Stern Side Tale
~Aniruddha Ghosh(22EX10004)
This essay narrates a small piece of early twentieth century history retold from a rather different perspective.
You are among the most distinguished on board. First class is the only place that can afford you and unmistakenly that is where you are.
Despite your stay being relatively further away from most of the other wealthy passengers; about thrice a day, they do come to pay your residence a visit, for about an hour with fellow travellers and family members. However, this apparent segregation does not come as a surprise for you though. They are expected to complete their journey to the New World and you are not.
You can hear but seldom see the all-important business deals going through between eminent entrepreneurs and industrialists of 1912 England as they discuss the food and complement the chef. All of them hold high admiration about you and are eager to meet and greet with you during lunchtime within the next couple of days.
Unlike others, you are not travelling with your family, but instead with your countrymen, some faces known, some unknown, but here on this journey, brothers all the same.
The vast ocean below is no match for ice cold bucket waters but there is not really much you can do anyway; it is all about counting your final days and embracing the stoicism. You never really liked being bound as a child, being limited by physical boundaries sounded terrible, but you do not always get what you like and coming to terms with it is a virtue.
That night you had heard the head chef instruct the workers to get to work early the next day, and that it was supposed to be a rather important work day tomorrow. Something told you that it was just a matter of one more sunrise before all of it was over and you would be served up on silverware, plated elegantly to satisfy the whims of the rather opinionated English upper class.
You stayed still, no thought would come across your mind, you felt a certain way that no man could ever describe, it seemed as if you were stuck between an everlasting dream and the shackles of reality, trying to break through but being physically incapable. Your mind had never felt so alien and strange to your own self ever before, your sense of reality had been entirely altered. One moment, it felt as if all the lights went out, the next moment they came back as bright as before, you felt vibrations and noises that you would have never expected to hear. Despite trying really hard to justify all your visions, the tipping point finally arrived when you could actually feel everything shaking around you, definitely your mind could never play so many tricks on you. Could it? There just had to be something, surely the sounds of utensils flying through the kitchen and banging on the walls was real, surely the thuds of the wooden chairs and tables striking the dining room walls was real, all of it was as real as your existence, as real as this journey you had set sail on.
With a final bright spark, each and every source of light vanished into the darkness of the night. You could see the final of the first-class passengers hurry out in the dim moonlight, they would definitely be rescued. It would be a long treacherous journey into the night for most of them, but it was necessary if they were to ever see their homes again.
However, for you, things were meant to be different. It was your home that would soon come to you, your home would rescue you from your current life in a bucket where you would have perhaps been cooked the next day to feed these humans, but now you are finally returning to the joys of having a limitless world to explore and live your life in. Oh! How lucky it was that you were not born a human!
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