Someone to Love Read online

  After all that had happened, the word ‘friends’ rang hollow to her ears. Atharv had promised to be her best friend and look where they were now, she thought ruefully.

  Last week, in a fit of anger over something as trivial as a misplaced keychain, he had called her a ‘fucking useless bitch’. Someone else might have been able to shrug these words away, but to a girl like her, a girl without any achievements or degrees, the words had delivered a merciless sting. She had rushed to the living room, sobbing, feeling as though she was the biggest failure in the world. After a bit, he had come into the living room, looked at her tear-soaked face and said, ‘When you finish crying, go wash your face and then come to the bedroom. Otherwise you are welcome to sleep in the living room.’

  No matter how overpowering the emotion, words that come out of your mouth should be carefully chosen. Words, the same words, can mean nothing to one person and everything to someone else.

  ‘Have you cooked anything? Or I need to do that too?’ he taunted again.

  She pursed her lips in reply and nodded towards the kitchen.

  ‘Not daal again,’ he groaned from the kitchen and she told herself that he wasn’t talking to her. She did that often now and pretended he was saying all the hurtful things to someone else. And each time she did that, she mused at the power words had – some could save a soul and others could destroy one.

  Like most bad marriages, this one too had killed dreams – hers in this case.

  ‘Does it taste okay?’ she asked hesitatingly, hating the slight tremor in her own voice.

  ‘By your standards? Yes,’ he replied and she flinched.

  They ate in silence and then she cleaned up the table as slowly as she could. It had been a stressful day at work and he was always more demanding in the sex that followed dinner after a day like that.

  ‘Come here!’ he hollered from the bedroom.

  She stared at a stubborn little piece of dirt stuck on the dining table and rubbed at it as vigorously as she could.

  Alone and lonely, two words often used interchangeably, but very different.

  She was rarely alone, no – her husband was always around – but she was the loneliest she’d ever been.

  She craved a warm hug.

  She craved a sweet conversation.

  She craved a compliment that was genuine.

  She craved companionship.

  She craved an evening spent playing a board game.

  She craved a meal out which did not end in an argument.

  She craved all of this, but mostly she craved someone to love.

  ‘Are you done yet?’ he hollered again, and she wondered how lovely it would be if he were to fall asleep before she reached their bedroom.

  ‘Do you want to do that BA course?’ he asked, staring as she walked into the room. She was wearing a mauve nightie, her, curvy figure well hidden. Her shoulder-length hair was loose, framing her sweet face. A little mole on the side of the lips that rarely smiled. Large but always sad eyes.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head.

  ‘You have no career to speak of.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. It wasn’t okay, but she didn’t care.

  ‘Is your mother okay?’ He asked mechanically after his ailing mother-in-law.

  ‘She had another dialysis yesterday,’ she replied without any emotion in her words.

  ‘I hope she gets better soon,’ he said.

  She looked up, surprised at the softness in his voice. But there was no gentleness on his face as he lunged forward to switch off the lights.

  ‘Come here now,’ he said, pulling her into an embrace. She gritted her teeth and prepared herself to suffer through the next twenty minutes.

  Later that night, she found herself in the kitchen. Alone in the darkness, her hands moved as if she no longer controlled them. Something else, a powerful thought in her head perhaps, was now in command. That powerful thought, the one that had now overtaken her soul, fed off the desperation in her life.

  She had no friends, no money, not any kind of a career, not even hope of a career and no education.

  Her soul was without hope, joy or freedom.

  She was caged in an unhappy marriage and her mother was dying. All that was meant to be beautiful had turned spectacularly ugly.

  There was only one way out of this miserable life.

  She stared at her hands as they opened the drawer and pulled out the sharpest knife.

  She watched in wonder as she picked up the knife and placed it against the throbbing blue vein at an angle.

  4

  Someone was chasing her. She was running, running her hardest, but he was closing in on her, and he had a gun in his hands … and…

  And Koyal got up, drenched in sweat, her body shaking. It was three in the morning.

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, looking around helplessly. She bunched up her knees, hugged herself and began to rock to stop the shivering, feeling more scared than she ever had in her life.

  A knock on the window and her body slumped in relief. Koyal knew, just knew, who was knocking.

  She ran to the window and when she saw Atharv pressed against it, she began to sob. Hands shaking, she managed to open the window somehow and then collapsed into his arms.

  ‘Hey, hey, are you okay?’ he whispered gently into her ears, cradling her in his arms.

  ‘Nightmare,’ she whispered, clinging to him. ‘Really bad nightmare. There was this man and he … he …’

  ‘Shhhh,’ Atharv whispered. ‘Do you need a doctor?’

  ‘No!’ Koyal said as indignantly as she could, given the tears. Atharv smiled. ‘How did you know?’ she asked after a bit, staring out of the window, her chin resting on his shoulders. He had his arms around her waist in a tight embrace. It felt surprisingly nice, being this close to him, she thought to herself.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, shrugging in the dark.

  ‘Zainab is hot, man,’ Vikas said and tried to give Atharv a high five. But Atharv just glared at him.

  The school dance was the day after. Zainab, widely considered to be the prettiest girl in the batch, had walked upto Atharv after the assembly and, in full view of everyone, asked Atharv to be her date.

  Koyal, head bent low, turned around to walk away.

  ‘Hey, Koyal!’ Vikas called after her.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you have a date for the evening?’

  Koyal rolled her eyes. ‘Most girls are going with girls and the boys are just turning up. No one needs a date. This is not America, this is Bhopal.’

  ‘Do you,’ Vikas said, now coming closer with a smirk on his face, ‘want me to ask you?’

  ‘Oh, shut up, pimple face,’ snarled Koyal, and Vikas backed away, startled. Atharv guffawed, but even as he laughed, his eyes did not leave Koyal’s face.

  Two days later, after being forced by her mother to look her best for the dance, Koyal found herself sitting in front of the mirror, staring disinterestedly at her reflection. She was wearing jeans and a white frilly top that Ma liked. Ma had even forced some lipstick on her. Koyal rubbed the back of her hands across her lips to smudge it all away.

  ‘I look ugly,’ she said, gulping away angry tears. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about beautiful Zainab. Why did the thought of Atharv being with someone like Zainab sear through her heart? It is just because I do not think Zainab is the right person for Atharv, she thought primly. The bell rang, breaking her line of thought. Some commotion downstairs.

  ‘Koyal,’ came Ma’s voice, ‘Atharv is here.’

  Atharv? Here? Was not he supposed to be at the dance with hot Zainab? Stupid, beautiful Zainab?

  Koyal ran downstairs and stopped short when her eyes fell on Atharv. Atharv was wearing a suit. A proper, grown-up suit. When had he started looking all exotic, she wondered. His skin was a striking caramel shade that set his eyes beautifully.

  His eyes. They shone.

  Of late, Koyal had noticed how women had star
ted paying a lot of attention to him – not just Zainab, but the lady at the shop who would not stop smiling at him – or even the chemistry teacher, Mrs Saxena, who always asked Atharv to help her with stuff. Perhaps it was his voice, which was now a serious baritone, or the look in his eyes, which was intelligent and grave, or perhaps it was the aura around him. Or perhaps a mix of it all.

  ‘What?’ he asked, bringing her back to the present.

  ‘You … look different,’ she stammered.

  ‘Do you want to come to the dance with me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you want to come to the dance with me?’

  ‘What about Zainab?’

  ‘She had other plans,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Okay, give me a minute,’ said Koyal and dashed upstairs. She pulled out almost every piece of clothing from her cupboard in a mad frenzy and finally settled on a black skirt (that she wore as high as she could), her favourite blue top and high heels. Her heels clanked against the floor as she ran to the kitchen.

  ‘Ma!’ she hissed to her mother.

  ‘Yes, Koyal?’ Ma replied, looking up with a knowing smile. ‘Do you want me to help you with some make-up?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Koyal grinned sheepishly.

  ‘Beautiful,’ she said.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said at the same time.

  Koyal and Atharv looked at each other and smiled. This happened all the time now. The two of them were sitting on a rocky edge of the mountains, staring at the valley below them.

  ‘Looks like someone opened a box of jewels,’ Atharv said with a faraway look in his eyes.

  It was close to midnight. Atharv and Koyal were on a school trip to Mussourie. They had sneaked out of their motel after dinner – during which she had almost hit another boy for sneaking a piece of bread off her plate. They had trekked up this little hill and had been sitting here since, in silence. The little houses that dotted the valley had lights switched on, some yellow, some blue, and in the darkness of the moonless night, they twinkled like jewels.

  The winds picked up and Koyal shivered.

  ‘Are you cold?’ Atharv asked, smiling.

  ‘Yes, very!’ she said.

  ‘Come here then.’

  When Koyal leaned towards him, he pulled her in so that his jacket was wrapped around both of them. It was weird to be this close to him, but familiar. Very familiar. Koyal snuggled in, wrapping her arms around his waist, taking in the warmth of his body. He sighed a deep, content sigh and went back to staring at the lights.

  ‘Atharv,’ she said into the phone, wide awake.

  ‘Koyal.’

  ‘Why are you up?’

  ‘Why are you up?’ he asked at the same time.

  ‘I am studying,’ he said after a pause. ‘I desperately want to get through to Indian Medical Institute, Koyal. Do you know at least one person from each batch gets the Fuller scholarship?’

  ‘Fuller scholarship?’

  ‘To Stanford.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Koyal. ‘I have no doubt it will be you.’

  ‘I need to get through to IMI first!’ exclaimed Atharv and then added after a brief pause, ‘I wish I had as much faith in myself as you have in me.’

  ‘I know you better than you know yourself,’ replied Koyal.

  ‘What about you? Plans after school?’

  ‘What makes you think I care?’

  ‘You are so clever, Koyal, I just wish you would…’

  ‘Apply myself!’ finished Koyal, laughing. ‘You sound so much like Ma sometimes. She keeps saying the same thing over and over again. Today, she said that perhaps one day on her deathbed she will ask me, as her one last wish, to start working hard and then I will listen to her.’

  Atharv guffawed. ‘Will you even then?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Koyal giggling. ‘Atharv,’ she said after a pause.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If we end up in different cities, will you forget me?’

  ‘How can I forget the best part of my life, Koyal?’ he asked.

  ‘I will be so, so, so lonely without you.’

  ‘I will be there even when I am not.’

  ‘What does that even mean, Atharv?’ said Koyal, smiling into the darkness.

  ‘That is what four a.m. friends are for, Koyal.’

  ‘Four a.m. friends?’

  ‘Look at the clock,’ he said.

  Koyal smiled. It was four in the morning. ‘We are four a.m. friends,’ she whispered, awestruck.

  ‘Yes, that is what we are,’ replied Atharv. ‘I won’t hang up, you try to sleep. I am right here, studying.’

  Koyal fell asleep in the next few minutes, holding the phone with Atharv on the line, close to her ears.

  Atharv is there even when he is not there.

  5

  She couldn’t believe she was feeling sorry for him. This was the man who had almost driven her to suicide. Her mind went back to that night in kitchen when she had placed the knife against her wrist, ready to end her miserable existence. Better sense had prevailed.

  Worry had creased his face like crumpled paper. He wanted this desperately and Dr Jacob, their last hope, was known to work wonders.

  Half agony, half hope – the worst kind of hope.

  ‘Dr Jacob will see you now,’ a polite nurse came and said to them. They got up and started to walk towards the famous doctor’s office, their legs moving synchronically as if they were soldiers marching a parade. Inevitably, she found her mind wandering to the day she had that conversation with him.

  ‘Um…’ she tried, once she was sure he was happy with the omelette she had made for him for breakfast. She had chosen the day and time with care – it was a Sunday and he seemed relaxed. She had just reread the email from her friend, and the two-three lines in the second paragraph, written most casually, had her seething with a mix of anger and jealousy, just as they had when she’d first read the email two weeks ago. The two weeks she had taken to deliberate hard on what she needed to do.

  ‘I was … er … thinking…’

  ‘Wow.’

  She paused but let the jibe pass.

  ‘We’ve been married for three years… Your mother…’

  ‘So you have a problem with her now?’

  ‘No,’ she replied patiently. ‘Everyone we meet now just talks about one thing … I was thinking it may not be a bad idea to…’

  ‘To?’

  ‘To … er … consider a baby.’ She stared at the fork in her hand, and then looked up, half afraid that a nasty jibe would come flying towards her any second.

  He was staring at her, his mouth open.

  ‘You want a baby?’ he asked.

  ‘Y … yes,’ she mumbled, now fiddling with the napkin.

  He got up and she cowered. He took three long strides and was beside her in a jiffy.

  She wondered if he was going to hit her.

  He threw his hands around her and hugged her so tight that she thought her chest would collapse inwards.

  What was that weird sound? Was he grunting? Gosh, no, he was laughing. Too shocked to respond, she let him pick her up and twirl her around in sheer delight.

  ‘YES! YES! YES!’ he shouted joyfully. ‘A baby!’

  A baby who could bring them closer. A baby who could make them a family, finally. Oh, yes, a baby!

  Dr Jacob smiled when he saw the forlorn-looking couple and asked them to sit down.

  ‘So you conceived after two months of trying?’ Dr Jacob asked, opening their file.

  She nodded.

  ‘And you miscarried?’

  She remained silent. Dr Jacob looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Four months later,’ he said. ‘It’s still quite difficult for her to talk about the miscarriage,’ he added. Dr Jacob nodded.

  Miscarriage.

  She felt her body contracting into a shell at the mention of the word. She remembered that night like it had happened yesterday. The dampness between her legs that had woken her up. The b
lood on her hands. Her screams. His white face. The doctors. The nurses. The deathly silence in the room when they started looking for a heart beat. The desperation in her heart as she prayed for a sound, any sound.

  Oh, the noise of that silence. Even clasping her hands to her ears could not shut it out. And even now, it did not let her sleep.

  In her heart she knew the baby had punished her – it had found out the real reason behind her desire to be a mother, and had decided not to come to her.

  She had murdered her own baby by wanting it for the wrong reasons.

  Missing the baby more now that it was gone, she invested the savage energies of bereavement into getting pregnant again.

  This time because she wanted to be a mother. Only because she wanted to be a mother.

  ‘And you started trying again?’

  ‘After three months,’ he replied. Three guilt-ridden months during which the top of her head to the tips of her toes mourned the lost baby.

  ‘And you conceived again?’ the doctor asked, breaking her line of thought.

  ‘No, though she did get tubercolosis,’ he said.

  God did not want to give a baby to someone as horrible as her, she knew.

  ‘You have been trying for how long now?’

  ‘Two years,’ he replied, pursing his lips, his eyes growing hard. Dr Jacob just saw a worried husband. She saw a husband seething with anger at how useless his wife was. ‘Can you do something? Please help us?’ he added.

  She looked at her husband and then at the doctor. The last two years had been tough.

  Dr Jacob spent the next half an hour studying their file and asking some more questions. ‘There is only one way for you to have a child,’ the doctor said.

  Her heart skipped a beat, every cell awake with hope. She was pitifully desperate to have her baby in her arms, a baby to love, a baby to call her own, a baby that would make her forget all she’d gone through.

  ‘How?’ they both asked, sitting straighter.

  ‘Adopt,’ the doctor replied. ‘I am terribly sorry and I don’t know how else to say this, but looking at your reports I cannot give you any hope of being able to have your own child,’ he said, shaking his head.