The fifth step

The next few days passed by in a blur. The days got cooler and the nights grew longer. Warm blankets, wood smoke , the sharp bite of winter, the feel of light on your palm, the dance of the senses to the first rush of winter, cold cream, lotions and other sensations less pleasant, moth balls, old woolens, the feel of winter as it seeps through the window’s cracks and through the small chinks in that infinitesimally small gap between jamb and door, the trickle of the first splash of water in the mornings, everything came together to annihilate itself on the nearest paradox.
I’d gotten out my old jackets and found the time to air them, a miracle in itself that the insects couldn’t get to them and neither could the larvae. I’d begun to cough but that too was fast receding in the face of an onslaught of antibiotics, cough syrup and warm fluids that were little more than placebos but seemed to afford relief nonetheless.
I’d put Loyana, Rudra and everything else out of my mind, I had to because I’d wanted to get the whole thing out of my system. I cared more about my career than anything else. The degree was very important to me,. I’d lived for so long in a sense of Limbo that the yearning for stability was now so strong that everything else took a backseat in my life.

I’d eat, breathe and sleep with the sole aim of getting through the two years, what I believed would be the last two years of my life on the road and then I’d find it, the holy grail of stability that I wanted so much that it had moved beyond a quest to become a burning need for salvation.
In this entire process I realized that I am a very selfish individual, more so than Loyana and much more than Rudra or any one else. This was because I make no pretensions to altruism. I left that behind me when I put away my halo. I needn’t carry the burden of the world. It’ll get along without me.