उनलाई अझै धेरै माया दिन्थे।

मन पर्ने झुम्का उपहार दिन्थे।

उनलाई अल्ली बढी ध्यान दिएर हेर्थे,

मिल्ने भए अँगालोमा लिएर बेर्थे।

तिमी झोक्राएको देख्दा, किन चुप बस्थे र,

फूल दिन्थे, तारिफ को माला गास्थे म।

हेरौं तिमीलाई आखाँ थाक्दैन,

पर्खौं तिमीलाई मन मान्दैन ।

That day, I chose the bus over a ride-sharing app, not because I had to, but because I wanted to feel what it was like to move with the world instead of watching it pass.
The bus was crowded, and Kathmandu was loud in all its familiar ways. Kalimati, Teku, Baneshwor……names passing through the windows like unfinished sentences.
Everyone seemed to be going somewhere. A student carrying tomorrow on their shoulders, an office worker already tired of today, strangers counting minutes, eyes fixed on destinations they could not afford to miss.
And there I was, the only person who had nowhere particular to be.
Funny, isn't it? How a bus can be full of people yet leave you alone with the loudest thoughts.
I watched them hold their places in the crowd, squeezing through narrow spaces, rushing to get ahead, as if life were a train that would leave them behind if they dared to breathe.
Perhaps that is what growing up means,learning to run before you understand where the road is taking you.
We call it ambition. We call it responsibility. Sometimes, we call it survival.
And somewhere between the noise and the traffic, I began to understand the power of money.
Not the money that buys everything, but the money that buys you a choice.
The choice to avoid the crowd, to trade an hour of discomfort for a little peace, to decide when to leave, where to go, and whether you want to follow the rush at all.
Perhaps the richest person is not the one who owns the most, but the one who can afford to stop running without being afraid.
That day, I had chosen the bus. Others had chosen their destinations. And for a little while, I was grateful to be the one who didn't need to arrive anywhere.
Because maybe life isn't always about getting off at the right stop.
Maybe, sometimes, it is about looking out of the window and realizing that everyone is in a hurry to reach a place where they hope they will finally have time to live.

I stepped outside of the building, a cold breeze hit my skin like I had been slapped on my cheeks. I looked up with papers in my hand, dark gloomy clouds over my head, “ah, shitty day, I didn’t even bring an umbrella with me” I said. No matter the surrounding, my brain was occupied, “occupied” a word with lesser heavier weight. 

My eyes wandered right across me, and I saw a bench under a tree, before I knew my legs had already taken me there. 

Sitting across the building I just came out of, with the cold breeze hitting the surface of my skin felt more like nature’s way of telling me something that my mind wasn’t able to decrypt. 

“What would have been easier” I thought. No matter what I say, he is not going to do chemo. No matter what I say… 

Sometimes I wish, if I could just cry my heart out infront of him, maybe that would make his heart a little softer for me, maybe that would make him want to live more years for me, for me. 

Staring at the building, a tiny drop of salt water started to drop on the papers that were resting on my lap. Paper with his CAT scans, papers that said his cancer had metastasized. 

In all 24 years of my life, I have never felt this helpless, not even when I was bullied back in school but looking at that piece of paper that said worse things about his health, can I ever make peace with him for not wanting to do any further treatment ?

That I had seen him slowly fading away cell by cell every single day? That I had known him when he was healthy, talking to me just fine as always to now seeing blood-stained pillows, to blood everywhere? Had I been in his place, what would he have done ? 

Sometimes I feel like that’s the God’s most torturing way to remind me that I have to pray to him, pray for his health and acknowledge his existence in exchange for hope that a miracle can fix everything that been ruined in last 4 weeks of our lives. 

Sometimes I think isn’t it a death sentence too? For him, for me ? Watching him slowly losing his senses, hardly able to walk, eat or sleep, watching him move his feet towards his grave, isn’t it a death sentence to me as well? 

Doesn’t he love me ? He didn’t even care to do what doctors recommended with my eyes full, waiting for his approval to give a rest to my wrenching heart, just for once if he could say Yes to the treatment, even if that doesn’t end well, that could buy me his few more years, few more memories that I can hug every time I close my eyes when I remember him.

Just once ? 

But the reality is far different than the tug of war I’ve in this mind, there’s no way I can make him agree as he is always this stubborn, so much so that he is teaching me how to live without him. As unfair as it is to me, sometimes I wish if death gonna be gentle to him, watching him in pain all these weeks is almost like getting stabbed 135 times in my body. Sometimes I wish if he were gone by now, swiftly, painlessly, if he really had to go, ! Sometimes I wish, if I were him, if I were the one getting this fucking cancer in my lungs and not him. 

No matter how much I ridicule him, god, and myself, my reality isn’t gonna change, in next few weeks or months, I’m gonna have to live without him, I gonna have to live with myself or without myself, and I’m sentence to death for life.