'Are you guys still together?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Good,' he said and paused. 'So now that you have seen that I am okay, I
think you should leave.''It doesn't have to be like this,' the girl said. Her voice still shook as if
she was scared of Dushyant. Pihu strained her ear to listen closely,
Dushyant's nails-on-a-blackboard voice in stark contrast to the girl's opera
singer's voice.
'It has to be like this.'
'Why are you acting so difficult, Dushyant?'
'I am acting difficult? You leave me and then don't talk to me for two
years and now that I am here, you come to me? Why? To make yourself feel
better? I am not going to give you that pleasure. I had a hard time forgiving
and forgetting you; please don't make me go through that again. Go back to
your rich, smart boyfriend you have always been in love with. I don't care
about you any more.'
'We didn't have to end up like this.'
'You chose it to be like this. You walked out of my life and fucked your
ex-boyfriend! It wasn't me, it was your fault,' he growled.
'I didn't … but I am sorry; after what happened, I couldn't have stayed
and you know that. After what happened between us …'
'Had you loved me enough, you would have stayed. You definitely
wouldn't have gone running into his arms. I was begging for you to come
back. I almost destroyed myself to get you back. What didn't I do to catch
your attention? For a little pity? Why didn't you come when I was drinking
myself to death? Why? Didn't you think for once how I would feel?'
'I did—'
'Fuck off. Please. I don't want you here. I would rather die than talk to
you,' she heard Dushyant shout.
'But—'
'Just get out.'
'Dushyant—'
'One last time, GET OUT.'
She heard the rustling of the bedsheet and saw the feet leave the room.
She felt sorry for the girl with the hypnotic voice who had just been
disparaged by Dushyant. Too bad, she couldn't see her beyond the soft,
beautiful ankles. For the first time, her judgement about Dushyant changed.Maybe it wasn't the disease or the tumour, maybe Dushyant had always
been a sick person.12
Dushyant Roy
The needles tugged at his skin as he rolled over and tried to get some sleep.
He knew he wouldn't get any that night. The pain had slowly become
permanent. Painkillers were less effective now and the pain was now a part
of him. He tossed and turned, thinking about Kajal and the argument from
moments earlier. He wondered why she had bothered after all these years.
Was it because she still loved him? Did she still think of him when in bed
with Varun? Maybe it was because she felt guilty about what she had done.
It was ten. The curtain was still drawn between them. The girl on the
other bed had been a constant source of irritation. His skin crawled every
time he looked at her. Even on the verge of death, he wasn't at peace. The
last thing he wanted was to have the image of a chattering young girl
gnawing at his eyes in his last moments. Instead, he needed a smoke.
There were still twenty rolled joints safely tucked into one of the books a
friend of his had dropped at the hospital. He took three of them out and
stuffed them into his robe. Slowly, he unscrewed the drips on his hand and
pulled them off. He walked out gingerly, trying not to attract attention to his
tottering self. He had taken just five steps away from the room when
someone called out his name. He turned around to see Zarah leaning against
the wall, her eyebrows knitted and her lips curved into a sinister smirk.
'Going for a smoke again?' Her voice a measured mix of sternness and
playful exuberance. He nodded. 'What did I tell you about not vanishing
again?' she asked.
'Come along? I have enough for both of us,' he responded. Usually
unmoved when challenged, his eyes were like a cowering dog who had
pooped in the hallway.Zarah smiled and motioned him to follow her. Together, they went to a
rarely used balcony on the sixth floor. Usually, patients want to get out of
the hospital as soon as they enter and don't look for hang-out spots to
smoke. But Dushyant was different. The lack of direction or purpose
soothed him, made him feel unshackled. The need to get high and fucked up
ruled him.
Zarah took one of the rolled joints from his hands and lit it up. As the
pungent fumes snaked up from the smouldering joint and hid her face
momentarily, Dushyant stood there, ogling. The irritating girl's words hung
uncomfortably in the air. The hot female doctor. With a lit joint in her hand,
a careless strand of hair wandering aimlessly around her face, she leant
dangerously close to the edge of the railing. An air of unabashed freedom
surrounded her.
'You shouldn't be smoking, should you?' he queried. Zarah didn't
answer; instead, she looked at the neon-lit city, her eyes already glassy from
the weed. She closed her eyes, let open the bun and allowed the breeze to
play with her hair. She took another long drag and let the smoke curl out
from her slightly parted lips. She is a regular smoker, he thought. Long
drags of a joint as potent as the one in her hand often made even old-timers
wheeze and choke. Not her.
'Neither should you,' she said and turned towards him. The joint was
working its way into her body. He could see it in her elegant and almost
sexual turns and the deliberate flips of her hand while managing the unruly
tufts of hair around her face. 'You fought with her?' she asked.
'Her? Her, who?'
'Oh, well. The girl who shares your room and the girl who came to see
you today,' she answered. Another long drag. She wasn't an amateur, even
by Dushyant's standards.
'I had my reasons,' he said. 'The girl in the next bed irritates me. She
behaves like a life coach. She fiddles with things, gets excited as if she has
just checked into a spanking new hotel suite and not a hospital ward. I can't
stand her.'
'And what happened with Kajal? The other girl?''How do you know I fought with her?'
Another drag. Her responses were getting slower. So were his. It wasn't
the weed clouding his senses that drew him to her. It wasn't her
overpowering scent, her piercing brown eyes, the olive skin or the supple
body that he wanted to feel in his rough hands and leave savage bite marks
What drew him to her was her nonchalance, the hidden anger, the
restlessness in her eyes, the tiny slit marks on her wrists and the belief that
she belonged to the same tribe as his. One of dejection, longing and
crushing loneliness. 'I was standing outside when I heard your voice. I
couldn't help but eavesdrop. I told you I would see you in the night, didn't
I?'
'Could you hear us talking?'
'You were shouting.'
'Shit.'
'Ex-girlfriend?' she asked, even though she knew the answer to her
question, her eyes firmly on him.
Dushyant didn't answer for a bit. At a distance, he could see the bunch of
lights he recognized as his college hostel. He wondered if Kajal was back in
her hostel room … or with Varun. Was she still thinking of him? Was she
crying? Did she tell Varun where she'd been?
'Yes,' he said. 'We broke up two years back. I did something stupid and
she left me. I tried to win her back, but she was gone. I hadn't seen her
since then,' he mumbled and wondered if he should tell her what had
happened that night.
'She wants to come back?'
'I don't know what she wants,' he said and climbed on to the ledge.
Unlike Zarah, who was at ease with her legs dangling on the other side of
the ledge, he was petrified. The hundred-foot drop made his heart pump
fiercely.
'Careful,' Zarah said and laughed boisterously. Unhindered and
unpretentious. He looked admiringly at the sharpness of her nose, the
cheekbones and the perfectly fitting trousers. Too stunning to be a doctor,he thought. With the mild hallucinogen in his bloodstream, he could see
images of a bikini-clad Zarah turning heads on an exotic beach in Brazil.
'Why haven't you told your parents yet?' she asked. 'And how long do
you think you can keep up with the medical expenses?'
'I have more money than it looks like,' he said.
'Rich parents, eh?'
'My father is a clerk and my mother is a housewife. They haven't sent
me a single buck since my second year,' he answered.
'Then how?' she asked. He searched for signs of shock on her face but
found none. She was too high to care.
'I am a face that people forget. But I am also a brain that forgets little.'
'So you do little brain-trick shows for people?' she chuckled.
'Not really, but close. You remember those multiple-choice questions we
had to answer to get through entrance examinations?' She nodded and he
continued, 'I was brilliant at that. In eleventh grade, my coaching-institute
teacher had noticed that and made me take an exam for a rich kid in the
senior batch. I cracked three exams for the kid. All we needed was to click a
picture of his which looked like me, and it was done. It was five thousand
for each exam. My teacher had a new car the very next week.'
'So?' Zarah looked disturbed. Finally!
'Business slowly grew. I started taking every type of exam. BBA, MAT,
CAT, engineering and even medical entrances. I have taken the board
exams, tenth and twelfth, every year since then. I know all the textbooks by
heart. I make more money in those four months of examinations than
people make in years. I am a safer bet than a leaked paper or two years of
expensive coaching classes. If I am not caught, I have a zero rate of failure.
And I come cheap.'
Last season, Dushyant had taken thirteen board examinations, nine
engineering entrances, four BBA entrances and a few MBA entrances. He
took the GRE five times and a whole host of other exams which now he
couldn't even remember. None of the surrogate examinations went cheaper
than twenty thousand rupees. He made 8 lakh that year. What with hisfailure rate of zero, people clamoured at his doorstep, even paying the entire
sum upfront.
'How long have you been doing this for?' Zarah asked and lit up the last
joint.
'It's been five years now,' he said. 'And I have been saving up. I don't go
out on expensive dates or have any indulgences. I have a lot of it with me.'
'All you spend is on alcohol and drugs,' she murmured.
'A lot of that comes free for me. I took an exam for an army officer's kid
one time. My alcohol comes cheaper than you can imagine. For other
things, I have my sources. I am a loyal customer and I never get into trouble
with the police or anything.'
Zarah threw the burnt joint away. She turned silent.
'What happened?'
'Umm … Nothing.'
'Something is wrong. I thought we were discussing stuff,' he said.
'I am an army kid, too,' she conceded.
'You don't come across as an abrasive brat.'
Zarah shot an icy stare at him. Dushyant had always thought of army kids
as extrovert bullies. The constant variation in environment and the change
in schools made them competent to handle any social exchange with ease.
They grew up a lot faster, matured faster and came across as extra-smart
brats.
'Is that what you think about army kids?' she asked.
'I am not putting them down or anything. In fact, as a kid I wished I was
as cool as them. So, are you like that?'
'Not really. I don't think so,' she answered and added with a pause, 'I
don't want to talk about it.'
'What? Did they beat you or something? Because that's okay. Mine did.
You wouldn't believe how much my father beat me when I couldn't clear
the IIT entrance examination. Before the exam, I was more scared about
what he would do to me if I didn't clear the exam rather than the exam
itself. It's ironic—since that year, I have cleared it thrice for other people,'
he said. 'See this,' he pointed out to a few circular scars on his left forearm.'Are these cigarette butts? He burnt you?'
'More times than I can remember. Every time I didn't score well in a
coaching-class examination, he would thrash me mercilessly,' he said. 'And
this one is a belt-buckle wound.'
'Didn't your mother say anything?'
'I think sometimes she wanted to. But she was used to it. I think she
thought I deserved it,' he explained. 'Plus, I used to get beaten up once a
month. Or less. The frequency wasn't any higher. Sometimes, it was just a
few slaps. Everyone gets those. But he constantly kept me in fear. It was a
nightmare,' he said. For a moment, he wondered what made him blabber so
much that night. Was it the joint? What was it about this girl that gave him
verbal diarrhoea all of a sudden? He hadn't shared the agonizing details of
his troubled teenage years with anyone other than Kajal. Everyone who
knew him was aware that Dushyant hated his monstrous parents with all his
heart, but no one knew where it came from.
'What happened after that?'
'Nothing. I put up with their bullshit till the first semester. They stopped
sending me money after I finished third in class. So, I started earning on my
own. Then, I didn't need them,' he claimed.
'How did they react?'
'They struggled to understand what was happening for the first few
months. I didn't call them. I didn't ask for money. They came to my college
a few times to check what had gone wrong. Eventually they found out that I
had started smoking and drinking. Dad whipped out his belt again, but I
fought back. I was much stronger …' His voice trailed off. He felt Zarah
lean into him. Suddenly, he became conscious of her physical proximity.
'And?'
'They have softened up a little. I didn't talk to them for six months.
Sometimes, they had to come to the hospital after my episodes of drunken
madness. They still try to tell me that I am a failure and how they wished
they had brought up a dog, not a son. But I have a choice now of not
listening to them. I exercise that. They are dead to me.''Is that why you do this to yourself? Torture yourself to torture them?
Like you did when Kajal left you.'
'Are you a psychiatrist now?' he asked, and then moved on. 'I don't
know. Maybe. I just want them to feel sorry for what they did. Make them
feel that they lost me because of their behaviour. And yes, I do want them to
feel miserable.'
'You're destroying yourself to do that?'
'I am not destroying myself … Well, maybe, I am. But I like my life. I
like doing what I do. It might have started out like that, but it's no longer
that. I used to be bothered at first. Now, I don't care that I don't have a
family to go back to.'
Zarah was quiet. Dushyant knew his story forced people to consider their
previous judgments about him. He never had any illusions about his failures
in life or his detestable nature, but he knew he wasn't the worst either. No
matter what he did, he knew he would always be better than his father. With
his eyes stuck firmly on her, he waited for Zarah to respond. People usually
did, expressing sympathy for him, and then moving on with their lives. At
the end of the day, he was a raging alcoholic and an addict who was meant
to be hated, not understood.
'We should go back,' Zarah said.
'So soon? After all this, don't you think I should know about you a little
too?' he asked as he jumped down the ledge. Every bit of his body hurt. His
heart eased a bit now that he wasn't gazing at a hundred-foot drop.
'Maybe later.'
'A little bit?' he asked.
The inquisitive tone in Zarah's voice had changed to a cold, professional
pitch. 'Let's get you into bed,' Zarah said and led the way back to his room.
He followed soundlessly. She put him in bed, reattached the tubes and
screwed them back on.
'If you keep sneaking out like this, you will take more time to get better,'
she whispered.
'More nights like these and I won't mind staying here a bit longer,'
Dushyant said and felt someone else had said it. He had just flirted with her.Why did I do that? Zarah smiled and told him she would see him tomorrow.
They shook hands and she left the room. There was something about her,
this doctor.
He knew she was hiding something from him, something about her
parents. Whatever the reason for her sadness, it only made her alluring and
desirable. Like an antique table that has character, the flaws—the tiny slit
marks on her wrists—made her more beautiful. The layers to Zarah made
her more intriguing. Even more beautiful than she was. For the first time
since he had woken up in the hospital, he felt better.
He was still dazed from the weed and the calm Zarah had helped instil in
him when he heard someone sobbing softly from the other side of the
curtain. He leant in the direction of the sound and saw Pihu's father sitting
near her feet. Pihu was sleeping and so was her mom. The man just
caressed the toes of his little girl and kissed them lovingly, with tears in his
aching eyes. His eyes were pure, black sadness.
Dushyant's breath stuck in his throat and he felt hollow inside. He
wondered what Pihu had. He put his head back on the pillow and wondered
if his dad would ever sit next to him and cry for having lost him.13
Kajal Khurana
Kajal was the third daughter of a rich business family based in Punjabi
Bagh, New Delhi. Aseem Khurana, her father, dealt in converting
unsuspecting animals into bags, shoes, clothes and the like. Getting into
fashion and leather designing seemed like obvious career choices for the
two elder daughters in the family. Kajal, younger by ten and twelve years to
her sisters, was the spoilt one. By the time she entered college, both her
sisters were happily married and, more importantly, incredibly successful
businesswomen. The leather factory now had showrooms and boutiques all
over the northern region. Money was never an issue. The smallest car she
had ever driven was a puny Volkswagen Beetle that cost her father a small
fortune. In spite of the abundant money and the cradling comfort, Kajal
grew up to be a very sensitive, simple girl with a magical voice and a
penchant for reading. She never shopped, never hankered for an iPhone or
that awesome-little-black-dress-for-the-party-next-weekend, and was never
comfortable in chauffeur-driven cars. Her only loves were music and books,
which she indulged in with wholesome passion.
No one expected her to choose science after her tenth board
examinations, but she did. The bigger surprise came when she cracked the
entrance examination and made it to a premier engineering college. Her
parents—not really impressed with their daughter getting into a boys' field
—wanted her to go to London and study literature. But she was dead set on
studying engineering. Her sisters, headstrong and no-nonsense, asked her to
chase her dreams and make something of herself. They were sure Kajal
would bring in the next wave of technology.Three years later, Kajal was disillusioned and wanted to quit college.
Fluid dynamics, Fourier transforms and the like were not things she was
interested in; she was just good at them.
Kajal was the apple of her parents' eyes; her wants were always put first.
When she had first mentioned her discontentment—after her break-up with
Dushyant—her dad had arranged for prospectuses of colleges in London
where she could study literature. Or journalism. Or whatever young girls
with kohl-lined eyes, dressed in kurtas, studied abroad. A little part of her
had wanted to go. Not because it was the calling of her life, which she had
conveniently ignored, but because she had wanted to run away. Only if she
had left for London instead of continuing here, she would have never gone
through the turmoil she faced now. The news of Dushyant's illness had
shattered her. The severity of his disease had been keeping her awake for
days now. Varun hadn't been helpful at all. With his eyes glued to the
presentation on his laptop, he had asked her to get over it. Dushyant would
have listened to me and not asked me to get over it if the roles were
reversed, she thought. Against her good sense, she had gone to see him at
the hospital, only to get ridiculed and be thrown out.
As she made her way back to the auto she had come to the hospital in,
she felt her grief first swell her heart, and then her eyes. For more than two
years, she had tried to cut off that part of her life which Dushyant had been
a huge chunk of. But the moment she set her eyes on him, her heart called
out to her, jolting it out of its slumber.
The contours of his face had hardened, the eyes were sunken, the beard
was unshaved, but the sincerity in his eyes screamed for attention. The
goodness of his heart, which nobody else but she could see, called out to
her. It was as if two years had meant nothing, just a blip on the time–space
continuum. Within an instant, she was back to the day he had first talked to
her in the library. Since the break-up, she hadn't gone back there. There
were a lot of places they had been to together and a lot of things they had
done together that had lost their charm once they parted ways. The library
didn't feel the same, the golgappas had lost their tang, and the late-evening
walk in the park felt like a chore.The autorickshaw drive to Varun's place was shorter than she would have
liked. Don't go, a voice inside her screamed as she paid the auto driver and
then climbed up the stairs to the lobby of the fifty-storeyed apartment
building in Connaught Place where Varun lived alone. His apartment was
on the thirty-eighth floor from where one could enjoy a brightly lit view of
Delhi at night. She had lost count of the nights she had spent staring
aimlessly into space while Varun prepared for his next big meeting.
'What took you so long?' Varun asked as he opened the door. He was still
in his office clothes. A finely striped shirt, now hanging over his crisp,
ironed trousers. Varun was ageing faster than normal and looked more like
thirty-two. He was ageing gracefully, though; the greys in his hair were
patterned and looked good on him.
'I stopped by at the hospital. I wanted to see how Dushyant was doing,'
she said. She searched for any change in the expression on his face.
Disappointed,she looked away.
'Want a drink?' he asked.
'I don't drink.'
'Oh,' he said. 'Yes.'
Kajal was annoyed. He had known her for ever. How could he overlook
such details? It wasn't the only thing, though. Time and again, she had
chosen to forgive him, blaming it on the age difference, on the difference in
the kind of lives they led and the kind of people they inherently were. They
were both born into money, but while Varun had grown up to appreciate the
luxuries of life, Kajal still loved her novels, her music and the dirty spice of
street food more.
'Won't you ask how he was? How things went?' she said, trying to incite
him, to elicit a reaction of any sort from him. His calm demeanour, his
uncaring self and absolute lack of possessiveness irritated her. Sometimes,
she wished he would shout at her, scold her and threaten to leave her. Do
something that would make her feel important, loved. Anything that would
make her feel more than a useless piece of furniture you turn to when tired.
A few months back, she had even posted pictures of her with a guy Varun
didn't like, on Facebook. Still no response. Just a shrug and he moved on.'How's he?'
'He is alive. He has tumours and a failing liver.'
'Will he live?'
'I think he will, but he is in real bad shape,' she said and added to
exaggerate, 'Though the doctors aren't very hopeful. They are still to figure
out many symptoms.'
'I hope he gets well soon. He was always a little screwed up,' he said and
sat at a distance. One leg calmly crossed over the other, and he reached for
the remote. 'Want to watch a movie today?'
'Isn't that what we do every day?' she asked, now angry. 'And I just told
you someone is dying and this is your reaction? Let's watch a movie? Do
you even care about what I want?'
Her eyes sized up the guy she had been with for two years. He wasn't the
same guy she had known when she was younger—the older, wiser guy who
could make everything all right with just a few kind words. Their
perspectives were different now, and that had more to do with her
discontentment than the seven-year age difference between them.
'I am not having this fight again today!' he growled, his voice rising.
'WHY NOT? It's not that we meet every day. Half the time, you're out of
town, and when you do have time for me, all you do is get drunk and fuck
Or well, watch a movie.'
'Excuse me—'
'I am tired of this, Varun!'
'Is this because of that guy you saw in the hospital?'
'His name is Dushyant. Do you remember? Dushyant. I dated him before
I dated you.'
'I DO REMEMBER,' he snapped. They were standing right next to each
other. Varun towered over Kajal who was staring right at him. 'The bastard
who hit you and you came crying to me!' he shouted, his hands flailing all
over the place.
'Just because he hit me doesn't make you better, Varun. Day after day, I
wait for you to come back to Delhi so that we can spend a little timetogether. And what do you do? You just call me over. I am done being your
slut—'
'I never said that.'
'But you do treat me like that, Varun,' she argued. 'I wasted so many
years on you. Understanding you, being with you when your meetings
didn't go well, trying to get what you're going through … and what do I
get? The guy I am with still offers me a drink when he knows that I don't
drink!'
'I am sorry—'
'No, I am sorry!' she said, tears flirting with her eyelashes. She got up
and started walking towards the door.
'You can't go—'
'I need some time,' she said and closed the door of his plush apartment
behind her. Deep inside, she knew she was never coming back. By the time
she got into an auto to go back to her college, the tears had dried up. But the
realization of what life had come to struck with full force. She decided she
would go back to the hospital again some day. As the kilometres clocked in
between her and the posh building Varun lived in, she wondered how far
away they were from each other. She had never been the one for him. His
work was his only passion. She was always the mistress.
The voices of her sisters rang in her head as she snuggled into bed that
night. They hated Dushyant as much as they loved Varun. The news of
Dushyant slapping her was hard for them to digest. It's just the start of an
abusive relationship, they had said. And she had believed them. That's how
it all starts, they had insisted.
During the years she had spent with Varun, she had missed the passion,
the madness, her torrid relationship with the guy she knew the best—
Dushyant—and most of all, she missed the way she was when she was with
him.14
Arman Kashyap
The reports were a mess. A million different problems and a zillion possible
reasons behind them. Treat one symptom and it might play havoc with the
other problem. Arman's brain had reduced to slush, concentrating on
Dushyant's case and isolating the primary debilitating cause. There were
too many things tripping over each other in his head. He had been thinking
about Pihu and her progressive condition. But it wasn't just the disease he
was thinking about, and that's what bothered him the most. He was thinking
about her.
He was itching to see her again, to watch her regale him with her silly
stories, see her giggle like a little kid and get excited by the littlest of things.
She was unbelievably alive for someone who was dying. He was thinking
about the promised date but alternately, he was also thinking about adopting
the tiny ball of cuteness.
The clinical trials were not the reason for his sleepless nights, it was her
—the infectious smile, the exuberance, the will to live, the courage and the
undying love for medicine. Being a specialist in ALS cases, Arman knew
what lay ahead of Pihu if the treatment didn't work. Pihu knew it too. Just
like the last time, she would die a slow, excruciating death … The very
thought made him shift uncomfortably in his seat. Worse still, she would die
on the operating table.
He had seen his patients lose the use of their limbs, breathe laboriously,
lie on a bed for days, wallow in self-pity, curse their lives, and die. He
shuddered.
Dushyant's reports were leading him nowhere. A smattering of guilt crept
Every minute he spent thinking about Pihu and her affliction meant aminute of extra suffering for the patient on the other bed. Not that he ever
cared for patients like Dushyant who had a death wish. From steroids to
drugs to other banned narcotics, his body was a noxious cocktail of toxic
chemical compounds. Arman left the room to talk to Dushyant and check if
he had missed something in the preliminary tests. He walked the empty
hallways of the hospital alone. It was three in the night and he could hear
the incessant snoring in the hallways, the creepy crickety sounds of the
crickets and despite these noises, the deathly silence of the hospital. A
handful of people still hung around. The night-duty ward boys, some odd
doctors going through the motions like zombies, the nurses, and a few
grieving relatives sprawled on the benches.
In the past month, he had been to his house just thrice, and that, too,
when he'd run out of his white shirts. He had now resorted to ordering his
shirts online from an e-retailer—White Shirt, Large, Quantity: 5, Cash on
Delivery. It was convenient. Not having to choose what to wear meant a few
hundred hours more to live. What would Dushyant and Pihu not give to
have those extra few hours?
'Still here?' a voice said from behind. It was the Head of Department,
Oncology.
'Had something to do,' Arman answered.
'You always have something to do,' the man said and walked off,
smiling. He would probably go home, gorge on home-cooked rice and dal,
and curl up with his wife and sleep. For Arman though, it was a constant
state of insomnia. His body had adapted to endure long hours without
complaint. A few hours a day of sleep on his couch sufficed. Of late, his
mom had started flooding his inbox with the CVs and pictures of Slim,
Convent-educated, MBA/Engineer/Doctor girls from Good Family
Backgrounds whom he could get married to, but he never opened any. His
family thought pinning him down in wedlock was the only way to slow him
down.
He pushed open the door to the ward. The lights were switched off and
he slowly adjusted himself to the ambient light of the room. He checked the
numbers and the crooked lines on the small monitors. Dushyant was lyingon his side, peacefully for a change. Arman picked up the chart and looked
over the sheet. What bullshit, a voice screamed inside him.
'Hi!' a warm, fuzzy voice greeted him. He turned to see Pihu's half-open,
sleep-battered eyes on him. Her smile made him feel enveloped in a warm
blanket with a hot coffee on a rainy Sunday, the kind of smile that shines on
an office-goer's wife's face after he returns from a long, harrowing day at
work.
'Hi!' Arman responded.
'Did you come to see me?' Pihu asked. Her expectant, doe-like eyes
made him lie.
'Yes,' he said.
'You're even cuter when you lie. I told Venugopal that. He said I was
crazy.'
'Who's Venugopal? Should I be jealous?' Arman played along. He hung
the chart back on Dushyant's bed.
'You could be. He's very good-looking, after all.'
'Better than me? I doubt that. Did I tell you how many girls I dated back
in college? I was pretty popular, you know? I don't think this Venugopal
guy could beat me. So, is he better than me?' Arman grinned playfully.
'No, I lied.'
'You shouldn't lie to a doctor, you know?'
'You shouldn't lie to a patient, you know?'
'I didn't,' Arman argued.
'You did. You're not here for me, are you?' She scrunched her nose in
fake anger.
'What if I am?' Arman asked and sat on Dushyant's bed, facing her. It
wasn't really a lie. Going all the way to Dushyant's room was his
subconscious making a decision to be close to Pihu again.
'I told you it's hard to stay away from me,' she said.
'You never said that.'
'I am saying it now and you better believe it,' she quipped. 'Will he be
okay?' The worry in her eyes bothered him, made him feel responsible.'You seem to be concerned. You picked this room after you met him,
didn't you? Zarah told me.'
'You seem to be concerned about why I picked this room,' she giggled.
'Oh, now I get it! That's why you never liked him—because you thought I
have a thing for him. And you know, I could have a thing for him! He is
quite a badass and badasses are cool. You know he snuck out of the hospital
to have a joint? How ridiculously cool is that?'
Even in the darkness and the inherent depression of the hospital room
harbouring two half-dead people, Pihu's eyes shone bright. Her spirit was
indomitable even when it stared at an inevitable death. But then, what
choice did she have but to fight?
'I never like any of my patients, especially his kind. The kind who ought
to be dead before they reach the hospital.'
'Now you're just being mean! I don't like him that much! You really
don't have to be that possessive about me. Oh my God, I need some space.
Like—really,' she said and jerked her hands around like a spoilt, high
maintenance girlfriend with Gucci shades and razor-sharp five-inch heels.
He laughed at her imitation.
'I was serious though,' he said finally.
'You can't be serious. Isn't that why we took up medicine? To save lives
and to heal people? No one deserves to die,' she reasoned.
'I am not being mean. And I am not saying he deserves to die. I don't like
people throwing their lives away.'
'You're throwing your life away too.'
'I'm not.'
'You work too much. I know you have a responsibility towards the
patients who come here. But you also have a responsibility to take care of
yourself, which you clearly aren't doing.'
'Fine, grandma! And this from a girl who keeps smiling all day just
because she doesn't want to see her family cry? Are you taking care of
yourself?'
'Yes, I am.'
'You're taking care of them, Pihu. You and I, we are not that different.''We are!' she defended.
'Don't lie to me. I just told you that. Don't tell me there aren't times you
want to cry out loud and curse everyone and everything, and throw stuff
around, and break people's heads. Don't tell me that sometimes you don't
want to grab your crying father by his collar and ask him why it is
happening to you and not the guy on the other bed, and that you don't want
to ask your mom to stop sobbing and let you sob instead and throw a
tantrum as well,' he said and fell silent. Pihu didn't say anything and Arman
realized his folly. 'I am sorry,' he said. 'It just kills me to see you lying
there, smiling at everyone, when I know it's crushing you inside.'
'I am smiling at you because I am glad you understand,' she murmured.
Arman took her hand in his and caressed the skin which had been punctured
time and again with needles. 'And yes, I do smile for them. But I smile for
myself too. My memories of them will be gone as I leave; their memories
will stay with them forever. Don't we all smile for the pictures we click
even on the worst picnics? That's all I want to do. I want to smile for their
last pictures of me.'
Arman didn't know what to say to that. 'By the way, I notice your parents
have finally decided to go home?'
'Yeah, I threatened them. They had to,' she answered. Arman chuckled
and she wasn't pleased to see this. 'Why are you laughing?'
'You threatened them?'
'Why? Can't I? I can be very assertive if I want to be.'
'I am sure you can. But just to confirm, you threatened real people? Like
what did you do? Puffed your mouth and refused to breathe? Who would
feel threatened by you?' he barely suppressed a chuckle.
'Whatever,' she grumbled. 'So tell me, why are you here?'
'Didn't you just say it? I found it hard to stay away from you.'
'Oh, c'mon. I know I am cute and whatever but why would you want to
see a dying girl?' she said and added after an excruciating pause, 'I am just
kidding! You are here to see him, right?'
'Yes,' Arman said. 'You want to know what's wrong with him?''That's what I like the most about you. You just know how to turn me
on!' She batted her eyelashes.
'I'm sorry to disappoint you but we are yet to figure out what's wrong. I
could use your opinion.'
'Sorry? That's like multiple orgasms! I can play a real doctor then,' she
said excitedly.
'Here, then,' he said and wrapped his stethoscope around her neck. She
grinned.
He narrated the reports to her, explaining to her every detail of
Dushyant's case. For the next half hour, she shot dozens of questions at him
and he was more than glad to field them. Arman let her put forth her ideas,
and though a lot of them were stupid and inane, he didn't shoot them down
outright. After all, the disparity in experience and education was gigantic,
and for her age and experience she was annoyingly exceptional.
'I hope I am not wasting your time?' she queried after her twentieth idea
on how to treat the guy was shot down, after careful consideration and
deliberation, by Arman.
'No, you're not. It's good to get some external opinion. Anyway, the
doctors around here are not that great!' he said to encourage her. 'And if
you were to apply for a job here you would so get it. Though I do have to
admit we have a strict sleep-with-the-boss policy here.'
She smiled shyly and said, 'I would take up the job just to be applicable
for the policy!'
They laughed till their stomachs felt like they would explode all over the
ceiling. Their conversation went from how to treat Dushyant to their
respective time in medical school. She regaled an amazed Arman with a
multitude of stories from her brief stay in medical school, while a struggling
Arman admitted he had no memories of professors, labs and operation
theatres or the feeling of cutting open his first corpse. As she described her
first incision on her virgin corpse, Arman started to feel as if he was there,
with her, holding her hand and guiding the knife as it moved deftly along
the ribcage. As if he was a part of that memory. He took pictures of her, of
them and of the imaginary corpse.Once finished, Pihu wanted to know more about the patients he had
miraculously treated in his much-talked-about career. 'There are no
miracles, just logic and knowledge,' Arman said pompously.
'Fuck off,' Pihu replied.
He knew he was gifted. He could see beyond the obvious and take radical
decisions that no one else would dare take. People wondered at his
competence and called him a freak and a genius, but he never gave it a
thought and accepted his talents humbly as a gift.
'So aren't you worried about him?' she asked.
'You really like him, don't you?'
'No, I don't. As a matter of fact, he never talks to me nicely. He abuses
me and asks me to mind my own business every time I try to talk to him. I
don't know what his problem is. Maybe he doesn't like me.'
'You're too sweet for your own good,' he said and added, 'Let's teach
him a lesson then? No painkillers for him tomorrow.'
'No, you don't have to be mean! He is too sick anyway.'
'He will not be tomorrow. We will make him undergo a liver biopsy and
see what's killing his liver. The tumours or something else,' he said. 'For
now—no more pain medication. How does that sound as payback?'
'You're not doing that!' she exclaimed even as her lips curved into an
impish smile.
'Watch me.' He winked, got up and pulled the curtain away. He was
about to reach out to the drips but stopped when he noticed Dushyant reach
out to his table for a glass of water. Startled to see Arman appear from
behind the curtain, he panicked and rolled off the bed. With a loud thud, he
fell face-first on the ground. Before Arman could react, Dushyant shrieked
out loud, rolled over and clutched his hand.
'FUCK ME!' he shouted as he clenched his fist and banged it on the
floor. Arman saw him wince in pain and rushed to his side. Dushyant
wouldn't let his hand go, even as Arman bent over to get a better look. He
was sweating now, his face was flushed red, and his whole body was
trembling in pain as he kicked wildly.'LET ME HAVE A LOOK,' Arman said sternly, but Dushyant kept
rolling from side to side, frothing at the mouth.
Overhearing the commotion, Pihu got down from her bed. 'Let him see
it,' she implored and Dushyant let his hand free.
Arman took a cursory look and said, 'I think it's broken.'
'But I didn't FUCK FUCK FUCK fall that hard,' Dushyant said, his face
wet with tears and sweat. 'Arghhhhh. It's hurting!' he shouted.
'Your bones seem to be a mush,' Arman noticed.
'I think I know what it is,' Pihu reasoned and added, 'It's cadmium
poisoning which is killing his liver.'
Even as Dushyant watched Pihu in disgust, Arman's brain cells tingled
and he was stunned. It made perfect sense. She was right. How could I not
see it? Dushyant whined in pain as Arman smiled at Pihu. YES! Pihu
seemed to say with her eyes.
Later that night, Dushyant was scheduled for surgery to get the bone in his
left hand fixed. Arman went over all his reports again. Cadmium poisoning
fitted and all the vital symptoms could be accounted for. His other problems
wouldn't have been so hard on his liver, if acting alone. Finally, after days
of groping in the dark, they had an approach that could get Dushyant better.
It took Arman a long time to get Pihu to sleep. She had beeen smiling
from ear to ear ever since she got the diagnosis right. For the last three
hours, he had been making constant trips to her room to keep a check on
her. A strange feeling of being dependent—even if it was in a small way—
disgusted him a little. But the contentment of seeing her sleep calmly stirred
something much more human in him. With time, he had come to see only
patients, not people, not problems but diseases, not emotions but
weaknesses, and fallible human character. Something had changed in him;
something that reminded him of a life he had left behind.
The operation was to last two and a half hours and the treatment for
cadmium poisoning wouldn't start until the next day. Arman felt like he had
just closed his eyes when someone knocked on his door. It was Zarah. Isn't
she early? He looked at his watch and found that it was already eight. Hehad been sleeping like a baby for four hours, with his legs sprawled on his
table, dreaming of Pihu in a doctor's coat, like a hopeless romantic.
He staggered to his feet and asked Zarah to come in. After excusing
himself for a moment, he trudged to the washroom, washed his face,
brushed and came back. For a change, he picked out a shiny new white shirt
(that he had ordered off the Internet) from the locker room, put it on and
wondered if Pihu would like it. It's a white shirt for heaven's sake! he told
himself. A cup of steaming coffee was waiting for him on his table when he
got back and Zarah was going over Dushyant's file.
'He had a fracture?' Zarah asked, shocked. 'The operation went well?'
'As if you don't know. You went to his room before you came here,
didn't you? And you checked all the charts, too. Clearly, you care about
him,' he smirked.
'How do you—?'
'Leave that. I just know,' he said and sipped his coffee. He knew one
thing for sure and it was that Zarah was an excellent choice as soon as he
took a sip. 'Brilliant coffee, I have to admit that. You're weird, Zarah, and
you know that, but I like your coffee.'
Quite often, Arman had noticed her reluctance to hold men's hands to
pump in medicines and how she tried to keep her distance from male
patients—except Dushyant, of course. There was something eerie about this
girl, but Arman had chosen to ignore it.
'Okay,' she said. Arman knew he had put her a little off balance by his
rare politeness. Zarah shrugged off the anomaly and asked him, 'What
really happened with Dushyant?'
'He fell down, but that didn't break his arm. His bones were soft and
withering away. We tested him for cadmium poisoning and he tested
positive. That's what is eating his liver. We have to treat him for that first
before we can start treating the tumours.'
'That's brilliant!' she exclaimed as she always did whenever Arman
came up with an improbable idea like this. 'Keep me around for the coffee,
but please do keep me around.'
'I didn't come up with it,' he clarified. 'Pihu did.''Pihu? Pihu Malhotra? The patient?'
'Dushyant's ward mate. She was there, too, when it happened. It took her
just a split second to realize what was wrong,' he explained with a hint of
pride in his voice.
'Umm …'
He saw her run out of words and could understand her disbelief. They
sipped on their creamy coffees. Finally, she said. 'What were you doing
there so late in the night?'
Arman didn't answer for a few seconds and then said, 'I was checking up
on Dushyant. And I ask the questions, not you. You make coffee.'
'But—'
'I thought I was pretty clear,' he interrupted to avoid further questions. It
wasn't the discomfort he felt when others prodded him about his personal
life, it was the uneasiness he felt thinking about his dysfunctional
relationship with Pihu. He had been through the same thing before and it
distressed him to think he was going down the same road again. A
relationship with a patient was always a road spiralling downhill.
Zarah smiled and Arman knew she had assumed what there was to
assume on her own. She picked up the files and prepped herself up for the
first round of patient check-ups. Arman tried to avoid her eyes.
'Are you starting to see your patients now?' Zarah asked and chuckled.
'I think I have to, since my patients are coming up with better
explanations for diseases. I don't know why we hire interns and doctors any
more. We should just ask patients to come up with solutions, shouldn't we?'
he smirked. Zarah didn't flinch and the smile was still pasted on her face.
By now, she was used to the condescending taunts. He left his office and
headed to the cafeteria for breakfast. And, more importantly, to avoid
Zarah's piercing questions, and some of his own.
He also needed to see how she was doing.15
Zarah Mirza
Zarah lived fifteen minutes away from the hospital and usually the roads
were deserted by the time she got home. That night was no different. She
was tired, both mentally and physically, after a long day of injections, tests
and complaining patients. She parked her car at her usual place—outside
the apartment complex. After six months of fighting and haranguing with
neighbours and other flat owners for parking space, she realized it just
wasn't worth her time. It was just a car! Parking feuds were common in her
neighbourhood and she felt lucky she wasn't a part of them any more.
She dragged herself up the stairs of her apartment—something she did
regularly to keep herself in shape—and put the key in. She tried it again.
She kept jemmying the keys for the next thirty seconds but the lock didn't
budge. Locked from the inside? Oh no. This can't be happening.
Reluctantly, she rang the bell and waited for the worst. The sound of
approaching footsteps made her belch. She wanted to run away. The door
was flung open. She could feel the vomit in her mouth.
'Hey, beta!' her mom shrieked and then hugged her. The dupatta wrapped
around her nose and mouth indicated that she had been mopping and
cleaning the house.
'You come home so late? Every day?' she asked as Zarah walked inside
the flat, her shoulders drooping, and threw her bag on the shoe rack. The
house was much cleaner, and smelled fresh. She had never been messy—
given her cleanliness-obsessed mom—but her mom still made the house
look a lot cleaner. She wondered what had happened to all the bottles of
alcohol—stacked in neat rows beneath her bed—she had duly collected to
empty them into herself—or herself into them.'There is just so much work,' she said.
'It's not safe at all. And this area is so dangerous. Only yesterday there
were reports of a chain-snatching incident in the neighbourhood. I think you
should get married. At least then we wouldn't have to worry so much about
you.'
'So you would have someone else to worry about me, and not you?' she
snapped.
'You know what I mean.'
Her mom's rants went on and on. She told Zarah about the overage girls
in their family who were having trouble finding a suitable match, and Zarah
chose to ignore her concerns with a brief smile. In the corner of the room,
her dad was watching television and had not noticed that she was in the
room too.
'And the house is so dirty. Doesn't the maid mop the floor? And the
bathroom mirror looks like it has never been cleaned. How much do you
pay her? I will talk to her when she comes tomorrow. Why don't you say
anything to her? And you leave hundred-rupee notes lying everywhere. I
am sure the maid flicks a lot of them. She will take all your money and run
away some day!'
'I am busy, Mom. I don't have three hours to look over what the maid is
up to,' she argued and lay back flat on the drawing room sofa.
Her dad noticed her. 'Oh, you are here? When did you come? Your mom
has been cleaning the house. I asked her not to, but you know your mom.'
And I know you. 'Yes,' she said, met his eyes and looked away. Her mom
rolled her eyes. She had always wondered what Zarah's father had done
wrong. He was a good man, a good Muslim, but his relationship with Zarah
had been strained for as long as she could remember. That one summer long
ago, things had been quite all right … great, even. And over the course of
one day, they had become as bad as they could have been. She had waited
for it's to sort out on their own, assuming every father–daughter duo goes
through such a phase, but things never looked up.
'I will go and change,' she said and went to her room. She closed the
door behind her and bolted it. Michel de Montaigne once said—'Nothingfixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.' She knew
this better than anyone else.
If only she could snuggle into her bed and stay there till her parents left
the house, the building, the apartment and were far far far far away. She
wished she could do that. After splashing some water on her face, she sat
down with her newly bought and inexplicably expensive MacBook Pro,
which she hardly had the time to use. She logged on to Facebook and
scrolled down her newsfeed mindlessly. Some friends were getting married.
Others were on vacation. A few had pictures in short dresses, partying in
glitzy clubs with rich-looking, fat boyfriends.
On the other hand, her life had a sense of overbearing inertia … slow and
moving at a dreary, constant pace. But she was sure no one else looked at
her life like that. After all, she was the lucky one who was interning at a
renowned hospital known for its unparalleled research facilities and labs
wielding the most cutting-edge technology. She was the one who had got a
chance to work with one of the best doctors one could have asked for. A
few years in the US and her success would be a coffee-table conversation
topic amongst her peers for years to come. Disappointed, she switched off
the laptop and cursed her wretched life. She desperately wanted a smoke,
but her mom was persistently banging on her door. She thought of Dushyant
and how he had managed to shed his family and move ahead.
After changing into her night clothes, she joined her mom in the kitchen
and helped her out a little. Her mom had managed quite a spread in the little
time she had. Dal makhani, paneer kofta, butter chicken, boondi ka raita—
the only things that made her want to go back home and stay with her. They
sat on the table and she tried hard not to meet her father's searching gaze.
She hoped it would be over soon. For her, the incident that had scarred her
for life was her father's fault and she had accepted it as God's honest truth.
'How's the doctor you are working under? I heard he is pretty good,' her
dad said.
'Yes, he is.'
'Tell your dad more about him,' her mom nudged to encourage
conversation between the two. She had been the silent sufferer all theseyears.
'There is nothing more to it. He is a great doctor and a brilliant teacher.'
There was silence again. Her mom tried to bring up topics like when she
planned to get married, and whether she was in love with someone, and she
shot everything down with disdain. Her parents had stunned expressions on
their faces, wondering what they had done wrong to deserve such hostile
treatment from their daughter. What do they know? She, on the other hand,
felt nauseated sitting next to her father. After dinner, her father opened up a
bottle of whisky he had got and invited Zarah to join him. She refused, even
though she really wanted that drink.
It took her three hours and two potent joints to fall asleep. Stoned, she
even dialled Dushyant's number, but couldn't get through. The network in
the hospital had always been suspect. Her eyes were sore and the pillow
was wet by the time her eyelids swept down. She wished her dad had
understood her when she really wanted it … No, needed it. At times, she
wondered if he still remembered that day when she had mentioned the
incident to him. Did he really not know that their discord had stemmed
from the moment when he had not believed his own daughter? Was he such
a coward that he couldn't stand up to his seniors?
Every time she thought about forgiving her father, horrifying images of a
young Zarah dragging herself through the washroom, blood trickling down
her thighs, crying soundlessly, waiting for her hero—her father—to save
her flooded her mind. If her dad had not been there to support her through
that then, she certainly didn't need him now.16
Pihu Malhotra
Pihu's condition had started to worsen. The first signs of the relapse of ALS
were beginning to show in her body. The nerve conduction tests showed
that there was a significant loss of sensation in her legs. That morning, she
had bumped into the door when she had gone to the bathroom. Her hands
were starting to betray her again. She had started to drop things and had
become clumsier. The horror of being an ALS patient was back. The loss of
sensation and control didn't bother her as much as it bothered Arman, who
was the first to go through the reports.
'Maa, I will be okay,' she reassured her mother who was inconsolable on
seeing her daughter struggle to do the simplest things again. The disease
was back and it was worse than ever.
'No, you won't be. It's our fault,' she said. 'We must have done
something wrong,' and she burst into tears. Her dad stood over her mom's
shoulder and smiled at his daughter. That's the only thing he did. Someone
had to be strong, hold the pieces of their lives together and remind them that
there was still hope, that all was not lost. Yet. It was a little unfair to expect
it from Pihu.
'When is he scheduling the treatment?' her dad asked.
'Soon,' she said.
They had discussed the treatment before. It was illegal and highly
dangerous but Pihu saw it as a win-win. It was no secret that there were just
two possible outcomes of the radical stem cell treatment. Either die a quick,
painless death or be cured. It made perfect sense for her. Having seen
herself rot and almost die, she knew what it took for her to plod through
that time. Behind the smile and the emotional strength she portrayed, insideshe was still a little girl scared to death. Either the disease would kill her or
the treatment—she preferred the latter.
Her sobbing mom excused herself for a bit and her dad sat near her.
'Do you think we should do this, beta?'
'Dad, it's our only option. And Dr Arman is a brilliant doctor. He is
putting himself on the line to try this out. I am sure he has something in
mind,' she assured him.
'But what if—'
'Don't worry. I am in good hands,' she said and her dad snickered like a
child.
'What?'
'You know what I think about sometimes?' her dad said. She looked at
him and encouraged him to continue. 'Every time that Arman comes in to
check on you, I think what if you two were to be together. As in, be
married. You know. I know it's stupid but I can't help it. All the jewellery
your mother bought for you … and her … her … dreams …' His voice
trailed off.
'Aw. That's sweet, Dad. But isn't he a little too old for me? And you
forget—he is trying to kill me with his scientific experiment. You wouldn't
want your daughter in the hands of a guy who uses girls as his guinea pigs.'
'That's funny,' he said. 'By the way, I have something planned for you. I
really hope you like it.'
'For me? A birthday gift? I am not dying in fifteen days, Dad,' she said
and wondered if it was a possibility. Her birthday was in thirteen days and
she wondered if she would see another one after this. She had never really
been a birthday person, but every year her parents put together a family
only birthday party with a butterscotch cake, trick candles, heart-shaped
balloons and birthday hats to top it off! Oh well, maybe she had always
been a birthday person because she loved these parties, and pitied other
friends who spent theirs in clubs, decked up in newly bought shiny dresses
and claiming to have brought the house down.
'I know you're not going anywhere,' her dad responded. The smile had
vanished for a bit but now it returned. 'It's just something I wanted to do foryou.'
She listened closely, waiting for her father to give more away.
'I will tell you more about it later. I think you should go sleep now before
my son-in-law comes in!' her dad joked.
'Yeah, he can be a pain in the butt,' she smirked and closed her eyes. Her
mind started to concoct images of her getting married to Arman in a huge
marriage banquet hall with all her friends and relatives lit up like Diwali in
their sequined saris, mixer-juicers and enveloped money in hand. In a red
and-gold saree, she thought she looked resplendent while Arman looked his
dapper self in a white bandgala, tailored with golden thread. She wished.
Oh, how she wished! With dreams of a lovely, romantic honeymoon in the
bluish-green waters of Malé, which she remembered from the holiday
package pamphlets, she went to sleep. For the first time, she fantasized
about kissing a boy and clutched her pillow tighter.
When she got up a few hours later, she saw her father pacing in the room
excitedly. The surprise?
'What's wrong?' she asked groggily.
'Nothing, nothing,' he answered and smiled broadly. On the next bed,
Dushyant, who had been heavily sedated since he broke his arm, was
grunting in his half-asleep state. She couldn't wait to tell Dushyant it was
she who had found out about his cadmium poisoning. After all, it was her
first diagnosis. After her own, of course.
Just as her father sat down, tired, the door of the ward opened and ten
familiar faces with big smiles came in, and crowded the tiny room. They
shouted Pihu's name in unison and hurrayed. Seeing her friends from the
medical college again opened the floodgates of the happiness hormone in
her and she felt her heart would pump out of her chest. She hugged them
one after the other, Venugopal being the last one. He had the biggest smile,
and the most crushing grief behind the misleading eyes. They had not come
empty-handed. Similar rectangular boxes wrapped in yellow Pikachu
wrapping paper. Some of them carried helium-filled balloons which were
now kissing the ceiling and she wondered when they would come downagain. Would it be when she was sleeping and would it scare the shit out of
her?
All of them sat around her bed and asked her if she was doing okay. She
pulled out one of her 'I am going to be dead' jokes and everyone laughed
out loud. They told her how proud they were and how strong she was. A
couple of girls broke down.
'Who's he?' a girl asked about Dushyant lying on the next bed. 'He's hot,
isn't he?' the girl winked at her.
'He has AIDS, so you should probably leave him alone,' she said.
'You are kidding me, right?' the girl said, duly horrified.
'Obviously. He is a poisoning case. Though he is really rude and we
don't talk,' she said and smiled. The girl's eyes were still on Dushyant. 'It's
so sweet of all of you guys to come here. I am so happy! Can I open these?
Please?' She flitted like a small child amongst all the boxes, touching them,
guessing what they were. She knew. It was one of those things when you
know what the gift is but you don't want to believe it till the time you
unwrap it, just to prevent disappointment.
Everyone looked at her and smiled. Her dad, standing in the corner,
radiated happiness and her mother was choked with tears. She ripped open
the presents one by one. They were books. Big books. Mean and thick.
Books on medicines. Holy shit.
'What is this?' she said, her eyes a barge of tears, threatening to flood.
Her classmates were bewildered. They knew she would love them, but
her smashing, teared-up smile exceeded their expectations. Venugopal said,
'We all know what you want the most. You're a freak. A junkie. So we are
giving you what you want. That is the whole course for the next two years.
And some old notes from a few seniors. Potent stuff.'
After taking time to compose herself, feeling like all the happiness in the
world was concentrated in that tiny moment, like a hundred Christmases
coming together on one single day, she said, 'I have to say I am a little
disappointed. I thought you guys knew me better. I have already read half
these books, you know?' Their shoulders drooped, defeated. 'Obviously, I
am joking! This is the best I could have ever asked for! You have no ideawhat it means to me. If you think you do, I feel about a millionfold better
than that!' she shouted and everyone laughed. The two girls who had cried
hugged her and cried a bit more. 'Though I wasn't joking completely. I
have finished a bit of it.'
There was a fresh round of banter, after which the room slowly
transformed into a college hostel room after the last exam for which no one
had studied, everyone thankful that it was over. Pihu's parents left. Soon,
the room was what teachers in school describe as a fish market! They
shouted, joked, laughed, cursed and fell all over each other. Pihu saw
Dushyant grumble and mumble irritably in his sleep, but no one was in any
mood to mellow down. They started to discuss their various professors,
their quirks, the dissections, other medical-college stuff and uninteresting
college gossip about who got caught making out and who was cheating on
whom. In the middle of the conversation, she would close her eyes for a
split second and imagine herself amongst frozen corpses, driving a knife
through them, studying their slimy insides and taking elaborate notes. In
those moments, she felt like she had lived a lifetime. Venugopal ordered
pizzas, stuffed with molten cheese of three delightful kinds, for all of them
and they ate like hungry cavemen. Pihu could really get people to talk and
people loved talking to her. Except the guy on the other bed.
'Can you guys just KEEP IT DOWN? FOR FUCKING HEAVEN'S
SAKE!' Dushyant shouted from the other side.
'What the hell—?' Venugopal replied.
'If you don't fucking leave this ward this very moment, I am going to
kick you out. All of you,' Dushyant warned.
'Try it,' one of them snapped.
'Yeah, fuck you,' added one of the girls who had cried earlier.
Dushyant had blood in his eyes, like when those invisible veins in your
eyes fill up and make their presence felt. 'Fuck you,' he sneered and ripped
out the tubes from his hands. His forehead popped a vein as a stunned Pihu
watched in horror. Before she could react, Dushyant had jumped at
Venugopal and hit him with a left hook that landed squarely on his chin.
Venugopal lay on the floor in evident agony. He moved swiftly to the nextguy, filtering out the girls and charged with an open hand. It landed on the
other guy's head and he tumbled to the ground.
'Anyone else?' he yelled as he stood there, breathing heavily.
'Such a dick,' a girl finally murmured as everyone looked at him, dazed.
As soon as he had hit Venugopal, Pihu had pushed the emergency button
and two ward boys came barging into the room now. Along with them came
Arman who was in the vicinity and had followed the ward boys inside. The
ward boys instinctively grabbed at Dushyant, who hit them and they went
crashing against the door. The other boys helped up Pihu's friends who
were sprawled across the floor, still overcome with fear and shock. Finally,
after smashing the two ward boys to a pulp, Dushyant let them go and
slumped on his bed. Arman, like the others, was too shocked to react.
'What on earth is happening here?' Arman grumbled as he looked at
Dushyant and demanded an explanation. His fists were clenched and Pihu
could tell he was restraining himself from boxing Dushyant's face in.
'They were fucking with me. I gave it back to them in equal measure,'
Dushyant replied, with fire in his eyes.
'Take this bastard away and put him in the pathology test section,'
Arman ordered the three ward boys who were still reasonably scared of
Dushyant. They grabbed his wrists. 'I will deal with him later.'
'I will go on my own,' Dushyant snapped and broke free. 'Assholes. All
of you.' He turned his back and headed to the door.
'Hey, you, smart-ass,' Arman called out. 'The girl who you are calling an
asshole saved your worthless life. Cadmium poisoning. No one else got it,
she did. I wish she hadn't and you had died on this bed.' Dushyant looked
back, surprised. The excruciating pain from his fall that day had numbed his
brain—the fact that it was Pihu who had finally diagnosed him had not
registered in his mind. Arman added, 'Yeah, now fuck off before I throw
you out of here.'
Dushyant left the room without a single word. Pihu blushed as everyone
looked at her in amazement.
'Yes, she did,' Arman proclaimed. 'She is better than a few doctors here,
I am sure.''He is just sweet to a dying girl,' Pihu purred.
'Can you stop with that? Dying girl and bullshit like that. No one is dying
here,' Venugopal added.
'YES,' the others joined in.
'Oh, by the way, I am Dr Arman Kashyap,' Arman said and waved.
There were appreciative smiles all around as most of them had heard of
him somewhere or the other. For those who hadn't, Pihu had told them in
the last hour about the hot doctor in the hospital.
'Pihu thinks you're cute,' one of the girls chuckled. The girl who had
cried.
Arman smiled at her and responded, 'I think she is quite stunning too.
Isn't she?'
No one replied, though the girls stared at him with unwavering eyes and
batted their eyelashes. Pihu wasn't really at ease seeing the other girls stare
at him and flash their best smiles. He was all hers, she was the one who was
dying, she deserved the searing-hot doctor who saved lives for a living. Oh
wait, what, did he just call her stunning?
'I think I should take your leave now,' Arman said and picked up one of
the books lying on her bed. 'You're feeding an addiction, I hope you know
that.'
'An addiction that you have too, don't you?' Pihu replied.
'But you should be resting and not reading medical—'
'And you shouldn't be? When was the last time you slept?'
'I don't need sleep. I am too busy helping your kind,' he argued.
'And that's not addiction?'
'You should sleep,' he said and put the book back down. 'I will check on
you later. Goodbye, guys. And really, if anything, you should have got her
jewellery or something. Not that she needs anything to look prettier.'
He turned and left the room. For the past few seconds, it was as if no one
else existed. Slowly, conversation returned to the room and the topic
hovered around the charismatic doctor who clearly had a thing for Pihu.
'I think he is into you,' one of the girls said.
'He is a doctor, he is supposed to be nice to everyone!' Pihu retorted.'Oh, c'mon. Did you see the way he looked at you? He is clearly into
you. It was as if we didn't exist!' another girl added, disappointedly.
'Whatever.' Pihu shrugged and they moved on to other areas of
discussion, even though she couldn't really think about anything else but
him. Pretty. Stunning. All in the same conversation. It really did feel like
her birthday after all.
They left after a little while. Everyone wished her luck, some for life, and
others for her non-existent relationship with her doctor, Arman. They had
come scared, thinking they would find a girl devoid of hope, but what they
had found was a girl throbbing with more life than all of them combined.
Venugopal hugged her the longest and told her that he had started to date. It
was the girl who had cried. Pihu nodded approvingly.
Alone in the room, she started to daydream again. This time Arman was
the visiting professor and she was the bubbly, enthusiastic student in the
front row who would do anything to get a good grade. Anything. She
blushed in her sleep as she fantasized about kissing him in the staffroom.
Slowly, she drifted off before things got nastier.
It was late evening when she woke up to an empty room. She hadn't slept
that well with all the books around her distracting her, begging for
undivided attention. Throughout her sleep, she had been tossing and
turning, thinking about the time she would wake up and write her name in
blue ink on each of the books she had been given. She really wanted to use
the fountain pen Venugopal had gifted her too. And she was pleasantly
surprised that Venugopal had started dating a real girl (after a slew of
imaginary ones), a Punjabi at that, and imagined the girl who had cried
today laughing at Venugopal's terrible Hindi. She missed him, and she
missed her college. At times, she really missed the physical part of studying
medicine—cutting open a dead body and seeing what lay inside. Rotten
lungs, shrunken pancreases, wasted livers—these were things that really got
her skin to tingle and her face to light up. She got up and walked
awkwardly to the bathroom, her feet and hands not really strong enough to
support her, and washed her face. Her body might be giving up, but herspirit wasn't. Plus, Arman had just called her stunning. She had every
reason to be the happiest she had ever been. The warm, fuzzy feeling still
tickled her and the shy grin refused to wash off her face.
Once back in the room, she picked up a few of the books from the pile
and dumped them on her bed. With the fountain pen she wrote 'Pihu
Malhotra, 2nd year, MBBS' on each one of the books. Once that was done,
she picked up a book on cancer and flipped through the pages. It had
numerous coloured pictures interspersed with millions of bits of text. She
flipped to a random chapter and started reading through it. There would be
no exams and this only heightened her pleasure of studying medicine.
She was on the fifth page when the door opened and she saw Dushyant
walk in. He headed directly to his bed and clambered up. Two ward boys in
white overalls walked in beside him and hooked him up to all the syringes,
needles and drips.
Despite what happened earlier that morning, she didn't feel any hatred
for him. In all of her nineteen years, she had never felt that emotion for
anybody. Though she did have a good laugh when a furious Venugopal had
said, 'Had he not been sick, I would have taken him down.' Pihu knew he
would do no such thing. Venugopal was a nice guy. Dushyant, on the other
hand, was battle hungry and war scarred. If anything, she felt sorry for him,
for his anger, his lack of friends and his affliction. He could fight though,
and girls love that in a man. Pihu was no different. Tense arms, anger in his
eyes, pumped chest. All he was missing was a kind heart.17
Dushyant Roy
Dushyant winced in pain as a syringe plunged into his vein and a
transparent liquid was pumped into his bloodstream. His eyes were stuck to
the bed next to him—empty. Zarah overlooked the administering of the
medicine and the subsequent blood draw.
'You look distracted,' Zarah noticed.
Dushyant looked away from Pihu's bed and replied, 'Not really. You
didn't come in the morning. Why?'
'My parents are living with me. They wanted me to spend some time
with them. So I took the day off,' she said and rolled her eyes.
'You look sad.'
'I can't stay at home any longer,' she said. 'It's okay when I go to their
place … I mean where I used to live, but not when they come over.'
'I can understand.'
'I don't think you can,' she fussed.
'Why don't you make me?' he asked. 'Is it done?' he asked the nurse
who was constantly plunging needles into him. The nurse nodded and took
her leave.
'You look tolerable today. What's the matter?' she queried with a smirk.
'What do you mean?'
'Usually, it's hard for people to stay around you. You're aggressive and
unnecessarily rude, and don't tell me you don't know that.'
'I am not—'
'Oh, please, you are,' she cut him off.
'Whatever. By the way, why didn't you tell me that she diagnosed my
illness? Did she really?' he asked. 'Or was Arman just blabbering?''First, Arman never blabbers. And she did. She got it within minutes of
you breaking your bone. Arman was impressed and he never gets impressed
either,' she clarified.
'Fuck,' he grumbled.
'What happened?'
'I think she had her birthday or something. There were a few friends of
hers who came here this morning and were making a shitload of noise …
and …'
'And?'
'I might have hit a few of them,' he murmured.
'You WHAT?' she exclaimed.
'You know, I was irritated. I asked them to shut up and they didn't. I
punched a guy and hit another one,' he shamefully admitted.
'Are you crazy, Dushyant? What did Arman do?'
'I think he wanted to hit me but he didn't. He shifted me to a different
room for a bit and then I was shifted back last evening. I feel so crappy
now. Why did that girl have to diagnose me? It's so irritating,' he growled.
'Why? Because if she hadn't, we would have killed you by now. We were
treating you for the wrong disease. You should be thankful to her,' she said.
'I think I should. She is a sweet girl after all. Why did she have to choose
this room? So annoying,' he squeaked and lay his head back. If he could
have made himself disappear for a bit, he would have done that. Dushyant
had done a million things he wasn't proud of, but he was never sorry about
But in those moments, he was. He looked over to Pihu's bed and wanted
to thank her. It really didn't matter to him whether he lived or died; he was
usually terrified of waking up the next morning and dragging himself
through another day. But he felt a little odd about having thrashed the
friends of the girl who had saved him.
'I think I need a smoke,' he croaked.
'Are you sure?' she asked and sat on his bed.
'Yes,' he asserted. 'And I need to thank her. What's her name again?'
'Pihu. Don't tell me you don't know!' she squeaked.
'I mean … I did, I just forgot. Can we go?'Zarah unscrewed the drips and helped him down his bed. On their way
out, Zarah picked up Pihu's chart hanging on the entrance of the room and
said, 'Her birthday isn't until two weeks from now. I think you should get
her something.'
'You think I will still be here after two weeks?' he asked, his voice
reeking of nervousness.
'There are tumours in every place we see, Dushyant. You're lucky to be
alive. I think you will be here for a really long time,' she said.
'I really need that smoke.'
Both of them left the room and walked through the corridor wordlessly
and rode the elevator to the sixth floor and then went to the balcony. Zarah
had a few joints—perfectly rolled—in her handbag and Dushyant was
pleasantly surprised, if not downright impressed.
'That's good,' he said after inspecting the joint carefully between his
fingers.
'What? You think I can't roll a joint?' she asked.
'You don't look the type. But anyway, you don't look the type who
would risk the life of a patient, too, by unhooking the meds and getting him
high,' he chuckled.
'I am not risking your life. It's to soothe your pain. This is medicinal
marijuana! It's totally legal,' she claimed.
'It would be legal if you weren't stealing it, which is quite obviously the
case here. And I don't think they give it you so that you can pull a patient
out of his bed and make him smoke it,' he said and took a long drag. The
smoke scraped his foodpipe on the way down and dulled his senses.
'Whatever.'
'Okay, fine. I agree this soothes my pain. And it's incredibly strong,' he
noticed. 'But what pain are you soothing?' He passed the joint to her.
'Nothing.' She shrugged.
'C'mon. You can tell me. I am almost a dead man. Your secrets are going
nowhere,' he pressed. 'I am sure you can trust me. A few more days and
you won't even see me any more. And if you think I am not worth your
trust, you can kill me in my sleep.''No, junk it. It's personal,' she sneered.
'I was just trying to help.'
'I know. It's just that I haven't really shared it with anyone. I don't think
it makes sense sharing it with you. I don't even know you,' she said, her
eyes now glassy and distant. Dushyant knew she was vulnerable and she
would spill it out and tell him everything; he just needed to push her over
the edge.
'You can. I was reading a book on war soldiers. Experiencing the horrors
of war over and over again makes it easier to tolerate the pain. Sharing with
me might help,' he pestered.
'I don't know—'
'You know you want to,' he interrupted.
Zarah hesitated and looked away from Dushyant's inquisitive and
piercing gaze. Dushyant wondered what she was hiding behind her glassy
eyes and guarded exterior.
'I was raped,' she squeaked and a lone tear streaked down her cheek.
Dushyant stood there, doubting what he had just heard. It reverberated in
the space near him and he couldn't bring himself to believe what he thought
she had said. She has got to be kidding … The silence confirmed the
matter's seriousness. His throat dried up and he struggled to say something.
What? Why? Who? When? What did you do? Nothing but a silent sigh
escaped his lips as he stared at her, as if he had seen a ghost.
Zarah said, 'My father works in the army. During one of the many army
parties, two of his drunken seniors raped me near the washroom. I was
fourteen.' All of a sudden, the tears in Zarah's eyes vanished and the glum
expression on her face was replaced by a calm, practised, nonchalant look.
'Then what happened?' Dushyant inquired as soon as he got his voice
back.
'Then, nothing happened,' Zarah said with an air of finality to end the
discussion.
'What nothing? Didn't you tell anyone? Your parents? Your mom? Dad?'
he questioned.Zarah gazed wordlessly at the glittering lights of the city while Dushyant
waited for her answers. It felt like he had been violated, not her, and his
fists clenched in anger. He stepped closer to her, Zarah's hair brushing
against his face. A part of him wanted to turn her around and envelop her in
his arms but he didn't know how she would respond.
'You can tell me,' Dushyant pressed again.
'I tried telling my father …' Her voice trailed away.
'What did he say? Didn't he do anything?' Dushyant almost bellowed,
the Anger Vein in his forehead now far more prominent.
'He didn't believe me.'
'He didn't believe you? That you got raped? Why the fuck? How can that
be?' Dushyant clutched her hand and jerked her around, almost as if it was
not Zarah in front of him, but the men who had raped her. 'There are tests,
aren't there?'
'I didn't tell him I was raped. I told him I was manhandled … Molested.'
'Why? Umm … but still …' Dushyant struggled with his words. He
grappled in the dark to come up with an explanation as to why her father
didn't believe her and why she had to lie. He also wondered if Kajal had
told anybody what had happened that night.
'He refused to believe me and said I was imagining things,' Zarah said,
her voice steeled now. 'I didn't know what to tell him.'
'And you have not talked about it to anyone?' Dushyant still pressed on,
looking for answers, trying to make sense out of this ridiculous atrocity.
'You're the first person I have told this to,' she confessed.
Why? Dushyant felt burdened by the truth. All of a sudden, he felt
accountable for what had happened to Zarah fifteen years ago. He started to
imagin