The Confession

You want to know why I did it. You want answers, explanations, then you must be patient. Because this is my story, and it starts from the very beginning.

It all started off that day. 9th of January, 2009, 5:30 pm. I was returning home from work. Actually my parents worked there. I was too young to work, barely 9 years of age. My parents worked for a contractor, carrying bricks and cement. I used to go with them and play around all day throwing stones at the stray dogs. I did not go to school, daily wage earners don'r really have that luxury. We lived under a plastic roof at the municipality ground, me, my mom and my dad, with around 1000 other families.

Then, as we were returning home, there was a huge explosion. Hell, I could not even spell explosion then. It was a huge ball of fire that threw the car in the air, and it was accompanied with a deafening noise. I was terrified. I turned back to run, I caught a glimpse of my mom, lying on the road, blood oozing from her open head. My dad was leaning over her, shocked, sad. "Dad RUN!!" I shouted, trying to point at the car that was still flying from the explosion. But I was a bit too late, It fell right where my mom was lying, right where my father was leaning. There was nothing I could do but shout and cry. There was blood everywhere, people hurt, injured, dead.

Indeed, what could a nine year old have done? One moment, I was dancing along the road, hungry, eager to get home. Next, I was shouting on the road, crying, having lost my parents and my two fingers, amongst a pool of blood in the garden of bodies. I went back to my tent eventually, to find out the news of my parent's death has reached before me, and all my uncles and aunties are helping themselves with our stuff, whatever little we had anyways. After a few days, when the hunger became unbearable, I began begging for food, singing hymns as I had seen other children do it. I used to despise them, but 3 days without any food can make anyone do anything. I was a mere 9 year old.

I am 18 year old now, and I ask you once again. What could I have done? Where was I wrong? What was my fault? It has been 9 years, I still remember that evening as it was yesterday. I haven't slept a good night's sleep since. My mother's face is sketched in my eyes, I hear my father's voices in the nights. Was I a coward? No. I have changed more jobs than any other 18 year old. I have been a chaiwallah, a waiter, a rikshaw wallah, a cook, a barber in the brief 9 years of my childhood. I haven't begged since then, I have slept hungry for weeks at a stretch. Was I a coward? No. I have made my own little shack. I earn a honest living, no matter how meager. I have defended myself against the world. I have grown up, well before time and on my own. Was I a coward? No. I have attended free school in the nights for the past 8 years. I have passed all my courses. I have worked hard to live, I have worked harder in studies. I have done all I could, to survive, to not perish.

But then I had hit the bottom. I could not go on fighting. I wanted to study further, I wanted to become something, I wanted to live in a house with walls for once. But there are no free colleges, are there? I have saved up, but thats just a drop in the ocean. I did ask all my past employers for a loan. It's like they did not even know me now. No bank would lend me the money. My shack does not match up to their standard security mortgage. Then one day, I got the news. It seemed like finally, all my efforts had paid off. It seemed like there was still a God somewhere up there.I was offered a scholarship in a college. I felt like my mother was still watching out for me from up there. But again, there came this man. He was the local leader of a political party. He said I was an unsuitable candidate for the scholarship. He accused me of fraud. Accused me of making up my caste as I could not prove it. How could I? My parents were dead. I was thrown out. And his son was given the scholarship. I wanted to cry, to shout. But I could not. I was not a 9 year old anymore.

I ask you once more. Was I a coward? No. If I had been, I would have used the gun on myself. I would have killed myself. I would have accepted my defeat.

Your Honour, now you know why I killed that man. I am defeated, I know that. But was I a coward? I would say No.