Location: Kolkata, IndiaDate: September 18, 2029Time: 7:14 AM
The smell of pesticide still lingered.
Even with both windows open, the small one-bedroom flat felt like a coffin. The fan above creaked. The bulb hung dead. And on the table — two glasses, half-drunk.
Yash Roy stood in silence.
His parents lay before him — still, cold, peaceful in a way that made it worse.
They had chosen death.
Not out of cowardice. But exhaustion.
Years of debts.Years of harassment.Years of survival with no purpose.
Their bodies lay side by side on the old mattress. Between them — one folded paper, hand-torn and stained at the corners.
Yash picked it up with trembling fingers.
It was written in his mother's handwriting — neat, small, gentle.
Yash,
We tried.We held on for as long as we could.But the world broke before we did.
This is not your burden. But we know it will fall on you.
I'm sorry.Your father was tired. I was tired.
But you…You still have fire.
You must live.That will be your atonement.That is your fire.
– Maa
The letter slipped from his hands.
No tears came.He hadn't cried in years.
Outside, the morning sun failed to shine through the dust-choked sky. In the street below, garbage burned in silent piles. Somewhere, a distant siren wailed and faded.
Yash sat at the edge of the bed and stared at the empty wall.
His father had once been a teacher. His mother, a nurse. After COVID, they lost everything — jobs, dignity, peace. Loan after loan stacked like bricks on their backs. Local lenders. Bank threats. Court orders.
Even in death, their names would be hunted.
And now only Yash remained — a nineteen-year-old boy with no future, no family, no reason.
He had thought of dying before.Now he didn't need to.The world would do it for him.
Later that day, when the officials came to take the bodies, they didn't ask him anything. They were used to it.
Suicide wasn't rare anymore. It was routine.
Yash sat on the rooftop till evening. A neighbor offered him food. Another whispered prayers.
He didn't respond.
But far above the clouds — in a space between time and thought — something ancient stirred.
A presence watched him.
A woman. A goddess.Clad in shadow. Eyes like burning galaxies.She watched the boy with the dead stare and hollow chest.
And she whispered, not in words, but in destiny:
"You will not die today.You will rise."