by Durjoy Datta
‘Do you blame yourself?’ asks Avanti.
‘For?’
‘For what happened to Mom? Do you still blame yourself for that?’
‘I used to.’
‘Till when?’
‘Till very recently,’ says her father. ‘Till the time you came to live with me.’
‘Why?’
Her father pauses, and she feels her chest rise and fall against her face.
‘I always thought you and your grandmother still blamed me for what happened. I . . . I had struggled for years not knowing how to ask for forgiveness and then I thought it was too late,’ he says. ‘I had lost you by then.’
‘You haven’t lost me.’
‘. . .’
‘. . .’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
And at a distance they see her grandmother walking towards them. Avanti’s father gets up and helps her to a bench.
‘Nanu, you’re out of breath,’ says Avanti. ‘You could have just asked for a wheelchair.’
‘A little exercise never hurt anyone and wheelchairs are for old people,’ says her grandmother, trying to catch her breath.
‘Okay,’ says Avanti.
‘What were you two talking about?’ asks the grandmother.
‘I was just telling Dad that I have forgiven him, and that I love him.’
Avanti’s father’s face reddens, his eyes tear up and he looks at Avanti who just crunches her nose and smiles.
‘Is there something you want to tell him too?’ asks Avanti.
‘What is there for me to tell you?’ Avanti’s grandmother looks directly at Rajiv. She has always been supportive of her son-in-law, like she knew what he’s like and has always accepted him as is. Like she always knew that Avanti’s father wouldn’t be able to take the death of her wife, like he wouldn’t be able to raise a child or come out of the guilt that his wife would still be alive if he had not messed up. Nani looks at Avanti’s father and says, ‘There’s nothing to tell you. Except that Avanti’s mother loved you and she told me she loved you and it was her fault, too. She should have never left you for she knew, too, how you were.’
Tears streak down his cheek and he hugs Avanti tighter as if to make up for the lost years. Avanti’s grandmother closes her eyes and sits back against the back of the chair like she has not just said something that has changed Avanti’s father’s life forever.
Twenty-Seven
It’s been 149 days.
The doctors have given up. No one says this but they have accepted that there will be a day when everyone will rush to Devrat’s room and find him dead. Just like that. He will be gone. Avanti’s puppy will be dead and gone. Never will she hear him talk again. Devrat’s parents have made peace with it, but not Avanti.
She doesn’t believe Devrat could leave like this. She staunchly believes he will be back.
When the doctors tell her that Devrat can’t hear anything, he can’t feel anything, and that his brain, too, is sleeping, she nods her head. But she refuses to believe that. She knows Devrat is listening to everything intently, she knows he misses her, that Devrat is just waiting for his body to respond and, when it will, he will hug Avanti and never leave her.
‘I don’t believe what the doctors say,’ Avanti tells Devrat. It’s dead in the night and Devrat’s mother is sleeping nearby. ‘They all try to tell me that you are gone for good and that you will never be back. But I don’t believe anything that they say. You’re my puppy, no?’ she says and runs her hand over Devrat’s emaciated face. She starts to cry a little. Devrat’s mother stirs in her sleep. ‘How can you die? You’re like a six-year-old. I just saw your first performance video. So cute. Baby, please don’t die. Please don’t. I know you’re listening. I’m so sure of that, but I’m on my knees and I’m begging you, please don’t die.’ Avanti’s on the ground, his hand in hers, and she’s crying. ‘I love you. I love you.’ And like many other days, she cries herself to sleep on the ground.
But there are days when she’s inclined to believe what the doctors tell her. There are days when she loses it and shouts at Devrat, throws things around in his room, cries and howls and breaks things. There are nights when Devrat’s parents and Avanti’s father have to restrain her and calm her down. There are times that she thinks she has lost it. There are times she wishes she can open the window of Devrat’s room and jump down and end it all . . . but hope stops her.
Today, she’s sitting in Devrat’s room reading one of his books. Besides comics, Devrat was also into books but they never discussed it, and suddenly, Avanti feels like catching up on her reading. She has been reading Roald Dahl and Ruskin Bond. She’s now reading Devrat’s favourite young adult authors. She has tried reading the heavier, literary stuff once in a while, but most of them are too slow for her taste.
And when she reads, she can’t help but write a little herself. She writes long letters to Devrat which she sometimes reads out to Devrat, and sometimes, just keeps it to herself.
Avanti’s writing again, but this time she’s writing about other people. Because she figured writing about her wait for Devrat to wake up wouldn’t be exciting enough. It’s their seventeenth-month anniversary, out of which Avanti and Devrat have spent five months in the hospital.
The dullness, the pain have subsided now. Even Devrat’s parents go back to the tiny one-room apartment they have rented close to the hospital. Devrat’s father has taken a transfer to Mumbai and doesn’t miss office even a single day, in fact works overtime, because the medical bills are mounting and have already eaten through a lot of their savings. Avanti’s father has shifted to Mumbai as well. Avanti’s flat is slightly bigger than theirs. Her father now teaches in a private university in Mumbai and her grandmother has been staying with them for the last few weeks.
But Avanti doesn’t write about these things. She doesn’t want him to feel worse knowing that all these people have uprooted their lives to stay in the city he is trapped in. Moreover, she thinks he knows, she thinks he is listening to everything while he’s lying there, motionless. The last five months have prepared Avanti for the worst. Now she doesn’t imagine miraculous scenarios wherein the doctor would come running and tell them that Devrat is awake. She knows that one day, just like today, the doctor will come and tell them that Devrat passed away in his sleep, and they will be happy for Devrat that he didn’t have to go in pain. They will cry, but not as much, for they have been mourning for the last six months. Their hopes are already crushed.
There have been days that Avanti thinks she is losing her sanity, though the psychiatrist she’s seeing in the hospital thinks otherwise. She’s Dr Bhatt’s only patient who pays in lunch. Dr Bhatt and Avanti meet every day during lunch hours and Avanti pays for lunch in return for Dr Bhatt’s observations.
‘You’re my most difficult patient,’ says Dr Bhatt.
‘I know. I’m incurable.’
‘No. It’s because you know what’s wrong with you,’ says Dr Bhatt and leaves his plate in the sink. ‘I need to get back to patients who actually pay.’
Avanti doesn’t write about this either. When she reads out the letter tonight, she wants it to sound positive and uplifting. She doesn’t want to make him feel bad with the depressing details of her stay, so instead she starts to write the names and genders of all the babies born in the labour ward. She, alone, has suggested and coaxed and managed to convince at least five couples in the past six months to name their baby Devrat. And interestingly enough, whenever she sees a happy parent call their newborn Devrat, she starts to see similarities between the kid and Devrat; the same naughty smile, the wonder in the eyes, and the restlessness. For those few moments, her puppy is alive again, in that restless, crying, lost newborn.
So she writes about that.
She doesn’t write about the feeling that she thinks she’s slowly goin
g cuckoo, that she’s slowly losing it, and what everyone around her says is slowly coming true. It’s been six months since she has stepped out of the hospital and now she’s scared to do that. ‘Devrat, I’m scared,’ she would tell Devrat sometimes in the middle of the night. ‘What if I have to leave the hospital tomorrow? What am I going to do?’ And there would be no answer and she would go back to sleep.
She doesn’t want to go out anymore, not for Devrat, but for herself. And it’s not just about Devrat anymore, it’s about every ward boy, every nurse, every doctor in the hospital. It’s like she’s the part of the walls now. And people like her here. They know her story. She’s loved here. She’s the kid of the hospital and everyone loves spending time with her. She doesn’t know what she would do out there.
Old doctors treat her like their own daughter and she spends hours talking to them about their old college days. The younger doctors first see her as a slightly maniacal girlfriend who’s steadfastly waiting for her boyfriend to wake up, then as a friend and someone they can share everything with, and finally, as someone who makes their relationship troubles look petty.
‘So how long have you been here?’ asks a medical intern. She has been here for three days now as the part of the group of six new interns that the hospital has hired, and like everyone new, Avanti has been the one making them feel at home. The girl is twenty-two, older than Avanti, but Avanti feels like she has aged years in the past few months.
‘We complete six months today. It’s like a long date where I’m the only one talking,’ says Avanti.
‘And you haven’t left the hospital in all these months? Like not even once?’ asks another intern. The boy’s from Jaipur and is a slightly shy guy. Avanti’s the only one he really talks to. Only yesterday, he told Avanti how jittery he is to be dealing with patients alone and Avanti had calmed him down.
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Don’t you miss the outside world?’ asks another intern.
‘Not really. I have everything here. I feel more alive here than I would outside. People say hospitals are depressing, but then truth often is.’
‘Truth?’
‘No one lies in a hospital. There’s only truth, hope, happiness and death. I experience all four of them here every day. I have seen the pain in the couple whose child was stillborn and I have seen the happiness in the eyes of parents whose eight-year-old kid just received a new heart.’
No one says anything.
Avanti chuckles. ‘I know, I know. These sound like the words of a godman who is probably a child molester too, but sitting here all day, talking to everyone, mostly old people, you tend to pick up what they think. So sometimes I go all primal on the philosophy part of it.’
‘Are we guys done here?’ says a voice from behind. It’s Dr Anamika Mishra. In her mid-forties, recently divorced, she’d cried on Avanti’s shoulders for days after the divorce papers went through.
‘I was just telling them that they are lucky to have you as a mentor. Also, I have told the boys that you’re single now!’ says Avanti.
‘AVANTI!’ blushes Anamika. ‘I’m as old as their moms.’
‘But you don’t look like that. You can still pass off as a sixteen-year-old. Quite frankly I’m a little jealous. I have seen Devrat’s lifeline on the monitor skip a beat when you’re around.’
Anamika blushes some more and takes the students with her. Avanti writes about this in the letter which is six pages long now. She reads it again and cuts out lines she thinks are depressing and morose. She checks in on Devrat again. Everything is normal. Well, the new normal, which means he’s still breathing, and there are signs of Devrat she knew somewhere hidden in the body that she sees every day. Even after so many days, it somehow feels impossible to her that he’s not listening. She knows he is listening, and sometimes at night, she climbs on the bed, puts her arm across him and sleeps there. His parents don’t seem to mind at all and she wonders if her heartbeat against him will wake him up. But nothing does.
Today she’s reading Devrat a short story by Rabindranath Tagore, a story Devrat’s mother told her that he really liked. She finishes just in time for the guitar classes that she takes thrice a week. She’s not yet playing on Devrat’s guitar because that’s the holy grail and she doesn’t want to touch it yet.
She has to take the classes on the roof of the hospital because it’s not allowed elsewhere, and for now, Avanti thinks she’s horrible at it. It looks simple, but it’s acrobatics, athletics, X Games all rolled into one for your fingers. Avanti blames it on her little stubby fingers but her guitar teacher says her fingers are good enough. Avanti wants to at least get the hang of the strumming pattern. The class goes as usual. She plays badly, the guitar teacher, Arun, berates her for not practising, she blames the guitar, and they both spend the next one hour listening to Devrat’s songs, pointing out mistakes in his imperfect guitar play, yet marvelling at how awesome he is.
She’s dropping Arun to the door when the Chairman of the hospital, C.R. Chautala, an old man in his seventies, yet spritely and always busy, calls out from behind. He’s flanked by three men, all carrying files. Avanti ignores the call.
‘Who’s he?’ asks Arun at the gate.
‘The guy who owns the hospital. He’s quite an ass. I don’t think he likes me that much. He always looks at me as if I’m going to blow up his hospital or something,’ says Avanti.
‘Best of luck, then,’ says Arun and hugs Avanti. Avanti gives Arun a package and asks him to courier it.
‘Who’s it for?’
‘It’s for Namita, a friend of mine. She’s getting married in a few days,’ says Avanti. Namita had come a few days earlier to invite her (along with her fiancé, nice boy) but Avanti had to turn her down. Namita didn’t mind though. The gift card says, Best Wishes, Devrat and Avanti.
‘Okay. Cool, then,’ says Arun.
‘Avanti?’ the old man says out aloud again. Avanti turns to face him. Avanti has met him before briefly when Chautala wanted to check if Avanti was not a threat to the security of the hospital. After all, a girl staying for months in a hospital is bound to raise some eyebrows. At that time Chautala had asked the HR people to run a questionnaire amongst the hospital staff to know what they thought of this girl.
The doctors and the ward boys and the nurses described Avanti in the questionnaire that was sent to them as ‘polite’, ‘kind’, ‘bright spot of my day’, ‘amazing’, ‘kindest person ever’, ‘my patients love her’ etc. The HR people reported back to Chautala and they told him that she wasn’t a threat, just a girl waiting for her love to come back to life.
But today, Chautala is not talking to her about that. They are in his room, and he’s offering her a room next to Devrat.
‘When do you plan to leave?’ the old man asks. ‘You want tea?’
‘I don’t know. And I really don’t need the room. I’m okay in his,’ answers Avanti. Chautala’s office is warm and homely, and this makes Avanti a little uncomfortable for it doesn’t feel like she’s in the hospital anymore. By now she’s used to the cold, white walls and the marble floor, so here, the brown couch, the small bed on the side, the shiny black table, the coloured curtains, are discomforting.
‘I have seen you sleep on the floor for months now.’
‘I don’t always sleep on the floor. It’s only when Devrat’s parents stay the night in the hospital.’
‘That’s why I’m giving the room next to Devrat to you. They have a common door which we will open for you,’ says Chautala in a part-businessman, part-grandfatherly tone.
‘I’m not sure I will be able to pay for it.’
‘I’m not asking you to pay for it. We never run to full capacity,’ says Chautala. ‘We can spare a room.’
A ward boy brings tea and Chautala pours some for Avanti. It tastes familiar.
‘Do you like it?’ asks Chautala. Avanti
nods. ‘It’s Somraj’s special tea. I heard your father taught him. I’m addicted to it now.’ Avanti nods again, this time with pride. ‘You can always come over. Drop in a message at my secretary’s desk and she will guide you,’ says Chautala with a smile.
Avanti appreciates the offer, pours another cup for herself and asks him why he is being so kind to her.
‘I wasn’t around when my son died . . .’ The words, although softly spoken, come down hard like an anvil, crashing on the table that separates them.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was all very sudden,’ he says, not meeting Avanti’s eyes. ‘And I know I couldn’t have done anything about it. He would have died anyway.’ He sips his tea. ‘But I keep thinking about that day, about him, his searching eyes for his loved ones, the last thing he would have said or thought about. It could have been nothing for all I know, and maybe he just went moaning in pain, but I can never stop wondering about it.’
Avanti doesn’t have anything to say to that. They finish their tea silently and when they are done, Chautala thanks her for joining him and asks a ward boy to shift all her stuff to the room adjoining Devrat’s room. Avanti tries to convince him otherwise but he doesn’t listen.
‘It’s my first date in decades,’ says Chautala.
‘It’s my first in six months,’ answers Avanti.
‘It will be okay, beta,’ Chautala answers and hugs her. ‘If you need anything, don’t hesitate.’
‘I will need a lot of tea.’
Avanti walks out of Chautala’s room and into her new room, which has been tastefully decorated. The steel bed has been replaced with a wooden bed, even the mattress is not the standard but a soft, thick one. There are books on the side-table. Some of them are spanking new, the other are slightly old with broken spines. There’s a vase with fresh flowers on the side table as well. Avanti opens the door between the two rooms, and she can see Devrat right in front of her. She takes out the letter and starts to write again, first thanking him for the new room, the anniversary gift, not only the room, but also the spare boyfriend in Chautala.
