Deep Dasgupta 

11/16/2021

I had two hours to kill.

For a professional assassin like me, ending someone’s time is quite easy. So I decided to kill the two hours in a second-hand bookstore.

Stacks of fat tomes in no particular order, just cobwebs and the musty smell of worn books unloved. Shuffling through the old, dusty books was an older lady – who was staring at me with mad, wide eyes – at the book in my hand – a copy of Dante’s Inferno. And she suddenly blurted, “I know you. So, you want to learn about Hell??” She looked strangely familiar, like someone from a lifetime ago.

The killer in me sensed the opportunity – a perfect victim. I squinted and looked her square in the eyes, “Yes! Talk to me about Hell!”

“You have no idea what it is!” she smirked.

So we sat on the sun-drenched broken steps of the broken storefront – and talked as two broken souls together. She was surprisingly well versed in the classics and philosophy. We talked about the stars, astrophysics and metaphysics – and she was a co-worker at [24]7.ai. I had seen her face before, as she had mine.

The Covid situation had devastated her family and she was the only bread-earner. Her husband had been laid off from his job, with 3 children in the teens, all at home all the time. She just couldn’t cope with it and ran away by herself in the afternoons - to bookstores and saree stores and lonely lanes for walks – just to think and keep her sanity.

We agreed that free spirits like us cannot breathe anymore, and it wasn’t just about the masks.

She did not know about the Mental Health Programs at [24]7.ai. About how it was specifically designed for people like us who are struggling with isolation, or being cloistered in a closet with the same people all the time. Professional counselors who can help us work through times like these, confidentially, on a one-on-one basis.

There’s a terrible stigma in some cultures about going to a counselor. Because they say you only go there if you’re crazy. Yet we have no problem going to a doctor when we feel physically sick. We seek help if we are unwell in body, but feel somehow unworthy when we feel helpless in our minds.

I had had a perfect kill. The two hours died quickly, hers and mine, efficiently, without a whimper or twitch. But when we ended our afternoon, she said something that will stay even with an assassin of time.

She grabbed the copy of my Inferno about hell, laughed loudly, and held it up to my face, "Two hours ago, there was not much to live for. Yet now, there is nothing to die for. I will call them, people who will help. Perhaps such connections can change time, maybe life itself...”