Someone to Love Page 3

  She stared at Dr Jacob and bit her lips hard to stop herself from bursting into tears. She’d had one chance of being a mother and she had blown it.

  There was going to be no child.

  Her arms would forever remain empty.

  Her heart ached, it bled, it sobbed the most pitiful tears.

  Outwardly, she showed no emotion, and even managed a smile when bidding goodbye to Dr Jacob.

  6

  Dusk was about to claim another day. The ancient imli tree stood firm and resolute, watching the little scene unfold under its branches with avuncular interest.

  Atharv had first walked past it as a five-year-old in white shorts, accompanied by a little girl in pigtails.

  He now stood over six feet tall, almost a man, and the same girl, almost a woman, was walking towards him.

  They were best friends, the tree knew. For how else could they always have such fun together as it had witnessed over the years?

  Tonight, however, ‘fun’ was far from their minds. Tonight was heavy, felt thick, meant more than either knew.

  Atharv stared at Koyal unblinkingly, his heart missing a beat. What would she say, he wondered.

  ‘Stop staring.’ Koyal laughed, pushing aside a lock of her blow-dried hair.

  ‘You look so different!’ Atharv said, trying hard to keep the admiration out of his voice. ‘Is today special?’ he asked hopefully.

  It was their last night in Bhopal and the two of them were meeting one last time before heading to different colleges. Koyal wore a fitted red salwar kameez, a dress Atharv had only seen her put on most reluctantly during festivals. She had kajal in her eyes and her face glowed more than usual. Atharv idly wondered if her lips were really that pink – or, horror of horrors, had Koyal Raje put on lipstick? For their last evening together, the two had ditched their friends last minute – something they’d increasingly been resorting to – and instead of heading to some swank restaurant for a fancy meal, had decided to do something they’d done almost every day in the last fourteen years. Walk and talk in the lane leading up to school.

  ‘Huh, it’s nothing!’ Koyal said. ‘I need to learn all this now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, there’ll be many handsome boys at engineering college.’

  Something inside Atharv’s heart slumped.

  ‘Right, handsome boys at Engineering College, Ghaziabad,’ he said, hoping his voice did not give anything away.

  Koyal pretended to lash out at Atharv, and ended up hitting him quite hard. Atharv yelped in pain and Koyal doubled up laughing.

  ‘How terribly sad tonight would have been if we were going to different parts of the country,’ mused Atharv when they were both calm again.

  ‘Yes,’ Koyal said. ‘But we’re not. Delhi and Ghaziabad are practically the same city, so no problem.’ Koyal had gotten into the Royal College of Architecture in Banglore, which everyone thought would be a great career choice for her. However, for reasons best known to her, she took up a seat in a badly rated engineering college in Ghaziabad instead.

  ‘Really? Doesn’t all this affect you one bit?’

  Koyal shook her head and kicked a stone that unfortunately hit a stray dog which yelped.

  ‘I am sorry! I am sorry!’ Koyal giggled at the dog.

  Atharv looked closely at his friend, surprised at how relaxed and happy she looked, and then it hit him.

  ‘Oh,’ he said before he could stop the words, ‘you are hiding.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Hiding behind the grin, hiding behind the red dress, hiding behind the make-up, hiding behind the mask of everything being fine.’

  ‘Of course not!’ she said hotly.

  The language best friends use to communicate is facial expressions. And sometimes, though words mean one thing, the expressions tell the truth.

  For a few seconds, both of them stared at each other – the few seconds it took Atharv to comprehend what was really going on in her heart.

  ‘Come here,’ said Atharv finally and pulled Koyal, who resisted for a bit, into a big hug.

  Though she remained silent, Atharv knew exactly how hard his best friend was trying to not cry. She clutched on tightly to him and he could feel her nails dig into his skin. A tiny sob cut the silence of the night. An animal somewhere nearby called.

  ‘Shh,’ he whispered into her ear, thankful for the falling dusk. He couldn’t bear to look at her face and didn’t want her to see his eyes.

  He felt her gulp hard.

  ‘This goodbye is hard,’ she said into his collar.

  ‘Do you know,’ Atharv said, ‘how lucky we are to have someone it’s this hard to say good bye to?’

  Koyal smiled through her tears.

  ‘You know what else is going to be hard?’ Koyal continued.

  ‘What?’

  ‘To not be “we”, to just be “me”.’

  Atharv drew back and stared at Koyal in surprise. ‘“We” will always be “we”, Koyal, no matter what,’ he said, looking intently at her.

  He pulled her back into a hug and they stayed like that, under the imli tree, in a tight embrace. He’s becoming broader, more manly, Koyal thought. Atharv’s arms were the shield that even God couldn’t pull off, that would protect her from all harm. With her Atharv, she was safe; with her Atharv, she was she.

  They stood like that under the imli tree. Two but not quite two. One but not quite one.

  Afraid and scared on their own but so complete like this. Why, oh why did life have to come in the way, the imli tree wondered.

  ‘Though I still cannot understand why you do not want to do the architecture course in Bangalore, you have no idea how glad I am that your engineering college is close to Delhi,’ Atharv said softly.

  ‘I know,’ she replied.

  He pulled back and took Koyal’s heart-shaped face in his hands. ‘Because Ghaziabad and Delhi are practically the same city,’ he said, mimicking Koyal’s voice and words.

  ‘Athaarrrvvvvv!’ she said threateningly.

  ‘Kuku?’ Atharv teased back.

  Koyal hit him on his arm and Atharv yelped again. The tender moment from a few seconds ago was now lost in the darkness of the night; the magical spell had been broken.

  They separated.

  ‘Will you buy me dinner now?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Atharv said, smiling. ‘Dirty roadside five-rupee chowmein?’

  ‘Nothing could be better,’ said Koyal, using the back of her index finger to wipe off any traces of tears, careful not to smudge her kajal. Atharv smiled when he saw her do that.

  The imli tree watched the two of them walk away together and mused about how humans are but the playthings of destiny. This innocent little meeting of two friends bidding each other goodbye had changed the channel of the Atharv–Koyal story but neither of them knew now, nor would ever really know in its entirety, how their story had just changed gears, shifted course.

  7

  Just like that, sitting on the floor of the toilet, with her back against the door, it hit her. The biggest problem with living with someone who criticizes you continuously is that you begin to see yourself through their eyes. And then the most tragic thing happens – you forget your own worth.

  Just like she had.

  He was on the other side of the door screaming profanities, pacing around the living room, wild with anger.

  She heard him grunt as he picked up something and then the deafening crash that followed. Her mind was oddly calm, but her body was shivering with fear. Temper tantrums like this had become far too common since their meeting with Dr Jacob.

  He now came to the toilet and started banging his fists against the door.

  She sat there, in an oasis of calm, not moving but thinking.

  He no longer let her speak to her family and the few friends she had were not welcome at home any more. This had to be some kind of domestic abuse, right?

  ‘Open the fucking door!’ he screamed and banged his fist on the
door.

  Nothing can be smaller than the man who abuses or hurts his wife, she thought to herself, flinching as he banged on the door again.

  ‘You useless woman, you can’t even give me a child,’ he was bawling now but these words hit and hurt.

  Words, she thought, are like ghosts. Both can haunt.

  ‘You can’t go out and earn a single penny, can’t cook a decent meal. You are almost uneducated, crass, uncivilized, barren…’

  Regret seared her heart. How she wished she could go back in time and shake some sense into her younger self. Don’t leave your course unfinished, you stupid girl, she wanted to yell. No, she couldn’t undo what had happened and perhaps this, dealing with regret, was part of growing up. There are some things in life that you can’t go back and change, no matter how much you want to. And she would have to learn to live with that.

  ‘I should have never married you! Look what you have done to me,’ he screamed again, bringing her back to the present.

  I should have never married you. Look what you have done to me. Another regret.

  ‘You deserve to be abandoned,’ he spat out.

  How can anyone abandon me when I am already entirely on my own? Her mother was unwell, her brother busy with his own life and her father had not spoken to her in years.

  ‘You uneducated fool!’

  Making a big change is scary, but maybe now is the time? Could I, could I possibly consider finishing my degree? Undo a mistake?

  ‘You stupid woman, I should just fucking leave you and not look at you ever again.’

  Can I dare to leave him?

  ‘I should leave you, marry someone with some brains and a working uterus. Not a good-for-nothing bitch like you.’

  However big a jerk he might be, he is right. Whatever I might do, I will never be a mother.

  And with that thought, her heart, which had just started to take brave steps, faltered again. Hers was doomed to be a childless life. Dr Jacob had been very clear – he could have a baby any time he wanted, it was she who could not.

  A childless woman. That is what she was destined to be.

  She stared at her empty arms and her heart broke again into a million little pieces for the baby that would never be hers.

  8

  At forty-seven, Atharv Jayakrishna, MD, would be the youngest recipient of the Alum of the Year Award in Indian Medical Institute’s 167 year history. He would begin his acceptance speech by describing his first memory of IMI back from the day he stepped into the college for the first time.

  He would talk about the goosebumps he felt when, from his rickety auto-rickshaw, through the black iron gates, past the green lawns, he first set eyes on the imposing red-brick building of IMI.

  He would choose to not talk about one thing from this scene. The one thing that was the reason this memory was so vividly alive in his head.

  A girl. A girl in a light yellow salwar kurta walking ahead, alone, lugging a suitcase three times her size.

  Atharv hesitated only a second before requesting the auto driver to stop the vehicle. ‘No matter how late you are running,’ his father used to say to him often, ‘there is always time for good manners.’

  ‘Hi, can I help you? Your suitcase seems very heavy,’ Atharv asked the girl. He hadn’t even glanced at her, so taken was he by the size of her suitcase.

  The girl looked up, surprised. Atharv felt her eyes on his face and he looked at the girl. And he stilled.

  He first noticed the delicate, perfectly shaped rose petal-like lips. Then the sharp little nose, and then the complexion that made him think of sunflowers in the snow. Even though it was scrunched up in the sun at the moment, this was, without any doubt, the most beautiful face he’d ever seen. The sort of face for which the earth could stop spinning, the waves stop heaving and the air stop flowing. For one mad minute, Atharv’s world flipped on itself.

  And then it happened.

  She brought her hand to her forehead to shade her eyes. And then her eyes opened wide enough for Atharv to see them properly.

  And Atharv stared without blinking, without breathing.

  The azure of the Mediterranean.

  The blue of the cornflower.

  The clarity of a cloudless sky.

  Blue eyes that set that beautiful face on fire.

  ‘Um … thanks, I can manage,’ she said, smiling now.

  ‘I insist, please. Let me carry that holdall?’ Atharv asked, snapping back into the real world. Had he really, for one mad minute, lost himself in a girl’s beauty? The way he had only read of people doing?

  ‘Thanks,’ she said after a pause and handed her bag to him.

  The two stared at each other for a moment.

  ‘First year MBBS and my name is Nili Verma,’ she said.

  ‘Nili, as in the colour?’ Atharv asked, taken aback.

  ‘Dad couldn’t get over them,’ she said, laughing and pointing a finger at her eyes.

  ‘From what I know dads never get over their daughters,’ said Atharv. ‘I am Atharv.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Atharv.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Nili.’

  As they walked in silence, Nili, fed up of the attention she got from boys all the time, wondered why this boy felt so different from the rest already.

  As they walked in silence, Atharv told himself not to be stupid. He didn’t quite know what he was hoping for, but he knew that this wasn’t the right time for it. His heart was not ready. Not just yet.

  It was in the beginning of their second year that she first saw her, though of course, she had heard a lot about her by then. Koyal was looking at some pictures from an event at IMI and her eyes fell on a stunning girl standing next to Atharv. Tall and fair, with impossibly delicate features, this girl could easily have been an actress or a model.

  ‘Whoa!’ she exclaimed and pointed a finger at the girl in the picture. ‘Who’s this, Atharv?’

  ‘Ahh, that’s Nili,’ he said carelessly and went back to his book.

  Koyal stared at the picture for a few seconds, lost in thought. If for six days a week he sees a girl this pretty, how much of an eyesore I must be for him on Sundays.

  ‘You never told me Nili is this pretty,’ Koyal said, wondering why she was feeling so shocked and, well, cheated.

  ‘Yes, she is pretty,’ he said with a quick smile.

  ‘She is standing next to you in every photograph,’ Koyal mumbled, continuing to stare at the smiling girl in the photograph and thinking hard.

  After a disastrous midterm examination – You never studied, Koyal, of course you were going to flunk! No, Atharv, no one studied, but I was the only one who flunked! – Koyal decided she wanted to get drunk.

  One Sunday evening, Atharv took Koyal drinking to a disc he chose after meticulous research. Her first night of binge-drinking, thought Koyal, giggling excitedly as she downed one drink after the other. The more she drank, the more absurd her antics became. At one point, she climbed on to the tabletop and then tried to pull Atharv, who had been watching her with a resigned look on his face, too. At first Atharv was horrified, but Koyal was dancing with such abandon that, as he watched her, he began to smile. He was quite lost in the carefree beauty Koyal radiated that he did not quite notice it when her expression changed. When, a moment later, she had thrown up all over the table, Atharv woke up from his dreamlike state, startled. By the time he reached her, she was laughing and, for some reason, Atharv started laughing too.

  The manager appeared, his face red, and ordered them off the premises of the discotheque. Atharv had to look at Koyal only once for her to start laughing. Atharv tried hard not to, but he was soon doubling up with laughter too. The irate manager threatened police action and that made the two of them laugh harder. It was only when they saw the bouncers heading towards them that they sobered up and left. By this time, Koyal was spent. She was slurring Amitabh Bachchan dialogues and giggling nonstop.

  Finally, at three in the morning and with the help of Koy
al’s horrified roommate, Mayuri, Atharv sneaked her into the girls’ hostel. Mayuri watched in silence as Atharv tucked Koyal into bed. ‘Sleep now,’ he whispered to her, gently patting her forehead.

  ‘It was fab,’ she said in a hoarse voice.

  ‘It was fab,’ he agreed.

  She smiled weakly, he shook his head.

  ‘Sing me a lullaby,’ murmured Koyal after a pause.

  ‘What?’

  Koyal burst out laughing. ‘Just kidding,’ she said sleepily and Atharv grinned.

  Mayuri watched from a distance as Atharv continued to gently pat Koyal’s forehead. Koyal was still looking at him when her eyes, heavy with sleep, finally closed. Atharv stood by her bed, still and unmoving, his hand lingering on her forhead, gazing at Koyal’s sleeping form for a long time.

  Mayuri watched the little scene in silence, afraid to even breathe, should that innocuous act disrupt the calm that was surrounding the two in a haze of something very beautiful and delicate.

  ‘Are you sure you guys are not in love with each other?’ Mayuri asked Koyal the next morning.

  ‘Ugh.’ Koyal made a face. ‘That’s too many words in one sentence for me to understand!’

  Mayuri laughed in spite of herself and looked indulgently at her roomie. When she had met Koyal first, Mayuri had, like the rest of the batch, taken her to be a spoilt girl, easily given to strong emotions and frequent violent outbursts. She couldn’t understand why a sensible guy like Atharv invested any time in her. However, with time, as she got to know Koyal, her weird ways and her kind heart, Mayuri was forced to change her opinion.

  While Mayuri liked Koyal, she wasn’t sure she understood her, especially when it came to Atharv. She had seen Koyal pace their little room very nervously as Atharv sat for his first year final exams at IMI, but when he had called immediately afterwards, she had pretended to have forgotten that his exams were beginning that day.

  Each night, without fail, Koyal would wait for Atharv to call her to bid her good night, and when he didn’t, she would panic, and then hesitatingly call him, trying so hard to sound cool, pretending she was calling to discuss something important, all the while nervously biting her lower lip.