By: Balu George

Tony, sweetheart!
I hear you are planning,
To drink yourself to death.
I will be cheering you on to the very end. Atta boy!

You have your reasons.
To hell with them! What do they know?

I sense, it was neither a broken heart nor thwarted ambition,
Which drove you over the brink.
They are for lesser men.

I guess,
When you saw yourself in the mirror,
You wanted to hammer it to pieces.
I have felt it too.
It must have been the pain of living,
The uselessness and pointlessness of it all.
And the tragedy of letting down the people who loved you.
All that must have drove you over the brink.
I know, I have been there.

Hatred of the self, is a good enough reason in my books.
Self-annihilation is not for the faint of heart.

I will be cheering you on. Go for it, Atta boy!

Tony, sweetheart, I am joking.
Don’t drink yourself to death,
Try Yoga.
Or,
There is this book which I am reading,
” Duck soup for the soul – From alcoholism to nirvana, first you have to sell your Ferrari”.
I think it is working. I have stopped drinking on Tuesdays.
If I achieve nirvana I will get you out of this mess.
But if you reach the other side first, which looks more likely,
Please switch on all the lights in my house,
At midnight the night after you die,
(As per the deal we cut on the school ground 15 years back)

So that I know there is an, afterlife.