#1 The Silent Screams: Unheard Forgotten Dreams

Thinking life is meaningless, I had given up any hope of life, scrolling through Instagram, fluctuating my brain with different types of feelings with each reel. I think my brain has become numb to any form of stimulation. I wonder if I’ll ever again feel the kiss of my girlfriend the way I had felt, or the way I got excited playing GTA Vice City for the first time or understanding for the first time why we can't walk without friction. These short pulses of quick dopamine have just messed up my brain. But since it's all meaningless, it doesn't even matter. I wish I could just die today, right now. Can't I just kill myself thinking of death? I have heard that sages had trained their brains so much that they could leave their bodies by choice in the Mahabharata or something similar.?

I feel so alive in my brain, can I just leave my physical body and be just a brain? Oh, I am getting a call at this time. It's my friend from my JEE batch. I should answer or ignore it and later say I was sleeping. But he's my only friend, I should just answer it.?

With my usual greeting, "Hello bro," but what is this? Why is he crying and angry and all? Fuck, my night is ruined. Is it a breakup? It must be; people these days playing love, but it's not their fault, it's today's generation's technology. Advanced, within a single click, you can watch beautiful girls and boys and masturbate and get the dopamine in a few minutes. Everything is so fast in this age; I wonder how our grandparents used to manage. They must have used some magazine, or lol, India was poor at that time, could they buy porn magazines? Or I wonder if they didn't need it because of early marriage. My grandma was married at 12, I think. Well, now's more advanced; people are not satisfied with just marriage. Is it the intimacy or mainly show-off or what? Well, "what happened?" I asked.

"Sattu is dead," he said. "They killed him. I am gonna burn them down." Well, fuck! That was my first thought. Was I getting sad or confused because I didn't know how to react? I thought Delhi was a bad place; people kill people for small reasons. I started to wonder what could have happened. Did something happen at school? Did they get into a fight over something? Is it a girl matter, a love triangle, a political or religious issue?

Fuck, why am I crying? Wasn't I emotionless? Then why am I crying? Satish, just 19, it's only been a few days since I'd played PUBG with him. He was a very good player and was a nice kid, intelligent and mature. I used to teach him Physics. He was preparing for JEE after me and his brother, and my only friend, Dikshit. Well, Dikshit got into NIT on the second attempt, while I just joined a random college on my first attempt after getting just 120 marks: 95 in Physics, 32 in Math, and -7 in Chemistry. I used to hate chemistry, mainly organic, and in class, me and Dikshit used to compete over who would get more negative marks on the test. Well, I guess I just did the same in the JEE mains. Regardless of that, I am pretty good in Physics and Math as I only love Physics.

"He's dead. And they are not letting me see him; our Sattu is dead. I want to kill my parents, and the teacher, and burn this whole society," he continued. "It's not suicide, it's murder. It's murder, and no one is going to do anything. Help me, please help me. I just wanna kill them." Suicide, I repeated. "Suicide," he said, "no, it's not suicide, it's a slow murder where you don't know you're being murdered. The worst murder is where they make you kill yourself, and they have done the same thing with Sattu. Sumit, you're good in Physics. Could you not just help me create a bomb? I've seen on the net we can create a smaller one ourselves. Please help me, I beg you, please, friend."

Suicide is the word that I think of daily before falling asleep and after waking up. Daily I think today's the day I'll commit suicide, that's it, it's the day. I've been thinking for the last 3 years and yet I am alive, and how the fuck a 19-year-old boy who's so cheerful and happy, and on top of that, so much smarter than me, would have committed suicide.

How can I get beaten in suicide? He's a better PUBG player than me, but at least I should have died earlier. Getting irritated, I shouted, crying, wiping my tears, "Tell me first what happened." Dixit said, "Don't you fucking see the news? What happened today? It was the JEE exam today, and yesterday, in total, 11 students were found dead in their rooms. Sattu is one of them. I got to know today; my parents had gone to collect the body. When they come, I am gonna kill them and then kill neighboring people and burn the whole place. You just help me with a bomb or something."

Not able to comprehend why a person would commit suicide for a trivial reason such as a small JEE exam. Well, I am suicidal too, but there’s no reason for me to commit suicide; I want to die because I don’t find any meaning in staying alive, not because of failure or any reasons. There could not be any material reason for me to commit suicide.

Getting anxious and Dixit crying and shouting, I just started to get dizzy, I rushed to the washroom to vomit. What's the feeling? Am I sad over someone's death or is it because I am sad over my friend's behavior? I told Dixit, "Calm down, I am coming. Just calm down and don’t do anything stupid. I’ll come, I’ll take the next flight and will reach by the end of tomorrow, just hold on."

The only thing that was coming to my brain was, "Please, Dixit, don't do anything stupid. Just wait till I get there." Flushing the toilet, and coming back to bed, I started to browse tickets. The prices were so high, and I wondered if I could afford it; my credit card was maxed out. Why and how did I end up starting a startup? Life was simple in my job time; if I had continued my job, by now, I would have saved enough to retire or go to Japan.

But the tears were coming non-stop, even after I had completely given up any hope. I had believed that I was emotionless, then what is this? Sattu, the last time we spoke, wanted to build an AI that could generate game assets for Unreal Engine, like ChatGPT for games. He loved games so much. But then why did he choose to end his life? The worst that could have happened is he failed his exams. So what? I could have taught him all the coding that I know. He could have still made the AI he wanted to make.

Well, that means I could never understand what was going on with him. Was it parents or society that could be blamed for his death? Was it me, who told him stories about Albert Camus or always blabbered about how life is meaningless, or is it that he was so weak that he couldn't face his failure? He used to get angry over losing the game in PUBG as well, but that's the response of most teenagers, I thought.

What could have troubled him so much that he decided to quit? What was the reason that he didn't even fear, and how the fuck did he get the courage? I always think of suicide, but to date, when I try to do that, my heart beats so fast that I faint. And yet a kid who's far younger than me could have killed himself. Is our society so scum? Fuck the movie directors and all; they make all the movies with happy endings. Fuck the "12th Fail" movie; recently, it got so much hype, and many people got motivated and false hope because of it. These movies show only the victors, the people who succeed, but what about the people who work harder than the hero but end up being a side supporting character? And are people really that stupid that they don't understand that any material goal is not what they live for?

Reputation, status, culture, and religion, all are just meaningless stupid pieces of shit that have been invented to make humans slaves. Is it so hard to see that if you’re dead, your status doesn't mean anything? It's so absurd that people could fight over something that doesn’t even exist. Let's say a Muslim marries a Hindu; the religion doesn’t exist, but the people do, it's blood and flesh. Religion, caste, and all are just fictional things, they're not even real, and yet we fight over these. How stupid we can be; I think blue whales are more advanced and intelligent than us.

Should I try to make a pocket-sized atom bomb? Can I make it, but then whom should I kill? Who's the person responsible for it? Who's to blame? Is it Sattu’s parents, their teacher, his idols, his influence, or the movie director, or could it be me? The people around me are getting influenced, and I am not able to do anything. In every story, there's a villain; who's the villain in this story? Whom should I fight with, or should I just die today? Why is there only pain and stupidity? I am so irritated. I wish there was a program where I could donate my body for research; at least I would be helpful in something. My life is meaningless; it's just a failure till now. How could I let Sattu die? What was the reason?

I hope my plane crashes tomorrow. There are so many books; if only everyone started reading books and started thinking using their brains, especially old people, parents, and students. Please read books or just stop and think. How many more Sattus will die before people realize it? He was such an intelligent kid. Where did I fail? Or where did we fail? We're a generation drowning in information, yet starving for wisdom. I wonder, how many unheard Sattus are out there, screaming in silence?

....To Be Continued.