PART 4 #9
Days stretch out ahead of us, and we had plans, but we’re too caught up in each other’s bodies to notice.
We’ve crafted a private world, a bubble where time doesn’t exist and the outside noise fades into nothing.
We spend our days naked, in each other’s arms. We don’t answer calls, we don’t cook.
We shower, we fuck and we sleep. We christen every part of the house.
On the balcony in the nights, the bedroom at all times, every time we shower, we even sneak up to the roof and make out.
In the rains, in the sun, in the heat. We bite, we slap, we fuck, we love.
It’s as if it’s a pain to live in two bodies.
It’s like we’re tuned to the same frequency, where everything around us whispers, ‘Don’t resist.’ It’s a month later that we emerge. Tired but not satisfied.
We leave the house to get a pregnancy kit.
When we come back home, we find out our lives have changed forever.
A little later, we are in the nursing home. The room’s dark. A screen is glowing. We are looking at it.
And on that screen, there’s a tiny heartbeat matching ours.
11.
Daksh Dey
‘No!’ Aanchal’s scream pierces through the playlist I’d meticulously created for our date night. It was Prateek Kuhad, Yellow Diary and other singers who moaned into their microphones. Now it feels annoyingly inappropriate. How did I think music would alleviate pain and uncertainty?
‘TYPICAL GUY THING TO DO!’ she shouts. ‘Solve things.’
‘If it’s going to happen today, we can’t have our core memory be a conversation about how guys are differently wired.’
There is shock in her eyes. ‘You think it’s going to happen today?’
‘Aanchal, it’s just Braxton-Hicks, fake labour,’ I assert, my eyes flitting between the road and Aanchal in the backseat. At least, I hope it’s Braxton-Hicks because the baby isn’t due for another month.
‘You’re suddenly a gynecologist?’ she retorts, while putting in a voice command in Google. ‘Hi Google, if the pain is five on ten one month before the due date and everything was normal in the scans before, is it Braxton-Hicks?’
I don’t point out the folly in her Google search. If I ask, ‘I have a pimple, am I dying?’ the answer would be, ‘Yes, within a week, you will be in a coffin.’
She swipes through the results. The pain has subsided.
‘It’s Braxton-Hicks,’ she announces. ‘Pretty common.’
For the next ten minutes, there are no contractions. I’m keeping track of flyovers and U-turns. Another couple of minutes without any pain, and we will turn back.
‘Thank god, the baby’s 2.5 kgs,’ she says, referring to the last weight of the baby. ‘I want a big gublu baby.’
‘Don’t weight-shame our baby.’
But I’m relieved.
There are no more contractions. We were overreacting.
There was no way the baby would come one month before time.
Just a couple of days ago, we had gone for a scan, and they told us the baby would gain another kilogram, strengthen its lungs and bolster its heart before delivery.
If our baby decided to show up today . .
. the thought trails off ominously. Snapshots of a fragile newborn tangled in a web of life-sustaining wires in a neonatal ICU (NICU) spring into my mind.
We are safe.
There’s no pain.
The baby’s not coming today. Our journey into parenthood will not start with us spending nights outside the NICU watching our baby being kept alive by tiny pipes helping it breathe and being fed through tubes. We should turn back.
‘NO!’ she doubles over in pain.
I bypass the U-turn.
This is something. It strikes us that this is the first time she’s felt this kind of pain.
Throughout this journey to parenthood, she has known pain, intermittent, as is the nature of carrying a life within.
But this . . . this isn’t the usual. Most times she has felt pain, it has been mild enough for her to drive to the hospital herself.
She has handled most of the hospital stuff herself despite my insistence on being a part of it.
‘I need to feel responsible,’ she would say. ‘I need to do this alone. You know you’re going to be the best baba in the world. I need a head start.’
We need to get this pain checked. Right on cue, rain begins to fall.
At first, it’s just a few droplets, a little pitter-patter against the windscreen, but then suddenly, it’s a full-blown downpour.
I can see her pain rising and falling in waves, yet she doesn’t let out a cry.
Fear is slowly creeping in. It’s unspoken, but it’s there, looming heavily inside the car.
Will our baby be okay? It’s a silent question that’s echoing within us. I watch her face lose all colour.
‘What if . . .’
‘It will be okay.’
All through the pregnancy, Aanchal had taken every small bump quite badly, racked with guilt. She would be reminded of her decision not to be a mother all those years ago and wonder if God would punish her for it by taking this one away. I can see the fear in her eyes.
‘It will be okay,’ I reassure her.
The wipers work furiously against the rain outside as we make our way to the hospital. I had pictured this journey differently—sunny skies, calm excitement, a diaper bag in the boot, a change of clothes and us calling our family.
When we reach the hospital, the neon ‘Emergency’ sign is blinking like a distress signal.
We had chosen this hospital because it was new, uncrowded.
But that comes to bite us when we find the receptionist dozing off.
There are no nurses in sight. The receptionist is trying to call someone but no one’s picking up.
‘Go to the admissions,’ the receptionist says.
‘Why?’ screams Aanchal.
‘Or call your doctor,’ says the receptionist dispassionately. ‘This is not an emergency.’
‘Are you trying to turn this into an obstacle course?’ I snap.
‘I’m trying my best,’ says the receptionist. She makes another call. There’s no answer. ‘I’m telling you. Going to the admissions is the procedure.’
‘Wait here,’ I tell Aanchal.
‘Don’t go.’
‘Let me find someone,’ I tell her, my heart breaking at the way she clutches my hand. I feel all of her fear.
‘Just shout!’ And before I can call out, she yells, ‘DOCTOR!’
Her scream’s potent because fifteen minutes later, Aanchal’s strapped on to a machine to confirm whether her contractions are real. And another one to measure the foetal heartbeat. The nurses tell us it’s going to take fifteen minutes.
‘You can stop googling, Aanchal,’ I tell her.
She gives me her phone.
‘Whatever happens, we are going to be together. As your mother would say, with Daksh, what’s the worst that can happen?’
She nods. I take her hand into mine.
‘We are going to have a beautiful baby,’ I whisper. ‘And we are going to love it so much, so, so much, that when it goes to school, it will wonder why other parents hate their kids so much. The other kids will be so jealous. We will be amazing.’
‘You will be amazing,’ she says. ‘Me . . .’
‘You will make the best mom ever,’ I assure her.
‘I will try and I’m pretty sure I’m going to fail.’
‘And that itself is being the best.’
We hold each other’s hands and stare at the graph. It makes no sense to us. A little later, Dr Jayaci, a middle-aged doctor, walks in with an alarmingly calm demeanour, checks Aanchal and then breaks the news like it’s no big deal.
‘We’ll need to do a C-section, Aanchal. It seems the baby is eager to meet you.’
We exchange wide-eyed looks. A month early?
She seems to notice our reservation. ‘It’s thirty-six weeks, four weeks early, but it’s okay. I saw the scans, things seem to be in order. Don’t worry.’
Things move swiftly.
I’m given scrubs to wear. Aanchal is prepped for surgery. She looks at me as the nurses gather around her.
‘It’s going to be fine, Daksh,’ she says. ‘We are going to be fine.’
While she’s being taken away, I finish the drudgery of filling up the forms.
I am seventeen again. I’m in a hospital, a different one.
My mother is to be taken in for surgery, my father’s losing his mind with nervousness.
I have my father’s credit card and I am ordering a lot of things from the coffee shop because I want to punish my parents for having a kid so late.
I am hating both Mumma and Baba for all the attention that is being lavished on the baby that has not even come yet.
I have decided to hate the kid. I want the kid to be dead.
Now, it seems so stupid. What would I not give for my child to live? Anything, anything at all. I would die a thousand deaths every moment.
I write down the details, make the payment. I cut deals with God. I would give up everything in the world to have a little part of Aanchal and me exist. I remind God that I have been an okay person, that I deserve it. I deserve it more than anyone else. We deserve it.
When I get back, she’s in the area cordoned off for patients due for surgery. She’s in the hospital gown and a doctor’s taking her medical history. The panic’s gone from her face, replaced by a deep calm.
‘You look like a doctor,’ she says when she spots me in scrubs.
I hold her hand. ‘I wish I were a doctor, and this was in my hands.’
‘You wouldn’t have been able to run a knife on me.’
‘That’s true.’
‘We didn’t get to do a pregnancy photoshoot,’ she sighs.
‘Are we listing down the positives of this situation?’
‘Get me pads, a change—’
‘Baba’s getting them,’ I tell her. ‘Maa is taking the next flight. She will be here in a few hours.’
She exhales and closes her eyes as if bracing for what’s going to come. I kiss her hand.
‘It’s going to be the three of us now,’ she mumbles.
‘Unless you want to make them four eventually.’
‘Says the guy whose wife is delivering a month early,’ she says sadly.
‘Don’t blame yourself.’
‘I blame you. You loved the baby too much. It just wanted to come out and see who its Baba is,’ she says.