PART 3 #2
Amruta: But it’s true. It wasn’t what you thought it would be.
Daksh: You had your love story, right? With Amit before he died. For years, you guys gave each other gifts, went out on dates, held each other’s hands and promised each other forevers.
Amruta: That’s what you don’t get. I was eighteen. I had the optimism and the energy to do all of that.
Daksh: Well, I never got to do that. And then, when I got married to you, you were very . . . jaded.
Amruta: I was also very scared, Daksh. To depend on you for all my happiness and then . . . you know.
Daksh: To me, it didn’t feel fair. I got the bored version of you. Not bored, but someone who was doing all this for the second time.
Amruta: I got old too, Daksh.
Daksh: We are the same age.
Amruta: You’re much younger, or you got much younger. You also know that. And you keep getting younger. For all the listeners who have joined in, Daksh has bought a new motorcycle. Who buys a motorcycle at this age?
Daksh: I’m only twenty-nine! And I had set my sights on that motorcycle for like . . . ages.
Amruta: It’s not the motorcycle that was the problem. It’s the kind of person you were becoming. You were going on these long rides with your friends. And then, you took us on weekend trips . . .
Daksh: They were so much fun.
Amruta: It’s not the fun part that was the problem. You were finally doing stuff that you couldn’t when you were younger . . . it’s the same thing with romance. You wanted a twenty-year-old’s romance at twenty-seven, twenty-eight.
Daksh: Yes, I get it. But what can we do about it? It’s who I am now.
Amruta: And that’s why we are here, aren’t we?
Daksh: Should we wrap this up now since we are not taking any questions from the listeners . . .?
Amruta: I think so.
Daksh: So, for our listeners, what are you going to do, Amruta? Like, in life?
Amruta: Something around audio. That’s for sure. I don’t think they will take me back at my teaching position after I have cribbed about them so much over the years. You?
Daksh: As you said, I will take advantage that Rabbani’s older and can take care of herself. I will probably travel a bit, spend some money. But one last question before you go . . . when was the moment you knew that it was over between us?
Amruta: We started when I saw you at the hospital in Dubai. Because I saw you and I was like . . . this could happen to us, right? So, we should be together, to take care of each other, of our children. But it also ended in a hospital. When you had that accident a little while ago?
Daksh: You saw me in a hospital and you went like, yeah, I need to dump this guy?
Amruta: I mean, okay, yes, that’s what happened.
So, listeners, he stayed for fifteen days in the hospital, recovering.
And when the doctor told me that he would be fine, all he needed to do was stay a bit longer in hospital to recover, I found myself .
. . shouldn’t say this but . . . free? I was like, yes, I can go back home and just be by myself . . .
Daksh: Wow.
Amruta: Oh, please. Don’t act so holy.
Daksh: Fine, fine.
Amruta: Guys, he himself told me that he too liked that he could be alone in the hospital. And we all know why he goes on these riding trips alone. Why does he do that? To be alone. To be away from us.
Daksh: I agree. I feel free. So . . .
Amruta: This is it.
Daksh: Again, we have to say it . . . thank you, guys, for listening to us all this while.
Amruta: We owe a lot to you.
Daksh: Keep following us on our socials for updates on what we choose to do next.
Amruta: So that’s it from us, guys. It was wonderful to have you listening to us, supporting us through the years. We apologize if we have disappointed you in any way. Hope to see you guys around. Bye-bye!
Daksh: Bye. Until . . . I was about to say the next time . . . bye!
2.
Aanchal Madan
The ground staff of Emirates at John F. Kennedy International Airport confirms that I want to upgrade my seat to business class.
She’s an Indian, too, and I think that’s why the double-checks—why would I spend a major chunk of my credit card points on a single upgrade?
If I chart my responses to this question over the years, I have gone from ‘I would never have enough points’ to ‘an absolutely ridiculous idea’ to ‘maybe someday’ to now when I’m thinking ‘I will have enough points again’.
‘Do you want to book your return too?’
‘Not yet,’ I tell the woman and collect my boarding pass.
Namit and Ridhima accompany me to the gate carrying my backpack.
I can feel the heaviness in their hearts.
They are well aware, perhaps even more so than I, that I will not return.
They know that a few days after I land in Delhi, I will turn in my resignation letter and inform them that I have changed my mind.
I don’t want to leave the friends and the life I have built here, but I would have to.
You don’t take all of life’s decisions; some, life takes for you.
‘Come back, okay?’ Namit says.
‘You belong here,’ warns Ridhima. ‘If you don’t come back, I will come there and drag you back here.’
I leave them with empty promises.
The first leg of the flight is to Dubai. I sink into my luxurious, upgraded seat and it brings me no comfort. The city that had been home for the last four years falls behind, and my heart starts to race. I have eighteen hours to brace myself for what I’m going to see when I land in Delhi.
I close my eyes and focus on my breathing.
I had mocked the first breathing class I went to, called it a sham, a business, but now I am a convert, proselytizing it to anyone who would listen.
Breathing, and doing it mindfully, is the only way we can control our wild mind, which would destroy us if we let it roam free. I let out a deep breath.
Thoughts of Gaurav’s troubled, emaciated face come swiftly. My heart weeps for him. On my phone, I open the folder with Gaurav’s reports.
Every week, the rehabilitation clinic inundates me with countless reports, twenty pages long, detailing Gaurav’s blood reports, weight measurements and other mundane but, I’m sure, important details.
Bold numbers swim before my eyes, my heart sinks thinking of what he destroyed in his body.
But what I truly want to know remains unaddressed in those reports: Is Gaurav okay?
Will Gaurav be okay? Will things ever go back to the way they were before?
It’s been six long months of waiting for them to give Gaurav back to us.
And then, last week, they sent me the mail I was waiting for.
Gaurav would be discharged. The doctors added that he had made tremendous progress.
They were all very proud of him. I wish I could say the same about him.
I love him, but he gets no compassion from me.
I will keep loving him, but I will never forgive him for what he did to himself.
To our parents. To Tejal. To Daksh. And to me.
Gaurav failed us all. His actions ripped us apart.
To get a handle on my anxiety, I spend the rest of the flight finishing a non-fiction book on mindfulness and re-watching portions from the Harry Potter and Avengers box set.
As the plane descends into Delhi, my heart pounds. I knew Maa–Papa, Rajat and Vanita would be waiting for me at the airport, but nothing could have prepared me for the rush of emotion that overcame me when I saw them.
My family.
I rush into their open arms, tears streaming down my face, and I feel the weight of all my sadness and confusion slightly lift off my shoulders. It’s as if they absorb it all, leaving me feeling like me again.
But then, as I look at their tired faces, I can see the toll both their children has taken on them. There was me, the unmarried twenty-eight-year-old living in New York, returning home only twice a year, and my troubled brother, who had nearly ended his own life.
I notice how old, how defeated they have become.
It makes me mad. I feel an unjustified anger against them.
There are people in their mid-sixties who look like they are in their forties, who have a cheerful way about them, who run, play a sport, join clubs and live life like it’s meant to be lived, who still have vigour and do things young people do.
Why couldn’t my parents be like that? Why did they have to become wrinkled, frail, weak and bent, and remind me that they are not going to be there one day?
What anchors me to this world if not their presence?
No matter how old you are when your parents die, you still become an orphan.
Rajat drives the car while I sit in between Maa and Papa in the back seat. Vanita’s in the passenger seat.
‘You didn’t have to come,’ I tell Rajat and Vanita.
Vanita speaks, ‘We were just getting away from our children.’
‘They are the worst,’ adds Rajat.
I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that they are responsible for raising humans.
Weren’t we just kids a few years ago? When I was younger, I couldn’t fathom why thirty-somethings would dress as if they were half their age.
It seemed peculiar. But as the years passed, I came to realize that they simply hadn’t yet grasped their own ageing.
Not all who age acquire wisdom, and I am certainly no exception.
I’m twenty-eight. The number itself is repulsive.
Two years from thirty. Double of fourteen.
I consider fourteen-year-olds big enough to make their own decisions. And I am now twice that age!
But as strange as ageing is, it has brought good things.