Chapter 1 : New Air
The air in Kerala is thick enough to swallow you whole, especially in a place like this university, where the greenery is so bright it feels like an insult to my state of mind. I was born on the last breath of the year 2000. For a long time, I was the golden child—full of a kindness that I now realize was just a weakness.
Everything changed with Kavya. She was the one thing in my life that wasn't calculated, but my family treated her like a virus. When I brought her home at eighteen, my grandfather didn't see a human being; he saw someone below the poverty line. He used his tongue like a blade, insulting her until the air in the room turned toxic. My family, the type of people who have the wealth of the Ambani's but the souls of vultures, watched in silence. When I stood up, my grandfather didn't just reject her—he grabbed me by the throat and threw me out.
He gave me one rule: I would inherit nothing unless I achieved total success by age twenty-five. Otherwise, the family assets remained locked away from me forever.
Kavya didn't stay to fight. She smashed the phone I gave her and walked away. I don't blame her, but the regret is a permanent weight in my chest. Then came the deaths. My mother, my father’s second wife, the grandparents—it was a parade of funerals that left me alone in a ten-acre house that felt like a tomb. I was left to raise my little brother while my older brother turned into a workaholic stranger.
I retreated to the basement. I spent three years buried in seven hundred books. I read until the stacks were taller than my six-foot-one frame. Finance, statistics, philosophy, psychology. I didn't just read them; I absorbed them until I stopped feeling. I became a machine made of paper and ink. My parents said I was a disgrace to the family prestige. My friends, the people I trusted more than my own blood, stopped answering my calls the second the money stopped flowing. Even my enemies stopped bothering to hate me. To them, I was already a corpse.
"Kala Bhairav!"
The name echoes through the walls of my hostel room, pulling me out of the data science models for my PhD. It’s Deepak. He’s the only one who still uses that name for me. I had almost forgotten it myself.
"We’re running out of time," he shouts, banging on the door. "It’s the farewell. The last day of the university. Get up."
I look at myself in the mirror. I am a twenty-something "idiot" to the world, a failure to my family, and a ghost to my former friends. But as I get ready for this farewell, I realize they’ve made a grieving fmistake. They think I’ve been or three years. They don't realize I’ve been studying how to destroy them.
I am twenty-four years old. The clock to my grandfather's deadline is ticking. It’s time to see if those seven hundred books were worth the price of my soul.
Chapter – 2
hey , I have seen them—my "flesh and blood"—laughing at the wreckage of my life. They do it behind walls of polished marble, but the silence of their mockery echoes louder than any shout. I find myself pacing my cell—no, my hostel room—asking the moldy ceiling a single, shivering question: _Are you even human?_ To understand one’s own feelings is to be a prisoner in a paradox of one’s own architecture. I have built this Matrix, brick by psychological brick, and now I moan because I cannot find the door. But to understand the feelings of _others_… is that not the true definition of a human? In this wretched era, a dog possesses more soul than a man. A dog looks at a weeping master and whimpers; a man looks at a falling brother and calculates the depreciation of his value. Ha! I sigh, I take deep, ragged breaths of the stale air, and I realize my humors are fouled.
I turned to the only remedy left for a man of my station: cold water. I doused myself, feeling the sting against my skin, a desperate attempt to jumpstart the testosterone and the dormant spirit within. In that frigid clarity, a thought struck me—a scheme, perhaps a salvation. Why not build a temple for the lonely? A business not of commerce, but of confession. A sanctuary where people share the rot of their souls with a therapist who treats them with the jagged humor of a friend rather than the cold clinical eye of a judge.
"Another pile of shit," I whispered to the shadows, even as my fingers flew across Excel sheets and Google Docs, documenting my own desperation under the guise of "innovation."
I wonder… I truly wonder… what is it like to be loved? I remember the flickering images of my youth—the cinema screens where protagonists uttered "I love you" with such sickening ease before pressing their lips together. As my mind grew, expanded by the weight of seven hundred volumes, I began to ask: _Am I the only one who feels this void?_
The door creaked open. My roommate—that exhausted, tethered animal—stumbled in and immediately began his ritualistic complaining. The fan! The noise! The mechanical whirring was "irritating" his fragile peace. He did not see the man standing before him; he saw only an obstacle to his sleep.
==_"My neighbors started complaining about the smell of me, when my body is decomposing."_ — Fyodor Dostoevsky==
The quote rang in my skull like a funeral bell. My introverted mind began to scream—a silent, high-pitched frequency that demanded I flee. I left. I sought the lake, that "picturesque" stage where nature pretends to be indifferent to human suffering.
The sun was a dying ember, casting an orange, neodium glow over the Ambedkar University grounds. The wind—a sharp, sudden blaze—struck my face as if trying to wake a corpse. I watched the weeds and grass moving in a certain proportional motion, waving like the hands of the damned reaching for the light. I heard the crunch of sticks and dead leaves beneath my feet—the sound of my own footsteps making me realize I still occupied a physical space.
"Hi," I whispered to myself. A greeting to a ghost.
Then, the air changed. I heard a voice—low-pitched, warm, and so smooth it felt like a lullaby for my weary nerves. She sat on the bricked concrete floor, four benches away, radiating a kindness so pure it felt like a physical he[[[[]]]]at. She was speaking to a toddler. The way she treated that child—with humor, with warmth—it was a spectacle of grace I hadn't seen since my mother’s light went out. ====
Suddenly, my chest tightened. A heart attack? No—worse. Social existence. She looked at me. After seven years of bachelor silence, of being a phantom in a library, she said "Hi."
I acted as though I hadn't heard. A lie! A wretched, cowardly lie! I was drowning in shame. I tried to speak; I felt a thousand words—philosophies, statistics, confessions—mumbling against the back of my teeth, but my tongue was a paralyzed muscle. I shut my mouth. I retreated into the safety of my introversion, a king of a kingdom of dust.
I watched her from the corner of my eye. She was drawing—sketching something into a book. Then, with a definitive snap, she closed it and walked away, taking the light with her. I returned to my room, the image of her green eyes burned into my retinas. I slept, only to wake to the cold reality of the calendar: one month left. One month until I am cast out, a "Data Science PhD" with nothing but a scholarship of dust and a heart full of shadows.
Chapter 3: The Weight of an Uninvited Mirror
He does not seek to cause pain, but his very presence—his silence, his intensity, his refusal to play the social game—acts as a psychic irritant to those around him.
They wish to strike me from the radar of their lives, and I cannot entirely blame them. It is not that I seek to cause trouble; it is that my very existence is a source of discomfort for them. Wherever I go, whoever I speak to, I see that flickering shadow in their eyes—the urge to move away, to be anywhere else. I am a living dissonance in their tidy, comfortable songs. I make them uneasy because I do not speak the language of "pleasure" and "things." So, I contemplate the exit. What is the purpose of a life if it isn't designed to be lived, but merely tolerated?
Everyone shares their opinions like they are throwing scraps to a dog. I listen, I absorb their trivialities, but what about me? I also existed! I have an appetite, a mind that roars like a furnace, and a soul that refuses to be quiet. But in this era, humans treat the purpose of life as a secondary annoyance, valuing the object over the spirit. They would rather talk to a screen than look into the eyes of a man who actually thinks.
The sun rose again—a golden executioner. I lay there, searching through the wreckage of my thoughts for a flicker of enlightenment, a "Dharma" to steady my trembling hands. Everyone jokes about the loneliness and the depression! They treat it like a fashion accessory until the abyss actually opens its mouth. Then, the laughter dies, and they find themselves searching for meaning in an empty void.
I do not belong to this world. Perhaps I belong to a place where a man’s depth is not a crime. I find myself whispering the words of that poor, tortured soul, Franz Kafka: "Nobody understands me, even myself I do not understand."
I tried to rise, but my body felt as though it were forged from trillions of tons of lead. It was as if the Earth’s gravity had been replaced by the crushing pull of the Sun itself, pinning me to the mattress as punishment for my thoughts. I fought. I used every scrap of my last energy to stand. I slapped myself—a sharp, stinging crack that echoed in the tiny room—realizing it wasn't my physical body that was heavy, but the mental mass of my own isolation.
I went to the bathroom and stood naked before the mirror. I tried to understand what my body felt, but I felt nothing. Nothing. Do you know what "nothing" means? It is a presence so heavy it threatens to crack the floor. I realized then, with a bitter clarity, that I was never loved properly in my childhood. I am a man built of books and shadows.
By evening, the "nothingness" drove me out of the room. I sought the lake, the only place where the air doesn't feel like a judgment. I walked the borders, my footwear crunching on dead leaves—the sounds of a ghost walking over his own life. I was searching for her—the Green-Eyed Grace. I was searching for the scent of her, the calmness she radiated, a warmth that didn't feel like the scorching fire of my family’s greed.
But she was not there. The bench was cold.
I paced, searching for her presence in the grass, in the waving hands of the weeds. And then, I saw it—a small, pocket-sized sketchbook, forgotten beneath the bricked concrete.
I picked it up. My fingers trembled. I didn't open it at first; I simply held it, feeling the weight of it. It was a relic. I sat where she had sat, a thief of a moment. I finally opened it. Inside were no numbers, no data science, no finance—only the world seen through a lens of kindness. And then, I saw myself. A sketch of a man, four benches away, looking at the water. She had drawn me. She had looked at the "discomfort" of my existence and turned it into art.
I am an antithesis for this society. I am ambitious, I am passionate, but I am paralyzed by a laziness that is actually a profound terror of being seen. Only twenty days left. Something in my inner self is screaming at me to move on, to become what I want—but for the first time, I have something to hold onto besides a textbook.
Would you like me to move into Part 4, ? whats ur opinion and thoughts on my novel ..? comment down i will reply ? .
Chapter _ 4
Chapter 4: The Tyranny of the Ticking Clock
I retreated to my cell—my room—and collapsed into the chair. The sketchbook lay on the desk like an unexploded bomb. I hesitated to touch it.
On the wall, the clock began to scream. To the contented man, a clock is a tool; to the desperate man, it is a judge. _Tick-tock._ It was not a rhythm; it was a countdown to an execution. It sounded more dangerous than the eruption of a volcano, sending spikes of adrenaline through my veins. That ticking is not time; it is my life leaking out onto the floorboards.
I sat there, a zombie in my own head, my thoughts spiraling into an insurrection I could barely control.
"Control yourself," I whispered. "To achieve power, one must first conquer the chaos within."
But is this what life looks like? A man always desires exactly what he does not have, and treats with absolute contempt the treasures he already possesses. Even if I have nothing left in my hands, I must seize the will to survive. But every time I believe in something, the structure collapses.
I realized then the true nature of the "Generation Gap." It is not a matter of age; it is a war of ideologies. The cause of all human conflict—from the wars of nations to the silence between a father and son—is not fate. It is the friction between two tyrants who both wish to shape the world in their own image. Because neither the father nor the son has become a "Great Man" of history, they try to control the only kingdom they have: each other.
I am surrounded by monsters wearing the masks of men. I have analyzed them. The people I meet are not "good"; they are simply efficient at hiding their inner beasts. The most successful man in this society is not the most virtuous, but the one whose mask is the most convincing.
If there were no fear of God, no threat of the Law, this world would instantly revert to its natural state: a slaughterhouse. Humans would rape, kill, and feast upon one another. I want to tear down the wallpaper of this "Matrix." I want to see the bricks of the paradox, the cement of fear that holds up the banks, the laws, the shops, the starvation. These are not realities; they are systems designed by the strong to enslave the weak using the currency of hope.
I could hesitate no longer. I opened the book.
My mind, accustomed to eternal darkness, was blinded by a sudden flash of light. She had drawn me. But she had not drawn the "Idiot," the "Social Ghost," or the "Decomposing Body" I see in the mirror. No.
She had rendered me as a structure of Greek marble—a fallen Titan sitting on the bench, lonely but majestic. The drawing possessed a soul that my physical body lacked. It was more beautiful than the reality my eyes had seen.
A violent chemical war erupted in my brain—Cortisol screaming "Danger!" and Dopamine screaming "Salvation!" I could not handle the spike. I slammed the book shut.
"Rossy W."
The name was written on the cover. The thorns that have wrapped around my heart for years tightened, drawing fresh blood.
"Do not be a fool," the Machiavellian voice in my head sneered. "Love is just a chemical reaction. A biological trick to ensure reproduction. You have no one. You are the only one for yourself. Reliance on others is a weakness."
I threw the book onto the desk and collapsed onto the bed, returning to the horizontal state of the defeated.
If I died in this room tonight, no one would come. No funeral, no tears. My body would be claimed only by the _Saprophytes_—the decomposer bacteria. They are the only honest things in nature; they do not care about my "prestige" or my "bank balance" before they consume me. That is how alone I am.
The thing that destroys a man is not pain; it is Insult. An insult holds more power than a bullet because it kills the spirit while leaving the body alive. If you are nothing to them, they give you nothing.
I lay there, calculating the data. Humans are running on a loop. We repeat 93% of our thoughts from yesterday. We are not innovators; we are biological machines fading into obsolescence. Men have become prisoners of their own emotions. The enemy is not the "System"—the enemy is the lack of self-mastery.
As Lord Krishna said: _Sthitaprajna_—the one who stands firm in wisdom. The one who controls lust, anger, and greed becomes a king even without a crown. But we? We are rats. We happily let the cat handcuff us because the cat holds a piece of cheese called "Pleasure." We have traded our Free Will for comfort.
I have been used. I have been a tool for others' needs. When I speak with kindness, they hand me hatred. I worry for them, but not a single soul worries for me.
I am exhausted. My body is a wreck, but my mind is a lit fuse.
Suddenly—Vibration.
Beneath my bed, my phone began to ring. A mechanical shriek in the silence of the tomb. I stretched my hand into the dust to grab it, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Chapter – 5
Chapter 5: The Currency of Blood and Rain
The phone vibrated against the dust of the floor, a mechanical heartbeat in the silence. I picked it up. The name on the screen was not a family member, nor a creditor. It was Deekshith.
If I am the Prince of a ruined palace, Deekshith is the King of the gutters. We are two sides of the same tragic coin—I was born into a golden cage, and he was born into an iron shackle. We are two souls inhabiting a single, tortured mind. He is the only one who knows that the difference between the rich and the poor is simply the quality of the mask they wear.
"Bhairav," his voice crackled, low and heavy like the static before a storm. "How is the air in your prison?"
"Stale," I replied, staring at the ceiling. "And the reality outside?"
"Expensive," he murmured. "It always costs more to breathe than we can afford."
He didn't need to say more. I could see him. I could feel the atmosphere around him as if I were standing in his shoes. The connection between us dissolved the distance, and suddenly, the cinema of his past—that blood-soaked reel of film that plays on a loop in his skull—began to play in mine.
The Flashback: The Economics of Death
The sky was the color of a bruise. It was the night Deekshith was born—the night the world decided to teach him its cruelest lesson.
His mother lay dying. Not because of nature, but because of Economics. The hospital demanded a fee that weighed more than a human soul. In a Machiavellian society, life is not a right; it is a subscription service, and his father’s subscription had expired.
His father, a desperate man, ran to the banks. But banks are temples of the wealthy; they do not lend to the drowning, only to those who can already swim. Rejected by the laws of men, he turned to the laws of wolves—the illegal money lenders. He sold his soul, and his only two acres of land, for a stack of cash.
He rode back in the rain, the bike tires screaming against the slick asphalt. He was racing against the clock of mortality. But Fate is a cruel author.
_Skid. Crash._
His head struck the concrete circle point. A sickening crack. Blood—thick, dark, and precious—began to pool on the road, mixing with the rain. He screamed. He didn't scream for himself; he screamed for the three lives at stake: his wife, his unborn son, and his own wretched existence.
"Help! The money… for my wife!"
And here is where the mask of humanity fell off. The crowd gathered. They saw a bleeding man, yes. But they also saw the cash—the illegal notes that had flown from his pocket and scattered like confetti in the blood and water.
Did they help? Did they show the "compassion" the poets write about? No. They were realists. They were opportunists. In a frenzy of greed, the bystanders became vultures. They scrambled on their hands and knees, snatching the blood-stained rupees, stuffing their pockets while a man bled to death inches from their fingers.
The emergency red lights flickered—a disco for the damned. The notes flew away. The father’s life flew away. And miles away, in a rural, doctor-less shed, the mother breathed her last, giving birth to Deekshith—a child born into a deficit.
A wealthy friend of the father—a rare anomaly, a man with a conscience—took the boy in. He ran an orphanage. He buried the parents whom the world had rejected. For ten years, Deekshith knew peace. But the Universe is relentless. The savior developed a brain tumor. The one candle in the dark was blown out. Deekshith was alone again, facing a world that had already shown him its teeth.
The Present: The Stained White Shirt
"I am at the gate, Bhairav," Deekshith’s voice brought me back. "I am going to visit them."
I knew where he was. The graveyard.
Deekshith was walking. He wore a crisp white shirt and black pants—his armor of dignity against a dirty world. He held a bouquet of roses, bought with money he likely didn't have. The clouds above him were pregnant with rain, threatening to wash the city into the sewers.
He walked on the shoulder of the road. Suddenly, a roar.
A luxury Mercedes—sleek, silver, a chariot of the indifferent gods—tore past him. It didn't swerve. It didn't slow down. It hit a pothole filled with sewage and mud.
_Splash._
The filthy water exploded upward, drenching Deekshith. His white shirt turned brown. The roses dripped with sludge. The car sped away, the driver not even glancing in the rearview mirror. To the driver, Deekshith was not a human; he was just part of the landscape, an obstacle no more important than a stray dog.
Deekshith stood frozen. The silence in the phone line was deafening. I knew what was happening. inside him, the Monster was clawing at the cage of his ribs. The rage of a thousand humiliations wanted to scream, to kill, to burn the Mercedes and the world that built it.
But he swallowed it. He wiped a streak of mud from his face.
"Did you hear that?" Deekshith asked, his voice disturbingly calm.
"I heard it," I whispered.
"He didn't even brake," Deekshith said. "But why would he? A lion does not apologize to the sheep for stepping on it."
He entered the graveyard. The air was cooling, the breeze carrying the scent of wet earth and decay. He walked to the flat stones where his parents lay—the victims of a transaction they couldn't pay.
He placed the muddy bouquet on his mother's grave. The rain began to fall, soft and cold, mixing with the sewage on his shirt, washing him in the tears of the sky.
"I have to go, Bhairav," he said. "The rain is starting. And the dead do not like to be kept waiting."
"Bye, Deekshith."
The call cut. The line went dead. And I was left alone in my room, listening to the volcano clock, realizing that whether in a Mercedes or in the mud, we are all just waiting for the rain to wash us away.
by depressedghost_7
1 Comment
You might get a better response taking this to r/writing or a related sub.