Sid woke up to the noise of children playing in the courtyard. He pulled himself up with his elbows to lean back on the bed. He was wide awake, and just like the air brings along fragrance, his mind carried the emotion of the last dream scene.

In his dream, the entire world turned into rotoscopic animation as in Yellow Submarine film. He was jamming with his buddies—It's All Too Much by The Beatles. He was on the lead vocal, Ravi was playing the guitar, Sahil was on the drums, and Raj was backing vocals, creating feedback guitar sound. This fictional rock band traveled across the world in split seconds with the power of psychedelia.

One particular scene, however, stuck inside his mind. He was standing alone on a bald mountain peak, gazing the orange sky. An image of a young man hold flute appeared out of nowhere in the sky and slowly kept on getting bigger and bigger. His bluish color mixed with the orange sky boasted of an eye-popping visual feast. 

What a wonderful view!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zc3idF_IZ0

The mind-altering experience washed over him again. He could feel it, but the psychedelic components were no longer fiddling with his perception of reality.

He felt a nearly desperate urge to have that whatever drug one more time.

Wait, no! Snap out of it, Sid. Embarrassment and guilt flooded his heart. How can you feel tempted, Mr. Spiritual Man?

Aha! So all those big talks were just words, no substance. Hypocrite!

Little did he know, but all this self-deprecation brought him back to his senses. Now he could get his head straight and think why party animals feel sick after a hangover. The faster you go up, the quicker you come down.

The temptation makes you take more and more drugs and get high again, then down you go, and up you go high for sometime. It goes on and on and on.

Damn! Give me a break, Sid blinked away his cycle of thoughts.

The guilt was still there within his heart for sure, but a fact calmed his heart that it was an accident. It was mischief of that idiot boy, Sahil. 

A question, however, wafted through his mind like clouds. What makes people have drugs? There has to be a cultural aspect for all this psychology. The boy grilled his conscience and came up with three reasons.

The first category of the people may do drugs are the ones who want to get rid of the pain. The boy could think of some instances where a person lost everything, such as family, friends, wealth, fame, name, and whatnot. Mr. Soddi was a classic example who fits in the first category.

The second category, however, might be the people who are trying to unburden themselves from peer pressure, anxiety, workload, and whatnot.

Now the big question haunted his mind was about third category people, who don't have miserable lives, peer pressure, stress, yet they do drugs, presumably young generation. No doubt they belong to a well-to-do family, but what in the world compels them to do drugs?

Sid beat his brains out over this issue, but the missing link to the answer didn't pop up in his head. He still couldn't decide if smoking marijuana, cocaine, Hookah, or anything, right or wrong?

And yes, those people who love doing drugs would snap back with retorts like my choice, my rules. Who the hell are you to tell me what should I do with my life? How would you make sense to this instant generation who got no conscience left in them? Don't think, just do it, bruv.

For every rash and wrong action, there are a million imitators. Every responsible and positive action ends up with suspicion.

*****

The sun sank lower, once the blue sky was now slowly transforming into the velvety dark of night. It was the exact time; Sid went to Ravi's place. The boy wanted to disclose his introspection mind to his best friend.

It did take some for Ravi to come out of his house, and then two went on their daily walk.

"You know." Ravi tore off his eyes from his cellphone, and anger contracted his face. "Sahil slipped a mind-altering drug in our coffee!"

"I know." Sid nodded with pursed lip. His mind was still playing ping-pong with thoughts. He wanted to speak up about his introspection to Ravi, but the right words were not popping up.

"I'll beat the stuffing of Sahil for what he did to us." Ravi's lips quivered in rage and gazed at his balled fist. Reddish pointed knuckles shot a memory inside his head about karate class he had at the after-school activity.

"I wanna talk to you about—"

"Good Lord!" Ravi burst out as soon as he set his glaring eyes on Sahil. "Think of the devil, and he's here. Let's kick his ass right here and right now."

It was Ravi, who sprinted toward Sahil, followed by Sid. Sahil's lips formed a tight-lipped smile to see them rushing at him. He stood up to greet them with open arms. Ravi, however, schemed different plan he presented him with a slap in his face and made him roll on the grassy ground.

Sahil protested in a friendly mood; however, he didn't get the drift of aggression from Ravi's side.

"Crackpot!" Ravi barked, "Why did you crank up any drug in our coffee?" The anger stretched across his round-shaped face.

"I'm sorry!" Sahil protested with fending off all the showering blows from Ravi. "Deejay thought you guys would love it."

Sid and Ravi exchanged looks and dragged Sahil out of the garden. They thought of disclosing Sahil's smoking habit to his mom. She must know what her goody-goody boy does doing behind her back, Ravi thought.

Sahil sensed their intention and to turn down their hot under the collar mood; he tried to divert the topic. "Hey! Hey! I got something to show you, fellas."

"What is it?" Ravi looked with his eyebrows knitted up.

Sahil groped into his pocket and took out a small pouch of marijuana, flapping it like keys. You can call him a blooming idiot because that gave Sid and Ravi one more reason to expose.

Ravi's eyes snapped with fury while Sid couldn't believe his eyes. Should they call Sahil stupid or a spoiled fifteen years old brat?

"What the heck is this? Another type of mind-altering drug? You're not supposed to have it. Throw it away!" barked Sid.

"C'mon, it's not brown sugar or something, it's marijuana," Sahil said, his chapped lips slightly parted with excitement.

"I'm repeating it. Throw. It. Away." Sid lost his temper, and he grabbed Sahil's collar.

"C'mon Sid!" Sahil put a hand around his shoulder. "We get one life, and we should enjoy it. I have to show you something. Let's go back to the last lane's garden."

When Sid, Sahil, and Ravi came to the backyard. Sahil took out his mobile. Head lifted, chest out, he hawked his throat to read out something.

"It makes me feel the way I need to feel." —Snoop Dogg.

"Kush rolled, glass full.....I prefer the better things!" —Rihanna.

"Robert Downey Jr. said he started smoking weed at age 8."

"I'm not a great pothead or anything like that ... but weed is much, much less dangerous than alcohol." —Johnny Depp.

"Justin Bieber confirmed that he'd been caught smoking weed and apologized for it." —Huffington Post.

"Look, I have never made a secret of the fact that I have tried marijuana... About 50,000 times." —Billgates.

"I smoke a lot of pot when I write music." —Lady Gaga.

Sahil stopped reading the blog, but the show wasn't over yet. He went on explaining some craziest and deadly drugs that made Ravi and Sid's blood run cold. Never in a million years, they could imagine such kind of narcotics.

DMT, Dimethyltryptamine. As weird as its name, it consisted of tar extracted from a tree. They say when someone inhales it, one goes to DMT space, where one can walk or talk with creatures with supernatural features. One can behold celestial beings of the higher realm and even see oneself out of the body.

Snakebite. It's poison of a snake stored in a container. Smokers inhale it just like Hookah. But there's a chance something may go wrong, and you will be so high that you'll never return in your body. Pun intended.

Fevibond. It's glue turned into a drug, Sahil proudly said he had inhaled one. School students use Fevibond to overcome exam stress.

Krokodil is a new drug that has only been around since 2002. It decays the consumer's flesh like rotten meat. Just Google the name and see horrible images - the creepiest drug of all.

"The one in your coffee was," Sahil took a dramatic pause. "The notorious wonder drug LSD. If you wanna give it another shot. I'm at your service."

Sid felt a flush of temptation almost made him nod. A tickling sensation jolted his fingers but he squeezed them to resist. Don't lie, boy, that LSD trip was one of the most amazing things you've ever experienced in your life. 

Say yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! A seagull cawed at his right ear. Say yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! A seagull cawed at his left ear. Say yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

Noooo! I'm not gonna fall!

The pull of temptation blown away from him like a gust of wind, and he instantly felt calm.

"No, thanks. I'm not a loser like you," Sid finally spoke up.

Slowly he got the drift of the reason behind third-category people, who are into drugs and what influences them to do it. Now he can link this reference to the answer he was trying to ferret out in the morning.

One ugly realization, however, struck him like a thunderbolt. We're slaves of our mind, and the media and celebrities govern our emotions.

"Am I a loser to you?" Sahil's eyebrows leaped up in a questioning look. "It means my future is all those celebrities who were into drugs like me."

An evil beamed across Sahil's face, and he expertly turned Sid's taunt around.

"There's a big difference between you and those celebs," he spoke through jeering smile. "They're rich; you're not. They're famous; you're not. They're influential, but you're not."

"Aw, c'mon! Everyone's doing it; even preteens smoke pot," Sahil replied, puffing his chest. "When I'm high, I feel like something calling me to the higher realm."

"Calling you for what? Are you a call boy?" Sid snapped back; this comeback made Ravi explode into laughter-slapping his thighs, stamping his feet, and almost falling on the ground.

"You guys suck," Sahil said through gritted teeth. "When an android application gets old, we upgrade it. So, similarly, we should upgrade ourselves."

Ravi and Sid felt a flush of awe because Sahil came up with another intelligent rebuttal.

"Try to update moral values in you. Try to update sense control in you. Try to update that antivirus, which terminates bad habits in you." Sid poked his index finger right into Sahil's chest repeatedly on every sentence he pitted against the argument.

Ravi tried to express his thoughts. "Life is like a mobile phone—" But Sahil interrupted and spoke up. "You can't deny we both are suffering from viruses of life. There has to be an antivirus for it. For me, it's drugs."

Sid pondered for a moment as his eyes gazed Sahil. "There will be a permanent antivirus for sure, somewhere luminescent in this obscurity of ignorance." He presented Sahil with a pointed look. "You know there was a firecracker known as a rocket that we burst in Diwali? It goes up, and when it's out of fuel, it goes down. Your drugs are exactly like that. Is there any drug that can keep you high forever?"

Sahil felt as if a thorn caught in his throat. He tried to speak, but words didn't make past his mouth, except "huh." More than Sid's words, the intensity in his eyes made Sahil ran out of arguments. He did become pensive for a moment, but as they say, bad habits die hard. Sahil was no exception to it.

*****

The boys knew it's hopeless for Sahil to have an inner transformation, Sid and Ravi were on their way back to their home. Their hearts washed over with disgust for the current trend of drug consumption. Despite the fact, it's destroying everyone's life.

"Why are these celebrities misleading people?" Sid groaned, "Even if they do, why the heck the masses have to idolize them?" he asked Ravi with a steady eye contact, who held similar perplexed look on his face.

Ravi shook his head and darted his eyes upward to the sky. "I'm sick of this world. Ask that man who created it." He meant God by that "man."

"What will God do?" Sid stopped walking and looked upwards at the sky: it was twinkling with stars, and the dense clouds partly covered a beautiful crescent moon. "We live in an age of guided missiles and misguided men. Therefore, it's folly to be wise when ignorance is bliss."

"Hmm." Ravi nodded and shot a glance at Sid; there was a bit of reverence in it. "You know, you showed some killer debating skills back there."

"Oh yeah?" Sid's eyebrows leaped up in disbelief. "I don't know I just ... I didn't want to let Sahil win the argument."

While he saw getting a nod from Ravi, his mind dragged to the memory of a debate competition that he participated in school time. He did win the prize. There was this tactic with which he used to trap his opponent during debates. Catch-22 or loaded questions, he calls it.

You know, you showed some killer debating skills back there.

He did sense a kind of delight by defeating Sahil as if his forgotten powers were coming back to him. At this point, however, he didn't know if his debating skills will come in handy or not.

****