Chapter 12 Raghav
Raghav
Time doesn’t stop. It fucking doesn’t stop.
It should. It should collapse into itself. It should fall silent and cease to exist.
Singularity or whatever the fuck people talk about?
Where time and space and reality, everything bends?
Nothing has meaning. Why doesn’t it, when meaninglessness has been achieved already?
But the world just keeps going on shamelessly.
Footsteps echoing, announcements continuing, fluorescent lights humming overhead like none of this is happening.
People breathing, coffee warming, vending machines beeping, ambulances screeching. It fucking goes on? Relentlessly?
Megha is gone.
I’m not waiting for confirmation. I don’t need the news anchor to finish her sentence or the airline to issue a second press release.
I know it in the way you know things because your body knows it.
You know when you keep your palm over steam that it’s going to burn.
How could you not know when they rip your heart out from the chest?
Of course, you feel it. I feel it. I feel her absence just as I felt her presence.
I’m burning now. Dangling over the fire.
The girl I loved—love, loved, will always love—is gone.
I know it in my bones. I just know it. I can feel the earth shift on its axis.
I can feel my future shift and twist and contort into nothingness and meaninglessness.
I don’t remember standing up, but I’m on my feet. I don’t remember walking away from Aditi, but I’m pacing now, away from the benches, away from the board still stuck on ‘Awaiting Confirmation’.
What am I doing? What do you do when your life’s over?
What are the steps? Who’s written the self-destruct book?
What’s the first thing I have to do? And then, I know.
I hate it immediately. How can I know what to do now?
Why? What right do I have to live any more when she is not?
My mind has computed the most rational explanation despite me trying to tell it not to.
If there were any doubt, it wouldn’t have.
But I know. There are no survivors. People are stupid.
They are asking questions. Can’t they see what’s on the screen?
A fireball. God himself died there. Everything’s dead.
Just fucking, please, everyone, get off the phones. It’s done. It’s over.
I look at my phone. I know the things to do. The terrible, terrible things to do right now. It’s to scroll and scroll and scroll and hope and hope and hope that it’s not true, though it’s as true as death.
I need to make a call. That’s the terrible thing I have to do. I have to call Megha’s father and give him the news.
Megha’s father.
I stare at his number on my screen. The man who only hated me, and for whom I only had hate.
But I also hoped, stupidly, stupidly, the last day that she left them, that one day he’d come around.
Like from concrete, a small sprout would eventually surface, break open the entire thing, that her family would replace mine. Fucking nonsense.
He didn’t know Megha was taking a flight today. It was a work trip. That’s how she packed her bags. That’s how she escaped the drama.
I press call.
It rings once. Then twice. Each second feels like a punishment.
Maybe I should be punished. I’m the reason this is happening. I’m the reason Megha’s presumed dead. That’s what the TV screen’s saying: presumed dead. Nothing is presumed. She’s dead.
He picks up.
‘Yes?’ he says. Gruff. Suspicious. He knows it’s me.
‘Uncle . . .’ My voice falters. My mouth is dry. I swallow. ‘It’s Raghav. Megha’s flight—’
There’s silence. I have to say this in one go, like a news reporter. Cold. Facts.
‘She was on the Indigo flight from Jaipur to Delhi. It crash-landed. There’s been an accident. The airline just confirmed. No survivors.’
I don’t know if I’m saying it clearly. I don’t know if the words even make it across. His response is not words. A jagged inhale. Then I hear her mother’s voice. Faint. Confused. Angry. That’s how I have always heard her.
‘What’s he saying?’
I continue, still spilling the facts. They need to know. And I can’t explain it repeatedly because every time I do, she dies again. Over and over again. Every time a news report flashes, every time someone screams, they die again.
‘She wasn’t going to Bangalore. She was coming to Delhi. She was on the flight. I’m sending you the ticket.’
I navigate to WhatsApp and send him the ticket. The ticket I booked. The seat I selected. I did the web check-in. I did everything that led her to this.
And then I hear the moment the news lands.
I hear it as her mother starts sobbing.
I hear something crash. I hear a television.
I hear them running into her room.
They would notice that she has taken more clothes than a two-day trip would require.
They would see all the signs. The goodbyes. They would remember tears in her eyes.
They would have recounted the conversation.
They didn’t know it then—how could they? But now it must be clear to them.
I hear the conversations, but I can’t make out what they are saying.
It’s in Assamese. Her brother has walked in too.
He knew. They shout at him, asking if he knew.
And he says he didn’t. He lies and why not?
They tell him about the crash and now he’s crying.
She dies again. The volume of the TV goes up.
I hear both of them—wailing now, raw, broken. She dies again.
The call’s cut.
I call them back, but there’s no answer. I broke a family earlier. Now I have destroyed them. This is my doing. I lower myself on to the bench like gravity’s taken over.
Aditi.
I look back.
She hasn’t moved. Her back is straight but her eyes aren’t focused on anything. She’s trapped. Like I’m trapped. I get up. Slowly. Like my limbs are lead.
‘Aditi,’ I say.
She doesn’t blink.
‘You need to call his parents,’ I tell her.
She looks at me like she doesn’t understand the language.
‘They don’t know,’ I continue. ‘You should be the one to tell them. They need to hear it from someone who loves him.’
What the fuck are these words I’m saying to her? Why am I trying to find sense when there’s none left? Her mouth opens slightly. She makes a sound that isn’t a word.
‘I can’t,’ she says. ‘I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it.’
‘You have to.’
‘Fuck them,’ she says. ‘It’s their fault.’
Her head begins to shake, but her knees go before her words do.
She collapses into my arms. Her whole body gives way like a puppet with its strings cut.
I catch her just before she hits the floor.
I look for help. She’s not the only one.
I lower her down. She’s conscious, barely.
Her face against my chest. Her breath shallow and ragged.
I hold her closer. She breaks down fully now.
And I do too. Outside, the ambulances still flash red and blue. Inside, everything has fallen silent.
Grief has no volume. But right now, it is the loudest thing in the world.