside Jaen, and yesterday, visited the ruined remains of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

‘I visited St. Paul’s twenty years ago; you know?’ Sannie whispers against my chest. ‘How old were you then?’

‘Ten,’ I mutter and close my eyes with content.

‘God, you are young,’ She laughs. ‘I was twenty-five then.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It never did. Still, it pains to see it destroyed.’

‘Fear makes people irrational, doesn’t it?’

She nods, her dark-brown tresses tickles me. ‘Faith gives people hope, a tether to bind themselves against the impending darkness. Mosques, temples, synagogues, churches…why do you think all these places of worship were built to a large scale? To give people something huge to hold on to. Fear slashes that tether to shreds and all of a sudden people don’t know what to do. They either crawl into shells or hit out in the dark. Who do you think are behind the destruction of the places? The ones who used to pray there every day. They feel betrayed by their Gods.’

‘At least, all the Gods are united in ending us. If this doesn’t teach unity to people, nothing ever will.’

Sannie laughs and climbs atop me.

Day 58

Earthy aromas from the steaming cups of ryokucha comes wafting through the air. Sannie and I are seated opposite to her Japanese colleague Yasuke and her grandfather Daisuke. A nonagenarian, Daisuke, is a survivor. As a child, he escaped the bombing of Hiroshima with severe radiation burns and loss of eyesight. Yet, he has lived a fulfilled life. He laughs easily, and heartily.

‘They say cockroaches are the greatest survivors, Sannie-san,’ He begins, ‘But those pesky insects have nothing on us.’

‘Ojiisan, not now.’ Yasuke mutters.

‘iie, Yasuke-chan. If not now, when? I’m not going to regale everyone with the story of my survival. But I do have something to say about facing death and fear. Everyone is going to die, and that is a fact. But staying calm when death confronts you is not easy. It is okay to be afraid to die, but it is very important not to die afraid.’

I slip my fingers through Sannie’s hand and clasp it in a death grip.

Day 67

‘The asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs came in at a shallow angle, whereas this asteroid will be impacting Earth at an angle of 45 degrees. The resulting impact will be ten times powerful.’

I nod as Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaks. ‘Force equals mass multiplied with acceleration. 0-Kalki, our doomsday asteroid, weighs almost 400 billion kilograms and is hurtling at us with a speed of 70000 kph. The blast pulse created on impact is enough to wipe out Africa. Chunks of earth, the size of huge buildings, will be thrown into the sky and yes, there will be one huge fireball. Within five minutes, it will all be over. Human life began in Africa, it’s only fair that it ends right where it began, eh?’

‘Aren’t you afraid, Professor?’

‘I’m terrified,’ he says in a sombre voice. ‘Yet, the astrophysicist in me is filled with wonder and the boy from the Bronx inside still salivates over the best sandwich in the world. Yes, the world will be no more in twenty-three days. But there are people dying even now as we speak. Babies are being born every second. Consider the history of this Universe. The Big-Bang happened nearly fourteen billion years ago. If we represent the entire timeline of the Universe as a single calendar year, do you know when we, the humans, came into existence?’

I shake my head in the negative.

‘Let’s consider the time at this very moment as 11:59 PM on the 31^st of December of the Cosmic Calendar. We, the genus homo, came into existence at 9:45 PM earlier today. That’s how brief our history is. The Universe wouldn’t have even registered our presence in these three and a half million years of our history. There’ll be a Universe long after we are gone. Life will begin anew at some other corner. We’ve had our time, but now as the bard, Jim Morrison, crooned This is the end, beautiful friend, the end.’  

Day 73

Sannie and I walk in silence through the village of Morretes. People are laughing and dancing in the streets. Their traditional dish, Barreado, is being served in clay pots. The aromas make our mouths salivate, yet we walk ahead. We shake hands with strangers. A handsome man in a tuxedo hugs me and I, impulsively, kiss him. He returns the kiss with fervour. Today is a day of celebration, a day of defiance. The Barreado is laced with poison, and the citizens of this beautiful village will be dead in a couple of hours. One final fuck you to the Gods.

We are not ready yet.

Day 82

‘Sabali! Sabali den!’ the old woman guffaws at my clumsy fumbles with the traditional Dogon masks. We reached the village of Soh in Mali yesterday. Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s quip about human life ending in Africa made me think about finishing my journey in the dark continent. Sannie was overjoyed, she was returning home after all.

The famous Dogon Mask festival was being celebrated with gusto in Soh. Kadiatou Dembele, the old woman who had laughed at my antics with the mask, owns the little lodge in which we stayed last night. With curly white hair and a wrinkled face that is home of a permanent smile, Kadiatou is the de-facto grandmother to the whole village.

‘Do you have any regrets?’ She asks Sannie and I.

I shrug and say, ‘Not anymore. I have travelled to all possible corners of the world and even managed to find love. What about you?’

Kadiatou smiles sadly and says, ‘I never went to school. I never learned to read or write. My parents, my husband, my children…I don’t know how to even write their names. That’s one regret I’m going to carry to my grave, den.’

Sannie smiles and says, ‘How about we rectify that right now?’

In the next couple of hours, Sannie and I teach Kadiatou how to write her name and the names of her loved ones on a blackboard. The old woman runs her hand tenderly over her husband’s name.

‘Souleymane! I’ll join you soon, my love.’ She mutters. I notice Sannie’s eyes have become moist with tears.

I remove my mother’s ring from my finger and kneel down before Sannie. She cries, she laughs, she says yes.   

Day 90 – Earth’s Last Day.

The lioness roars in pain. We alight from our bakkie and proceed warily towards her. The sky is dark, there are frequent meteorite showers. The bush has started burning. The lioness doesn’t care about her surroundings. She pants and grunts, trying to push her litter out. We spot movement in the periphery and spy a cackle of hyenas. They are fanning out, in scent of easy prey. The lioness becomes wary of intruders and roars with helplessness. Sannie and I grab the flimsy tent poles from the bakkie and, with a bellow, run towards the hyenas. Some honeymoon, eh?

Sannie falls first and three hyenas descend on her, ripping and tearing. I run towards her and am ambushed by the ones that have flanked me. I howl with pain as the hyenas feast on my flesh. A gigantic shadow engulfs the Serengeti, 0-Kalki is here. The lioness is licking her cubs. I remember the woman from the plane. Professor Neil DeGrasse Tyson said it. Jim Morrison’s haunting voice echoes in my mind.

This is the end, beautiful friend…the end. This is the end, my only friend…the end.

I close my eyes. I’m ready.     

Glossary:

Ojiisaan – Grandfather (Japanese)

iie – no (Japanese)

sabali – patience (Bambara)

den – young one (Bambara)

bakkie – pick-up truck (Afrikaans)