PART 1 #12
No one says another word in the car. Which is a relief.
Gaurav’s damning revelation should have triggered a torrent of judgement and vitriol from my parents, yet they have been remarkably restrained.
Maa refused to speak to me and Papa, instead of speaking to me, wanted to talk to Daksh.
But then, Daksh distracted everyone by doubling over on the beach.
His engorged, bursting appendix saved me.
The wedding party, which had been too drunk to even remember their own names, descended to the lobby, called an ambulance and then took a fleet of taxis to the hospital.
While I am indebted to him for this timely distraction, I am surprised at the degree of affection these strangers have for a guy they met only hours ago.
It’s not the first time that this has happened.
Time and again, I have seen people at Gaurav’s events—the shrewd marketers, the ambitious brand executives—turn mellow and treat Daksh like he’s one of them.
Last year, I told Gaurav he was stupid to be splitting the revenue of Phoenix Rising Gaming evenly between Daksh and him when it was he who was the undisputed star gamer.
Gaurav looked at me as if I was an old, evil hag trying to poison his ears.
‘You don’t know where I would have been had he not been there,’ Gaurav had said coldly to me.
‘You would have found another way.’
‘I would have lost my way. You don’t know anything.’
The taxi drops us to the parking outside the ER. It’s Dubai, so even the emergency section is calmly and weirdly inviting. There’s a smell of coffee and freshly baked goodies wafting in the air from the coffee shop nearby.
We take the lift to the third floor. Outside his room, Aditya and a bunch of his friends are waiting. Some of them are still in the suits they were wearing at the party. They all look worried, drunk and hungover at the same time.
‘Are you not even going to come inside?’ asks Maa as I stop at the door.
Papa holds my hand and drags me inside the room behind him.
For all I know, in their minds, they have gotten me married off to Daksh because he impregnated me.
They think they will convince me to be with him.
But they don’t know. Vicky had once controlled me, owned me, because as a stupid seventeen-year-old, I had sent him some pictures that he held against me.
Just because Daksh got me pregnant doesn’t mean I owe him something.
As we enter the room, Daksh greets us with a pained smile.
People are crowded around the bed, sitting on the sofa, helping themselves to the free bottles of water meant for the patient.
Daksh now wears a flimsy hospital gown, barely held together by strings.
Just then, he doubles over a little in pain, and I notice his strained biceps, which is a strange thing to be noticing about him.
I find myself weirdly wondering if the gown is the only thing he’s wearing right now.
‘So many people not allowed, sir,’ the nurse complains in her thick Malayali accent and schoolteacher demeanour. ‘The entire wedding party can’t be here.’
‘This is the last thing I want too,’ Daksh says and then doubles over in pain again. ‘Sorry, Vanita, for spoiling your wedding.’
Vanita waves him off dismissively and clicks a picture of him. ‘This is what happens when you come to a wedding without a gift.’
‘Nurse,’ Daksh says. ‘I want my appendix dipped in formaldehyde, gift-wrapped and given to this girl.’
Vanita crinkles her nose in disgust. Daksh leans back into the bed again, clutching his abdomen. He has made sure not to make any eye contact with me.
Gaurav’s phone rings and fills the room with its shrill sound.
I lean over and see that it’s a video call from Rabbani.
She’s much older now. Nine, I do my calculations.
From the little snippets Daksh shares on his Instagram profile, I have noticed she’s whip-smart and is often taking down her brother with her brutal comments.
‘DADA!’ she squeals when he answers. ‘LOOK WHO DOESN’T DO POTTY ON TIME!’
She breaks out in cute laughter.
She’s not the only one. I hear two boys on the speaker too. Their laughter echoes in the room. Everyone, including the nurse, is giggling now.
‘It’s all the Diet Coke!’ one boy says.
‘And the bhujia!’ the other boy says.
‘Okay guys, enough!’ says a lady whose voice I recognize immediately.
Amruta Thakur from Kids Raising Kids.
She’s the kind of seemingly perfect woman who’s making us all look bad by managing two kids, a career in education, a tight little body and a podcast irritatingly well.
She has the kind of gravelly, naughty voice that’s built for radio, the kind of voice that guys fall in love with over phone calls.
She’s the kind of pretty, cute girls get when they hit the gym hard.
She’s petite, but her eyes are strict and stern, and from what I have seen in pictures, her muscles are taut.
She’s what I believe boys on the Internet call muscle mommy.
Which fits in her case. The woman’s ripped.
I liked her the first time I heard her, and then hated her with a passion.
Her understanding and chemistry with Daksh were unmissable.
Half of their podcast is just one of them saying ‘I feel the same!’ or ‘I thought it was only me who thinks like this!’ They are usually about things I don’t think or care about—kids, family, chores, education.
Their banter is natural, free-flowing, and they look as if life has brought them together.
As if it’s fate! I imagine if the three of us go out, I could just walk away without informing them and they wouldn’t even notice and keep talking.
On their social profiles, people ask them if they are a couple. They have never answered it.
‘Do you want us to come, Daksh?’ she asks. ‘The flights are expensive, but I’m thinking I will send the kids by cargo, and I will take a business class ticket.’
‘I’m not coming in a hundred lifetimes,’ jokes an older voice, which I guess is Daksh’s father. ‘I have had enough of Dubai for a lifetime.’
I have noticed Daksh’s father on his Instagram account.
He shares quite a bit about his healing journey.
To be honest, Uncle has been on a recovery that’s seen him heal more than anyone has the right to.
The last time I saw him, he was depressed and missing a leg, but now he has gone from the clunky functional prosthetics to the cyborg-looking blade prosthetics and leads a running group that wakes up at 4 a.m. for their runs.
A few weeks ago, he had posted a shirtless picture of himself and other men in his running group, looking too fit for his age.
Interspersed with his running pictures on LinkedIn are the consultancy projects he does every now and then.
Sometimes I feel as if I had only imagined it all: Mumbai, his skeletal frame and his desire to embrace death and depression.
‘I will be back in two days,’ says Daksh.
‘Does it pain, Dada?’ asks Rabbani.
‘You’re joking? Me and pain? I eat pain for lunch.’
‘Of course you do,’ chuckles Amruta. ‘Listen, I’m landing in the morning. Your Baba is taking them out for the day.’
Daksh shakes his head. ‘You’re absolutely not leaving them with my father. I don’t trust him with kids.’
‘Oye!’ his father says. ‘I raised you!’
My own father laughs. ‘Dey ji! This is what kids are like these days!’ He walks to the bed and then waves at Daksh’s father.
‘Arre! Madan ji, long time.’
Amruta interrupts this. ‘Can we have this conversation later? Daksh, I will come in the morning, okay?’
‘No,’ Daksh insists. ‘I will come to you.’
Daksh then looks at the screen for a few seconds. His eyes grow soft and the conversation happens through subtle expression changes. It’s like their own secret language. Like they know what’s there in each other’s hearts without needing to use words.
‘Fine,’ says Amruta. ‘We will wait then.’
Then there’s a long pause.
‘I miss you, Daksh.’
I miss you.
Amruta’s words make my world stop.
Suddenly I feel the air get sucked out of the room. Suddenly, and for no reason at all, I am gasping for breath. The words said with the sincerity of a monk, the seriousness of a dying person, are brimming with unexpected love. I find my heart shattering. Why?
I miss you.
The words, though innocuous, make me feel small, diminished, just a blurry background in the story of Daksh and Amruta, a footnote, to be forgotten.
I’m no one in Daksh’s life story, just a mistake in the past. He was in love with me, now he wants to see me squirm and be angry, and soon, I will be erased from his consciousness.
Written off as an error in judgement before he found his path.
It’s not just me, the others feel it too. Vanita turns to me with a look of pity. Maa–Papa exchange a glance tinged with a sense of sorrow. Even Gaurav catches my gaze as if to tell me that Daksh and I were a missed opportunity and I would come to rue this in the future.
And when I turn to look at Daksh, his eyes softly looking at the screen, the small curve of his lips, I feel a sharp pain piercing my heart.
I remember this look. It used to turn my knees into jelly.
It’s how he got me to be in a relationship just hours after I had broken up with Vicky.
I feel a pin-prick that burrows deep and fills me with an all-consuming ache.
My pain is punctuated by a squealing voice.
‘EW!’ say the kids together. They, too, have sensed what’s happening between Daksh and Amruta.
Daksh has an entire constellation circling him, and I’m alone, a dying planet.
14.
Aanchal Madan