PART 1 #13
No one moves from the waiting room till the time the doctor—whose son turns out to be a fan of Gaurav—emerges from the operation theatre, slips off his surgical gloves and tells us that the operation was a success.
He adds that Daksh’s last words before he was put under were that his appendix be gift-wrapped and given to Vanita, which the nurse had to respectfully decline because medical waste cannot be taken outside the hospital.
‘No part of him is waste,’ Gaurav says, ‘you can keep it or dispose of it. But let me tell you, every bit of my friend is precious.’
Gaurav then gives the doctor a signed Nintendo Switch for his son, which he had someone send over from the hotel.
The doctor tells us Daksh will be unconscious for a while and will have to stay under observation for a day.
It’s decided that everyone will go back to the hotel except Gaurav, who will move into the room with Daksh. Papa offers to switch places with him in a couple of hours.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ says Gaurav, rather dramatically.
I watch on as Tejal flutters her eyes at Gaurav and asks if he needs anything. Gaurav shyly declines. The whole conversation is gag-inducing.
Back at the hotel, everyone disappears into their rooms, to catch some sleep before the haldi ceremony, which Vanita had pushed by two hours.
I get into bed but sleep evades me. I toss and turn but all I can think about is Daksh, that phone call, the mayhem of Daksh’s life, squealing kids, screaming kids, loving kids, and the voice of Amruta, that seductive yet adoring tone and those words, I miss you.
Maa–Papa had talked to me on the way rather normally. As if their daughter hadn’t just robbed them of the chance of a grandchild.
‘What did Daksh tell you?’ I had asked them.
‘. . . not to come between you and your dreams,’ Papa had replied without any hint of anger in his voice.
It’s strange Daksh is asking them to do what he couldn’t.
But I can’t escape the undeniable truth: he said what he did to protect me.
I put on my earphones and play some music to drown out my thoughts about him.
It has the opposite effect—every song seems like it was written for us.
Be it a love song, a heartbreak song, an item song—all I think about is how it’s about us.
I dial Rajat’s number and recount the entire sequence of events to him.
‘You should do what you want to do,’ he says.
‘That’s the most generic answer you can give, Rajat.’
‘. . . and that’s because I’m done playing a part in life-changing decisions of yours, bro.’
‘You never had a problem before,’ I argue.
Rajat was the only person I could turn to when I held that pregnancy strip in my hand. The result stared back at me, tossing up the myriad possibilities my life could go in, each one more dire than the other. I was twenty-three and pregnant. There was one clear answer. I had to end it.
I couldn’t have given up my freedom. Daksh villainized me for using the word freedom.
Is my love a cage? Are children jailers?
The answer was that both could be. I didn’t want to take a chance.
I had just broken free of Vicky’s clutches.
My freedom was so new even then that I would wake up in the middle of the night in dread thinking that Vicky was back in my life somehow.
I knew my parents wouldn’t understand my reasons to terminate the pregnancy.
After my job started, I knew they felt an emptiness in their lives.
They would have jumped at the opportunity of being grandparents.
Like Daksh, they would have promised to do everything to relieve me of the pressure of raising a child.
But I couldn’t have done that to myself.
Why would I rob myself of time? Of a successful career? A romance? A married life before a child?
I couldn’t have shared anything with Vanita. She—with her own rules and ideas about family—would have tried to convince me otherwise. And since I love her to death, I would have listened.
Rajat came along without a question. He took charge and immediately booked a hotel room. They said it would take twelve hours for the foetus tissue to pass, or a maximum of twenty-four. He filled the room with snacks and made a list of shows we could watch.
I will always be thankful to him. Sometimes you don’t need advice. You need someone to trust your intelligence to make tough decisions.
That day is the actual anniversary of our friendship. He—and I—believe that was the day we saw each other as friends for life. A friendship forged through tears, loss and new beginnings.
‘My own life-changing decisions are enough, bro,’ he complains. ‘Nandini has been dancing on my head asking me to take the next step and that’s kind of enough for me.’
‘Okay.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Why aren’t you getting married to her?’
‘She thinks I still have feelings for you.’
‘Which you don’t.’
‘I’d rather be suspended from the ceiling by my pubic hair. My parents are going to create a big scene if I tell them about Nandini. They will feel intimidated by her parents. Anyway . . .’
‘You’re dying to tell me what to do.’
‘Run the opposite way, bro,’ he says with a finality in his voice.
‘It’s just the rush of a new place. All of your relationships with him have been that—the Andamans, Mumbai and now this.
You think you’re a new person in a new place and you want to take all these risks.
Real life is not a vacation. And you also know he’s too good for you. ’
‘Good to know my friend is on his side.’
‘He’s good in a way guys are supposed to be good—family, love, romance and all of that. You’re not like that. You’re good in a way where you protect your own happiness.’
I take a deep breath. ‘So, I should just ignore this little whisper in my heart?’
‘Snuff it out. Murder it.’
I close my eyes and imagine what my life would look like in the US.
Hadn’t this been my long-standing dream?
What a leap it would be. From a one-room house with a flickering tube light to the US?
Why would I give that up? My second international flight, my new home in a new city, an entirely new world to experience, enjoy, worry about, get intimidated by.
Rajat’s right. I need to murder it. With the glut of emotions I am going to feel once I start my new life, this little flutter in my heart will be dead before I know it.
‘Done,’ I say, ‘and you should tell your parents. They love you too much to not agree.’
We disconnect the call. I wait for the feeling to pass.
But it doesn’t. I click open the pictures of the new apartment I’m supposed to move into, the new office, the pictures of my cabin in a country far away, and it all fails to distract me from the image of Daksh lying in that hospital room.
The harder I try to bury it, the stronger it gets.
The flutter is no longer merely that. It’s a drum beat that’s getting louder with every passing second.
15.
Daksh Dey
It takes me the better part of an hour to send Gaurav away for the wedding.
The unslept, tired nurses are thankful the last person from the wedding party is out of their hair and not telling them how to do their job.
The head nurse connects the Wi-Fi on my iPad and I click on the Zoom link shared by Gaurav for the wedding.
The nurse laughs and then hooks a new IV drip into my cannula. ‘If they are coming, tell them to come here with some sweets, okay?’
There’s finally some movement on the Zoom screen.
The first few guests reach the mandap and start to appraise the setting, nodding, appreciating the niceness of it all.
Then, Aditya’s friends stumble in drunk and high; I can hear them yelling for snacks.
They take pictures, throwing peace signs in the air, leaving the elderly onlookers offended.
I miss being there.
A few minutes later, the pandit appears on the scene and starts to arrange all the sweets and samagri needed to get Vanita married to Aditya.
Aditya’s a nice guy, I noticed that. There are some people whom you see and then think, yeah, these guys fit together like a glove.
That’s the vibe I get from Vanita and Aditya.
Quite the opposite of what I felt during the brief time I dated Aanchal. Things between us were always meant to be torturous, tumultuous and extreme. From the second I saw her in Mumbai, four years after the Andamans, I knew she was all I wanted.
From the moment we exited the washroom of that hotel in Mumbai, having made love for the first time, I knew my heart, my soul, everything I had was no longer mine.
But she crushed my heart, turned me down, said she wasn’t ready.
On the way to the airport, I tried to make her understand the depth of my feelings for her as if it were something I could explain in the first place.
I recalled each surge in the pulse of my heart, every moment my breath faltered, and every time just the thought of her face calmed me throughout the years.
She told me later that my confession had scared her because I looked ‘too sincere’.
How can you be insincere about love? Love is the realest thing there is.
When she stepped out of the taxi, she was ready to give us a shot.