Death of the hero.

The clouds seemed to play hide and seek as I boarded the bus back home. Trouble was brewing all over town they told me. The thespian is dead. The cardiac muscles of the hero, tired and then stopped. And he died once more; like a hundred other times, the only difference being - he wouldn’t get up this time, wiping the make up off his face.

But it was a life well lived and trouble for the rational did not make sense. But the shutters on the shops were all pulled down. And every street corner had garlanded pictures of the hero; some in memory, some in fear. I got off the bus and someone jokingly suggested – “Tomorrow guarantee holiday. There is bound to be riots”.

And well it was. You didn’t have to be Nostradamus’ second son to predict that. I sat on the couch surfing channels. Like fishermen who are advised not to venture into rough seas, I was ordered not to go out of home. The news channels beamed correspondents reporting amidst charred buses and rioting mobs. I looked out of my bedroom window to see the billowing smoke. I did not see any. I looked out to see if stones were being hurled at my bedroom window. They weren’t. But those images continued to flash on the screen. A police constable running out of a burning bus, with fear splashed all over his face; a few mindless men encircling him like in those games we played back at school. And those clenched fists ramming into his face as though it were but a pillow. Blood on the streets, fire in the air. And all because the cardiac muscles of the hero tired and then stopped? My neighbor had turned on the music full volume. His small world had not changed. I turned off the television set and read Dilbert. Isn’t this guy funny? My little world hadn’t changed either.

May the soul of the hero rest in peace.