Mei Mara Page

The old man nodded. “Ha. Mei mara. Now go. Go be dead somewhere else. But first, buy one stick. For your mother’s room.”

Anjali’s alarm didn’t ring. Her phone, a cheap, cracked-screen model she’d been meaning to replace for two years, had given up sometime in the night. She woke to the grey light of dawn filtering through her unwashed curtains, the sound of her mother coughing in the next room. mei mara

Anjali leaned her forehead against the cold glass of the office window. Seventeen floors below, the city’s traffic moved like a sluggish, poisoned river. She thought of the word again. Mara. Dead. The old man nodded

Anjali closed her eyes. “Mei mara. Phir bhi yahin hoon. ” (I am dead. Yet I am still here.) Now go

Her mother stroked her hair. “Then who is sitting here?”

The old man smiled. His teeth were stained, but his eyes were clear. “Let it rain. The earth drinks. So do I.”

“Mei mara,” she whispered to the ceiling, the words tasting like stale coffee. It wasn’t a declaration of suicide. It was a resignation. A small death of spirit.