PART 5 #2
That night, the night of Gauravi’s birth, in the sterile, chill air outside the ICU, while tiny Gauravi, just a few hours old by then, squirmed in my arms, still struggling to make sense of her existence out of her mother’s womb, Dr Jayaci looked at me as if I was a monster of some kind.
‘She was adamant about not terminating the pregnancy under any circumstances,’ Dr Jayaci told me sharply. ‘She insisted that both of you wanted a child.’
‘But . . .’
His colleague interrupted, unmasking the question that had been buried in Dr Jayaci’s accusations.
‘Were you not aware she suffered from preeclampsia?’ he asked angrily.
His statement echoed through the hallway. The nurses looked up. In their eyes, I was guilty: either unaware of the grave risk or worse, having forced my wife to carry our child despite the looming danger.
The doctor’s impatience with my stunned silence was palpable. Dr Jayaci pressed on, ‘Blood clots were a constant threat. We administered thinners to combat this. It’s thoroughly documented in her medical file. You should have reviewed it.’
‘I never saw the files,’ I say. ‘She said—’
The doctors turned on their heels and disappeared inside the ICU. The nurses stepped close and told me I should go back to the maternity ward with the infant.
‘Where’s the grandmother?’ one of them asked me sternly.
The other nurse added, ‘You go, we will take the baby there.’
‘It’s not safe here,’ the first nurse said.
‘Where else would she be safe but here, close to her mother?’ I snapped.
They stepped back. Gauravi started crying. Seeing the melee, a few guards approached. Baba chimed in, ‘We should go.’
Through the little circular, prison-like window, I looked at Aanchal.
Signs of life still in her. The crinkly line on the ECG monitor.
The doctors working over her. The nurses noting down readings on their pads.
My wife was alive. I turned away. I was led back to the maternity ward.
I put a bottle to Gauravi’s lips, and she quietened down.
I sat next to Aanchal’s empty bed and wished death on myself in return for Aanchal coming to take her place on the bed.
A couple of nurses returned, carrying with them Aanchal’s medical file, their faces neutral. They opted to address Baba, perhaps assuming he would handle the revelation better. Baba listened attentively, his brows furrowed in concentration as they relayed the truth.
Aanchal had lied to us.
She had hidden her life-threatening condition with deliberate intent.
She came to the hospital alone, multiple times.
She made everyone believe she would go through anything but she had to have the baby.
The doctors kept asking her to rethink. She hid the files, even got decoys for her mother, for me.
Files that showed that everything was fine.
Pink of health, for both mother and baby.
Rabbani holds my hand as we walk on the beach. ‘She didn’t know the worst would happen.’
‘But it did,’ I sigh.
‘She was always greedy, wasn’t she? She wanted everything.’
‘So did I. The blame lies with me. How could she for one second have thought that she wasn’t the most important thing in the world for me? I could have done without being a father . . . who cares?’
‘But you did care, Dada. Not at the cost of her, but you cared. Maybe she was just scared she would eventually disappoint you. At least this way she would be able to give you . . .’ She points towards Gauravi. ‘. . . some happiness.’
‘She was all I needed.’
‘I’m sorry, Dada.’
Aanchal knew of the risks, knew that she was walking a tightrope.
Yet, she went ahead with the pregnancy, for me, for us.
What utter stupidity. How absolutely stupid of her to think I could ever forgive her for that.
All I wanted was her. That’s it. Had I not made that amply clear? How could she be that blind?
The painful memories follow us as we walk down the beach, the sky a brilliant palette of blues and pinks, the sun shining bright.
Rabbani, Gauravi and I walk on the same sands where we had all once walked.
Mumma, Baba, her parents, Gaurav. Who knew that we would be marked by death?
It had followed us everywhere we went. Whenever I think of those times, I remember how she told me I brought her good luck, that I was the luckiest boy in the world.
I wonder if she sees it differently now. Luckiest boy in the world? Bullshit.
‘This place was unlucky for us, wasn’t it?’ I ask Rabbani.
‘This place was the start of the man you are today, Dada. The best kind of man.’
‘What’s the use?’
‘Our journeys were shaped by who you became. Don’t insult us by saying you didn’t matter to all of us. To Mumma, to Baba, to Aanchal, to Gaurav, to her parents . . . look at all that you gave us, Dada. You were the centre of all of our lives. You’re our main event. This place made you.’
‘. . . could have got Aanchal in return.’
The doctors said she died of a pulmonary embolism. They assured me that she didn’t suffer. They had tried to fight me when I wanted Gauravi to meet her mother—even if she was dead—some random medical risks they talked about.
How still, how calm she was.
As if she had finally stopped running.
The nurses kept begging me to leave the room, to let them do their job. Had they done their job, my wife would have been fucking alive. It was a damned clot. How the fuck can a small piece of coagulated blood destroy everything I held dear? How could an army of doctors not fix it?
Everyone keeps reminding me how selfless an act it was from her. It wasn’t selfless; it was cowardly. To stay with me for a lifetime, that would have required courage. Not to end in a blaze, reduced to a memory.
‘The boat’s here,’ says Rabbani.
We wear our life jackets and board the boat Rabbani had hired for us. Gauravi’s really excited to see the dolphins. We don’t see any. Years from now, she’s probably going to see this memory differently.
I take Gauravi into my arms.
I tell her about Aanchal, her mother. She registers the word ‘Mumma’, but she uses it loosely for any woman.
My stories mean nothing to her. She just repeats certain words from them.
But it’s my job to tell her Aanchal’s stories before the details muddle in my brain.
So I tell her everything. I already find myself adding embellishments, making Aanchal seem part goddess.
Which she might not be to others, but she always was to me.
She listens, her little head cocked to one side, her brown eyes reflecting the sky above and my heartbreak within.
Rabbani gives me the taped box that’s serving as an urn for Aanchal’s ashes.
The pilot stops the boat. The gentle rocking makes my heart lurch.
‘This is what she would have wanted,’ says Rabbani.
The ashes feel heavier than anything I’ve ever carried. My heart seems like a boulder pressing me down, trying to sink me to the bottom of the sea as I open the box, the finality of the moment hitting me like a sledgehammer.
I let Aanchal go.
I let the ashes flow into the ocean, watching as they get carried away by the waves. Gauravi, not understanding the gravity of the situation, claps in delight, thinking this is a new game. I let her.
‘I love you,’ I whisper, hoping the wind will carry my words to Aanchal.
We sit there, Gauravi, Rabbani and I, and watch the ocean carry a part of us away, a part of us that we’ll never get back. Aanchal, my love, my heart, my everything, is now a part of something vast, boundless, just like the love for us she left behind.
‘Love’s not just about holding on, it’s also about letting go,’ says Rabbani, as she wraps her arm around me and rests her head on my shoulder.
Gauravi wraps her tiny fingers around my thumb. ‘I love you,’ I whisper.
‘You,’ Gauravi repeats.