Down to electric chair, an ode.

The judge was a funny man. The judgment felt funny. But still, I don’t know whether to cry or to laugh. The sentence was an electric chair and I felt like laughing. These people are talking in wide sunlight, of killing me. What? It's funny to hear. I now exactly know my time of death. The good man, the judge told that loud. For some of these talking people, the announcement was a part of their routine and for some it was sweet. There were laughs, shouts, siren, I was taken to the prison. The van started slowly through the crowd and traffic and gained speed as it moved to the uninhabited country. From outside it was just a wall that I could see. Two towers to the sides, with the height less than that of a two storeys. The place around was more a barren desert. All the vegetation the place had was some shrubs and some trees that I would rather say that were once trees. I did not like the place. I did not like the wall. I did not like the inside of the wall. I did not like the world inside it. I did not like the cage they put me in. All of it was suffocating. They stayed too long in the place that their dislike for the place rather turned to hatred for everything else. They too should have felt like me, like an alien, when they came here. Only that most of them were brought here to live and still had the privilege of uncertainty in their life. They were still lucky not to know when they would die even if it be today or tomorrow or long after. I readily understood that given a long time in there I too would be in their state, just not interested in anything around, not in breath or bread, not in wit or wine, not in life itself or the world that held it. There were officers around who might have lived a long life in the desert that their hearts were dry as the land and rock around. I wouldn’t blame them for beating the inmates up till their bones showed, just to pass the time. But it was cruel still. I wouldn’t as well blame them for the shitty food they gave there. That food must be the reason we remained, rather I preferred to remain hungry in there during the first few days. At first, I sat thinking for long hours, for hours it might have been or might be even days, I don’t really know, I did not know! All I could manage to think sitting down there in the dark was my approaching death. The chair that was to electrocute me had started to fill my dreams. Later I thought of why I should waste the last of the days I’ve got ‘thinking’. I thought I would rather make some productive use of my time and leave a mark that I lived behind me. And then I started thinking about it. Soon I would find me sobbing at my own death. That too, electricity? Electrocuted to death? Couldn’t these people in authority come up with something creative? What a weird way to die? Couldn’t they make it more interesting? After all, I said to myself. How interesting can death be anyway? That couple of words, of course, couldn’t console me. Console me? They are going to kill me. They are going to electrocute me to death. I’m going to die. Die in pain! I planted a few plants meanwhile. They were left unattended after planting them. I started reading some books. Great novels, poems, short stories. I collected a lot. But in vain. All I could see in their pages was death, darkness, vanity. I tried films thinking they might at least take my mind off. The prison warden was a good man, he arranged for all these. He would let me see films on his television once every week, and sometimes twice. But even the films were boring. The picture of my death was so much clearer than the screens, that I could hardly see anything on the screen. Now, that’s a privilege that I had. I could get a lot of things normally people in here, in a prison wouldn’t have access to. Even they might have wanted to take my mind off my death. Aha! Now they are offering me sympathy after celebrating the announcement of my death. They were busy arranging things for me just as they were busy arranging things for my killing. Once I was inside the place no longer did my days go one after another as it did outside, it went hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second. Oh My God. 'Hey! Why should I call the God any longer?', I said. 'Whom else are you going to call at this time?' Again said I. Each and every moment went by as if it were a long boring journey through the hot scorching desert. And with every of the moment that passed, a weight came down more on me, the heart beat harder on my chest, my blood goes thicker. And the thicker my blood went, the darker went my eyes. I tried to form statements, the last statement. I simply couldn’t think of a word other than death and electricity. I wished, looking at the electric bulbs glowing around in the alley that if at all they never invented such a damned thing as electricity. As my Death would still stay, I was more afraid of staying through the whole time with electricity passing through me till I would be not feeling anything at all. They all came fully dressed and well rehearsed. I had tried imagining their rehearsal for my killing. Very funny Indeed. Was it like a game for them. Like a kid would torture some insect to death. When I was a kid once I tortured a lizard to death. I caught it with a stick and it shed its tail. I then put it in water in which it struggled a lot before it could make it to a side of the vessel. I poked it. Burned it at parts. Kept it in a box. And did all sort of thing to it before it died, after which I buried him in a hole and made up a ceremony for it. Now I felt myself being that lizard. They walked me down amidst them. At this point, I Imagined myself as a VIP walking among his security personnel in uniform. I just didn’t know if a VIP would go in such torn and dirty rags. Anyway why in the world did my dress matter now? I could hardly see anything as I walked past my favorite corner and past my flower plant and I sat down on 'the chair'. It was a hard chair, made of some hard wood, I did not know which, parts of metal pieces, leather straps. There were points for wires to be attached. My blood was as thick and hot as the hot liquid oozing out of a volcano. I thought it would ooze out now. A part of me was still searching for many answers and also was dreaming of many possible and impossible magic that could still happen to save me. All set to kill me, the officer asked me something, said something aloud in a tuned official tone. I didn’t hear a word, for my ears were buzzing louder. Something started to shake me wildly. It shook all my internal organs. Was this the electricity? There was pain. A lot of it. Starting from the head and spreading all over my shaking body. Is this how electricity passes through you? Well then, the darkness that came next would be what they named death and this would be how passing electricity to death would look like, it was dark.