It was evening, and the classes had finished. He had returned to his apartment after meeting his friends. He changed his clothes and spread out his yoga mat to do some yoga. He practiced for a full twenty minutes before Golu suggested that it was enough and told him to take a bath.
He picked up his towel, walked into the bathroom, and stepped under the shower. As the cold drops slipped over his skin, he remembered how he used to bathe in the rain as a child. Then he remembered how he used to make paper boats.
It was a new demon from the black hole today. It sat beside the black hole on his right shoulder and whispered lustful things into his ear. It didn't matter to him because he was committed to Tanya, whether she ever thought of him or not. Golu whispered the Hanuman Chalisa into his other ear. It had no effect on the demon, but it made him feel better.
He continued standing under the shower. Then he covered himself with Old Spice shower gel and scrubbed his body with a loofah. This was one of the reasons he never brought any of his friends to his apartment. They would make fun of the loofah, among other things. He had made quite a few friends during his first year, but by the third year he had realized that none of them were worthy of being invited into his apartment. They were parasites, essentially. So whenever they asked to come over, he made excuses, even though he continued to spend time with them in college and after classes.
He finished his bath and got out of the bathroom. He put on a T-shirt and pajamas, powered on his laptop, and logged into GoSocial. GoSocial was a new website he had found, and on that website there were people befriending each other and talking about different kinds of things. Whatever your interests might be, you’d find that sort of person on that website. He checked his profile. It was a roleplay sort of profile where he played a poet and a hipster, talked about science, philosophy, and literature, and wrote short poems. Within a short time, he had amassed a number of friends on that website, and that number was steadily increasing. He particularly liked one girl among his GoSocial friends whose name was Paoli, and they used to talk to each other till late in the night. This night too, he talked to her till 1 AM and then logged off as he had college in the morning.
In the morning, he woke up, got ready, had a breakfast of cornflakes, and went to college.
It was afternoon. He was at the college, and something didn’t feel right. Golu was sitting on his shoulder, and a demon from the black hole on the right shoulder was hissing something in his ear. He felt that everything was useless—the degree that he was pursuing, his studies, his skills, everything. He got out of college and started walking in a state of fugue. He took an auto and told the driver to go to the railway station, and upon reaching the railway station, he boarded the general compartment of the first train he saw. The train started, and his mind was blank. Golu was speaking something to him, and the demon was still hissing in his ear, but he was too lost in thought to notice.
After around ten hours, he looked outside the window. The train had halted at a station called Rajpur. He got off and started walking, and kept walking until midnight, until he reached a cemetery near a church. He looked at the church glowing in white light and kept on walking and walking till it was early morning. It was early in the morning that his trance broke, and he then switched on his phone. There were calls and messages, hundreds of them. His phone started ringing, and it was his father. He picked up the call and said hello. His father asked him to come home. He told him he was coming and disconnected the call.
He was done with studies, and he was now going home.
The demon of the black hole hissed something in his ear, and then Golu asked him to call the auto that was passing by him. He took the auto to Rajpur railway station, got himself a general compartment ticket to Deenapur, where his home was, and went and sat in the train that was standing on the platform.
The train reached Deenapur, and he got off. His father was waiting for him on the platform. He got off the train, and his father hugged him.
“If you don’t want to study dentistry, don’t do it,” his father said.
The next day, his father sent his brothers to bring his stuff from Gopuram, where his college was situated. The brothers went and returned in three days with his belongings after completing all the formalities at the college.
He had told his father that he wanted to do social work, and so his father enrolled him in a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work at a college in Deenapur. Golu kept on doing therapy on him. He hadn’t talked to Golu for a very long time, but Golu kept on talking to him, motivating him, and telling him about his future prospects.
The black hole on his right shoulder birthed a new demon almost every day, and as the previous demon went back, a new demon came out of the black hole to hiss in his ear, say nasty things, and show him nasty visions of rapes, murders, and genocides. He had become accustomed to this, but that didn’t mean it was bearable, and yet he suffered quietly because he knew that if he talked about this to anyone, people would think that he was mad.
Golu was the biggest support he had. On days with good weather, Golu used to tell him jokes that cracked him up. College was going fine, and he didn’t skip any classes. He wanted to help people, and so it was the best thing he could do, though he missed dentistry, as he had wanted to become a faciomaxillary surgeon. But dentistry was in the past.
He played guitar in his free time and did house chores. His mother was happy to have him home, and so were his two brothers.
He hadn’t logged into GoSocial for months, and he kind of missed Paoli, but something stopped him from logging into that website. He thought he would log back in again when he had completed his first year. ~
He had lost touch with Tanya and she remained only as someone who he was one infatuated to though he could swear by his love for her he knew that he had moved on. The college was going on and exams were near, just a month he would be in second year. He had started making plan for his future, he wanted to get into the field of mental health which he thought was his only choice given his daily experience with Golu and the black hole and its demons. He had decided to specialise in Mental Health and Psychiatric Social Work for his Masters. Golu was sitting on his shoulder listening to him thinking so many things at once and was boosting his confidence. A demon who had appeared from the blackhole was saying intimidating things to him though he was used to it by now.
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