There's a moment in a man's life when everything collapses.
Not all at once.
Not like in the movies.
No.
It happens slowly. Piece by piece. Until one day you look around and realize there's nothing left but the drop.
A figure stands on the edge of a tall building.
Twenty-three stories of cracked concrete and rusted railings. South Delhi. Abandoned except for the squatters and the ones who came here to die.
The wind pulls at his clothes.
Old.
He's forty-four. But his face says otherwise—deep lines carved from the corners of his mouth down to his jaw. A heavy brow. Hair that went gray too early and is now matted with sweat and dust, plastered to his skull like something dead.
Middle-aged. That's what the papers will call him.
His body is still solid underneath the ruin. Broad shoulders that once carried a rifle. Thick hands that haven't forgotten strength, even if everything else has.
Black suit. Torn. Dirty. Worn out like the man wearing it. Jacket missing a button. Left sleeve ripped at the seam. A dark stain along the collar that could be sweat or blood or both. Trousers smeared with something dried—mud, maybe. Or worse.
One hand holds a gun.
9mm. Standard issue from a lifetime ago. The metal is warm from his grip. But the magazine is gone. He left it three floors down, along with his wallet and a photograph he couldn't bring himself to keep.
Empty.
Useless.
Like everything else.
Below, the city screams.
Police cruisers clog the streets. Their lights paint the building blue and red—fucking Christmas colors for a funeral. A crowd has gathered behind the barricades. Office workers still in their shirts. A woman holding a child, the kid's face buried in her shoulder, but she's watching. A chai wallah who's abandoned his cart to stare.
Horns. Sirens. Voices through megaphones.
"You can't run anywhere now! Surrender or we will shoot!"
He doesn't look down.
Doesn't look at them.
He looks up.
At the sky.
Today, the sky is beautiful. The pollution that usually hangs over the city has thinned just enough for the colors to bleed through. The clouds are long and low, catching light like embers.
Orange. Pink. Gold.
Sunset bleeding into night.
He takes a deep breath. His chest expands against the torn suit. His ribs press against the fabric—too thin now, too visible. He hasn't eaten properly in weeks.
Everything collapses.
Not all at once.
Not like in the movies.
No.
It happens slowly.
Piece by piece.
Until one day you look around and realize there's nothing left.
---
2023
My name is Veda Das.
Forty-four years old.
And I am already a dead man.
But I wasn't always like this.
I wasn't always this empty shell standing on a ledge with nothing in his pocket and less in his soul.
Once upon a time, I was a soldier.
Once upon a time, I had a wife.
Once upon a time, I had a child who never got to take his first breath.
---
1. AGE 17.
I joined the army with nothing but a dead father's name and a mother's tears.
She was forty-two then, my mother, but she looked sixty. Hair already streaked with white. Face drawn tight from years of hunger and worry. Her hands—fuck, her hands—the skin cracked, the knuckles swollen, the nails split down to the quick.
My father?
Ran away with some woman when I was born.
Never saw his face. Never heard his voice. Never got an explanation.
Just... gone.
Like I never existed.
Like the seed he left behind meant nothing.
My mother raised me alone. We lived in a rented room near the Jagannath Temple in Puri. Wide enough for a cot and a kerosene stove. The walls were painted a pale green that had peeled away in patches, and the window looked out onto a wall of another building two feet away. No light. No air. Just the smell of cooking gas and the sound of her crying at night when she thought I was asleep.
She worked two jobs.
During the day, she stitched collars in a garment factory. Hunched over a sewing machine for ten rupees a hundred pieces. Ten. Fucking. Rupees. Her back curved like a bow by the time she was thirty-five.
At night, she cleaned offices in Connaught Place. Scrubbing floors until her knuckles swelled and her knees bled through her saree.
Slept four hours.
Never complained.
Never once said why me.
She just... kept moving. Kept fighting. Kept believing.
"God is watching, beta. Always watching."
I wanted to believe her.
I really did.
But if God was watching, He had a funny way of showing it. He watched her bleed. He watched her break. He watched her pray on her knees every morning, and then He let another day crush her anyway.
At 17, I left for the army.
Not because I was brave.
Not because I wanted to serve my country.
Not because I believed in anything.
Because my mother's hands were getting tired. Because someone had to carry the weight. Because I watched her come home one night and vomit from exhaustion, and I realized I was the reason she was killing herself.
I joined because it was the only way I could make money.
Simple as that.
I was never smart. Books? Forget it. School? Wasted time. I was the boy in the back row who never raised his hand, the one teachers skipped when they called on students. My uniform was always too short because we couldn't afford a new one. The other kids would whisper. Chawl ka ladka. Gareeb. Bewakoof.
My head worked different. Slow. Heavy. Like moving through water.
Teachers gave up on me. Classmates laughed. I learned to keep my mouth shut and my head down.
But my body?
That worked.
Strong hands. Even at seventeen, I had the build of a man ten years older. Thick neck. Wide chest. Knuckles calloused from hauling sacks at the market on weekends for extra change.
Strong back.
Willing to bleed.
At 17, the army was the only door open. No degree needed. No brains required. Just a body they could use. Just a boy willing to die for money.
I didn't want to leave her.
Didn't want to go.
The thought of her alone in that empty house—the cot, the stove, the green walls peeling, the silence—it ate me alive. Who would carry the water? Who would walk her home from the night shift? Who would be there when she woke up coughing?
But staying meant watching her work until she dropped. Staying meant being useless. Staying meant she'd never stop killing herself for me.
So I left.
I felt pathetic. Dumb. Useless. Like a son who couldn't do anything except offer his body like meat.
But sometimes—
Sometimes meat is all you have.
She cried when I told her.
Held me so tight I couldn't breathe. Her body against mine—so small, so fragile, so fucking tired. I could feel her ribs through her blouse.
"Don't go, son. We'll manage. We always manage."
I lied.
Said I'd be fine. Said it's just a few years. Said I'd come back rich. Said I'd buy her a house with a garden and a window that faced the sun.
We both knew I was lying.
But she let me go anyway.
Because that's what mothers do.
They let their children leave, even when it kills them inside.
I walked out the door.
Didn't look back.
If I looked back, I'd never leave.
That was 2013.
I was 17.
And my life as a soldier began.