A Piece of Fiction

I am dying. (What is the big deal? So are the six-and-a-half billion people, and infinitely more flora and fauna, who have taken birth on this planet earth. Everyone who has ever lived, is dead or is dying).
Let me be more precise. I am dying in three months. Or this is what a doctor told me today. Actually what he told me was that alcohol and drugs had taken over my body, spoiled my liver and my lungs, and with me ignoring the continious advices of friends and family to change myself, three months was the maximum he could give me.
And so I am dying in three months.
Well, let me introduce myself to you. "Whats in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet", wrote Shakespeare. I will call myself Asshole, for want of anything else. I am 30 years old, single, a small town middle class boy, an IIT-IIMian, presently living alone in New Delhi and an alcoholic and a drugs abuser for the past five years. And now I am on the threshold of death.
"What a waste of brilliant talent. This boy was destined to achieve great things in life. He had it all: charisma, talent, energy, ambition. He could have reached the Everest of whatever field he chose. But he chose to do nothing. He was a flawed genius." Probably this is what people would write at my tombstone. Or maybe, they will just write my name and add a line saying that "lived and died in accordance with his name." I am fine with anything. I mean, after you die, does it even matter what people remember you as? Or, for that matter, how much money did you have, and how many women? Arent we all just dust in the wind? Isnt life just an illusion?
Why did I make the choices I did in my life? Why did I go to IIT and later IIM? Was it just to earn the respect of people around me? Or was it to prove something to myself? And why did I drink so much alcohol? Was it to eliminate my negative thoughts, about my career, my ambitions and my relationships, or was it just to prove to the world that I was not a nerd people believed me to be?
Whatever it was, drinking and drugs did make me live a happy life. In the end, that is all that matters, isnt it? What would you have, a life of helping others filled with guilt, or a useless, happy life? In short, a life of meaning or a life of happiness?

That is the only question you need to ask yourself.